by Margaret Way
‘Deviations aren’t only reserved for men, Flick,’ Ingo pointed out, rather kindly for him when he had no patience with Felicity’s breathless involvements, and worse still, held her responsible for Genny’s multiple anxieties and the tensions she had endured with precisely such a mother. Felicity was very loving and demonstrative with her daughter, but all things were relevant. Felicity simply wasn’t capable of her daughter’s depth of feeling, nor did she have Genny’s intelligence or extreme sensitivity.
Nevertheless he smiled at her and Felicity purred with satisfaction. The conversation went on, peaceably this time, for Genny disturbed them no more.
Although Felicity never said anything of any great importance and avoided controversial matters like the plague, she had an extensive circle of friends, even women friends, and men of all ages were kindly disposed towards her, Ingo included. Maybe it should teach me something! Genny thought wryly.
Painful as it was to accept, men really didn’t like confident or overly intelligent women. They could deny it all they liked and write long favourable articles about liberty and equality, but in their hearts they never meant a word of it. Such articles sold, but they were hypocrisy nonetheless. Nothing had changed since life in the caves.
Ingo, at any rate, would have been at home there. Challenging the elements, wild marauding beasts, assembling a community with himself for the leader, hauling a woman off by her hair. Ingo was violent.
He was also the most elegant, civilised man in the world, but that was only a veneer, a thick coat of polish. There was some element in Ingo, Genny feared. He disturbed her enormously and worst of all, he charmed her too frequently, the sight and the sound of him. She could still feel the tingle of hismouth on her skin.
She made a small helpless sound, appropriate even in a caveman’s mate, and settled more comfortably into her seat. Soon they would touch down at Tandarro, the capital of Ingo’s world. She had only herself to blame for moving into his arena, the most dangerous and the most beautiful place in the world.
CHAPTER THREE
Dan Howell had never been so enchanted in his life. Not one but two beautiful blondes, hanging on his every word. Except that he was fifty and admirably in control of himself, it would have gone to his head.
A Texan, and very proud of it, he looked not unlike the hero’s kinsman in every Western Genny had ever seen, with a ruddy, sun-scarred face, a powerful broad shouldered frame just starting to get heavy, his thick hair bleached to flax and his light blue eyes, used to looking through vast distances, creased and piercing, but very friendly. Both women took to him at once, and even Aunt Evelyn looked mildly intrigued, all three showing considerable unfeigned interest in his part of the world and the Texan way of life.
Given such interest and attention Dan waxed lyrical, in his pleasant drawl, not going on about Texas’ tremendous size in the face of the State of Queensland’s immensity and the cattle empire he was on, but providing them all with stirring examples of wealth acquired, adventure and enterprise, the enormous drive that had opened up the American West at pretty much the same time as Queensland was being settled. Listening to Dan, who had known hardship as well as the rewards of building up a fine, progressive ranch, they could almost see everything he talked about happening before their very eyes.
Dan was a born raconteur with a singular dry wit and Ingo, his host, encouraged him with his anecdotes with no thought of Howell, the buyer, but because he liked the man and was enjoying his company.
‘My goodness, I can see it all so clearly.’ Felicity said, her lovely countenance transfixed.
‘Thank you, ma’am!’
‘So you really say that?’ she asked, enchanted.
‘We do. I don’t know when I’ve ever seen a prettier woman either.’
Pink covered Felicity’s cheeks like a gauzy veil. ‘Now, Dan, I’m immunised against flattery.’
‘The simple truth,’ he assured her.
Pleasure raced through Felicity’s veins like champagne. ‘I don’t know that you’ve mentioned Mrs Howell?’
Dan shook his flaxen head. ‘No deliberate omission. There is no Mrs Howell, but sooner or later it has to come to me.’
‘I don’t believe it, Dan, you’re a bachelor.’
‘Fairly caught tonight!’
Evelyn just prevented herself from snorting and Genny caught Ingo’s eye. He looked perversely entertained, marvellously attractive with his mocking smile as he stared right back into Genny’s face.
‘Why don’t I show you the night sky?’ suggested Felicity, who had found through tried and true experience that the simplest approach was best.
