Fires of Change (The Fire Blossom Saga)

by Sarah Lark

  Linda suppressed a sigh of boredom. Mrs. Butler had left the garden to fetch the tea, and her son, Oliver, was already back on his favorite subject, the upcoming regatta being organized by the Christchurch Rowing Club. Linda found it difficult to feign interest. Her half sister, Carol, on the other hand, was making an assiduous effort to listen and smile encouragingly at her fiancé’s descriptions. Linda and Carol were looking forward to the regatta, which included colorfully decorated boats and a cheerful picnic on the bank of the river. The entire population of Christchurch would gather by the Avon, and the boat races were a welcome distraction from the particularly grueling work on the sheep farms in spring. But Oliver’s constant talk about his rowing technique and his fabulous new rowing partner, Joe Fitzpatrick, and above all, his endless analysis of their chances to win would have tested the most patient of listeners. At least Carol’s fiancé showed strength of purpose, enthusiasm, and ambition when he talked about the event, all qualities that seemed to be missing when he worked on his parents’ sheep farm—or so Captain Butler complained. But Oliver’s mother thought it perfectly acceptable for him to be a gentleman rather than a farmer.

  “The trick is not rowing completely simultaneously,” Oliver continued. “The strokesman should row a little bit before the bowman. That way you eliminate the yawing that would otherwise come from . . .”

  Carol nodded enthusiastically, concentrating less on Oliver’s words than on his pleasant, sonorous tenor. She loved his voice, as well as his slender figure, curly black hair, aristocratic features, and heavy-lidded, soulful brown eyes. At the moment, they were flashing with eagerness, but Carol also liked it when they were gently shadowed and full of dreams, which was more often the case. Linda, on the other hand, found Oliver lethargic and pale.

  Carol’s fiancé looked very much like his mother, an extraordinary beauty who had come from the upper echelons of English society, and Carol and Linda’s parents had always wondered how Captain Butler had convinced her to emigrate to his sheep farm. Lady Deborah had probably had a completely different vision of her life as a “sheep baroness” in the empty Canterbury Plains. She must have imagined fox hunting, picnics, and garden parties rather than playing hostess only to the drovers who traveled between the distant farms to shear sheep.

  In New Zealand, an invitation to tea was a rarity. People usually drank coffee in their simple farm kitchens, and the conversations had more to do with training sheepdogs or Merino-Romney crossbreeds than with caring for rosebushes. In fact, these were frequent subjects of conversation between Deborah’s husband, Captain Butler, and Linda’s mother, Catherine Rata. Catherine, who, to Deborah’s dismay, was called Cat, had declined the tea and headed straight to the shearing shed, leaving Carol and Linda in the garden with their hostess.

  “Perhaps before we leave,” she’d said. “But first I really must speak with your husband about the young ram, Mrs. Butler. And pretty soon we’ll have to go. We’ll take Georgie with us. There isn’t much time.”

  Georgie was the boatman who delivered mail and packages to the farms along the Waimakariri River. He had brought Cat and the two young women with him that morning. The river was the only way to travel between Rata Station and Butler Station in one day. With horses, the journey took at least two days, even though the path along the river was well maintained. It connected Rata Station with the Redwood brothers’ farm, as well as a more recently founded settlement to the north. Usually, Cat didn’t mind being on the road for a couple of days and would have been happy to sit and chat. Right now, though, the shearing was fully underway, and the last pregnant ewes were lambing. Everyone had their hands full. In October, the only person who had time for a leisurely tea party in a well-kept garden was Deborah Butler, and that was because it had never even occurred to her to get near a sheep.

  Linda wondered how Captain Butler could stand Deborah’s idleness. Before he’d invested in sheep, the old salty dog had made his fortune as the captain of a whaling ship. But even after twenty years of marriage, he still seemed to be madly in love with his gorgeous wife. Everything at Butler Station pointed toward his blind obsession with her. The house wasn’t simple and practical like those at Rata Station or Redwood Station—it resembled a castle more than anything else. An English specialist had been hired to tend to the gardens, and the stable was full of thoroughbreds instead of solid crossbreeds. Captain Butler obviously viewed his wife as a rare kind of luxury, like the horses. But that indulgence didn’t extend to his son. If it had been up to his father, Oliver would be making himself useful in the shearing shed instead of taking tea with his fiancée and chatting about regattas.

