“A smart Irishman.”
She ignored the remark and concentrated on applying a butter glaze to the cake.
“Countryside is beginning to look seared. Do you think the rains are just late this year?”
“Are you asking if this is more than just a dry spell, if we’re facing a drought? No one can determine the start of a drought until afterwards.”
She felt her words had been testy. Taking a swish of the glaze on one forefinger, she presented the swirl for his taste. “Your approval, sire,” she said, smiling.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and, taking her finger between his lips, sucked the sticky substance. “Hmmm, you get sweeter by the year.”
“And you get more randy.” She grinned and pulled away to glance down at Robert, who had fallen asleep at his father’s feet. A protective Rogue rested his grizzled muzzle in the boy’s lap.
She bent to collect her son and cradle him in her arms. “Robert’s been so excited about seeing his Uncle Sin, he didn’t sleep well last night.” She pushed back the sweat-damp forelock that had fallen across his forehead.
“I’m not too keen on Sin’s teaching him to ride at such an early age.”
Her defensive instincts surged to the forefront. “Sin is always very careful.”
She wondered if Francis could be jealous of the affection between their son and Sin. Robert loved his father, but he absolutely worshiped his Uncle Sin. With Robert’s delivery, a bond had been forged between her son and Sin.
In every way she was tied to Sin, except in the one that was most important to a woman in love.
“Robby!” A flamingo-thin Celeste whispered and bent to kiss the napping boy.
Robert stirred. His lids fluttered and he awoke with a grin.
Celeste picked the toddler up from his bed and planted loving kisses on his baby-fat cheeks. “Oh, Robby, you have a new tooth since I’ve last seen you. Aren’t you growing into a handsome lad? Keep this up and I’ll be able to marry you. I’m waiting for you, you know.”
Behind her, Sin said, “You’ll have to wrestle me for her, Robert.”
At the sight of his uncle, Robert’s face radiated. Another smile erupted. “Uncle Shin!” he gurgled.
“Alas,” Celeste said, passing Robert to Sin, “I must yield to someone held in greater favor by my prince.”
Sin grasped Robert around his chubby waist and held him aloft so that his baby face was close to Sin’s own. Rubbing noses with Robert, he laughed and so did the toddler.
Amaris loved the sound of their laughter. This was what life was all about.
“A prince are you?” Sin teased. “I’d much prefer to be a toad. They have more fun. They get to play in water. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Or better yet, how about fishing, me lad? Shall we do that?”
His glance strayed over the toddler’s head to meet her gaze. His smile altered. It was still a smile but there was a subtle, fine thread of something more.
At her side, Francis said, “Come along, cobber. Amaris has burned the supper, I fear, and ’tis up to us to provide it."
“Oh, you cad!” Amaris responded in mock indignity. “Don’t believe him, Celeste.”
Over a dinner of roast mutton, snow peas, cooked greens, and steamed rice, the conversation skipped from dress patterns to the deepening draught. Sipping from their vineyard wine, Sin told of a new hand he had hired, a British migrant who had come to Australia and the outback to make his fortune. Well-connected, he had letters of introduction but had no idea what it took to adapt to station life.
Sin leaned back in his chair, glass stem in his hand. “Mr. Crane was a Yorkshire man who insisted on taking the cattle out to look for water two months ago. He didn’t return, and I rode out to follow his tracks but they disappeared from a water hole on a stretch of flat water-worn pebbles. This morning I found his skeleton only forty meters away from the water hole, hidden by brush.”
Francis tossed down the remainder of his glass. “Our native-born jackeroos might be as inexperienced as these damned British migrants but at least they know and understand the land.”
Amaris chuckled. “It wasn’t so long ago, Francis, you were one of those damned British migrants.”
He laughed with the others. “I guess I’ve become a dyed-in-the-wool Australian.”
“Wool,” Robert chirped. “Wool.” He had learned early the most important word to most station owners.