‘Do you mean all of us?’ Ingo inquired sardonically.
‘You’ve seen it before. Dan may not be used to our celestial displays.’
‘True. I’ve never had the Southern Cross pointed out to me.’ Dan smiled, a little disconcerted by the faint tension he surprised in Genny’s face. Because she was a youngster he didn’t dare look at her, but he found her fascinating, with her silver-gilt curls rioting around her piquant face, her eyes so dark and velvety one could luxuriate in them. She was very beautiful withh her intoxicating youth and her distinctly Italianate look, but her face wasn’t joyful. It was passionate, fiery, the mouth full, the chin faintly cleft, but it wasn’t a happy face. Some soft kind of desolationn was there for all her slow, ravishing smile. A broken heart, perhaps. Young girls took things so much to heart, especially one who looked like that. But why should she be looking at the innocent stranger in their midst with such controlled apprehension? Dan smiled at her, trying to reassure her for he didn’t know what, and she smiled back at him, almost taking his breath away.
Ingo, aware of Genny’s habitual anxietiess and the reason for them, intercepted Dan’s eyes seeing the fascination in his face. ‘All right, Dan, I can well see such an experience might be hard to come by another time. Flick, I might tell you, is an inveterate Circe.’
‘There you are, Dan, be warned. ‘ Felicity said gaily.
‘Heaven help me, there’s nothing I want to do more. One of these days I might even be able to show you our Texan sky. It’s pretty big. You’ve seen it, Ingo, tell her. ‘
Ingo grinned. ‘Honestly, I don’t know which is the more beautiful.’
‘You’re only saying that so you won’t get into an argument,’ bridled Felicity.
‘Anyway, Flick, you’re talking to a man of consequence. Dan has a great property.’
‘Well, maybe not the size of yours. Even I can’t get used to these immense holdings you have over here.
The ranch house couldn’t compare with this palace, that’s for sure. It seems pretty remarkable set down in the wilds. I can never quite follow why there are so many English mansions in the Australian outback.’
‘Dreams of home,’ Ingo said, finishing off his drink. ‘The deep-rooted desire to recreate the ancestral home in the wild bush. Everyone knows the British are eccentric; nothing spared to impose order and good taste in the most unlikely places. As far as I know we haven’t neglected that side of it.’
‘It’s quite a place.‘ Dan said truthfully, not altogether at home with the Faulkner eccentricities, the great chandeliers and the heirloom silver, the antique furniture and the paintings, with a whole row of old family portraits down through the years, formidable looking men and overruled-looking women looking out rather austerely from their gilded frames. On the other hand, Dan decided there and then, he would make an attempt to redecorate the ranch house when he got back home. Maybe get the right people in to do it. He certainly had the money. He might as well sink it into some very high-class furnishings and paintings and things. Women usually took care of that side of it, but in fact Tandarro had been designed, built and furnished from top to bottom by George Douglas-Faulkner, an English ‘gentleman selector’ reminiscent of the style of the splendid two-storied mansion he had been born in and which had been inherited by Edward, his eldest brother. His desire to make his own way and build u
p his own dynasty had led him to Australia, through New South Wales into Queensland, where there was intense competition to take up large leases on magnificent grazing land. Originally intending to invest in sheep, Faulkner turned his attention to cattle, becoming so prosperous after a number of years that he was able to bring out his two younger brothers and their families.
Dan privately considered the lofty proportions of the dining room with its solid, dark-hued opulence and heavy Victorian furniture as too ‘old world’, too rich and massive for his taste, but he had to admit Faulkner looked as at home at the head of the long gleaming table as he did in the saddle. Dan was an ardent admirer of the younger man as a cattleman and breeder; close to, in his own home, Ingo Faulkner seemed very much Dan’s idea of the English aristocrat worked into a more easy-going shape in the country of his adoption. There were men in plenty who lived like kings in Texas and it was certainly true on Tandarro, a property so big that it was more like a self-contained kingdom with Faulkner, the benevolent but all-powerful ruler. Miss Evelyn, the elderly aunt, though still handsome, was the sort of woman Dan avoided at all times, but Felicity and her daughter Genny were perfect, as delicate and feminine and as carefully guarded as any other Faulkner possession.
