by Jo Goodman
Lydia’s movement was not so much a struggle as it was a wriggle frought with frustration. “Let me go.”
“Certainly.” He kicked the door shut.
At her sides Lydia’s hands clenched. She was about to say something, thought better of it when Nathan’s glance gave no quarter, and marched back to the bed. She scooted to the side farthest away from him and sat there stiffly, the covers tucked thickly around her. Lydia made every effort to address him calmly. “I suppose there’s no chance of you sleeping anywhere but in this bed?”
“Hardly.”
“Turn back the lamp then when you’ve finished unpacking.” Lydia lay down and curled on her side, giving Nathan her back and forcing an even cadence to her breathing.
He had no intention of emptying either the trunk or the valises tonight. He had wanted to make a point and he’d made it. Nathan finished undressing, put out the light, and crawled into bed naked. Stretching his arm across the wide mattress, he could feel the warmth left by Lydia’s body on the flat of his palm. Reaching further, his fingers could almost touch the curve of her back.
“You don’t have to sleep there, Lydia,” he said, a certain husky weariness in his voice. He withdrew his hand and tucked it under his pillow. “I’m not going to touch you.” She said nothing for so long that Nathan thought she was ignoring him or had fallen asleep.
Lydia had done neither. She was thinking. “Why are you doing this, Nathan?” she asked at last.
“You’re my wife, Liddy.” He stared at the faint outline of her in the darkness. It was the only explanation he was prepared to offer.
San Francisco
Madeline was pouting. “I don’t want you to leave.”
Brigham removed her arms from around his neck. “Lower your voice. Samuel will hear you.”
“I doubt that. He’s got his Chinese whore with him tonight.”
“You really hate Pei Ling, don’t you?”
“Why shouldn’t I? Until Lydia brought her into this house Samuel was faithful to me.”
“Somehow I doubt the reverse was true,” Brigham said. He gave the silk belt around Madeline’s waist a little tug, tightening it, and stepped away from her. “Why he ever put up with your infidelities is beyond me.”
Madeline sucked in her sulky lower lip and abandoned her seductive posture. She moved to her vanity, sat down, and began brushing her hair with hard, quick strokes. “Samuel knows I married him to get a name for my baby. There was never any pretense about it.”
“The way I understood it, you could have had O’Malley’s name.”
“As if I’d have wanted it,” she said coldly. Her hair swirled around her shoulders as Madeline swiveled on her stool. “I don’t want you to go tomorrow.”
“So you’ve said. The passage’s been booked though and I have every intention of leaving in the morning.”
“Why is it so important to you? Does it mean so much that Nathan’s won?”
It means everything, Brigham thought. What he said was, “He hasn’t won yet. Not if I can persuade your daughter to come with me.”
“Her note said she was married to him.”
“We both know he made her write that. There’s no record of their marriage anywhere in San Francisco.” He slanted her a considering look. “What difference would marriage make? You’d come with me if I asked you.”
“Ask me.”
Brigham didn’t hesitate. “Take George’s place on the ship tomorrow.”
Madeline blinked. “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”
“Deadly.” He smiled. “Well?”
“You’re mad. Why would I travel to that miserable country when I have everything I want here?”
Brigham walked over to Madeline. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he gave her a light push and turned her on the stool to face the mirror. Standing behind her, his eyes caught hers in reflection. “Do you really have everything?” he asked. “Think you’ll find another lover like I’ve been to you?”
“Don’t be absurd,” she said coolly. Pride dictated her response. “Of course I will. You think too much of yourself. You always have.”
“A moment ago you were begging me to stay.”
“Hardly begging. Begging would be writing it down in an impassioned love letter. I can’t live without you. Or some other sort of drivel like that.”
Brigham went to her escritoire and took out a sheet of notepaper and a pen. He brought it back and laid it on the vanity in front of her. “Write it down. I like impassioned love letters.”
“You have a dozen, I suppose.”