  “Don’t bore the young ladies, Oliver,” Deborah Butler said as she crossed the perfectly trimmed lawn.

  She was trailed by a Maori girl in a maid’s uniform who carried a tray with a teapot and English biscuits. Deborah wore an elegant sky-blue day dress with a fitted bodice, bolero jacket, and hoopskirt. Cream-colored lace adorned the hem of the skirt, neckline, sleeves, and jacket. Deborah’s full dark hair was combed back and coiled tidily into a matching bonnet.

  Both Linda and Carol felt awkward in their simple blouses and skirts, in spite of the fact that Carol had made an extra effort to look pretty that day. She had decorated her white muslin blouse with blue trim but had had to take off the matching cape; it had gotten warm in the spring sun. Her shiny blonde hair was pinned up in a complicated style. Linda had helped her braid it and had woven in dark blue ribbons to match the trim on the blouse and skirt. The result should have been enough to satisfy Deborah, but of course the long boat trip in the stiff breeze had been enough to set free a number of unruly strands that danced around Carol’s pretty face. Oliver thought it terribly fetching, but his mother regarded her rather skeptically.

  And for Linda, Deborah Butler’s stern gaze held no mercy. After Linda had helped her excited sister with her outfit and hair, she’d had no time to worry about her own. She wore a pale blouse and a gray skirt, her hair in a simple ponytail. It had been more susceptible to the wind than Carol’s braided style, and even more stray blonde strands surrounded Linda’s face.

  The girls, who had both turned eighteen in May, passed easily as twins. They both had big blue eyes, although Carol’s were a little darker and more expressive, and Linda’s were a lighter blue and gentle. Her eyes were also a bit too close together and, like her full lips, had been inherited from the girls’ father, Ottfried Brandmann. Most men couldn’t keep their eyes off Carol’s or Linda’s sensual lips. Carol’s face was narrower, and Linda’s was rather oval. But all that was only evident when one studied them closely. At first glance, the impression of sisterly similarity won out.

  “How is your needlepoint going, Miss Carol?” Deborah Butler asked. Following English tradition, she poured their tea herself. The Maori girl stood aside to wait for further instructions. “Are you satisfied with the pattern?”

  Carol nodded uncomfortably. Her future mother-in-law had initiated her in the art of petit point embroidery several weeks ago. The border that she was working on at the moment was intended to be a decoration for her wedding gown. Unfortunately, Carol had neither enthusiasm nor talent for fine needlework. And no matter how carefully she scrubbed her hands after a day of handling reins and leashes, wrestling with sheep, and petting horses, there was always enough grime caught under her nails to turn the border gray instead of the intended shades of cream. Fortunately, Linda helped her every now and then. She was more domestic than her half sister, and above all much more patient—when she didn’t have to listen to endless chatter about regattas.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have much time for embroidery,” Carol explained. “I work on the farm, and in the evenings I’m tired. Besides, you need daylight for such fine work.”

  Deborah Butler made a face. “Doubtlessly,” she agreed. “Although I don’t understand why a young lady has to work with sheep and sheepdogs. I mean, I have nothing against riding sometimes or owning a little dog. I had a kitt
en when I was a girl—they can be terribly charming. But my husband says you won the herding-dog competition in Christchurch?”

  Carol nodded delightedly and turned to look for her dog. The tricolor border collie she called Fancy was a purebred from the Wardens’ kennel at Kiward Station, and her pride and joy. Her adoptive father Chris Fenroy liked to say that Fancy had cost him a fortune, but she was worth every penny, and in the coming years, she would be the dam for their own breeding stock at Rata Station.

  “When you live here with us, it will be more necessary for you to pursue . . . ladylike activities,” Deborah Butler said before Carol could reply. “I certainly won’t allow my husband to involve Oliver’s wife in the farm work. As a member of the Butler family, you will have social obligations!”

  Linda and Carol exchanged glances and almost giggled out loud. The social duties of a sheep baroness in the Canterbury Plains were limited to accompanying her husband to the annual meeting of the Sheep Breeders’ Association in Christchurch. Afterward, Carol would have to be careful not to drink herself into a stupor at the complimentary dinner at the White Hart Hotel. Many of the sheep barons had started out as whalers and seal hunters. The ladies didn’t like it when they got drunk and talked about their past experiences at the formal dinner that followed the meeting.

