September Moon

by Candice Proctor

  Yet if the house was a part of the land, the garden that surrounded it was not. Amanda stared in delighted astonishment at the flourishing oasis of green enclosed by a low stone wall. Within its boundary, rows of artichokes and carrots and tomatoes shared space with thyme and Alchemilla mollis and all the best-loved herbs and flowers of an English garden—roses and hollyhocks, pinks and ranunculus, stocks and plumbago.

  "Whoa there, boys," called Mr. O'Reilly, reining in the bullocks beside the front gate.

  Dust swirled around the cart, then drifted away, blown by a breeze scented with apple blossoms and lavender and the sweet, exotic fragrances of jasmine and honeysuckle. Before she could stop herself, Amanda caught her breath in delight. "Your garden is lovely. However do you keep it so green?"

  "Chow rigged up a system with a windmill that draws from a water hole in the creek bed," he said, wrapping the reins around the brake handle.

  She looked at him, puzzled by his curt tone. "Why did you plant it, if you don't like it?"

  His head snapped back, his intense blue gaze slamming into her. For a moment, she didn't think he was going to answer her. Then he said, "I planted it for Katherine," before turning away to brace his arm on the back of the wagon seat and leap nimbly to the ground.

  "You there, Campbell?" he shouted, staring at the silent, walled compound. "Bloody hell," he muttered under his breath, and came around to help Amanda down.

  Feeling terribly self-conscious, she primly held out the tips of her gloved fingers—

  And had to bite back a gasp as his rough hands closed on her waist to lift her bodily off the seat. For one strangely exhilarating moment, Amanda soared through the air, held only by the strong grip of his hands at her sides. Then her feet touched the ground, and he released her and swung abruptly away

  "Campbell!" O'Reilly took off his hat and whacked it against his thigh, sending up a cloud of fine red dust. "Where the hell are you?"

  Amanda stayed where she was, her fingertips pressed against her waist. She had the oddest sensation, as if she could still feel the warmth of his hands, burning all the way through the protective barrier of her dress and corset. She rubbed her fingers back and forth, trying to reclaim control of her own wayward flesh.

  An abrupt noise jerked her around, startled. She saw the door of one of the smaller buildings within the compound fly open. A tall, skinny man staggered out onto the stoop and stood wavering back and forth in the breeze, an unkempt scarecrow with loose, tattered clothing and a massive black beard. He took one lurching step forward and grabbed the post supporting the small porch roof just in time to save himself from falling.

  "O'Reilly?" He peered at the wagon as if it were a great distance away, rather than a matter of only a few yards. "Ya back already?" The man belched, filling the air with the unmistakable scent of rum. "I weren't expecting ya back so early." He shook his head slowly from side to side.

  O'Reilly jammed his hat back on his head and planted his I lands on his lean hips. "Campbell, just how the hell do you expect to unload this wagon, let alone see straight enough to record the supplies?"

  "No worries, mate." The man—Campbell, she reminded herself—let go of the post to bat at a fly hovering around his nose. He lost his balance and tipped over face first into the dirt.

  "Mr. O'Reilly," said Amanda in a carefully lowered voice. "This man is shockingly inebriated."

  O'Reilly swung to face her. "Inebriated? Who, Campbell? Nah. He's only drunk." Walking over, he wrapped one hand around the man's arm and hauled the fallen bookkeeper to his feet. "See if Mallory and Ogden are in the barn, and bring them back to help unload the wagon." He gave Campbell a gentle push that almost sent him sprawling again. "And if that new chum, Lewis, is there, bring him along, too. He can do the writing."

  "Papa."

  O'Reilly spun about as a little girl of five or six, with matted golden hair and an unbelievably dirty face, burst through the open front door of the house, ran across the veranda, and hurtled herself at him.

  "Missy, darlin'." He crouched down to scoop the small child up in his arms. His blue eyes flashed and the dimples appeared in his cheeks, and Amanda felt her breath catch. The man might be foul-mouthed, low-bred, and immoral, but there was no denying that he could be quite dangerously attractive when he smiled.

  "You been helping Sally clean out the chook houses?" He plucked a feather from the little girl's hair and took a second look at her grubby face. "Or was it the pigsties?"

