September Moon

by Candice Proctor

  "Getting back to England is important, is it?"

  She brought up her hand to dash her palm across her eyes, suddenly ashamed of just how badly she'd lost control of herself. "It's the most important thing in the world to me," she said quietly.

  "Why?"

  She turned to stare at him in surprise. "Because it's Home. It's where I belong. I could never be happy here."

  He stood gazing down at her with a strange expression she found unsettling—as if he were looking inside her, seeing something she didn't want him to see. Something she didn't want to see herself. "I've always thought happiness is less a matter of where you are than who you are."

  Amanda stared back at him, shocked by his wisdom and his understanding. She didn't want to let herself see this side of him. She wanted to go on thinking of him as uncouth and raw and ignorant. When he was like this—gentle and wise and compassionate, she realized just how dangerously attractive he truly was.

  He reached out, unexpectedly, and ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek. She trembled with the disturbing feelings that his touch, his very nearness always seemed to arouse within her. She drew in a shaky breath that did nothing to ease the pressure in her chest. "I could never be happy here."

  They stared at each other in silence for a long moment. The night air curled around them, unseasonably warm and heavy with the pungent scents of the Australian bush. "No," he said softly. "I don't suppose you could be."

  This time, he was the one to look away. He turned toward the Flinders, lost now in the blackness of the night, and she thought she heard him sigh. "What did you want to talk to me about, anyway?"

  For a moment she couldn't imagine what he was referring to. Then she remembered all she had intended to say to him about Liam and the bullockies and that bookkeeper, Campbell. Only, she didn't want to talk about it. Not now. "It can wait until later."

  "You were bursting with righteous indignation about something when you tracked me down at the cart shed. Might as well get it over with."

  "Very well. I have been wanting to talk to you about the children."

  She sensed a subtle change in his attitude. "What about them?" he asked, his eyes narrowing. "Is there a problem with their lessons?"

  "No. I think we're beginning to come to an understanding on that."

  "Then what the hell's the matter?"

  "Really, Mr. O'Reilly. I must protest this continued use of profanity—"

  "Quit protesting and just spit out whatever it is you've got to say."

  She felt her own irritation rise to match his. "Very well. Since you insist, I will." She sucked in a deep breath. "I do not believe it proper for these children to be constantly exposed to the men of doubtful character and reprehensible conduct who seem to frequent this station."

  "Such as?" he asked in a dangerously silky voice.

  "Your bookkeeper, for one." She flung her arm in the general direction of the office. "The man is a disgrace."

  O'Reilly stared down at her. She could not begin to read the expression on his face. "So you think I should fire Campbell, do you?"

  "Yes, I do."

  He lifted his head, his gaze drawn toward something lost in the darkness of the night. "There's a small graveyard across the creek. Have you seen it?"

  Amanda shook her head. "I've noticed it. But I haven't actually visited it. Why?"

  "Next time you have a chance, I think you ought to go take a look at it. You'll see it contains three new graves. One's of a woman named Ellen Campbell, and beside her are the graves of her twin eight-year-old sons, Nathan and Mathew. They all died six weeks ago."

  "Campbell's family?" Amanda said hoarsely.

  "That's right. He came down with some kind of stomach sickness when he was in Melrose for supplies. Only instead of staying put, he came home so that Ellen could nurse him, and he ended up passing whatever he had on to the rest of his family. He survived it. They didn't."

  "I didn't know," she whispered.

  "No. You didn't." He swung his gaze back to her face. "Campbell's a good man. If he feels the need to drown his sorrow and his guilt in alcohol for a while, I reckon I can afford to give him the time and space to do it."

  Amanda looked at the man beside her, seeing again a side of him she didn't want to see, didn't want to know about, didn't want to acknowledge. She cleared her throat and looked away.

  "I can understand—even applaud your forbearance when it comes to Mr. Campbell. But what of those two bullockies who came through this evening? Those men truly are degenerates."

  He surprised her by laughing softly. "I don't know if I'd cal 1

  Sweeny and Jessup degenerate, exactly. A bit wild and unwashed maybe. But not degenerate."

  "Not degenerate? When they regale Liam with tales totally unsuitable for one of his tender years—"

  "Bullockies are famous for their yarnin'."

  "—and allow him to drink intoxicating beverages?"

  There was a pause. Then he said, "I don't expect you to understand this, Miss Davenport, but I happen to think it's better to allow a boy to taste alcohol, rather than forbidding him to touch it. Sweeny and Jessup might be a bit crude, but I don't think they'd ever let Liam do more than take a swig of whatever they've got."

  "And you think a—a swig or two are acceptable?"

  "Look, I know what drinkin' can do to a man in country like this. And it's precisely because I know it that I intend to make sure Liam grows up aware of what alcohol is like. That way, he's not going to build drinking up in his mind as something he can't wait to try, something he doesn't know how to handle, something he thinks he can use to prove he's a man."

  "Is that why you took him into Hornbottom's hotel?"

  "He told you that, did he?"

  She had expected him to deny it. Now she almost gaped at him. "Is it true?"

  "Yes." His mouth curled into a slow grin that let her know there was a lot more to this story than the little bit she'd been told.