  “I enjoy working with the dogs,” Carol began, then fell silent as her mother approached.

  “Could I please have that cup of tea, Mrs. Butler?” Cat asked with a smile, gazing out over the lawns.

  Almost five acres of the original grassland had been landscaped into a formal garden, and aside from the occasional southern beech that Deborah Butler tolerated for shade, none of the plants were native to New Zealand. Deborah and her gardener had hacked out all the pervasive rata bushes that had lent their name not only to Cat’s farm but to Cat herself.

  Cat Rata had grown up without a family. Her mother, Suzanne, was a mentally feeble prostitute who didn’t even remember her last name or bother to give her baby a first one. The neglected child had just been referred to as “Kitten.”

  But Cat had given up being upset about all that a long time ago. She had escaped the whaling-station brothel at the age of thirteen and lived for several years with a Maori tribe, where she had been called Poti, which meant “cat.” She’d been adopted by Te Ronga, the chieftain’s wife and tribe’s healer, and Cat mourned the woman whose murder had set off the Wairau incident.

  “This is a very beautiful garden,” she remarked politely. “Even if it is a little strange. England looks like this, right?”

  Deborah gave a small nod, eyeing Cat just as critically as Cat had eyed the garden. If she hadn’t been so properly raised, she would have chosen the same words to describe Cat: very beautiful, but a little strange. Deborah took in Cat’s brown cotton dress, simply cut and absolutely unsuitable. She wasn’t wearing a hoopskirt under it either, and Deborah suspected that she didn’t even own such a garment.

  Of course a hoopskirt was impractical for farm work and for the boat trip, and Deborah could almost understand the lack of one. But Cat had also elected not to wear a corset, and that really was unacceptable! However, her appearance was another matter. Cat Rata was quite slender, and her finely formed oval face was dominated by expressive brown eyes filled with awareness and intelligence, and at the moment, a little sarcasm. Her hip-length blonde hair was bound into a thick braid at the back of her neck, which made her seem younger than her almost forty years. It was an improper hairstyle for a grown woman, Deborah thought, but she had also seen Cat wearing her hair loose, held back with a broad Maori headband.

  “I modeled our garden after the park at Preston Manor,” Deborah said primly. “Of course, the original was much larger. It even had space for bridle paths—and long walks.”

  She gave her son a short, meaningful glance, which caused him to spring to his feet. Oliver had been longing to take Carol for “a little walk”—it was the only chance for intimacy that Deborah’s strict rules would allow.

  “May I show you the yellow roses, Miss Carol?” he inquired formally. “My mother is very proud of them; they don’t usually survive here. You are welcome to join us too, of course, Miss Linda.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not interested in roses,” Linda lied.

  In fact, Linda enjoyed accompanying Cat and the local Maori tribe’s medicine woman when they searched for medicinal herbs. Having read an English book about herbal medicine in the Old World, she knew the effects of rose oil on infections, insect bites, and minor heart difficulties, and had even planted a rosebush in the kitchen garden at Rata Station. Linda experimented not only with rose oil and rose water but also with rose hip tea and mashed rose hips for menstrual difficulties and stomach pain. However, she didn’t care about the color of the blossoms or Deborah’s valuable cultures. She was happy for her sister, who would enjoy the short time alone with her fiancé.

  “Just don’t be gone too long,” Cat said. “Georgie will be here in half an hour or less, and we don’t want to keep him waiting.”

  They certainly wouldn’t miss the arrival of the boatman. Deborah’s garden bordered the Waimakariri River, which enabled promenades on the riverbanks and summer picnics by the water.

  Oliver gallantly offered Carol his arm as they hurried away on the gravel path that led around the garden. To Cat, it seemed almost like an escape. But they wouldn’t be able to avoid Deborah’s sharp eyes. The imported English shrubbery wasn’t nearly dense enough to hide a stolen kiss.

  “The two children really don’t get to see each other very often,” Deborah remarked as she poured tea for Cat.

