Jane felt her heart hammering in her throat as someone got to his feet from a lounging chair on the veranda and loped down the shallow steps to the car.
“Here they are, safe and sound, Steve, but I guess they’re pretty weary after all that travelling.” Joel said, climbing out. He went round and got Lisa’s folding chair out and set it up on the veranda.
Jane sat paralysed in her seat as the man Joel called Steve came round and opened her door and held out his brown hand to help her down.
“Welcome to Blue River, darling—” the man said dryly, and his deepset grey eyes flicked a scornful glance at her before he smiled beyond her at her sister, adding in a different tone, “and to you, Lisa. I hope you’re going to be happy here, little sister.”
“Hi, Steve—” Lisa grinned at him mischievously, “I’m sure I will! But just now all I want to do is sleep and sleep—aren’t you going to kiss her? We’ve come an awful long way for this, you know.”
“Sure.” The man reached in and practically lifted Jane out of the utility and gave her a hard, brief salute on the lips. Then he nodded towards the house, where a middle-aged woman was standing waiting for them on the veranda. “Mrs. Newbery will show you your rooms—Joel is putting your gear in. Now for you, Lisa—you look light enough to lift,” smiling, he reached for the girl and carried her up to the veranda and deposited her gently in her chair.
Jane tried to pull herself together as Mrs. Newbery shook her hand warmly. This was Blue River all right. The bluegums and the mimosas and cinerarias were massed colour and beauty in the garden on the plateau above the winding river. The water reflected the deep cerulean blue of the sky.
But the man they called Steve was a complete stranger.
“You poor dears, you get into your beds right away and I’ll bring you some breakfast, then you can sleep and sleep—” the housekeeper turned her warm motherly smile on Lisa, “I do think you’re a brave child to travel all this way, even if the jets are quick and comfortable. I’ll show you your room, my dear.” It wasn’t a dream. It was a horrible nightmare, Jane thought as she followed the wheel chair, anxious only to get away from the penetrating scornful eyes of the master of Blue River.
CHAPTER THREE
THE homestead at Blue River was not at all like a Hollywood colonial mansion, as Jane had imagined it; it was a large and comfortable timber bungalow built of solid jarrah, with bare polished floors of Queensland maple, painted white outside and a soft French grey throughout inside ... a colour that gave a pleasant sensation of coolness after the glare of bright sunshine.
Mrs. Newbery was different, too, from the nosey, domineering housekeeper Steve—the man who had called himself Steve, she corrected herself hastily—had described to her. When he had asked her not to put her name and address on the air-mail letters she was to write every day. “She’s an inquisitive old body, used to bossing us around since my mother died,” he had said, his eyes wrinkled with laughter. “She’d be dying to know who was suddenly writing to me from England—she might even open one or two on the pretext of forwarding them if they were urgent. So, darling Jenny-Jane, just put Lilac Cottage and your name, see? I want to tell Mrs. Newbery and Alison about you myself. They’re inclined to be a bit possessive, honey. I think they’d like me to stay a lone bachelor all my life!”
“Will they—do you think they’d hate me?” Jane had asked dubiously. In the tumult of emotion on Steve’s last evening at Lilac Cottage she’d thought they were only talking of a remote future possibility, dreaming a lovely dream; though Steve was very definite about his plans.
“Of course not! They’ll love you, Jenny. My sister Alison couldn’t care less about Blue River, now she’s running her own boutique in Sydney. It’ll be different for Mrs. Newbery—she’ll have to play second fiddle to my wife, naturally. It’d be better for her not to know too much about you until I can talk to her—tell her what you’re really like, my darling. She’ll come over then, you’ll see.”
“I hope you’re right!” Jane had laughed a little tremulously, “I suppose you know we’re talking nonsense, Steve. This is just a moment of madness—you’ll have forgotten me after a week in the Argentine! We can’t be in love—we don’t really even know each other! Do you go about the world proposing marriage to every spinster you meet, Steve?”