  "You're not going to explain it to me, are you?"

  His grin widened. "Nope."

  She stared up at his lean, handsome face and suddenly felt rocked by a confusing swirl of emotions she didn't understand and didn't want. The evening breeze fluttered his worn shirt against his hard chest and molded the sleeves around the work-toned muscles of his arms. He looked so big and strong and achingly, enticingly masculine, standing there in the moonlight, that she almost shuddered.

  Suddenly desperate to reach the bright safety of the house, she swung away from him. "I don't understand you," she said. But what she meant was, I don't understand myself. I don't understand what is happening between us. What almost happened here tonight.

  And I'm so terribly afraid of what will happen next.

  Missy lay on her back in the hay and watched the dust motes floating lazily in a beam of late afternoon sunlight. The hay scratched her bare arms and sometimes gave her a rash, but she loved the way it rustled when she buried herself down in it, and she enjoyed the clean, dried-grassy way it smelled. It reminded her of long hot summer days and horses and secret meetings of the O'Reilly Raiders, as Hannah called them.

  Liam thought they should be named the O'Reilly Warriors, but Hannah was bigger, and when Liam tried to argue with her about it, she punched him in the nose. So they called themselves the O'Reilly Raiders, and the hay barn was their secret headquarters, where they plotted new and awful ways to get rid of the latest governess. At least Liam and Hannah plotted. Missy mostly just listened.

  "I finally got one," said Liam, sticking a straw in his mouth and pretending it was a pipe.

  Hannah rolled over onto her stomach and kicked her feet in the air. "How big?"

  "Ten feet."

  "Get off it, Liam. How big?"

  Liam threw his older sister a malevolent glare. "Well, five feet, at least." Then he grinned. "If she was scared of that goanna, wait till she finds this snake in her room at night."

  "Li-am. You never caught no five-foot snake."
>
  "Nope. Jacko caught it for me." Jacko was one of Sally's nephews who worked for Papa as a stockman. "It took him a few days, but he finally found one. He's got it in a bag in that big old hollow gum by the creek. When we're ready, I'll bring it up and hide it behind the kitchen. We'll turn it loose in her room after everyone's in bed."

  Missy shifted uncomfortably. "I think it's mean."

  Two similar sets of eyes, one brown, the other hazel, swung around to stare at her. "Of course it's mean," said Hannah, enunciating each word slowly and carefully, as if Missy didn't know English or something. "That's why we're doing it."

  Missy hated it when Hannah talked to her in that tone of voice. Hannah thought that just because Missy was little, she didn't understand things. Only Missy usually did understand; she just looked at things a little differently, that's all. "I don't think this gov'ness is as nasty as the other ones," she said stubbornly. "I think she's pretty. Especially when she smiles."

  "When does she ever smile?" scoffed Liam.

  "She smiles at me."

  "Of course she does," said Hannah in disgust. "You gave her flowers." Hannah held her stomach and leaned over and gagged, like she was about to throw up.

  "I felt sorry for her."

  "Ha," said Liam. "You felt sorry for Miss Down, when we put sand in that cream she was always spreading all over her face."

  "I did not! I never liked Miss Down. She used to thump me in the middle of the back with her knuckles whenever I pro- nouned a word wrong. It was Miss Macmillan I thought you were too hard on. She wasn't that bad. And after she stepped in that fresh cow pile you put beside her bed in the morning, she left."

  Liam laughed. "That was a good one, wasn't it?"

  Missy shook her head. She didn't like most of the governesses Aunt Hetty sent up from Adelaide; most of them were so pinched and sour and serious, they made everyone's life miserable until they finally went away again. But she didn't resent them, the way Liam and Hannah did.

  Sometimes Missy thought maybe it was because of Mama. Missy had never known Mama, so she didn't really miss her. But Hannah and Liam did. They didn't just miss Mama, they were angry with her for having gone away and left them. At least that's what Sally said when Liam and Hannah were mean to her. Sally said Missy had to try to understand that they hurt inside, and that's what made them try to hurt other people. But Missy wasn't sure she believed it. After all, Papa was never mean, and he must miss Mama, too. Although he never talked about Mama either. No one ever talked about Mama. And that made Missy sad, because she wished she knew more about her mama.

  "Are you for us, or against us?" demanded Hannah, fixing Missy with a ferocious stare.

  Missy sighed. "I'm with you."

  Hannah nodded. "Good." She turned to Liam. "When do you want to do it?"

  Liam smiled wide enough to show his missing tooth. "Tonight."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The flame of the coal oil lamp flickered and smoked, sending misshapen shadows dancing up the whitewashed bedroom walls.

  It was late, and Amanda should have been in bed. But she felt oddly restless, unable to settle. Clutching her shawl close to her nightdress, she bent to adjust the lamp's wick. Her gaze fell on the writing desk that had been her mother's, and she picked it up and sank into the chair, the desk held on her lap.

  She hadn't used the desk since her arrival in Penyaka a week ago today. She had no botanical specimens to catalog, no letters to write. There was no one in England who would be looking for a letter from Amanda Davenport.

