The Bridegroom's Dilemma

by Lindsay Armstrong

  As she dressed with care after lunch, she realized she was trying to blank out her last encounter with Nick. Because, to her horror, just to think of it brought tears to her eyes. And her mother’s words of wisdom on the subject of Nick Hunter—that he might be more complicated than appeared on the surface—came back to mind.

  But what was so complicated about him? she wondered sadly. He had certainly adjusted to parting from her with what looked like amazing ease. He surely couldn’t be pushing her towards Bryce otherwise, not to mention his relationship with her nemesis, Wynn Mortimer. So, if there was anything deep, dark and complicated about him, she had never touched it.

  She stared at herself in the mirror, closed her eyes briefly then adjusted her hat—and went to the races.

  Several hours later, she came back from the races, tossed her hat onto the bed, slipped her shoes off and sank into the armchair. It had been a fun afternoon. She’d backed a couple of winners, consumed some champagne, watched the antics of the crowd with amusement and looked after Bryce admirably.

  Inasmuch as when he’d tired of hobbling around on his sprained ankle, between the mounting yard, the bookmakers and the grandstand, she’d procured a couple of folding chairs for them in the family tent. And she’d brought him champagne and food, taken his commissions to the bookmakers and come back to describe each race to him.

  Yes, she thought tiredly, laying her head back, Skye Belmont, TV personality, had been at her bubbly best. Even Wynn Mortimer, stunning in a white leather miniskirt and matching sleeveless, low-cut top teamed with a ruby-red cartwheel hat crowned with feathers, had failed to render her less than bubbly. The fact that Nick, due to the weight of his honorary steward duties, was not much in evidence had also helped.

  To make matters worse, another bravura performance was required of her tonight. The Owners and Trainers Ball was being held in a large marquee and the Attwood house party made a practice of attending.

  ‘I didn’t bring anything to wear to a ball!’ she’d protested when apprised of this. ‘Anyway, I’m sure Bryce isn’t up to it.’

  Bryce had expressed the opinion that, whilst he wouldn’t be up to dancing and might never attempt to do so again, he would still go. Please come, Skye, they’d all entreated. It’s part of the Mount Gregory experience; you can’t miss it and we don’t really dress up for a ball! All bar two, that was.

  Nick had simply watched her impassively while Wynn had turned her back on the proceedings.

  She’d agreed reluctantly and Sally had offered to lend her something to wear which she’d declined, saying she’d come up with something herself.

  Nick had spoken for the first time. ‘I’m sure you will, Skye—you’re good at that. I think Skye must have the smallest wardrobe of any woman I’ve known but she always manages to make it exciting.’

  Skye’s eyes had blazed at him before she too had turned her back on the proceedings.

  ‘I don’t think I can take much more,’ she murmured to herself in the privacy of her bedroom. ‘And I refuse to be bubbly tonight! So take heed, Skye Belmont.’ She went to take a bath.

  ‘Nick was right. You look stunning. And you always manage to look different, somehow.’

  Skye glanced down at herself then up at Bryce. She wore the same outfit as she had to the races. But the rose was gone, she’d exchanged her black patent shoes for her silver high-heeled sandals and she’d added a marvellous pale grey shawl with black and turquoise flowers on it. She wore it over one shoulder and tied at her waist on the opposite side. Her hair was pulled severely back in a knot.

  ‘Nick was not trying to be right,’ she murmured. ‘He was trying to lump me in with all the other women he has known. No doubt a multitude.’

  ‘Was that the reason you broke it off with him?’

  They were walking slowly towards the ball marquee, having fallen behind the rest of the party as Bryce hobbled along. There was another dark, velvety sky above them, pricked by a million stars, and there was the aroma of wood smoke and meat cooking on the air, coming from glowing camp fires dotted around. Not everyone had been fortunate enough to be invited to the Owners and Trainers Ball.

  Or were they more fortunate than she was? Skye mused. She had no doubt many a party was being held out in the open and for a moment she longed to break free and go and find herself one.

  ‘Skye?’