The girl Genny, Faulkner called Giannina, with a wonderful balance between indulgence and a dreadful, teasing. One had a way of speaking and the other interjecting that Dan found curious. He couldn’t quite follow either of them, and there was an unnameable something in Faulkner’s striking face every time he looked at his young cousin. Such a beautiful and intelligent girl Dan would have cherished, yet Faulkner seemed oblivious to her fine-drawn look, sending any number of flippant little darts to her which she instantly returned. It wasn’t Dan’s way. He liked to put a woman way up there on a pedestal, far from this intriguing challenging that was going on. Felicity too, he sensed, was puzzled by the coolly tempestuous thrust and parry. It wasn’t her way either.
When they had gone, taking the jeep because there was a splendid vantage point from Spirit Hill, the scene of live magic and ritual sacred dances, there was silence at the table where they still lingered over coffee. Aunt Evelyn, resplendent in an ageless mauve gown that had cost an enormous amount when she bought it many years before, thought it best to express her dignified disapproval.
‘For all I care we may never see them again, but I beg of you, Genny, don’t upset yourself unnecessarily.’
‘You know Flick! She was just flattered, and he seems a very nice man.’
‘The life you’ve led often makes me cry.’
‘Evvy, don’t excite yourself.‘ Ingo said carelessly.
‘I can’t help it. The way Felicity was acting reminds me of the last time.’
‘Not Hughie, surely?’
‘No, not Hughie, the other one, what was his name?’
‘Stewart,’ Genny said obediently.
‘It’s humiliating! The man comes to buy stock and Felicity runs away with him.’
‘Please, Aunt Evelyn, I love my mother best in the world. She’s like a child. She doesn’t realise that she fills us all with apprehension. I’m sure this is only a pleasant diversion.’
‘We’ll give them an hour, then we’ll go and look for them!’ Ingo said, half flippantly, half intentionally.
‘I‘d say Dan’s voted Flick the prettiest woman he’s ever laid eyes on, but you, my repressed little Giannina, knocked him rotten.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Genny turned her aureoled head, the light shining on the flicked-up curls.
‘No news, Giannina, you know when a man’s looking at you, you just feel you have to hide it.’
‘Except that I didn’t notice,’ she retorted.
‘I did,’ Aunt Evelyn said, somewhat severely. ‘It’s a good thing you’re just a child.’
‘No, Ev, there’s been a big change over the years. Not a lot of progress in other ways...’
‘If it’s all right with you, Aunt Evelyn, I’m going to escape for a little,’ Genny said hurriedly. ‘I hope you like the records I brought you.’
‘My dearest child, thank you once again. It’s so good of you to think of me-and the books, all my favourite authors.’
‘Remember her when you make your will!’ said Ingo, his brilliant eyes on Genny’s tinted face, the wild apricot that stained her high cheekbones.
‘As you very well know I’ve already made it, not that Father left me a great deal,’ replied Aunt Evelyn.
‘I should have thought you were a rich woman.‘ Ingo said, and laughed at her.
‘I‘ll tell you now that I’ve divided it equally. One part to you, my beloved nephew, and the other to Giannina, who I fear will need it with such a mother.’
Ingo shook his head, his dark face sparkling with humour. ‘Evvy, I’m proud of you. I promise you I’ll spend it all wisely. As for Giannina, who seems to be struck speechless for once, she should fall on her knees. and thank you. With all that money she won’t even have to marry.’
Aunt Evelyn threw up her hands. ‘I couldn’t bear it if she were to become an old maid. Look at me.
Father always told me there wasn’t a man worthy of me.’
‘Couldn’t you have decided for yourself?’
‘Oh, I wish I had now. I might have had children of my own. However, as you know, hove both of you, notwithstanding the fact that you argue all the time.’
‘It seems to me being an unmarried lady is no disgrace.’ Genny said very earnestly. ‘Surely it’s better than being an unhappy wife?’
‘I dare say.‘ Aunt Evelyn said quietly. ‘It’s just that I’ve never had…’
‘I know, I know.’ The tender-hearted Genny leapt up from the table and came round to fling her arms about Aunt Evelyn’s thin, square shoulders, her beautiful dark eyes with tears in them.
