by Margaret Way
“Fee doesn’t want to think about it.” Brod said bluntly. “I wouldn’t be mentioning it myself only chances are someone will tell you at the funeral, human nature being what it is. The real problem was Dad lent Rebecca Cecilia’s Necklace to wear at the function the other night.”
“Brod!” Ally looked her shock. “In that case, we could have a little gold digger right under our noses. She must have known.”
His handsome mouth tightened. “I’m by no means certain of that. Rebecca says he didn’t tell her. Fee believes her.”
“And you? Why the doubt?”
Brod put a hand to his temple. “I can’t rid myself of it. Maybe the fault lies in me. She certainly got rid of it before the night was over. I locked it away in the safe myself.”
“Which seems to suggest Rebecca might have been another one of Dad’s victims. He set her up? Maybe marked her in everyone’s eyes?” Ally suggested shrewdly.
“Talk to her and find out,” Brod said.
“You sound like the answer is important to you.” Ally’s mind was working overtime. She wondered about this Rebecca Hunt who had made such an impression not only on her father but on Brod as well.
“It’s easy to see she’d get to a man, Ally,” Brod confirmed what she was thinking. “The thing is I can’t reconcile all my images of her.”
To his sister the look in Brod’s eyes could only be described as tormented.
The four of them sat at one end of the long mahogany dinner table, eating without appetite, the conversation muted and desultory. Even Fee, a genuine extrovert, was subdued by the tragedy that had overtaken them. Given what she had heard, Ally didn’t know what to expect when she finally met Rebecca Hunt. Rebecca had not intruded on her homecoming but had insisted on waiting until dinner to be introduced.
Now Ally watched the other younger woman as she sat quietly beside Fee. Just as Brod had said she was simply beautiful, Ally thought. Dressed in a deep violet shift dress that lightly skimmed her figure. The light from the chandelier glossed her smooth dark hair and illuminated the creamy white skin. She was small, inches shorter than Ally who was five-seven but she carried herself so elegantly she appeared taller. Her eyes, Ally considered, were her most striking feature apart from the piquancy of that full mouth. Every time she lifted her head, they glittered like diamonds with the light on them. She had a good hand shake, a lovely voice, and a decidedly refined air. She wasn’t overly friendly, which Ally didn’t expect at this time but when she did speak she said all the right things.
Ally couldn’t fault her. In truth she didn’t want to fault her at all. Rebecca Hunt didn’t strike her as an opportunist or a social climber though Ally could well see how her father had become infatuated. Rather she struck Ally as a young professional woman like herself, who was very good at what she did, but hiding a multitude of hurts behind a carefully constructed facade. Ally’s own dysfunctional childhood and adolescence gave her an insight into such things.
During the course of the evening Ally noticed, too, the tensions that were running back and forth between Rebecca and her brother, the intensity of the glances as though each was speaking to the other with their eyes. The tension peaked around half past nine when Rebecca rose gracefully to her feet.
“I must leave you all to speak privately,” she said with the most exquisite sad smile. “I know you must want to.” She addressed Ally directly. “I’m so glad to have finally met you, Ally. I’ve heard so many lovely things about you. Now I’ll enjoy your show even more when I watch it. Night, Fee. You’ve been so kind asking me to stay on but I really feel I should return to Sydney after—” she faltered briefly “—the funeral. There will be lots of planes flying in and out. I’m sure I could arrange a lift to some point.”
“How about the Never Never,” Brod said discordially looking at her hard. “I thought we’d discussed this, Rebecca.”
“Well we did.” She looked flustered. “But Francesca will be arriving. Ally is staying on. You don’t need me. We can leave the biography, Fee, until such time as you’re ready to start again.” The very tautness of her face showed her anguish.
“But, darling, I don’t want that at all,” Fee protested, casting aside her wondrously beautiful deeply fringed silk shawl. “I don’t want you to live with this…sadness on your own. You’ve sustained a bad shock. Our lives have become entwined. Besides I’m looking on working on the biography as a sort of cure. A healing if you will. We haven’t spoken one real word about my childhood yet. Stewart was alive and things were…” She threw up her hands theatrically.