Sin lifted him from his chair. “Now listen, me lad, you need to learn to say horse, too.”
“Horshey?” Robert repeated, and they all laughed again.
“So, you’re ready to ride, huh?” With Robert tucked into his arm, he strode from the dining room. “We horsemen are going riding before it gets dark.”
“He’s a sheep man,” Francis corrected in a good-natured tone.
Everyone trooped outdoors to watch the two in the riding arena. With a delighted Robert perched in front, Sin trotted Wave Runner, his gift to Robert at his birth. Applause erupted from the spectators, which included not only Francis, Celeste, and herself, but also several station hands. No more than a half dozen were married, and those women also turned out to watch. Tough women, jilleroos who would endure the rigors of outback life, they looked as if they had been ridden hard.
Robert took his turn at the reins and beamed proudly when Amaris applauded a well-executed circle. Her son never suspected that Sin’s knees completely controlled the magnificent animal.
Although many stations hired contract horse breakers, Sin broke his own. Her gaze claimed by the play of his thigh muscles beneath the well-worn denim trousers, she could well remember watching one day as he mastered one of his rogue horses.
It had been obvious after only a few minutes that this was to be a contest of wills between man and beast. When both were speckled by blood, she feared that neither would give until one died. Celeste had not watched. “I cannot hide my worry for Sin. If he were to be hurt . . .”
Despite desperately loving Sin, Amaris had known no fear for him. Rather, watching him tame the animal into submission, she felt an excitement that had been almost sexual.
This was a man whose will would never be mastered. Neither convict punishment nor the hostile environment of the Never-Never had broken his will.
This was a man whose will matched hers.
This was her man . . . a man she could never have.
Of course, after a long and bloody battle, the rogue horse had eventually yielded, its head bowed, its nostrils blowing foam, its chest laboring hard.
When darkness put her son’s riding performance at an end, she returned to the veranda with the others to sit and talk and cherish those rare moments when they could relax among friends.
Later, after everyone went to bed, Amaris lay wide awake. Robert slept contentedly between her and Francis. Her urge to shift to another position was repressed simply because there was no room to turn. Despite the open window, heat lay over the room.
Trying not to awaken the other two, she slid from the bed and felt her way through the darkened house to the front door. The coolness of the night breeze wafted along the veranda. Her sigh joined the breeze. It played with the hem of her muslin nightgown, rustled the ends of her loose hair mantling her shoulders, and lured her to the steps where it collected the scents of honeysuckle with which to wreath her.
Above her, the night sky was studded with stars. Arms wrapped around her knees, she sat in contentment. How wealthy she was. Not all of Nan Livingston’s riches could equal the blessings she enjoyed: a precious son, good husband, good friends like Sin and Celeste, and her own place that carried her own stamp as valid as any waxed seal.
Over the years, although she had managed to acquiesce to Francis, to let him lead even when she knew his decisions were sometimes in error, the local people nevertheless referred to Dream Time as Amaris’s run.
Yielding to Francis was probably one of the hardest things she had ever had to do—to be less of a person, to sublimate
herself because she was a woman.
A movement in the shadows caught her peripheral vision. Even as she tensed to spring from the steps, a hand clasped her forearm, detaining her.
“Tis only me, Amaris.”
“Oh, God!” she whispered. “You gave me a fright, Sin.”
He lowered his large frame to the step just above hers. She could feel his body heat, smell his scent that she associated only with him. She knew that his hands, dangling between his knees, were dusted with hair. She knew how his hair swirled in one direction at his nape. She knew that his temples were beginning to gray.
She knew so much about him, except how it felt to lie beneath his weight, how his hands felt stroking her inner thigh, how it felt to have him fill her with himself.
“Robert is no longer a baby. He’s becoming a little boy you can be proud of, Amaris.”
Not “you and Francis” can be proud of but only “you.” “Robert adores you, you know.”
“He’s a special little boy.” His voice was husky with his yearning for the child he would never have.