  Missy giggled and wrapped her arms about his neck as O'Reilly swung her up and around. "Nope. We's gettin' the room ready for the new gov'ness." Suddenly solemn, she stared at her father with an expression Amanda recognized as part of a practiced repertoire of incipient feminine wiles. "I don't want no new gov'ness, Papa. Please say we don't need one. You know they never stay anyway. And they're all mean and sour."

  O'Reilly let out a peculiar huff that might have been a laugh as the little girl slid down his long body, her bare feet landing in the dirt. "You better hope she didn't hear that," he whispered as he seized the little girl's hand and swung her around to face Amanda. "Miss Davenport, may I present Miss Melissa O'Reilly? We all call her Missy," he added, his obvious love for the child lighting up his face. "She has a hard time getting her tongue around Melissa."

  Amanda knew a flash of pure panic as her gaze dropped from the man to the now sullen child. She had so little experience with children. Ignored by her scholarly father, her own mother dead, Amanda had known a childhood of lonely hours spent curled up with a book in the corners of silent, empty rooms. Now her lack of knowledge seemed to press in upon her, making her feel awkward, almost stupid. Plastering on a stiff smile, she stepped forward and held out her hand. "How do you do, Melissa?"

  Melissa was small enough that she had to tilt back her head to stare up at Amanda. Stony-faced, the child thrust her filthy fingers into Amanda's proffered hand.

  She felt her smile slip. "Now it is your turn, Melissa, to say, ' How do you do,' " Amanda prodded gently.

  Melissa dropped Amanda's hand and whirled to take off for the house at a run. "Hannah!" she called, her bare feet slapping across the veranda. "She's here! The new gov'ness is here. Do come and see her."

  Surreptitiously wiping her hand on her skirt, Amanda stared after the departing child. "How long has it been since these children had someone to look after them?"

  O'Reilly fished a pipe and small leather pouch from his pocket. "If you're askin' how long it's been since they had a governess, it's been about five months." He opened a pocket- knife and used it to cut a slice off his tobacco plug. "But it's Sally who looks after them. She always has."

  "Sally is their nursemaid?" Amanda asked, eyeing the preparation of the pipe with frigid disapproval.

  "Sort of. She's an Aborigine."

  Amanda's gaze flew to his, her hands coming up to form a lent before her mouth. "Do you mean to tell me that these children are being raised by some black savage?"

  "Well, she's black, all right." He held a match to the bowl of his pipe, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked on the stem. "But I don't know if I'd call her a savage."

  Amanda saw her then, a black woman in a faded blue dress, standing in the shadow of the veranda. How long had the woman been there? Amanda wondered with a vague twinge of discomfort. Had she heard what Amanda said? Would she have understood if she had heard? It was impossible to tell by looking at the woman's face.

  Unlike the few sadly degraded natives Amanda had seen hanging around Adelaide, this one was upright and well proportioned, although small. Her dress must originally have been intended for someone both heavier and shorter, because it ended several inches above her ankles and hung loosely about her body. Like Missy, the woman wore neither shoes nor stockings and, judging from the way the thin cotton of her dress lay against her hips and thighs, Amanda doubted that she wore anything at all beneath it. It was really quite shocking.

  More shocking still was the woman's face. She was an older woman,
probably middle-aged, with gray-streaked hair and heavily wrinkled skin. But what drew Amanda's fascinated gaze was the woman's nose. The septum of her nose had been pierced, and now held what looked very much like a bone.

  So intent was Amanda on studying the woman that it was a moment before she realized, much to her chagrin, that Sally was regarding her with the same intense scrutiny as she was regarding Sally. And Sally didn't seem particularly impressed with what she saw.

  "Whad for boss sister send dis one?" she said, throwing back her head and curling her lip as if she'd smelled something foul. "Dis one, no good." She turned on her heel and disappeared into the house, leaving Amanda sputtering with outraged indignation.

  Beside her, Patrick O'Reilly leaned against the veranda post and practically doubled over with loud laughter.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "Hannah? Liam? You there?" Carrying Amanda's trunk, Mr. O'Reilly pushed in the front door of the homestead. Amanda followed him, trying to shake off the ridiculous sense of nervous foreboding that seemed to have settled over her.

