September Moon

by Candice Proctor

  She didn't even need to think about it. "The rain."

  They laughed together. Like friends, she thought. She liked the idea of having Christian Whittaker as her friend. She'd had so few friends in her life. And Christian was so pleasant, so gentle and well mannered, so reassuringly English.

  Lifting her tea, she studied him covertly over the rim of the china cup and wondered why she could never imagine Christian as anything more than a friend. He had a pleasant face, she decided. His cheeks were full and ruddy, his chin square and prominent, his eyes light brown and sincere. His brown hair was neatly cut, his mustache carefully trimmed and waxed, his clothes everything that a gentleman's clothes should be. She had no doubt that even the hottest days of midsummer would find him impeccably attired in jacket, waistcoat, and tie, his shirt virtuously buttoned up to its high collar.

  Amanda suppressed a sigh. A woman would be safe with a man like this, she thought. Safe not only from the importunities of the cruel, materialistic world, but from herself. Safe from all the wild, sensual impulses that could so easily destroy her.

  She studied his straight, thin-lipped English mouth, just visible beneath the bushy mustache, and tried to imagine what it would be like to kiss him. Cool, probably. And dry. She couldn't imagine Mr. Whittaker opening his mouth.

  Or thrusting his tongue down her throat.

  A long shadow darkened the pristine linen cloth she'd used to cover the tea table. "G'day," drawled a deep, lazy voice.

  Amanda started violently. It was as if she had conjured the devil with her own wicked thoughts.

  Mr. Whittaker hastened to stand and bow formally. "Good afternoon, Mr. O'Reilly."

  Amanda looked up into a pair of intense blue eyes, glittering with the memory of everything that had happened between them last night. He pulled out a chair and sat down. She jerked her gaze away.

  How could she have betrayed herself like that last night? she thought wildly. How could she have simply stood there, subdued and placid, while he loosened her hair and pulled her into his arms for his kiss? She had been as acquiescent as that chestnut mare in the paddock yesterday, waiting submissively for the stud to penetrate her.

  Unbidden, an image flashed through Amanda's mind. An image of O'Reilly looming over her, soothing her with gentle, coaxing words as he spread her legs and prepared to mount her. Aghast at the wayward direction of her thoughts, she almost shuddered. She could not keep letting herself think of him like this.

  "I am afraid Liam and I will have to miss a few of our sessions," Christian Whittaker was saying. "I have been asked by the company to attend to some business in Adelaide. I probably won't be back until next month."

  O'Reilly pushed the brim of his hat farther back on his head. "No worries. We're going to start shearing in a few days anyway. Liam'll be kept busy enough with that."

  Mr. Whittaker raised his brows in surprise. "Is it not too early?"

  A grin that held no amusement twisted O'Reilly's lips. "Under normal circumstances, yes. Although it's always a bit of a gamble, whenever you decide to do it. Shear too late and a hot spell will scorch the sheep's backs and let the flies get at them; shear too early and an unexpected cold snap can kill the lot. But the way this drought's going, if I don't shear soon, I won't have any sheep left alive to shear anyway. I plan to cull bloody hard this year."

  "What does that mean?" Amanda asked, noticing the two creases etched by worry between his eyes. On the surface he seemed so carefree and easygoing. But he carried a lot inside him, this Australian.

  He looked away from her, out over the dying hills. "It means that as things stand now, this range can't support the number of animals I'm running on it. So I can either let them all starve to death, or I can sell or slaughter half of them now and hope the ones that are left are strong enough to make it through till this bloody dry spell breaks." He pursed his lips. "If it ever does."

  "If the drought doesn't end soon," said Christian Whittaker, "the mines are going to have to close. We'll never be profitable if we have to pay so much simply to haul our ore out of the Flinders."

  Amanda turned to him in surprise. "Is there any real danger that might happen?"

  "I'm afraid so. It's one of the reasons I'm being sent down to Adelaide. To see what kind of support there is for running a railway line up here."

  O'Reilly expelled his breath in one of those little huffs she now recognized as a laugh. "Not much chance of that."