  ‘Uh.’ She wrested her mind back to what Bryce had said. ‘No, as a matter of fact. Well, not any that I knew about.’

  ‘So what was the problem?’

  Skye sighed. ‘He wasn’t who I thought he was and I definitely was not the kind of wife he…wanted.’

  ‘Then it was a very close shave,’ Bryce said with a frown.

  ‘You’re not wrong. Bryce, I’m not really looking forward to this so, if you feel like leaving early, please tell me!’

  He took her hand. ‘Trust me, Skye. You’ll end up enjoying yourself!’

  It was hard not to.

  The band might have been a country band but they were innovative and lively and the lead singer was a fair Elvis Presley impersonator. Everyone danced with everyone else, although Skye managed to avoid Nick, or, it struck her, perhaps it was the other way around? And the Clarks’ nineteen-year-old daughter, Maggie, arrived unexpectedly, sporting a broken arm.

  This turned out to be ideal for Bryce, who had met her years ago, because she kept him company, saying that any energetic movement was painful so she wouldn’t be dancing.

  Apparently she’d fallen off a boat unbeknownst to her parents, who’d believed she was safe and sound at the James Cook University in Townsville, industriously studying marine biology.

  As soon as Skye heard about the marine biology, she recalled the look of surprise in Bryce’s eyes on being presented with a nineteen-year-old Maggie Clarke who obviously differed greatly from his memories of her. She was short but slender, dark and elfin and, although not precisely beautiful, she had lovely large brown eyes that sparkled with fun.

  Could this be the answer to one set of her prayers? Skye asked herself. What could be more perfect for tearing Bryce’s infatuation away from her than an attractive, soon-to-be marine biologist with a broken arm? The other plus for Maggie was that she did not come across as a man-eater, just a happy, friendly girl.

  It was this set of thoughts that caused Skye to suddenly feel more in tune with the Owners and Trainers Ball. Also, there was such a crowd, it was quite easy to lose sight of Nick and Wynn.

  It was while she was dancing with Jack Attwood that she said suddenly, though, ‘I’d love to know what they’re cooking on those camp fires, and not only for my book. I mean—’ she looked contrite ‘—this is fun, but the real Mount Gregory atmosphere is out there, would I be right in thinking?’

  Jack grinned. ‘Between you and me, Skye, that’s where I’d rather be but Sally insists we grace the ball. Uh…’ he paused and looked around… ‘I’d get skinned alive if I left but, look, Nick has a few mates out there. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind giving you a bit of a tour of the camp fire scene.’

  ‘No, not Nick,’ Skye said with a trace of humour. ‘Wynn would skin me alive, Jack.’

  For a moment their gazes caught, and Skye’s eyes widened as she read sudden determination in Jack’s. He also said, ‘I have plans for Wynn, Skye. Did you know there’s a best-dress competition tonight? Well, there is, and I’ve just appointed famous model, Wynn Mortimer, as the judge. It should keep her out of mischief for at least an hour or so.’ He stopped dancing and looked around.

  ‘No. J-Jack, no…’ Skye stammered.

  But he took no notice of her and led her towards Nick, standing alone for a moment as someone danced off with Wynn.

  Nick hesitated only briefly when told of Jack’s mission. ‘Why not?’ he murmured. ‘I’ve helped Skye with her books before. Let’s go.’

  ‘This wasn’t my idea,’ Skye said mutinously as he led her outside. ‘So what you could do is walk me up to the house and I’ll go to b
ed.’

  ‘Not your idea to see what they’re cooking on the camp fires?’ He stopped walking and looked down at her enigmatically. He was in black tonight—shirt, trousers—although, like most of the men, he’d discarded his jacket and loosened his grey tie. It was a set of clothes Skye knew well and loved him in…

  ‘Yes, of course that was my idea,’ she said hastily. ‘But…’ She trailed off wearily.

  ‘As in flying you out, I’d be the last person you’d ask to do this?’ he supplied. ‘Yet wasn’t it you who suggested we could even be friends?’

