Wife to Order: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  She poured Oliver’s coffee and handed it to him as he stood above her to receive it.

  ‘I never heard of anything so absurd in all my life,’ she said in her clear hard voice. ‘A girl of eighteen left in a will to a man. Any man, let alone a bachelor. What on earth kind of a girl can she be, dining now down at the stables.’

  ‘Not at the stables, dear Millicent,’ Oliver said, returning to his own seat. He poured a liqueur into a tiny glass and set it on the small table beside his coffee. He sat down, and faced his mother and sister. ‘At Tim’s cottage. Quite a different thing. Though, by the way, my stables are kept fit for a king to dine in. She was not left to me in a will. Her affairs were.’

  ‘The same thing surely if the girl is sent here like a parcel done up in string from the never-never.’

  ‘Perhaps she might be useful on the estate, if she’s from the outback,’ Mrs. Reddin said hopefully.

  Her daughter cast her an oblique look. ‘If you can’t get rid of her, that is a possibility,’ she conceded.

  ‘Why should I want to get rid of her?’ Oliver asked lightly. Until that moment he hadn’t had a clear idea what he would do with Carey. He was surprised in a slightly ironic way at finding himself her champion. It was a curious fact that Millicent always inspired him to take the opposite point of view.

  ‘It’s a pity that nobody milks cows these days,’ Mrs. Reddin said. ‘It’s all mechanised, of course. Otherwise she might …’

  ‘An executor does not put his protégée to work as a domestic servant on his own property, Mother,’ Oliver said. ‘He merely looks after her affairs. There’s no occasion for Carey to stay here or go from here. It has nothing to do with the facts of the matter … where she stays. She just happens to be here at the moment. I’m glad you were both able to come out to Two Creeks because obviously she couldn’t stay here for long under any other conditions.’

  ‘Were you thinking of keeping her for long?’ queried Millicent, astonished.

  ‘I had thought of asking you and Mother if you would take her into the town house for a period. Until Carey herself decides what she wants to do.’

  Millicent ran a finger along the inside edge of her necklace.

  ‘Well now …’ she said. ‘Of course you are asking something. Not that one would mind ordinarily. That is, if it was a man, or a child. But a girl of eighteen! I ask you, Oliver! How would we account for her except by saying she is your responsibility? Then you know what people would say. They would simply shriek with laughter at the idea.’

  Oliver took a sip of his coffee, a sip of his liqueur, then took out his cigarette case and helped himself to a cigarette. If Millicent had known him as well as he knew her she would have known by the faintly white line around his lips that he was very angry. He did not show it by word or gesture so Millicent went on.

  ‘You have your friends to consider, Oliver. And my friends, too. What do you suppose I’d say to Jane, for instance?’

  ‘Ah, yes … Jane,’ said Oliver. Neither his mother nor his sister heeded the irony in his voice. ‘Jane’s opinion is, of course, important.’

  ‘She is my best friend. And yours, too, Oliver. You never had a more loyal friend, and admirer, than Jane Newbold. What’s more she’s recognised as the beauty of Melbourne society.’

  ‘Yes, Oliver dear,’ his mother said. ‘We often wish you would marry Jane. She is a dear girl, and Millicent would be so happy.’

  ‘That, too, is important,’ said Oliver, with an ominous quiet in his voice that was completely missed by the other two.

  ‘What does this girl look like, Oliver?’ asked Mrs. Reddin plaintively.

  There was the sound of a distant door opening and shutting.

  ‘I think she is coming now,’ Oliver said, getting up. ‘I’ll bring her in. You can see for yourselves.’

  He went out into the hall. Carey was just turning into it from the cross passage. She started when she saw Oliver.

  ‘Come into the drawing-room, Carey. I want you to meet my mother and sister.’

  The cool evening air had brought a colour to Carey’s cheeks. Her hand was at her throat where her fingers were nervously undoing a coat.

  ‘I’m just a little wind-blown …’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Let me take your coat for you.’

  Carey was surprised at the seeming kindness in his voice. She looked quickly up into his face to see if he meant it. He looked away as he took her coat and put it across a chair in the hall.

  When he straightened up and turned he made a gesture for her to precede him to the drawing-room. His whole manner seemed to have changed. He was courteous, almost as if she had been an honoured guest instead of an orphan left on the doorstep by Uncle Tam. There was an ease and grace about him. It had the effect of easing Carey’s shyness. She entered the drawing-room with a greater calmness than she herself realised.

  Mrs. Reddin and Millicent Reddin both put down their coffee cups and looked at her. Carey knew that they took in everything about the five-feet-two and a half inches of herself. They saw the slightly wind-blown red-brown hair, the very blue eyes and the fair skin, the brown, hard-worked hands that were made slightly odd by the pink nail polish; the old flat-heeled shoes that went just as oddly with her lovely silk dress.

  ‘My mother …’ said Oliver Reddin, making the introductions. ‘My sister Millicent.’