“Not a one.” Madeline picked up the pen and wrote I can’t live with before Brigham stayed her hand. “It’s enough,” he said. He raised her hand and kissed it.
“If I really wanted you to stay,” she said, removing her hand from his, “I’d tell Samuel what was in Nathan’s letter that we destroyed. My husband would see that you’d spend the next ten years in jail.”
“Threatening me, Madeline?” The way his fingers whispered across her collarbone took the hard edge off his voice. Reaching over her, Brig opened the middle drawer of her vanity and pulled out a silk scarf. He pushed aside one shoulder of Madeline’s robe and trailed the scarf lightly over her skin, watching her reaction in the mirror.
Madeline caught the end of the scarf and twisted her hand, wrapping the scarf around her wrist. Brigham still held the other end. She stood, the blue flame leaping in her darkening eyes, and used the scarf as a leading ribbon to make him follow her to the bed. She lay down, pulling him with her, and kissed him hotly on the lips, loosening the belt of her robe with her free hand. The robe opened. Brigham’s hand closed over her breast, kneading it, brushing the nipple so it stood up hard and stiff. She cried out when his mouth replaced his hand.
“Shh,” he said, rising above her. His smile was gentle. “Quietly, darling.” He kissed her until there was only the soft moaning sound of her hunger.
Madeline’s hands slipped under his open shirt, her fingers curling like talons. She scratched his back as her body moved sinuously under his.
Brigham caught her by the silken wrist and brought her hand around. “None of that,” he said softly. Raising her wrist to the spindles in the headboard of her bed, Brig fastened the scarf tightly to one of them.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. Her leg stroked his and her knee nudged his erection. She was more excited than alarmed.
“Something I like to do when a woman wants to put more scratches on my back.” He spread kisses across her face and neck while he worked the silken belt free of her robe. When he had the belt he used it to secure her other wrist. He sat up, straddling her thighs. “You like it, don’t you?”
Madeline didn’t answer. She twisted under him, struggling in the way she imagined he wanted. His eyes were incredibly hot and dark. Her tongue came out to wet her lips as Brigham stroked the underside of her outstretched arms.
“I think you should come with me,” he said softly. “Do you know what it’s like to make love on a ship?” His hands neared her breasts, circling, brushing her with his knuckles. “Come with me, Madeline.”
It was difficult to talk. Her skin leapt in anticipation of his touch. “George is going with you.”
“Do you really think I’m going to let him follow me all the way to Sydney?” he asked pleasantly.
Madeline couldn’t think for a moment through the haze of her excitement. What was Brig saying?
“He’s not welcome where I’m going.” He bent over Madeline and placed his mouth on hers. His tongue traced the line of her lips. “You’re welcome, though. The voyage will be very lonely if you don’t take my offer.”
Madeline averted her face. “What will you do with George?”
Brig’s hands caressed her breasts, her rib cage, and the taut plane of her abdomen. He could feel the excited flutter of her heart and hear the quickness of her breathing. “You don’t really care about George, do you?”
She
shook her head, closing her eyes as Brig’s touch forced a wave of pleasure through her.
“I didn’t think so,” he said softly. He kissed her mouth again, deeply this time. His hands left her briefly, long enough to pick up the pillow that was lying near her head.
He raised it and his mouth at the same time. This time when Madeline cried out, the pillow smothered the sound. He held it there long after her body had gone still. “You shouldn’t have threatened me,” he said finally, easing off her. “I was undecided until then.”
Moving quickly, with the rote precision of a task long since refined, Brigham took the ebony-handled letter opener from Madeline’s escritoire and cut her wrists. He removed the bloody scarf and belt from her wrists, stuffed them in his trouser pocket, and arranged her body on the bed to suit his fancy. Practicing Madeline’s handwriting for several minutes at her desk, Brigham finally finished the note she had begun for him. It now read: I can’t live with this ache in my soul. He locked the door to her room and left via the window and the balcony, entering the house again from the side entrance on the ground floor.