“No. And you’re not a spinster, honey. You’re my unique and lovable Jenny. You can’t kiss me and say we’re not in love, can you?” After a while he had stroked her head, smiling in the firelight. “Don’t throw this magical thing away, Jenny—it’s our chance of happiness. It was meant to be. Would you like me to ring up Lisa before I get the plane tomorrow—?”
“No...” she was not yet used to Steve’s careless spending and the thought of a long trunk call from London to Falmouth appalled her. “Please, Steve, this is something I’ll have to tell her about myself. It’s going to be a bit of a shock for Lisa.”
“A nice shock, I guess. If she’s anything like her photograph she’s a lively girl. It’ll do her good, Jenny—shaking her out of her hospital rut—won’t it?” She’d had to admit that it might be exactly what Lisa needed.
“It’s all settled then. As soon as she agrees, you can book your air passages. Leave the selling of this in the hands of a good agent—the firm that sold Barton Manor could handle it, couldn’t they?”
Jane had smiled involuntarily. Messrs. Paul, Vinnicombe and Knighton were one of the biggest estate-agents in the West Country.
“Yes, they’d sell it for me if anyone could. But this is a bad time of the year, Steve, for selling country properties—small cottages, anyway. It might take years.”
“All the more reason for coming "out as soon as you can and leaving all your troubles behind, sweetie! I’ll leave you a cheque for a thousand, just to cover your fares—” he’d turned up the wick of the oil-lamp and signed the cheque there and then, though Jane had refused to let him make it out for more than five hundred pounds. That, he said, was only enough to cover the flight to Darwin.
She was thinking of all these things as she helped Lisa undress and have the cool bath that Mrs. Newbery had run for her. The housekeeper told them that this bathroom, between the guest rooms, was their own. Steve had another, adjoining his room at the end of the passage on this side of the house, and Mrs. Newbery and Jamie had their own rooms and bathroom in the annexe beyond the living-room.
“Jamie’s my boy,” she explained with a twinkle in her faded blue eyes, in answer to a question from Lisa, “he’s four years old and a proper little demon for all that he looks like an angel. You’ll meet him and the others when you’ve had your sleep out—I’ll go now and get your breakfasts.”
“You mustn’t wait on us,” Jane said hastily. The housekeeper was such a nice, kind, motherly soul who had not quite lost her Scottish accent after thirty years in Australia. She was not at all like the inquisitive, bossy, interfering woman Steve had sketched for Jane ... “I’ll come to the kitchen and get our trays, if I may.”
“You do just as you like, my dear. This is to be your home, isn’t it?” Mrs. Newbery turned back from the doorway to tell Jane where to find the kitchen before she bustled away singing a little song to herself.
“She’s a sweetie,” Lisa pulled herself out of the bath with her strong arms and sat on the edge, drying herself as well as she could without standing up. She looked down at her legs with her head on one side and smiled a little.
“They look all right, don't they? Win you give me my massage when I’ve had a sleep, Jane? Jenny! Are you frightfully tired, darling? You look like a sleepwalker.”
“Just a bit dopey—with excitement, I think,” Jane tried to make it sound convincing. Her brain was seething with the shock of meeting a perfect stranger called Steve Forrest ... there couldn’t, surely, be two Steve Forrests...? Nothing made sense any more. The stranger had greeted her as if she was really his fiancée—obviously determined to play his part in front of Lisa. Jane’s heart was hammering with
indignation and humiliation as she remembered those letters she had written to Steve ... her Steve ...
Write to me every day, darling—promise? I want to find a sort of Diary of Jane when I get home ... post them in a larger envelope once a week if you like—you have a typewriter, haven’t you? Just type Lesley and no address on the back, then Mrs. Newbery won’t be able to write to you and ask any awkward questions before I’ve had a talk with her.
Remembering the outpourings of her lonely heart in those fifteen letters—the first real love-letters she had written in her life—and the two naive, schoolgirlish enclosures from Lisa, Jane blushed up to the roots of her hair. Whatever lay at the root of this nightmare mystery she was determined to discover it without delay. Out there in the utility she had been too flabbergasted to ask questions, and this new Steve Forrest had taken charge of the situation before she had recovered her wits. Now she knew she could not rest until she had solved the mystery, even if her sudden suspicions should prove correct and she had to face a situation that would be unbearably humiliating.