“God, Fee, you’re not going to make a full confession now he’s gone?” Brod asked with a wry groan.
“What’s wrong with the truth?” Fee demanded. “You don’t know how miserable Stewart made me when we were children. He was a devil of a liar. Got me into terrible trouble all the time. Said I did everything.”
“You probably did,” Ally observed with the same wry affection Brod used when he spoke to his aunt. Ally transferred her gaze to Rebecca. “Please don’t think of going on account of me, Rebecca. I can see we’ll get on fine. Fran is a lovely person. Fee and I both want you to meet her. Anyway you heard Fee. She means to go on with the book.”
Rebecca looked touched, but adamant. “You’re being so nice but I really think…”
“Rebecca, why don’t I walk you up to your room,” Brod intervened, rising to his impressive height. “I can plead with you on the way.”
“Do that, Brod,” Fee said in heartfelt tones. “Rebecca really doesn’t have anyone to go to. She told me. This isn’t a kindness, Rebecca. We really want you.” She sounded very definite as indeed she was.
“What’s with Rebecca and Brod?” Ally asked her aunt in a fraught undertone as soon as the two had left the room. “You don’t need an antennae to pick up the vibes.”
“To be honest, darling, I think Brod’s fighting his attraction to her. I think he’s going through a bit of hell over your father, and Stewart’s claim Rebecca knew all about Cecilia’s Necklace before she wore it.”
Ally continued to stare at her aunt. “You don’t believe that?”
“Darling, I don’t want to say it, but I know what a liar your dear father was.”
“Well he’s at rest now,” Ally sighed.
“Wouldn’t it be horrible if he weren’t,” said Fee.
Both of them waited until they were in the upper hallway before either of them spoke.
Even then in mounting furious undertones. “What a little coward you are waiting until you had Fee and Ally for cover,” Brod accused her, when he really wanted to touch her. Soothe her.
“Am I going to go to hell for it?” Rebecca’s pale face flushed with anger. “Why do you want me here, Brod? To mete out further punishment?”
His lean face tautened. “No such thing has occurred to me. Besides it seems to me you’re punishing yourself. How’s it going to help you to run off?”
Rebecca let out a long mournful sigh. “Damn it, I’m not running off. I just don’t want to intrude.”
He couldn’t help himself. He exploded. “Hell, that’s good. You turn the whole household upside down, me included, now you’re talking about hitching a ride on the first plane out of here. It doesn’t fit the pattern.”
“I thought it was what you wanted?” She stared up into his face, afraid of his power, his magnetism. She didn’t need this upheaval in her ordered life.
He actually groaned. “I don’t know what I want with your face distracting me. Maybe you ought to think of Fee. She employed you to do a job. You’re a professional aren’t you? It must have sunk in she wants you here.” He gave a quiet, ironic laugh. “You’ve even talked Ally around.”
Rebecca took a few rapid little steps away from him and went no further. “Honestly you take my breath away. I can’t believe Ally’s your sister.”
“Good Lord, you haven’t noticed we’re very much alike?”
“Ally is a beautiful person.” Rebecca
ignored the mockery. “You’re decidedly not. If I were you I’d be ashamed.”
He tossed the idea around for a moment. “Tell me what I’m supposed to be ashamed of and I’ll work on it,” he said. Then suddenly in a voice that moved her powerfully he added, “I want you to stay, Rebecca.”
Her heart quite literally rocked. “You want to keep an eye on me?” Despite herself her voice trembled.
“Like inches away.” He moved closer, as graceful and soundless as a panther.
“I don’t want trouble, Brod.” She raised her chin.
“That doesn’t seem to matter when it obviously comes after you. What are you afraid of, Rebecca?”
“I might ask the same question of you?”
He reached out and drew a shivery finger down her cheek. “As it turns out I don’t have the answer. What I particularly need to hear is more about you. You already know a lot about me. I think it’s time you started talking. You don’t speak of family. Of friends, lovers.”