  ‘Nick,’ she said tightly, ‘you seem to forget you’re here with another woman and my name is already dirt with her.’

  He grinned. ‘Don’t worry about Wynn, Skye. All we’re going to indulge in is an innocent little stroll around—aren’t we?’

  He looked so devastatingly alive and amused, she was torn between a desire to slap him or… No, she cautioned herself. Stop right there. She shrugged. ‘All right.’

  He found a friend, an opal prospector, who was more than happy to invite them to his camp fire. So they sat on a log, were introduced around, and handed tin plates. Nobody recognized Skye and seemed to have no idea that she and Nick had been engaged, so she found herself relaxing a little.

  Someone twanged a guitar softly and she looked around the circle of people with interest. They were all prospectors with rough, dirt-engrained hands, or drovers, and people very used to camping out under the stars. Which was not to say they were roughing it food-wise, she discovered as she nibbled at a chicken wing and tried to analyse what it had been marinated in—it was delicious.

  But the most interesting thing to her was how at ease Nick was with them and they with him. The firelight flickering on him couldn’t have revealed someone from a different world more accurately than broad daylight, she mused. And not only because of the things it did reveal—his clothes and his clean, lean hands—but his aura.

  Somehow or other you just knew that this was a clever man with a lot of clout—perhaps because of the way he spoke? Or perhaps because he could be so at ease amongst any company. Yet most of these people did seem to know him so he must have been prospecting with them and been down to their own grass-roots level.

  Something he chose not to share with me, she thought sadly, and, with an effort, stopped looking at his hands…

  ‘Wondered if you’d bring any of your fancy friends down to see us, Nick, me-old-cobber,’ his friend Bluey said, but with no trace of offence in his voice.

  ‘This particular friend,’ Nick replied, ‘was dying to see what you cook on your camp fires. She writes cookbooks.’

  ‘Does she, now? What do you think of the chicken?’ He turned to Skye.

  ‘So much that I’d love to ask you for the recipe to put in my book. And…’ Skye hesitated ‘…ask you if you have a recipe for witchety grubs, kangaroo-tail soup and…lizards?’

  A shout of laughter went up round the camp fire. But again no one took offence and they started to regale Skye with the odd things they’d seen cooked and eaten, although it turned out that none of them had actually eaten witchety grubs or lizards. But they did come up with damper and bread recipes for her, and a few forms of bush tucker they had tried, which they obligingly wrote down on scraps of paper with much laughter as they agonized over their spelling.

  But after the chicken bones had been removed and a potato in garlic butter baked in foil in the coals had been put on her plate with a spicy sausage and a portion of tomato and onion omelette she said that she might have to rethink her bush tucker chapter on Mount Gregory. Because the food was as tasty as if it had come from a gourmet kitchen.

  They liked that. In fact it was soon obvious that they liked her a lot, and when they finally stood up to go Bluey drawled, ‘If I were you, mate, I’d put a leg-rope on this little lady. ‘Bout time you thought of getting hitched.’

  Skye froze but Nick, with her hand in his, said lightly, ‘Look who’s calling the pot black. You’ve never been hitched to anyone in your life.’

  ‘True, mate, true! But I only live one kind of life. You’re never going to be able to be a real loner.’

  ‘Is that what you want to be, Nick?’

  They were wending their way back towards the marquee around another large, noisy tent—the boxing tent.

  ‘Now that is an outback tradition,’ he said. ‘Know how it works?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Members of the crowd are invited to take on one of the resident boxers who travel with the show. It can be quite funny.’

  Skye shuddered. ‘I hate boxing in any form.’

  He didn’t comment as they strolled past a beer-drinking contest.

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer, Nick?’ she said at last. They were beside the race track now, a little away from all the activity, and he stopped and leant his elbows on the running rail.

  There wasn’t much grass on the Mount Gregory track; in fact the back straight was only sand, but this patch in front of the winning post was carefully nurtured and it looked cool and dewy in the starlight.