He slept deeply that night, fully aware that no one expected Madeline up at dawn to see him off. He would be hours at sea before her body was discovered and even then Brigham doubted he would be a suspect. The suicide note had been a masterstroke.
She really shouldn’t have turned him down, he thought. He might have been able to let her live until they reached Sydney.
Lydia sat in the kitchen with Molly, spooning nut and raisin filling onto pastry squares. Every few minutes she would glance out the kitchen window, see the bright winter sunlight, and sigh. She hadn’t been out of doors for longer than a few minutes since coming to Ballaburn. After the first day a steady rain had misted the valley, swollen the stream, and driven most everything toward shelter except the sheep and Nathan Hunter. He had been gone for four days and three nights, riding out to the far reaches of the station, taking inventory of the work that had gone undone in his absence.
Irish had kept to himself most of that time. Lydia saw him at meals, but their conversation was stilted and superficial, so uncomfortable that they were both relieved to get away from the table. Lydia was many times more at ease with Molly Adams, the housekeeper and cook at Ballaburn for a dozen years, confiding in her almost without being aware that she had. No one at the station knew more about what Lydia thought and felt than Molly, and Molly would have sooner been burnt at the stake than break a confidence.
“You don’t have to stay in here and do this,” Molly said. She wrapped a towel around her hand and opened the hot oven door a crack, checking her pastries. “I’ve been doing it alone these past twelve years and I’m not the worse for it. If I need help I’ll find Tess. She’s not had anything to do this morning besides a little dusting.”
“There’s no coach today?” Lydia asked. It was Tess who served the refreshments to the passengers. The girl lived for the arrival of the coach with its surfeit of male travelers. She flirted and teased, all of it fairly harmless as far as Lydia could tell, and made each weary passenger feel welcome at Ballaburn while the horses were being changed.
“No coach. And it’s a good thing, too. Jack’s not going to put up with much more of her antics. He’s been trying to catch her eye since Brig left and she’s having none of him. She needs to be plonked on the head with a waddy and dragged off to a minister. That shiela’s always wanting what she can’t have or doesn’t need.”
A dollop of filling slipped off the end of Lydia’s spoon and splattered thickly on the tabletop. She scooped it up with her finger and destroyed the evidence of her surprised reaction by eating it. “Tess and Brig?” she asked casually, still sucking on the end of her finger.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Molly said. She dusted her breadboard with more flour, slapped the dough down hard, and began rolling it out with more energy than was strictly necessary. “Forget you ever heard it—or at least that you heard it from me.”
“It’s forgotten.”
“Go on with you,” she said, jerking both her chins in the direction of the door. “The boys will fix you up with something in the stables. It’s about time you’re seeing more of Ballaburn than the inside of this house.”
Lydia laid down the spoon. “I don’t know my way around,” she said, a little uncertain about going off on her own. It was not the same as riding along the Pacific shore or cantering through Golden Gate Park. “Tess says that—”
“Tess is it now?” Molly scoffed. “Probably filled your ears full of tales about the blackfellows and God knows what else. Well, if you’re really worried, then take someone with you.” She paused and caught Lydia’s line of vision squarely. “Take Irish.”
“Irish?”
“Who else?” Molly went back to her rolling. “It’s his station. Knows every inch of it. He can’t go everywhere these days, not that he doesn’t want to, but that contraption he rides in will take him most places.”
“You mean his wheelchair?”
“I mean his buggy.”
Irish was surprised by Lydia’s request to accompany her. He also accepted with such alacrity that Lydia knew Molly had been right to suggest it. Lydia’s mount was a ginger mare, sure-footed, the men in the stable said, and responsive to light handling. Jack and Pooley saddled the mare for her, tripping over each other in their eagerness to help. Harnessing Irish’s gray gelding and hitching the specially made, one-seater buggy was accomplished with much less fanfare. He was lifted easily into his seat and given his buggy whip. There was no fussing, a situation he would have abhorred, as a wool rug was placed over his legs.