“I know.” Her heart went out to Celeste, unfulfilled as a mother. Yet, if Amaris had to forego her love for Sin, she could at least take comfort in the fact that Robert was a bond between them.
“It appears that each time you and I watch the night sky together,” he said in a low, very quiet voice, “the Southern Cross is brighter than normal.”
“I used to think you didn’t like me.”
His hands clasped into a single knot. He was silent for a long time. She thought that he wasn’t going to answer. Then, at last, he spoke. “That was the problem. I always liked you. I liked your courage, your determination, your spirit. You never gave in and wept and said, ‘Poor me.”’
Still staring up at the crystal-speckled heaven, she asked, “Then why did you either ignore or mock me?”
“I didn’t approve of your social climbing. But then, who am I to judge? I love not only my wife but another woman I can never have.”
Incomprehensible that they could sit never glancing at each other and talk quietly about such intimate feelings. They could just as well have been discussing the drought.
“Could it be the age-old plight of wanting what you can’t have?”
She heard the dry, self-mocking humor in his voice. “That’s what I tell meself.”
“Amaris? . . . Sin?” Celeste chided softly from the doorway. “Are you two children sneaking out at night to play?”
So guileless was she that she was totally unaware of the import of her words. She stepped out onto the veranda. Despite the long nightgown sheathing her from wrist to neck to ankle, she had appropriately wrapped a hand-knitted shawl about her shoulders. Amaris realized she should have put a robe over her long gown.
“My, isn’t it beautiful out tonight?” Celeste said. “I can’t blame you two for escaping the confines of the house.” She settled next to Sin on the step, her shoulder touching his, her knees brushing Amaris’s spine. “This is like the old days, isn’t it? We three?”
Sin put his arm around her waist. She was so thin, Amaris thought, she was almost a wraith. “You couldn’t sleep either?” he asked of Celeste.
She rested her hand on his knee and her head on his shoulder. “I’m not accustomed to having the entire bed to myself.”
“As much as you grumble about me sprawling, giving you no room?” he teased.
Whatever guilt Amaris felt was chased away by the sudden question that nudged her mind: Did Celeste know after all of the love between Sin and her and— sinless soul that Celeste was—choose to ignore it? Amaris shivered at the possibility of such a thing.
“You can’t be cold.” Celeste said.
“Not really. The late hour is just catching up with me. I think I’ll try again to get to sleep. Good night, Celeste, Sin.”
But, of course, she didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
Francis’s drinking deepened along with the drought.
Amaris watched the running creek turn into a series of billabongs, pools of water left in dried-up riverbeds. By the end of the following year, the grass had long since disappeared. The face of the countryside was shifting red and gray sand, blowing wherever the wind carried it. Dead sheep and fallen tree trunks became sand hills. Birds were dropping dead out of leafless trees.
She had sent to Sydney with Francis and Sin only seven hundred bales of wool, whereas the year before she had sent away more than two thousand. Her flock had dropped from one hundred thousand to six thousand.
The gardens yielded no vegetables, and meat was lean to starvation. Butter and milk had long been food only in name. How was she going to feed over fifty-six people for whom she was now responsible?
When she looked into her five-year-old’s trusting eyes, she both wept and raged inside. She was helpless against the elements, against the wrath of nature.
“Stop pacing the floor,” Francis said one evening from the dining table, where he sat drinking rum. “You’re making me jittery.” He was not a reader like she; and with so little opportunity for socializing with his peers, he found nothing better to do than drink.
“Tis not my pacing that’s making you jittery, ’tis your drinking,” she snapped.
“Mama? Are you a bad girl?” Robert peered up at them through his incredibly long lashes. He sat on the hardwood floor and played with a corncob horse Baluway had fashioned for him. Next to Robert, Rogue watched her just as intently.
She had to smile. “No, not bad—or mad. Just . . . just talking aloud.”
Later that night, in bed, Francis voiced her own fears. “If rain doesn’t come soon, we’re going to lose the place.”