“Thanks, Jane. I can manage now—” Lisa said when Jane had slipped the nylon nightie over her head and helped her swing herself into the wheel chair. Lisa could get about well in the light chair, and from it she could get into bed by using her arms. Long practice had made those movements easy for her, and the doctors encouraged her to use as many muscles as she could.
She grinned up at Jane’s flushed face. “You do look hot, sweetie. Take a shower and have breakfast with Steve, you don’t have to stay with me! I like this place, and doesn’t it smell heavenly? All those exotic flowers, I suppose.”
“And the bluegums,” Jane agreed absently. The light breeze blowing up from the river carried the scent of the bush and ferns, mingled with the perfume of many flowers and the tangy, pleasant odour of the eucalyptus trees. She knew it all, she thought bitterly ... even to the French-grey decor and simple Australian natural wood furniture in the pleasant bedrooms. Without moving the wire screens from the big windows she could have described the view over the winding river, the thick native bush and ferns on its banks, where tropical palms and creepers grew in wild profusion alongside the willows and eucalyptus, with here and there a great jarrah tree. She could have described the hills rising on the far side of the river, and the blue haze on them when the swift antipodean dusk swept over the land, cooling it.
When Lisa was settled in her bed, looking like a fragile Dresden-china shepherdess framed by the spotless white draped canopy of the mosquito-net, Jane had a shower. The cool needles of water jetting over her hot body refreshed her and gave her strength for the battle that she sensed lay ahead. She put on fresh underwear and a Terylene dress and white sandals on her bare feet, and ran a comb through her crisp short hair, and used very little make-up, before going in search of the kitchen and Lisa’s breakfast tray. She had to go through the long living-room with its rather shabby but comfortable-looking furniture; it was deserted, and the screens over the windows at each end made it cool and shady.
The kitchen almost took her breath away; it was a large bright room with primrose yellow walls and dazzling white built-in fitments all round. Jane had never seen so many electrical gadgets in a kitchen before, nor such enormous refrigerators, cookers, and double sinks with all the fittings gleaming chromium.
Mrs. Newbury, busy with a coffee percolator at the work-bench, turned and caught her staring, and smiled suddenly.
“Ah, you look better, Miss Lesley. Is your sister comfortably settled?”
“Yes, thank you. May I take her tray?” Jane was suddenly ill at ease under the steady scrutiny from those faded blue eyes. What on earth had Steve Forrest—if he was Steve Forrest—told his housekeeper about the sudden arrival of two strange girls from England? Nothing unfavourable, obviously; Mrs. Newbery had made them truly welcome.
“What a nice kitchen!” she added impulsively. “But you’ve got enough refrigerators to store food for an army, surely?”
“Aye. Mrs. Forrest always hankered after a modern kitchen, you see, forby it was juist a dream in those days. There was never enough money when she was a young wife and mother—then it was work, work, work from mom till night fighting tae clear the land—” Mrs. Newbery put a work-roughened hand lovingly on the gleaming flank of a cake mixer and smiled again at Jane in a frank and friendly way. “’Tis a pity she didn’t live long enough tae enjoy the prosperous years after the war. We don’t know the hardships of life in the Outback before the war, my dear. Juist when things were getting easier, they went for their first holiday to the Old Country, got caught in the influenza epidemic, and died. I daresay they couldna stand the cold after so many years out here—but of course Steve has told ye aboot all that. It’s done with, and ye’ll not have to face those conditions ever again.” She added gently. “Steve was only a lad of ten, but he remembered his mother’s dreams. When he was old enough he had everything done just the way she had wanted it.”
“It’s lovely,” Jane said again, because she didn’t know what else to say. From the expression on the older woman’s face she guessed that Steve was like a son to her ... Jane couldn’t tell her that it was all a mistake, that she had never set eyes on the master of Blue River until half an hour ago. She added hesitantly, “I’m not tired now I’ve had a shower. Could I—do you think I could have breakfast with—with Steve?”