“It’s not a bad way to travel,” Irish told Lydia as they rode over the bridge, “but I get a little tired of staring at Horatio’s hindquarters, if you take my meaning.”
Lydia took his meaning very well. His buggy was low to the ground, more like a racing sulky. It was supported by two large narrow wheels at the rear and tilted backward so that Irish sat at a restful angle rather than stiffly upright. In order to see precisely where he was going he had to look to the left or right of his horse; mostly he just gave Horatio a general direction and relied on the horse to get him there.
“Nathan never let on that Ballaburn was so grand,” Lydia said. Although Irish shrugged as if it were a matter of indifference to him, Lydia thought she glimpsed a smile on his craggy, weather-worn face. “He said it was big, but not grand.”
“He probably thought you wouldn’t think so. He told me the kind of place you lived in. Ballaburn can’t be half the size of it.”
“I didn’t live in a palace, Irish. It was huge, yes, but not that enormous.”
“But bigger than Ballaburn,” he said.
“Yes. Why does it matter so much?”
“It doesn’t.”
Lydia knew he was lying, yet she couldn’t fathom the reason. She looked back over her shoulder at the house and saw an inviting warmth there in the gold-and-brown stone that was never any part of her home on Nob Hill. “Your property is much bigger,” she said.
“It has to be. Samuel isn’t a grazier. I am.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Irish was bent on making comparisons and still he undervaluated the breadth and beauty of what he had. Who did he think he had to impress? “I’m not my mother,” Lydia said with sudden insight.
“God forbid,” said Irish, raising his eyes heavenward. “As if I’d want that she-devil here.”
She persisted, slowing her mare to a walk and coming immediately abreast of Irish’s buggy. “You know what I mean. I don’t understand why, but you’re gauging all you’re showing me by her standards. Quite honestly, Irish, she’d hate it—all of it. The isolation alone would drive her to madness. She needs to be in the heart of the city and Sydney wouldn’t do at all for her. The house is too rustic, too small, inadequately staffed, and, worst of all, serves as a way station for the Cobb & Co. line. You may be rich as Croesus, Irish, but my mother would still turn her nose
up at what you’ve built here.”
“I didn’t bloody well build anything for your mother.” He gave his horse a flick with his whip. The buggy rattled ahead of Lydia. “I built it for you,” he muttered.
“What?” Lydia kicked her mount to follow. “What did you say?”
“I said I built it for you,” he snapped. “Now, do you want to learn something about your heritage or carry on about your mother?”
Lydia’s mouth closed abruptly and she hung back again, stunned by what he had to say and by the way he said it. When she caught up to him on the rise of a hillock she said, “You’re a thorough boor, Irish, but I want to hear about Ballaburn.” This time she was certain she saw his thick mustache lift to one side as he smiled.
Ballaburn’s landscape was dotted with sheep. Four thousand, she learned, were scattered all over the station, some grazing in loose flocks where the vegetation was rich, others foraging singly where food and water was sparse. Most of them were Merino, a breed with a heavily wooled head and excellent soft fleeces that brought Ballaburn its largest return pound for pound. Hornless Southdown sheep, with their small round bodies and short fleece, were raised mainly for mutton. The medium-sized, white-faced Dorset yielded milk, and the ewes had a tendency toward birthing twins, which kept their number high. All the sheep had especially thick fleeces now. Come September and springtime, when the worst of the cold nights had passed, the Merinos would be mustered in mobs to the shearing sheds and relieved of their coats.
There was cattle also, but only what the station needed to supply the men with an alternative to mutton. Horses were raised strictly for working; no one had any dreams of entering one in the Melbourne Cup. A garden behind the kitchen supplied tomatoes and maize and other vegetables, and wild blackberries grew in abundance on thorny bushes in the hills. What Ballaburn didn’t have naturally was delivered from town on one of the coaches or done without. Molly and an entourage of helpers and hell-raisers only went to Sydney three times a year for supplies.