  "No, but we need to try." He reached into his worn satchel and drew out a slim, expensively bound book. "If Liam has time while I'm gone, have him take a look at this translation of Medea. We'll be starting Euripides after I get back, and I thought it might be a good idea if he became familiar with the English version before we tackle the original Greek."

  Amanda picked up the brown leather volume and ran her fingers over the embossed gold letters on the cover. "It's one of my father's translations," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  "Yes. Be sure to ask Liam to take care of it, would you? It means a great deal to me."

  She glanced up to meet Christian Whittaker's serious brown eyes, and smiled. "I'll make certain he does."

  Christian left soon after that. She expected O'Reilly to wander away, too, but he didn't, even though the atmosphere between them crackled with wary sexuality and residual anger. She busied herself stacking cups and saucers on the tray, painfully conscious of the man sprawled lazily in the chair beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him reach his strong, tanned hand to pick up the Medea.

  "So this Angus Davenport was your father, was he?" He flipped through the first leaves of the book and grunted. "A big Oxford man."

  "Yes."

  "I would have expected a man like that to have plenty of money."

  "Not as much as you might think." She reached for the teapot.

  "But enough so's his daughter wouldn't need to hire herself out as a secretary or governess."

  She could feel the heat of his gaze upon her as she moved to set the teapot on the tray, then just stood there, staring down at it. "My father loved Oxford almost as much as he loved the world of the ancient Greeks. It was always his dream to endow a series of lectures on the Athenian tragedians, so I... " Her fingers slid over the graceful curve of the fine china teapot she still held between her hands. "I try not to begrudge him the pleasure I know it must have brought him to be able to do that."

  He let out his breath in a mirthless laugh. "Christ, why shouldn't you resent what he did? Seems to me, you're the one hurting because of it."

  Amanda shook her head, her gaze still resolutely fastened on the pink-and-green floral design of the teapot, as if it were the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. "No. He left me what he considered an adequate sum for a modest dowry. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough for me to live on for the rest of my life, when I did not marry."

  "And exactly who was he expecting you to marry?"

  She looked up, feeling a sad smile tug at her lips. "The local vicar, of course. Mr. Smutley, his name was. He courted me for eighteen months. Since I enjoyed discussing literature and philosophy with him, I fear I never discouraged him as forcefully as I perhaps should have. My father assumed I meant to marry him."

  She was surprised by the intensity of O'Reilly's gaze as he stared back at her. "A vicar?" His teeth flashed in a sudden grin. "Your father couldn't have known you very well."

  How did you guess? she wanted to ask, but didn't. "No, my father didn't know me well at all." He never bothered, she thought, but she didn't say that, either.

  She watched O'Reilly uncoil from his chair and circle the table, his gaze reckless and heated as he came at her. The westering sun slanted in beneath the veranda and glazed his strong, bare arms with gold where they showed beneath his rolled-up shirtsleeves.

  "So who was he?"

  She kept her gaze fastened on that beguiling hollow just above the juncture of his collarbone. "I don't know what you mean."

  "Yes, y
ou do." He was close enough he could have touched her, if he'd wanted. He always stood too close to her, as if he knew it rattled her. But then, of course he knew. He seemed to know far too much about her.

  He leaned in even closer, until his face was just inches from hers. Her gaze settled on his moving lips as he said, "Who taught you to open your mouth beneath a man's kiss? And to fear the things you feel when a man touches your body?"

  Her startled gaze flew to meet his intent, burning one. He was like wildfire, she thought. Dangerous and unpredictable. And she did fear him, as any sane person fears fire. She feared him, and all the things she felt when he put his strong man's hands on her weak woman's flesh.

  Swallowing hard, she tore herself from his hypnotic blue stare and turned to gaze out over the sun-parched hills. "I don't want to talk about it."

  "All right." He rubbed the backs of his fingers with unexpected gentleness against her cheek. "You've told me most of what I need to know anyway."

