He laughed then, feeling the chestnut's hooves strike solid ground. With a mighty heave, the horse lunged and scrabbled up onto the bank, muddy water running off both man and beast in noisy rivulets that splashed onto the stony ground. She was still running toward him; O'Reilly spurred the gelding to meet her, and leaned down to catch her around the waist and scoop her up onto the pommel before him.
"Amanda," he said on a joyous expulsion of breath as she flung her arms around his neck, pressed her trembling body to him. "Amanda. Dear God, Amanda."
She was wet through, her body shaking with the chill and the need to draw air into her gasping lungs. "They told me you were dead." She kissed his chin, his cheek, his neck. Her hands skimmed over his shoulders, his back, his chest, as if she would touch every inch of him. "They said you were dead. But I didn't believe it. 1 knew it couldn't be so. I knew. I knew."
He snagged his fist in her wet, tangled hair, tilting her face so that he could stare down at the rain-drenched curve of her cheek, the swell of her full lips. She smelled wonderfully of roses and morning rain and herself.
"I was afraid you'd left," he said, his voice husky with emotion, his head dipping until his lips hovered over hers. "Left Australia and gone back to England." He brushed his open mouth against hers, hugged her even closer. "Riding down here, I made up my mind about something, Amanda. I decided I want to go back to England with you, if that's what it takes to make you happy. If you—"
She pressed her fingers to his lips. "I don't want to go back to England." Her solemn gray eyes locked with his. He saw no uncertainty, no fear there now. Only love, and the deep conviction of commitment. "I want to stay here. Always."
He smothered her mouth with his. The horse shifted restlessly in the water's edge as the rain poured around them. But O'Reilly knew only the sweet, frantic pressure of her lips, slanting against his, opening beneath his. She clung to him, her fingers digging into his shoulders as the kiss went on and on.
"Lieber Gott," said a booming voice.
O'Reilly flung up his head to see the German missionary some hundred feet away, splashing through the shallows toward them. Then O'Reilly's gaze fell to the woman in his arms, and he began to laugh. "What in God's name are you doing here, anyway?"
"Looking for you," she said, her smile wide and breathtaking.
"And the children?"
"They're safe with your sister."
He stared off across the swirling floodwaters. "We'll have to go get them."
Her hold on him tightened, as if she thought he meant to charge back through the creek right then and there. "Not yet," she said.
He grinned down at her. "No. Not yet. We'll have to get a message through to them somehow, but right now, I intend to find someplace warm and dry and private, where I can spend the next week doing absolutely nothing except showing you how much I love you."
Her hands curled around his neck, pulling his mouth back down to hers as she said in a sultry purr, "How about two weeks?"
He covered her mouth with his. "God, I love you," he said, his lips moving over hers. "So much. So much."
EPILOGUE
Morning was Missy's favorite time of day. Especially September mornings, when the air smelled cool and sweet, and the sun streamed golden warm out of a vivid blue sky.
Sucking in a deep, joyous breath of spring, Missy wrapped one elbow around a veranda post and spun about, admiring the way her starched yellow satin skirts swirled around her. True, her pointy-toed shoes pinched her feet, but Hannah had warned her that because it was Papa's wedding day, Missy had better keep her shoes on. And since Hannah was actually wearing a dress for the occasion, Missy decided she'd better do what she was told, or risk a painful thump between her shoulder blades.
The lilting strains of Ichabod Hornbottom's fiddle drifted across the veranda to mingle pleasantly with the happy trills of the Irish miner's accordion, coming from somewhere down by the gate. The garden was noisy and crowded with people— bushmen tugging at uncomfortably tight shirt collars, women preening in silk and lace, children squealing and running every which way. Everyone from miles and miles around had come for the wedding, which was why it was being held outside, in the garden. Papa had talked about maybe having it in the woolshed, but Miss Davenport said she thought it would be nice to be married in the garden.
With the coming of spring, the garden was bursting with new life, and thick with the sweet scent of roses and the heady blossoms of the apple and plum trees that had made it through the drought a year and a half ago. After the rains finally came, Chow and Miss Davenport had worked hard, cutting things back and replanting, so that the garden now looked as pretty as it ever had. Different, but still nice, maybe even nicer, because along with the flowers she knew from England, Miss Davenport had also planted things like striped mint, and emu bushes, and yellow buttons—Australian plants, that coaxed the bush birds and butterflies to come right up to the house.
Humming quietly in time with the fiddle, Missy switched elbows and twirled around the post again, until she could see Papa where he waited under the heavily scented purple-and- white umbrella of the wisteria arbor. He seemed relaxed, his thumbs hooked casually on the pockets of his fine new trousers, his head tipped back, laughing at something Liam'd just said. It was Liam, beside him, who looked unusually serious, almost nervous.
Then the sound of the French doors of Miss Davenport's room opening onto the veranda brought Papa's head around. The smile still lingered on his lips, but it changed somehow, softening into a look so tender that Missy felt tears prick her eyes and tickle her nose, even though she couldn't quite have said why, because she certainly wasn't sad.
Hannah came out first. Her thick, dark hair framed her face in neat glossy ringlets and, like Missy, she wore starched yellow satin and white lace. It was amazing how pretty Hannah could look when she dressed like a girl—not that Missy would ever tell her that, of course. Besides, from Hannah's triumphant smile and high color, Missy was fairly certain her sister knew it, anyway.
Hannah was being disgustingly bossy about the wedding, just because she was maid of honor and Missy was only the flower girl. She'd even insisted on holding on to Missy's basket of rose petals, and only handed it to her now with a harshly whispered "Stop spinning around. Be careful you don't spill all the petals out of the basket at once. And for heaven's sake, pay attention."