  The entrance opened directly into a large, dimly lit space that looked as if it must serve as a rugged version of an English drawing room. Her first impression was of battered settees and old chairs haphazardly covered with woven throws, of scattered tables half-buried beneath piles of papers and opened books, and a worn carpet with several large rents in it, as if someone had caught a spur in the threadbare nap.

  Hut as her eyes adjusted to the softer light, she noticed that the faded carpet had once been fine. The corner fireplace bore u marble mantel, and the front door surround was an exquisite series of stained-glass panels depicting the brilliantly colored birds and flowers of the bush.

  An unexpected wave of entirely unwanted emotion washed over Amanda as she watched Patrick O'Reilly's broad back disappear through a doorway to the left. He might come across as irreverent and almost ostentatiously casual, she thought, but at one time he had gone through a great deal of effort and expense to make this isolated house in the wilds of the outback into a comfortable home. Yet neither the house, nor the lovely English garden surrounding it, she thought, had been enough to keep the woman he had called Katherine here with him.

  "Your room's in here," he called, and Amanda hurried after him.

  The house seemed to have no halls or passages at all, for when she followed him through the doorway, she found herself in a bedchamber. It was large and airy, with two sets of French doors, one facing the front of the house, the other the side, that had been thrown open to the cool, late August air.

  O'Reilly dumped her trunk at the foot of an old-fashioned cedar bed and headed back out to the cart. Amanda swung off her mantelet and draped it over the footboard of the bed. Then, still in her gloves and bonnet, she did a slow pirouette, assessing what would be her room for the next twelve months. Her gaze flicked from the high-fronted cedar chest of drawers and wardrobe to the tiled washstand to the cushionless, straight-backed chair beside a round table with a water-ring- marked top.

  Another strange room in another strange house. In the five hard years since her father's death, Amanda had slept in everything from a cramped, stuffy attic to a crowded ship's cabin. At least this was private. The walls were newly whitewashed, the plain wooden floors looked freshly swept, and the carved cedar mantelpiece, when she walked over and ran one finger along it, free of dust.

  "Something wrong with the housekeeping?"

  Amanda whirled about. A tall, slim boy stood just outside her room, on the veranda. He wore the white moleskin trousers, heavy shirt, and leather waistcoat that seemed to form the standard male attire in outback Australia. A wide-brimmed hat, low-crowned and pulled low over the eyes, obscured half his face.

  "Hello," she said, flustered to have been caught so obviously questioning the cleanliness of her accommodation. "It's a nice room."

  No trace of a smile lightened the boy's features. "It's haunted. Anyone tell you?" He sauntered into the room and began to walk slowly around her, insolently looking her up and down. Unwilling to be inspected, Amanda pivoted with him, so that they circled each other, like a couple of fighting cocks.

  "Sally says it's the ghost of an Aboriginal woman raped by the man who built the house."

  "I don't believe in ghosts. But I do believe that young men need to learn there are certain subjects not discussed in the company of ladies, and the type of incident you just mentioned is one of them."

  "The governess before last said she didn't believe in ghosts either," confided the boy, ignoring her strictures. He had a fine-boned, almost effeminate face, Amanda noticed, with almond-shaped, deep brown eyes and thick, black lashes. His skin was tanned dark, and what she could see of his hair was dark, too. He looked nothing like Patrick O'Reilly.

  Leaning in close, he dropped his voice to a whisper. "She used to hear a strange, haunting noise, like the droning of the wind, or the mournful cry of some unearthly creature. Early in the evening, mainly, around sunset. That was the time of day the Aboriginal girl is said to have died, you see."

  The faded chintz curtains beside the open sets of doors moved restlessly in the wind. Amanda smelled eucalyptus and an exotic, lemony pepper scent blowing up from the broad valley below. Everything here was so wild, so strange, so ... otherworldly. It frightened her simply being here. But she wasn't about to let this boy see her fear.

  "Sunset I don't mind," Amanda said calmly, "as long as this noise doesn't awaken me at night. I do so dislike having my sleep disturbed."