  Amanda had always thought of September as a time of falling wet leaves and gray, frost-nipped mornings, of crackling bonfires and plump orangy-red rosehips and sweetly scented haystacks. But here in the Flinders, the coming of September meant the passage from a warm winter into a hot, sun-seared spring.

  With spring came the shearing season, and she saw little of O'Reilly in the days that followed. He spent most of his time visiting the outlying shepherds' huts, or supervising the digging of some channel down by the woolshed, or handling one of a hundred other tasks she only dimly understood. She told herself she was relieved he was too busy to approach her. She told herself a lot of things she knew weren't true.

  At first she assumed that O'Reilly and his men would shear the sheep themselves. But when she said as much one morning in the schoolroom, Liam and Hannah hooted with laughter.

  "As if Father and the shepherds and jackaroos could muster, wash, and shear a hundred thousand sheep," snickered Liam, digging his elbow into Hannah's ribs.

  Only Missy sat silent, staring solemnly at her older brother's and sister's grinning faces. She turned to where Amanda stood beside her desk, her shoulders rigid. "There's groups of shearers what travels around, Miss Davenport," she said quietly. "They goes from station to station. They're so good at it, some of 'em can shear more than a hundred sheep in a day. Papa used to work as a shearer once, before he married Mama, so he's pretty quick. But even he can only shear sixty."

  "Thank you, Missy," said Amanda gratefully.

  After that, Missy appointed herself as Amanda's unofficial Sheep Tutor. She told Amanda about how the sheep needed to be brought in from the scattered outstations, and about the loose-limbed, stoop-shouldered shearers, each at his own stand, who could clip the wool so close to a sheep's loose, kinky skin that it looked naked when they were finished.

  Thanks to Missy, Amanda added a long list of new words to her vocabulary: strange terms, such as crutching and skirting, and endless names for sheep, from wethers and cobblers to overgrowns and wets. She learned that Liam and Hannah—in fact, almost everyone on the station except for Missy and Amanda—would be called upon to work in the woolshed for I he six weeks or more the shearing was expected to last.

  "And when the shearin' is finished, Papa always holds horse races, and a dance in the woolshed," Missy told her one afternoon on the veranda, when Amanda was brushing the little girl's unruly hair during the break between lessons. "Folks come from miles around. They dance all night and then ride home when the sun comes up in the morning to light the way." She craned her head around to squint at Amanda's plain gray dress, and her forehead puckered in thought. "Do you have something to wear? Something pretty?"

  Amanda smiled and shook her head. "Not really. Look straight ahead, please." She gathered the thick blond hair in one hand and divided it into three for a braid. "It doesn't matter. I won't be going."

  "But you must! All the governesses do. And the children, too."

  "Oh. Well, I suppose I must, then. But I shan't dance, in any case."

  "Why not?" asked Missy, with all of a six-year-old's tenacious persistence.

  "If you don't look straight ahead, miss, this braid will be crooked." Amanda's hands flashed in and out as she wove the three strands together. After a pause, she said, "It wouldn't be seemly for a governess to be seen dancing. Too frivolous."

  "Aren't governesses supposed to have fun?" asked Missy, twisting around again.

  "No, they're not."

  "Then I don't think you should be a governess."

  A gurgle of laughter escaped Amanda's lips. "Don't you? And what, pray tell, do you think I should be, Missy?"

  "I think you'd make a nice mother."

  Amanda's hands stilled as a long-buried pain wrenched at her heart. Once she had wanted children. Once she had dreamed of holding her own sweet-smelling baby to her breast, had imagined what it would be like to catch a child's first smile. To guide its first steps and watch its wonder at the unfolding of the beauties of nature around it. But she had put all that behind her long ago. Hadn't she?

  She forced herself to finish tying off the braid. "I'm not married, child," she said quietly. "Remember?"

  "Well, that shouldn't be too hard to fix." Melissa swung completely around and rested her hands on Amanda's knees. 'There's lots of men around here that need wives."

  "Missy—"

  "There's Mr. Campbell." Missy's nose wrinkled up. "But he smells funny and he's always fallin' over because he drinks too much now, so I don't think he'd make a very good husband."