  A melancholy sense of loneliness swept through her at the thought. She ran her fingers over the desk's surface, tracing the delicately inlaid design.

  This desk and a few small pieces of jewelry were Amanda's only links to the woman who had died giving her birth. Her mother's death had left a void in Amanda's life, a sense of something lacking, something that would have made her more complete, more capable. Since coming to Penyaka, she had begun to think that if only she'd had a mother herself, perhaps she would have been better prepared for the task of taking care of the three O'Reilly children.

  And they did need someone to care for them—not just teach them, the way their father seemed to think.

  She knew O'Reilly loved his children fiercely; that wasn't the problem. She had watched him—surreptitiously—so many times this last week. Tucking Missy into bed at night.

  Playing chess with Liam or Hannah in front of the fire. Sitting out on the veranda with the three of them, laughing and talking as twilight descended on the surrounding bush. Yet she still sensed, somehow, that it wasn't enough. There was something wrong in this family. It seemed so strange that no one—not even the children—ever mentioned Katherine O'Reilly.

  Sighing, Amanda set the desk on the round table and carried the lamp to her bedside. The night was cold, and she was glad to snuggle down beneath the heavy covers. But as she reached to twist off the lamp, it occurred to Amanda that without realizing it, at some point in the last week she had gone from wanting to control the children to wanting to help them. If she wasn't careful, she thought wryly, she might actually start to care for the little hellions.

  Just the thought of it made her laugh softly to herself.

  The fear penetrated her consciousness before the noise.

  She sat up in bed, fuddled with sleep, blinded by the night. Her heart raced painfully in her chest, sending the blood pounding through her limbs so hard, they tingled. She sucked in quick, shallow breaths, her lips parted, her mouth dry. What was it?

  She twisted wildly about, peering through the darkness at the door to the parlor, at the French doors to the veranda. Nothing. All were closed.

  And yet something had awakened her. Something her body—or perhaps it was her unconscious—sensed as a threat, even if her mind remained unaware of it.

  Then she heard it. A faint, rasping sound. A slither. She was not alone. Someone-—something was in the room with her.

  She fumbled around on her bedside table and found the matches. It took three tries before she managed to get one to strike.

  Light flared, golden, wavering, dim. But bright enough to show her the long, fat brown snake slithering across her floor.

  A brown snake.

  She let out a quick, frightened gasp and almost dropped the match. Her hand shook so badly, she was afraid the flame might go out, but she managed to reach slowly, carefully, and light the lamp. It was difficult to do, since she didn't dare take her eyes off the snake in the process.

  The lamp wick flared up, bright. As if startled by the sudden light, the snake halted in the middle of the room. It was so long, its body seemed to stretch halfway back to the door. As she watched, it swung around and raised its narrow, pointed, shiny black head to stare at her.

  Amanda tried to swallow the choking ball of fear in her throat. "Mr. O'Reilly," she called. It came out as a hoarse croak.

  He would never hear her. She edged to the far side of the bed, and tried again. "Mr. O'Reilly. Mr. O'Reilly? Mister O'Reilly!"

  In the distance, a door banged. She heard a thud, and an instant later her own door flew open with so much force, it crashed into the wall behind it.

  Patrick O'Reilly, big and naked, burst through the doorway. "What the hell?" His gaze swept from her to the snake. The snake reared up, its head swinging around to confront this new danger only a few feet from its flicking tongue. "Holy shit."

  She didn't see the knife until O'Reilly raised his hand and sent the blade whistling through the air. She heard a vibrating thwunk as the tip bit into the wooden door frame on the far side of the room. The snake's thin body, minus its head, flopped onto the floor.

  O'Reilly walked forward to stare down at the dead snake while Amanda, stunned, could only stare at him.

  He had a magnificent body. Tall, lean, and broad shouldered, strong and yet graceful. Sun-bleached hair curled against a tanned neck. His back was brown, too, and strapped with muscles that rippled as he leaned over to inspect the dead rept
ile. His buttocks were taut, hard, and white, as white as his long, well-shaped legs. Amanda's breath left her body in a whoosh, and though the night was cold, she felt herself grow hot.

  "I shouldn't have killed it," he said, and to her astonishment he actually sounded as if he regretted it. "It's just a black-headed python. They look like a brown snake, but it wouldn't have hurt you. They're harmless." He looked at her over his shoulder. "How did it get in here, anyway?"

  She shook her head. "I can't imagine. All the doors were closed."

  He straightened and turned to face her. She knew she should look away, but she could not. Against her will, her gaze roved over him. His chest was exquisitely defined by years of hard work, his stomach so hard, the ridges of muscle clearly delineated. And below that rose a large, proud male member that swelled even as she stared at it.

  Her head snapped up and her gaze met his. A slow, lazy smile spread across his face and brought a gleam to his deep blue eyes. He didn't seem the least discomfited by his own nakedness. But he knew she'd been looking at him, knew she'd been admiring his body. Burning with embarrassment, she swung her head around and stared pointedly at the far wall.

  "Mr. O'Reilly, your... your clothes."

  "It doesn't bother me. Does it bother you?" She could hear the rich timbre of amusement in his voice.