“I don’t choose to,” Rebecca said, the perverse pleasure in his company so keen she couldn’t move.
“Fee said you had no one to go back to. What did she mean?”
She ought to try to move. Now. Yet her body turned more fully towards him like a flower to the sun. “My mother died when I was fourteen,” she began quietly even now feeling the terrible pain of severance. “She survived a car accident but complications from her injuries killed her a few years later. My father remarried. I see him and his other family as much as I can but he lives in Hong Kong. He was an airline pilot. The best. He’s retired now.” She touched the tip of her tongue to her suddenly dry lips.
“Don’t do that,” he said in a slow deep voice.
“Brod, I can’t stay here in this house. This beautiful sad house.”
“Why do you think that is? Come on, tell me.” He swooped to take hold of her wrists, drawing her close against him, bending his dark head to kiss her a little roughly but so sweetly, so passionately on her mouth.
He was becoming so precious to her she was really afraid. Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop. The feeling was stupendous. Her heart was burning inside her like a flame.
But he did, lifting his head like a man who was spellbound.
“This thing between us, I don’t want to hurt you,” he muttered, not even sure if he believed it himself.
“But it scares me.” There she’d admitted it.
“You’re the one with the powers.” Now there was a shimmer of male hostility. “These past few days have been hell.”
She recognised that herself. “I never thought for a moment your father—” She broke off, too upset to go on.
“Would fall in love with you. Want to marry you?” He held her away from him so he could stare down into her face.
“No.” She averted her head so he could only see the curve of her cheek.
Something flickered in his brilliant eyes. How to control this power she had. “I don’t see we’re getting anywhere discussing this.” He removed his hands quietly, watching her brush a long strand of her hair away from her face. “Don’t embarrass us by calling on anyone to give you a lift, Rebecca,” he said. “Don’t hurt Fee’s feelings. When you’re ready to tell me what lies under that porcelain exterior, I’m here.”
How can I tell him, Rebecca thought, her eyes trained on his tall figure until he reached the central staircase and without a backwards glance disappeared down the steps. Back to his family.
I had a family, too, Rebecca thought, walking desolately to her room, closing the door. A very happy family until her mother, a passenger in a friend’s car, was badly injured when the car they were travelling in was struck by a speeding vehicle. Her mother’s friend was killed. Her mother spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair devotedly nursed by her husband and daughter. A few years after her mother’s premature death, her father remarried. A beautiful Eurasian women he met in Hong Kong. At this time she was at boarding school while her father shuttled between Hong Kong and Sydney. Even so they remained close and Vivienne, her stepmother, never let a birthday go past without sending some wonderful present. Vacations were spent in all sorts of exotic places. Bangkok, Phuket, Bali, twice to Marrekesch, but things settled down after Vivienne had her first child, an adorable little boy they called Jean Phillipe. A little girl, Christina, followed two years later.
It was at university she met Martyn. He was a few years older, studying law. She was doing an arts degree majoring in journalism. Although she was making lots of friends she and Martyn soon became a pair. He was exceptionally bright, good-looking, of excellent family, an only child. If Rebecca was soon to find his mother was very possessive she kept it to herself. Anyway Meredith actually approved of her if a little unhappy about the fact Rebecca’s father had married a Eurasian who could have run rings around Meredith in any direction.
They were married when she was twenty and Martyn twenty-four. At first they’d been happy only Martyn didn’t think she had any real need to finish her studies. His family were well-off. He was an up-and-coming young lawyer with a prestigious firm who had selected him because of his brilliant results. His mother had never worked. She had dedicated her life to becoming the perfect wife and mother. That was Meredith’s primary responsibility in life. She fussed endlessly over her husband and son, kept a splendid house for them, arranged all the frequent entertaining. Rebecca’s goal should be the same. It was supposed to be an all encompassing role. And some years on—Martyn was in no hurry to start a family—they would have children. Two only. A boy and a girl.