Hands behind her head, she stared up into the dark. The place is always mine . . . ours. We won’t lose it.”
Francis, only a hand length away, didn’t even try to touch her tonight. She could smell his rum-laden breath. “The land is worth nothing if we all die of starvation.”
“We won’t.” She was tired of trying to reassure him when she wasn’t even certain herself.
“Damn it, look at yourself. He put his hand on her pelvis. “Your hip bones are as prominent as a skeleton’s. “You’re not eating enough.”
“Tomorrow, the major, Sin, Thomas, Sykes, and a few other graziers are coming over to discuss finding a solution. I won’t let us starve, so stop worrying, Francis.”
“Well, neither will I. If I have to, I’ll go to Sydney and request a loan from Nan Livingston. She’s always been supportive of me. More than you have. You don’t trust me to do anything. Always suggesting a better way. Or following along behind me and doing it over.”
The mention of Nan Livingston struck ice in her heart. Wouldn’t Nan enjoy taking over Dream Time! What revenge! “You’re rambling drunk.”
Later, as she lay in bed, she tried to still the welling panic. There had to be a way to keep the run from going under.
The candle sputtered. She reached to pinch it out—and stopped. Tallow! If not mutton, then tallow! She couldn’t wait until the next afternoon.
Hands jammed in breeches pockets, she paced before the five men crowded into Dream Time’s small office. Its window looked out on the garden, which now consisted of little more than brown withered vines and wilted flower stalks whose blooms had never unfurled.
“I’d say that the Livingston woman would sell her soul in exchange for power,” the major was saying. “She and Randolph are going to duel it out yet, mark my words.”
His words brought her steps to a halt. She pretended to be studying the landscape outside. Nan Livingston. A shadow that followed her, even into the Never-Never.
“I disagree,” Sin said. “Nan Livingston is ruthlessly ambitious. That’s all. A lesson that wouldn’t hurt for everyone in this room to learn.”
“Well, we don’t have to worry about the high cost of shipping the Livingston woman charges, since our sheep are bringing not a farthing.”
Hands still in her pockets, Amari
s turned back to the men. “Gentlemen, sheep are worth about six pence each for mutton, but only if a buyer can be found. Surely there must be enough in a sheep to make it worth more than that.”
She paused, dramatizing the moment. “I suggest there is. Tallow. People need soap, candles. Tallow used for these is running between two and three pounds a hundredweight in London. If we boil down a sheep, we’ll render between twelve and twenty-five pounds of tallow. If we boil down eight hundred sheep and send the tallow to London, it will fetch us six shillings per sheep. That, gentlemen, is a good deal better than six pence!”
A silence held sway in the room. Then the major slapped his thigh. “By Jove, Amaris, you may have something there.”
“Her simple arithmetic may well save the Australian sheep industry from oblivion,” Sin said.
The way he looked at her made her suggestion, made anything, pale in comparison. Just the look that passed between her and him was enough to sustain her, she thought. Now she could live through those emotional droughts when she went weeks without seeing the man who held her heart.
Almost listlessly, her gaze drifted from the brown earth and brown vegetation beyond to the brown fence posts and even farther to the brown horizon. Dull, drab, lifeless. She felt utterly drained.
Then her eye caught sight of color!
On the horizon boiled green-purple-blue clouds. A rainstorm was in the making. A rainstorm of magnitude, judging from the combination of garish colors.
She turned and hurried down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and ran out onto the veranda. “Francis!” she shouted. “Francis!”
She found him in the store. The door’s lock had been removed. Inside, the shafts of sunlight were sifted with dust in the air. The store’s shelves were bare of supplies, and she had stopped coming here weeks before. Her ledger lay dusty on the counter.
At the sound of her footsteps, he turned. For the first time, she noticed that his tawny hair was streaked with gray at the temples and over the ears. “Oh, Amaris, I was just checking to see if any empty food tins remained.”
Dream Time (historical): Book I Page 24