  ‘Do I want to be a loner, Skye?’ he said slowly. ‘Not particularly but it could be the way I’m fashioned.’

  She thought about this for a moment. ‘When you’re partying and driving racing cars et cetera, it doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘I once told you that’s not all I like to do.’

  She remembered the first time she’d had lunch with him. ‘I know, but I never saw any evidence of it, or how you fitted in with this—’ she gestured to take in the night and the place ‘—when we were—together.’

  ‘I do it a lot less than I used to. But I’ve been coming up to this area since I was a kid, looking for opals, sapphires and gold. My father and I used to set off together in a truck with our swags and our billies and do just that. Then big business got in the way and he didn’t have time to indulge his passion for what started it all for him.’

  Skye was silent, trying to picture Nick as a little boy.

  ‘Of course it’s not only the joy of finding things,’ he went on. ‘It’s the magic of the outback, the people, the wide open spaces, the folklore, things like this.’ He gestured to include Mount Gregory.

  She said a little helplessly, ‘I said this before but when you’re doing the other things you do it’s hard to believe this side of you exists.’

  He turned to look up at the stars and leant back against the rail. ‘Skye, what women may not understand about men and some of their preoccupations is this. Racing cars and boats is about speed, sure, but it’s also a genuine fascination with motors and engines, how they tick and how to get the most out of them. The glamour and the social scene is only a byproduct.’

  ‘They do seem to go together,’ she commented.

  He shrugged. ‘When you get as exhilarated as you do about technology and pushing limits, it seems to follow on naturally that you’d like to party.’

  Skye looked at him with widening eyes. ‘I never thought of it like that.’

  He grimaced. ‘Boxing is the same. Done properly, there’s a science to it that appeals to a lot of men.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid you’re not going to win me over there. And none of this—lesson on how to understand men explains why you feel you may be fashioned as a loner. Or why you didn’t try to explain this better to me.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because I couldn’t explain it to myself.’

  Skye stared at him, wide-eyed.

  ‘And perhaps,’ he added, and moved his shoulders, ‘Flo is right about me.’

  ‘Your Florence?’

  ‘The same,’ he agreed. ‘She reckons I’ve had too much handed to me on a platter and I’m too used to getting my own way. In other words, I don’t take kindly to not being able to run the show.’

  ‘Something I’ve never forgotten,’ Skye mused as she digested this, ‘is how secretly surprised your mother looked when she first met me. I don’t know what’s made me think of it now but�
�’ She stopped and frowned.

  ‘My mother was surprised because she read you more accurately than I did, and she also knows me well,’ he said with a trace of grimness.

  ‘Read me accurately as in how?’ Skye queried.

  He glanced down at her. ‘Too much in love with me to know what you were getting yourself into, Skye.’

  She gasped. ‘But…but…look,’ she stammered, then said desperately, ‘How does one get fashioned as a loner? There must be reasons.’

  ‘There’s nothing deep or dark to do with my upbringing, there’s no unrequited love in my life that went badly wrong other than you, so—I guess Flo is right. I’ve led too much of a charmed life than is good for one, and it’s my way of…sloughing it off.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have clung,’ she whispered then stopped, appalled.

  He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. ‘You were always too good for me, Skye. Think of it that way. You were always meant to make someone a wonderful wife—’

  ‘Don’t you dare mention Bryce to me now,’ she warned fiercely as tears came to her eyes.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘So it really is all over?’ she said then, almost defiantly, as if to show she didn’t care what he thought. ‘If so, though, why did you do what you did to me last night?’

  He smiled slightly. ‘That was a very male ego talking.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Skye, you were the one who saw it all more clearly than I did,’ he said gently, and brushed the tears from her cheeks. ‘By the way, I’ve been dying to ask you what you did with your wedding dress.’

  She caught her breath because nothing could have killed any false hopes she’d been nurturing better than this query.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said huskily. ‘It’s still hanging up in, well, my mother’s house. But I did cut the cake up into little pieces and I sent them all to a children’s hospital.’

  He smiled. ‘I hope that made you feel better.’