‘Girls, girls, we can’t go on like this.‘ Ingo shoved back his chair and stood up. ‘I can scarcely prevent myself from breaking down. Come on, Evvy, you may be torn about being an old maid, but don’t forget you reared me. That’s something.’
‘Yes, and I’m proud of you. I know how kind and good you really are,’ his aunt said quietly.
‘You’ll have to tell me about it some time,’ Genny flashed out irrepressibly, ‘I can’t see it myself.’
Aunt Evelyn patted her hand, forcing a smile. ‘I think you can. My father was a man of rigid and old fashioned ideas about women: a remarkable man, a strong man, but Ingo has something neither my father nor his own father had.’
‘Don’t tell her, Evvy, let her find out for herself.’
‘That might be the best thing. Now if you two will excuse me, I’ll start on one of the new books Genny brought me. I’m quite a fan of Mary Stewart’s, especially those old thriller-romances.’
‘Very proper in a woman. Where would we be with out romance?’ Ingo held his aunt’s chair, bending to brush his mouth against her firm, unlined cheek. ‘Don’t worry about Flick. She always falls on her feet.’
‘It’s not Felicity so much I worry about, it’s this child here.’
‘I‘ll worry about her,’ Ingo assured her.
‘I know you do.’ Aunt Evelyn withdrew smilingly, her back straight, her silver-streaked black head held high.
Genny watched her, feeling singularly upset. ‘Poor old Evvy!’ she said softly.
Ingo shook his head. ‘I‘m afraid I can’t feel sorry for Miss Evelyn Faulkner of Tandarro. On the other hand, I might have felt sorry for her husband.’
‘What a rotten thing to say!’
‘Darling, Evvy’s becoming more and more mellow. She was quite a tartar in her younger days and incurably haughty.’
‘How else would she be, the way she was brought up?’
‘We all suffer one way or the other. Look at you.’
‘Yes, look at me,’ Genny echoed ironically.
‘I have been all evening, more or less.’
‘You’ve taken great care to hide your glances from me.’
; ‘Naturally! I enjoy that little patrician air of yours. It sits oddly with your passionate mouth.’
‘Don’t talk such rubbish!’ she snapped.
‘Hasn’t Dave told you?’
‘On the contrary, it’s never entered the conversation.’
‘Now you’re making me really anxious. Tell me a bit more about his extraordinary behaviour.’
His attitude was careless, his lean body faultlessly arranged, one hand pushing against the table, the other shifting a crystal wineglass, yet his voice had an imperative note to it. It really got to her, her sadness transmuted to a sweet irritability.
‘You’re damned well not going to ruin any of my romances!’
‘Your romances.‘ he scoffed at her, reaching out suddenly and drawing her towards him.
She swallowed dryly, feeling sizzled at his touch. His vivid dark face was openly mocking her, her own face was vaguely alarmed. Obeying a totally uncontrollable instinct, she began to rain small blows at him with her free hand so that he had to spin her like a doll, locking her virtually a prisoner within the hard circle of his arms. Her slight body lolled forward like a flower, her back to him, fighting the strength of his linked hands, the beginnings of a wild hysteria in her. She had to concentrate furiously on beating him off. It was unbearable to be so close to him.
‘Stop it.‘ She dug her nails into him and he held her harder.
‘If you want me to treat you gently, Genny, this isn’t the way to go about it. ‘
‘You’re so... so...’
‘Go on.’
‘Let me go, Ingo.‘ she said, her breathing deep and urgent. She twisted her head back and looked into his eyes. Their silver glitter shocked her, the turbulent vitality, even menace. She could feel herself go white. ‘Please, Ingo! ‘ she whispered. the will to defy him dying. The wild resistance of a moment ago was shattered. She hadn’t a hope against such dark, frightening energy, a man’s physical strength.
Tension and a hard recklessness were there in his face, danger and excitement flashing around them like tongues of light. A soft shiver ran through her and she turned in his arms, her body playing tricks on her as it came to rest against him, curving trustingly like a child.