  "Melissa, I do not think it is appropriate for you—"

  "You could marry Mr. Whittaker," she continued irrepress- ibly. "He doesn't smell, and he's nice. But Papa says he has the worst seat on a horse he's ever seen and besides, Mr. Whittaker would take you back to England with him and I wouldn't like that. So I think it would be better if you married Papa. Then you'd be my mama and you'd never leave, would you?"

  Amanda stared down into Missy's open face. She knew the speech wasn't as artless as it seemed, but that did nothing to lessen the impact of the longing and need that Amanda glimpsed in the child's big blue eyes.

  "Oh, Missy," she whispered, and hugged the child to her. "You'll get a new mother someday. You'll see."

  "I don't want just any mama. I want you."

  "But Missy—" She broke off as a chorus of whoops and ribald cheers cut through the still noonday air. Turning toward the sound, Amanda heard the jingle of harnesses and the clip- clop of horses' hooves on the stony road.

  "It's the shearers! " Missy cried, jumping up to grab Amanda's hand and tug her out of her chair. "Come and see!"

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Melissa tugged Amanda around the side of the house and through the garden to the front gate.

  There Amanda stopped, amazed by the sight of the dozens of shearers filling the dusty track. Most were scruffy men, wearing patched moleskin trousers and dirty, floppy-brimmed hats and anywhere from two days' to two months' growth of beard on their faces. But some were dapper, almost dandyish in their fine peg trousers and nipped-in coats.

  "The ones with the tall hats and kangaroo knapsacks are called Derwent Drums," Missy told her as they watched the cavalcade lumber off down the creek toward the woolshed and shearers' quarters. "They're from Tasmania. Papa says they might shear slow, but they're careful. You see the ones with the blanket swags? They're Sydney-siders. They're fast, but they can cut the sheep up bad."

  Overhead, the sun shone dazzlingly bright in an achingly blue sky. Once again, Amanda realized, she had hurried outside without her bonnet. Her complexion would be ruined if she wasn't careful, she told herself, as a stiff spring wind buffeted her ears and tugged at her hair to send loose tendrils against her face. She brought up her hand to catch the wayward strands and smooth them back behind her ear...

  And knew O'Reilly watched her.

  She could feel his gaze on her, like a tense heat. She turned, her elbow cocked skyward, her hand still on her hair, and her gaze tan
gled with his.

  He'd been out mustering sheep and was just trotting his horse back to the stockyards. He sat tall and easy in the saddle, his beautiful, hard body swaying as if he were one with the big chestnut he rode. She saw him say something to the men riding with him. They all laughed. O'Reilly's dimples flashed, and something wanting and needy caught at Amanda's insides. She saw him turn the chestnut's head and spur toward the shearers. And her.

  She stood on the verge of the dusty road and watched him ride toward her with an amused, disconcerting gleam in his narrowed blue eyes that he made no attempt to subdue, even when she forced herself to frown back at him.

  An eddy of wind rich with the scents of horsehair and saddle leather and eucalyptus oil swirled around her, tugging even more of her hair loose. She flung up both hands, desperately trying to keep it from flying shamelessly about her head.

  He was abreast of her now. And as he passed, he leaned toward her, close enough to say in a low voice, "You see? You can't keep it under control. No matter how hard you try."

  And they both knew he wasn't talking about her hair.

  The newly shorn ewe bolted across the yard, the warm, noontime sun shimmering over her naked pink back. She had a patch of black tar on her far shoulder, where the shearer must have nicked her.

  O'Reilly whistled. A flash of brown and black streaked across the stony ground, toward the ewe. Barrister darted around her, turning her. Baa. The sheep's tongue lolled out and she bleated in terror. Baa, baa. She didn't know she was one of the lucky ones. She was young, strong, and healthy; she would be allowed to live.

  O'Reilly swiped his sleeve across his sweaty forehead. "Move this lot on out, Grisham," he shouted The shepherd nodded and whistled up his dogs.