  The boy frowned, but he wasn't about to give up yet. "Oh, she heard it at night, too. And then, one morning, she didn't come to the schoolroom for lessons. We went lookin' to see what'd happened to her, and we found her here. In that bed." He gestured toward the big old cedar bed beside the door.

  Sitting right up, she was, and staring straight ahead, her eyes opened wide like she'd seen something awful. Her mouth was open, too, like she was trying to scream. Only she couldn't scream, of course, because she was dead. Scared to death, the doc said."

  Amanda realized she was clutching the lace collar of her dress and let her hand slide back down to her side. Mrs. Radwith hadn't mentioned any deceased predecessors. "How many governesses have you had?" Amanda asked, still turning in slow, measured circles with this unnatural, unpleasant child she was expected to teach. She was getting dizzy.

  "Nine," he said. And this time, he smiled. A slow, sly smile that was pure nastiness. She imagined he must have derived considerable enjoyment and satisfaction from the process of driving all nine of her predecessors away.

  Except, of course, for the predecessor who had died in this bed.

  Amanda stopped circling and determinedly held out her hand. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Miss Davenport. And you must be... Liam, isn't it?"

  A giggle sounded and Amanda turned to find Miss Melissa O'Reilly peeking around the door from the parlor. Someone— Sally?—had washed the child's face and brushed her hair and tidied the thick golden ringlets with a pink-checked ribbon. But she was still barefoot.

  "That's not Liam," Missy said, her dimples peeping. "That's my sister, Hannah. She's a girl. She only dresses like a boy."

  The girl in the moleskin trousers and broad-brimmed hat spun about and gave a very feminine hiss. "Mind your own business, you little—"

  "Watch your mouth, young lady, or I'll tan the seat of those trousers you're so fond of wearing." Mr. O'Reilly, carrying Amanda's satchel and writing desk, appeared in the doorway behind Missy. Dumping Amanda's satchel on the floor beside her trunk, he set the writing desk on the table and pivoted to glare at his daughter. "You hear me, Hannah?"

  Instead of dropping her eyes demurely and murmuring yes , sir, Hannah glared right back at her father. "You always stand up for Missy," she said, her pointed little chin thrust aggressively forward.

  "This has nothing to do with Missy." He planted his hands on his hips and stood with his legs braced wide. "I'm talking about your language."

  "Yes
it does have to do with Missy!" Hannah's voice cracked with emotion. Amanda saw unshed tears glitter in the girl's eyes, and felt a faint tug of unexpected sympathy for this strange, complicated girl. Hannah's thin chest rose as she sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. "You never tell Missy off when she does something to me. You love her more than you love me, and you know it."

  "Now, Hannah," he began, reaching for her, but the girl whirled and dashed through the open French doors. "Damn it, Hannah!" O'Reilly bellowed. "Get back here."

  Hannah never wavered. Hopping off the veranda, she darted down a lavender-edged, flagstone path, vaulted over the low stone wall that separated the house from the rest of the station, and disappeared behind an outbuilding.

  Patrick O'Reilly stood in the open doorway and stared after her. "Bloody women," he muttered, as if the peculiarities of the female sex explained Hannah's behavior.

  "Mr. O'Reilly," said Amanda, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. "May I have a word with you, please?"

  He swung around to face her, and she knew from the expression on his face that, for a moment at least, he had essentially forgotten her presence. After five years as a servant, she should have become used to being invisible to her employers. But for some reason, this time it hurt.

  "Yeah?" His gaze dropped to her crossed arms. "What's on your mind?"

  For some reason, she found she had to clear her throat before she could trust herself to speak. "I am concerned by your threat to use physical violence on that child. I do not believe in it."

  "Physical violence?" He leaned against her bedpost, a puzzled frown line appearing between his straight, dark brows.

  It was oddly unsettling, having him in her bedroom, actually touching her bed. "I am well aware of the fact that my attitudes on this subject fly in the face of current pedagogical theories." She hoped he didn't notice that her voice was quavering, and pressed on resolutely. "However, as long as I am employed to instruct these children I would appreciate it if you would endeavor to avoid chastising them in the manner to which you are obviously accustomed."