“Surely—he’d like that,” Mrs. Newbery agreed warmly, her eyes twinkling. “I guess he only suggested your resting first because your little sister looked so tired. She’s a mighty pretty lass, isn’t she? The boys are going to get excited about you both—we don’t get many fresh faces at the Blue River these days.” Jane thanked her for the huge tray laden with coffee and a bowl of fruit, hot rolls and yellow butter, and a plate of bacon and eggs, kidney, tomatoes and a grilled chop that Mrs. Newbery took from the oven. “Lisa will never get through this lot!” she exclaimed, laughing in spite of herself. “There’s enough here for four strong men!”
“Och, you’ll soon get used to eating a proper breakfast, lass, and Lisa will be all the better for it.” She pointed out the veranda on the north side of the house, shaded by the hill behind. “We have most of our meals out there, it’s fresher than eating indoors. I’ll tell Steve you’ll be with him in a while, Miss Lesley.”
Lisa pulled a face when she saw the tray.
“Gosh! This must be lunch as well, I should think. I’ll sleep for a week with all that ballast—but the pineapple looks gorgeous. Do you know, I believe I’m hungry, after all?”
Jane sat for a moment on the edge of the bed, envying Lisa her placid acceptance of everything. The words almost stuck in her throat when she said, “I’m going to have breakfast with Steve. Can you dump the tray on that table when you’ve finished?”
“Of course.” Lisa, her mouth full of bacon and egg, grinned at her sister. “You’re rotten at describing people, darling. He’s not a bit like I imagined—a sort of Golden Boy dollar millionaire rancher!”
Jane’s laugh was rather forced. “Is that how I described him? Poor Steve!”
Lisa stopped eating to look at her shrewdly. “No-o. Not exactly. But that was the impression I got. Actually Steve is no pin-up hero, but I think he’s nice. And strong enough to keep you in order, Jane—and that’s what you need, really and truly. You’ve had to shoulder a pretty heavy load for too long haven’t you?” She added thoughtfully, “But he seemed annoyed with you about something—is it because you brought me along—?”
“Of course not, darling! He wanted you to come.”
Jane got up hurriedly. She didn’t want to talk to Lisa about Steve until she’d got things sorted out.
Steve rose slowly to his feet as Jane walked down the long veranda towards the big table set for breakfast, and she felt the hot tide of colour mounting her cheeks again at his steady scrutiny. She felt it was a critical scrutiny, as if he were wondering about her as much as she was wondering about him. If he had opened all those letters
addressed to Steve Forrest, she thought bitterly, he would know a great deal more about her than she knew about him. And he would think her completely crazy—or worse, a designing fool...
Her tired brain raced round and round the mystery. The veranda seemed to be miles long. And all the time his grey eyes were watching her approaching, the expression on his lean brown craggy face giving away nothing of his thoughts.
And his thoughts, she realised suddenly, must be as confused as her own.
“Are you Steve Forrest?” she demanded coming up to him with bewilderment in her eyes. “The—the owner of all this—the Blue River station?”
“I think you know who I am,” he answered drily, and pulled back a chair for her, “but if you’re in any doubt—” his smile was oddly grim, “a few weeks here will convince you, Miss Lesley.”
The way he said her name was as insulting as if he had struck her across the cheek. She said confusedly, “Then—why—”
“Breakfast first, I have a long day ahead of me and I dare say you could do with a square meal after your journey,” he nodded at the chair and she sank into it, feeling suddenly weak at the knees. Their arrival at Blue River was such an anti-climax after the past weeks of emotional excitement, the end of her sudden romantic hopes of a happy future in a new country.
Either the man who had asked her to marry him at Lilac Cottage had been a complete lunatic—or he had played a cruel and malicious trick on her. And not only on her, but on Lisa as well. Knowing they were hard up, knowing Lisa was young and pretty and crippled ... she had told him so much about herself, hiding nothing...
Wedding at Blue River Page 3