  “In bad weather, the journey from one farm to another is very difficult,” Cat replied. But she was personally of the opinion that a young man carried on the wings of love should ride through the rain and mud much more often than Oliver did. Carol would have liked to visit Oliver by herself, but Chris and Cat had forbidden it. They could well imagine what Deborah would have thought of a young girl who rode a horse two days alone through the wilderness. “But in a few days, there will be another opportunity for the young couple to see each other,” Cat added casually. “Your husband is selling us a breeding ram, and of course Oliver won’t want to miss the chance to bring the animal to Rata Station himself.”

  Deborah Butler raised her eyebrows. “My son is no drover.”

  Cat smiled. “It’s not that hard,” she replied. “I’m sure he’ll manage.”

  Linda suppressed a giggle.

  “It was his father’s idea,” Cat continued, and took a sip of tea. “He thought Oliver would be thrilled at the chance to combine business with pleasure.”

  “I hope he doesn’t lose the ram on the way,” Linda joked later, as Cat shooed the two girls toward the pier.

  Cat had comforted Carol with the hope of a swift reunion with Oliver. At Rata Station, she would see much more of him than she did under Deborah’s strict supervision. Neither Chris Fenroy nor Cat herself had any interest in playing chaperone. They approved entirely of the relationship between their adopted daughter and the Butlers’ only son and heir. Carol would bring a large herd of sheep into the marriage as a dowry and would be able to run her own farm. Linda and her potential husband, who still had to be found, would one day run Rata Station.

  “That way, we’ll be neighbors and can do everything together!” Carol had said happily when she’d told her sister about her engagement to Oliver Butler.

  The two young women couldn’t imagine ever being separated. They had been raised as twins, although they knew that they only had their biological father in common—a secret that the neighbors didn’t know. Of course there were rumors. The situation at Rata Station seemed rather strange even to the relatively open-minded settlers in the Canterbury Plains. When Linda and Carol were younger, the neighbors had been scandalized at their two sets of mothers and fathers: they’d been raised by Carol’s mother, Ida; Linda’s mother, Cat; and their respective partners, Karl Jensch and Chris Fenroy. I
t was particularly hard for Deborah Butler to accept the unusual family structure. She complained constantly about Ida having left Linda and Carol in Cat’s care while she traveled the North Island with Karl, and would doubtlessly be shocked if she found out the truth about Linda and Carol’s parentage. Because of reactions such as hers, Cat and Chris, like Ida and Karl, had concluded that it would be better to raise the two girls as twins from Ida’s previous marriage to Ottfried Brandmann—and to talk as little as possible about how Ida had become a widow.

  Chapter 5

  “Are you going to join the regatta?” Cat asked Georgie.

  He was a short, strong man with tousled red hair. He rowed his flat-bottomed riverboat with powerful strokes to the middle of the Waimakariri. There, the current would speed their progress.

  The boatman shook his head. “No, Miss Cat. I paddle around enough. I don’t need to do it on Sundays too.”

  “A few of the boatmen on the Avon are joining in anyway,” Carol remarked.

  Several of those men had easily beaten Oliver and his friend Jeffrey the previous year, and the pair had wound up in fifth place.

  Georgie shrugged. “Sure. Some of them just can’t wait to show the young ‘gentlemen’ from the rowing club how it’s done. But it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t want to spend the time practicing either. It’s actually not that easy to row in teams of two or four or eight. The trick is not to row all at once, but—”

  “Oh, really?” Linda asked, her voice saccharine. “That’s so interesting! You’ll have to tell us more about it.” She repeated Carol’s honeyed words to Oliver while Georgie blinked in confusion.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Carol grumbled. “And if you ask me how far along I am with my needlepoint, Lindy, I’ll throw you overboard!”

  Cat listened to the half sisters’ friendly bickering. She lounged on a bench at the bow and watched the grass- and reed-covered banks of the Waimakariri slide past. The landscape seemed wild and untouched, though most of it had briefly been farmland. But the settlers in the Canterbury Plains had given up planting fields long ago. The towns were too distant for effective deliveries, and the pervasive tussock grass was much too tenacious, quickly overwhelming any crops. Instead, the plains had proved ideal for raising livestock. Sheep grazed by the thousands in the wide grasslands, and in summer they were driven high into the mountains. The majestic, snow-covered peaks of the Southern Alps rose behind the plains. In the clear air of the South Island, they seemed close enough to touch, but the yearly journeys there and back with the sheep could take days.