Missy closed her fist over the basket's handle and made a face at her big sister. She didn't think Hannah had any reason to act so puffed up and important. After all, Hannah was only maid of honor, while Mary McCarthy was the matron of honor, which surely meant she was more important.
"Imagine having your groom's former paramour stand up next to you at your wedding." A voice that sounded suspiciously like Iantha Thorndike's tittered suggestively as Mary McCarthy, also pretty in yellow satin, followed Hannah out into the sunlight.
Missy craned her head around, looking for the worm- mouthed governess, but saw only a sea of smiling, expectant faces, shiny now with the first traces of sweat as the sun rose higher in the sky.
"Missy," hissed Hannah.
Yanked back around by her sister's firmly guiding hands on her shoulders, Missy stepped off the veranda and took her place in front of Hannah. She wasn't exactly certain what a paramour was. But Miss Davenport and Mary McCarthy had become really good friends lately, and Missy couldn't see why Mrs. McCarthy shouldn't be in the wedding, just because she and Papa used to spend so much time alone together in the middle of the afternoon.
Missy was still trying to figure it out when a man's voice said, "Sure then, she's beautiful, isn't she now?" and Missy's new mama stepped out of the shadows.
Splendid in cream silk embroidered with yellow rosebuds, Amanda Davenport paused at the edge of the veranda, her lips parted with excitement, her smiling gaze fixed on the man who waited for her at the end of the path. A circlet of cream and yellow sweetheart roses crowned the glorious, flame- colored hair that floated in a loose aurora of fire about her shoul
ders. In comparison, her fine-boned face looked radiant but pale, her figure still slight and fragile-seeming, despite the noticeably swelling burden she carried beneath the graceful folds of embroidered silk.
"It's due before Christmastime, according to what I hear," said Iantha Thorndike, her precise English voice carrying clearly in the sudden hush.
Missy glanced about angrily, but Miss Davenport only laughed softly, her hand coming up, briefly but unselfconsciously, to touch her bulging stomach.
It was because of the baby, Missy knew, that Papa had been desperate to get his dee-vorce, and quickly. Missy didn't quite understand what the problem was, but it seemed that dee- vorces weren't very easy to get in South Australia. So Papa and Miss Davenport had been really happy when they found out that Missy's real mama had dee-vorced Papa a long time ago, in France or England or America, so that she could marry a Russian count, or German prince, or some such person. Liam was hoping for the Russian count, but Missy had decided she'd rather have a prince, even if he was sure to be a Lutheran, like Hannah said.
"Missy! "
Jerked back to attention by a sisterly finger poked between her shoulder blades, Missy stepped forward, the leather soles of her shoes tapping against the flagged path in time to the surprisingly stately melody coming from Mr. Hornbottom's violin. She remembered to hold tightly to the basket so that it didn't tip. She remembered to walk slowly, so that she didn't get too far ahead of everyone else.
The only thing she forgot to do was to throw the rose petals.
But nobody seemed to notice. As they reached the wisteria arbor, a light breeze soughing through the gums down by the creek sent sweet, lilac-colored blossoms cascading down upon yellow satin and rose-strewn cream silk. Missy's new mama said her vows clearly, precisely. It was Papa whose voice was hushed with awe and an almost trembling kind of joy.
Then Reverend Townsend said, "You may kiss the bride."
The bride stood still, almost shyly waiting for her groom's touch. His hands came up, his fingers sliding into the fiery cascade of hair that framed her face. Their gazes locked and held, and it seemed to Missy as if, for these two, in that moment, there was no one else in the garden, no one else in the universe.
"You're mine now," he said softly. "Forever."
A smile touched the bride's lips as she lifted her face to her husband. "I've always been yours."
His head dipped. Missy turned away ...
Just as a loud bellow floated across the garden from the direction of the kitchen.
"Li-am." Hannah rounded on her brother, her hands closing into threatening fists that did serious damage to the bridal bouquet she still held. "You promised you wouldn't play any tricks during the wedding."
"And I didn't," said Liam gaily, his swirling green-and- gold eyes bright with devilry and merriment.
Ching's voice, rising and falling in curses that lost none of their impact for being uttered in Mandarin Chinese, broke off suddenly in another howl of rage.
"Then what is that all about?" demanded Hannah.
Liam grinned. "I didn't say anything about the reception."
AUTHOR'S NOTE
A ruggedly beautiful landscape of raw, brittle red ridges and unexpectedly lush and peaceful water holes, the Flinders Ranges today still preserve much of the wild grandeur and indescribable majesty that first awed strangers to Australia almost a century and a half ago.
The killing drought described in this book was real. Unfamiliar with the harsh cycle of flood, fire, and drought that dominates this ancient land, the first European settlers in the Flinders paid a heavy price for their ignorance. The overgrown tombstones and crumbling stone walls of their abandoned homesteads, mines, and ghost towns are still visible today, mute testimony to their suffering and loss.
Yet those who learned to understand the land were able to survive and even prosper. While Patrick O'Reilly and his family are, alas, products of my imagination, the descendants of many of the strong, self-sufficient settlers who inspired this tale can still be found today in the wild reaches of South Australia's outback.
A note about language: I have tried to give the flavor of nineteenth-century Australian speech without reproducing it exactly. Oddly enough, some words or phrases that Australians today think of as "American" were actually in use in nineteenth-century Australia but have since been dropped. Other words, such as pom or even Australian, more correctly belong to the late nineteenth century, but I have used them because they most clearly and familiarly express the meanings I wished to convey. Also, while Australian novels often use yer to convey the Australian pronunciation of the word you, this practice makes sense only if one understands that Australians typically turn their r's into a's. I have therefore used ya— although many Australians would read that as yer, since they also have a tendency to turn their a's into r's!
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