It took Rebecca a while to realise Martyn didn’t want friends. Or her friends at least. He didn’t want to invite them around to their very comfortable town house, a wedding present from his parents, he didn’t want to go to any of their parties. Gradually people stopped asking altogether. As one of her girlfriends told her: “Martyn only wants you for himself, Becky. You’re supposed to be so smart. Can’t you see that?”
The marriage had lasted exactly three years. No time. An eternity. She refused point-blank to give up her studies. Her generation wanted a fulfilling job. She was supposed to be an outstanding student. At which point Martyn had always thrown back his head and laughed. “Journalism? What the heck’s that? Stay at home and write a bestseller.”
The arguments began. She felt he was caging her. Destroying her friendships. It wasn’t a life, just the two of them all the time. It dawned on her that Martyn, for all his legal brain, wasn’t interesting enough. What was important to him was he had her undivided attention.
The physical abuse started in the last year. First a hard slap across the face that sent her flying. Of course she had reacted in horror. Her father had been so gentle towards her and her mother. She left their town house that very night staying with Kim her most faithful friend. Martyn had come after her, in tears, begging her forgiveness.
“Don’t go, Becky,” Kim warned her. “It will only start again.”
But he was her husband. She’d taken her marriage vows very seriously. The last time he hit her she ended in hospital with cracked ribs.
The marriage was over. She had her life back. Though it wasn’t that simple. She had to endure a period of terrible harassment until she threatened to go to the head of his law firm, a fine man who liked her, to lodge a complaint. Soon after she moved away to London, determined nothing like that would ever happen to her again. It had been a long time before she had entered into another relationship. But somehow no one had ever touched her heart.
Until now.
CHAPTER SIX
AROUND them, everywhere they looked the ancient plains stretched to the horizon, the needle leaved clumps of spinifex that dotted them bleached bright gold against the fiery red of the sand they stabilised. Above them arched the limitless peacock-blue sky that at three o’clock in the afternoon was ruled by a scorching sun. People had come from all over the Outback to the vast station, this vast emptiness, to attend Stewart Kinross’s funeral. Almost e
verybody except the infirm or the elderly had trudged to the low ridge where the Kinross family since the time of settlement had buried their dead.
The family cemetery in itself was impressive, surrounded by a stone wall with elaborate black wrought iron gates. Small and immense headstones were erected inside, some side by side. Kinross men and women. Children. Rebecca’s eyes blurred as she tried to read some of the poignant legends on the marbles, unutterably saddened to see babies had died.
No tears from the family. Brod stood his six foot three, his hands clasped before him, his handsome blue-black head bowed. Ally dressed from head to toe in black stood with Fee, similarly attired as was Fee’s lovely daughter, Francesca, the sheer perfection of her English skin and her marvellous titian hair a striking foil to her black dress relieved only by an obviously valuable string of pearls.
Other members of the extended family crowded around, friends, VIP’s, businessmen, partners in many of the Kinross ventures. Prominent not only by virtue of their height and physical presence, were the Cameron brothers, Rafe and Grant, their unprotected bare heads with the fabulous glint of gold.
Rebecca in a dark grey wide-brimmed straw hat Ally had lent her, which matched the only suitable dress she had with her, a discreet charcoal-grey, was glad of the sunglasses that hid her eyes.
The clergyman, well-known to the family, continued with the service while Rebecca gripped her fingers waiting for it all to end. She half turned away at the final moments when the heavy ornate casket was lowered into the ground, unable to witness it. Her own mother’s funeral came back to her with dreadful clarity. She and her father had stood rigid, fighting to keep back the floodgates but at that point they had both succumbed to unrestrained weeping. At least her father had found happiness as her mother would have wanted.
That hadn’t been her lot. Martyn had treated her so badly but in the end she had been far from powerless. She had reclaimed her life. Known success, won the respect of her peers. She’d had no way of knowing when she accepted Fiona Kinross’s commission to write her biography such high drama would be unleashed. What was she doing here on this day of all days? How had she ever become so deeply involved with the Kinross family, not knowing at that point Stewart Kinross had carefully planned it all.