  Both ladies inclined their heads. Carey smiled delicately. Then she looked at Oliver for direction. What did she do now?

  ‘Sit down, Carey,’ Oliver said, placing a chair for her. He stood behind it and held it for her as she sat down. ‘Millicent will give you some coffee.’

  He crossed the intervening space to the coffee table and waited while Millicent filled a cup with the rich brown fluid. He carried it, with the cream jug and sugar, to Carey. He looked at her hands, not her eyes, as she helped herself.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, glancing up, offering a fleeting nervous smile.

  His eyes were no longer cold, though they were still impersonal. Strangely, she felt that he alone, in that room, was a friend. Was it only because she already knew him, and the very silence of the other two cast up a barrier between them and her?

  Carey could think of nothing to say to break the silence. Nor did she understand why the other three maintained it. They were, of course, looking at her and taking her in. But why didn’t they say something?

  Out at Wybong it was considered impolite not to speak to a stranger.

  And why was she herself silent? At Wybong she was never silent. Harry Martin had once said she chattered like the creek coming down its first fall from the north, after the Wet.

  ‘Of course she is very young, Oliver,’ Millicent said at length, addressing her brother and not Carey.

  ‘Eighteen,’ Oliver said. ‘You are eighteen, aren’t you, Carey?’

  Carey nodded. She could not say anything because she had just taken a sip of coffee that was too hot.

  ‘Very pretty for an outback girl,’ said Mrs. Reddin. ‘You do come from the outback, don’t you?’ she asked.

  Carey nodded.

  ‘Wybong.’ She wished her voice hadn’t squeaked. And she wished she didn’t have that dreadful compulsion to look at Oliver for support. Why should she suddenly think of him as someone who would give help? For two days he had been her unrelenting enemy. What had happened that now she wanted to take cover over there somewhere near his chair?

  ‘Her hair is nearly the same colour as Jane’s …’ said Millicent. ‘Of course Jane’s hair is so luxuriant and really red. And always in place.’

  ‘But it is a lovely colour, as you implied,’ said Oliver.

  What were they doing to her, thought Carey? Walking all round her with their thoughts, like the stockmen looking over a horse or a bullock before they bought, or even made a bid.

  ‘She is very quiet, you will notice,’ Oliver said, looking at his mother. ‘Her uncle, old Tam Fraser … you might remember him, Reg Fraser�
�s brother … guarantees she is docile.’

  A flush began to steal up Carey’s cheeks. How dare they do this to her?

  ‘That makes it so easy,’ said Mrs. Reddin. ‘I do believe, dear … yes, I do believe … we could have her for a little while in the town house. What do you think, Millicent? Not if you don’t wish it, of course, dear.’

  Oliver rubbed his hand across his chin. His glance, edged with a sardonic gleam, passed from his mother to his sister. It did not miss the fact that his sister had affected a bored expression but that really she was relieved to find Carey so mouse-like, so quiet.

  ‘I’m glad of that, Mother,’ Oliver said. ‘And I’m glad you like the look of Carey. You see, with Carey’s permission, you are looking at my future wife.’

  Carey did not drop her coffee cup. Her eyes moved away from Mrs. Reddin and Millicent to Oliver. Uncle Tam, she thought, was not the only man who was full of tricks. Who, she wondered vaguely, would get this man out of this trouble? And how dare he use her to win a bout of words with his mother and sister?

  Carey did not know that the difference between Uncle Tam and Oliver Reddin was that Uncle Tam planned his deeds, cunningly, long before he committed them to action. Oliver Reddin made up his mind in a flash and seldom had occasion to regret the accuracy of his judgment.

  If Carey was for him the answer to Millicent’s dictatorship she was also the answer to the problem of Tony … and the occasional embarrassments of a bachelor household. She was glowing with youth. She could be amazingly beautiful if she was taught how to do that wonderful hair … and to dress.

  As for love …

  Oliver Reddin did not believe that any man’s actions were motivated by love. Love was an illusion and had very little to do with the realities of life. But a young and beautiful wife had its attractions. Some training was necessary, of course.

  Two Creeks was a setting for a young and lovely wife just as a beautiful Mrs. Reddin would be the crowning triumph of a handsome estate.

  Oliver showed nothing of these thoughts as across the room he observed the look of dazed astonishment in his sister Millicent’s eyes.

  The problem would be one of training Carey for the role, of course! However, as Tam Fraser had said, she was docile.

  Chapter Three

  Carey didn’t know how she got out of that room and away to her own bedroom.

  In a daze she undressed, bathed and went to bed. She had meant to get into bed and ponder over Oliver Reddin’s strange pronouncement but sheer physical exhaustion had her beaten. She thought over the evening. She had gone to the Wacketts’ cottage for dinner. Earlier she and Tony had first wandered over the wilderness that was her own farm and then Tony had taken her down the creek bed to the gully where the two creeks met. He had shown her where the lyrebird had his courtyard, and explained it was the wrong season of the year for the proud beautiful bird to show himself. He had shown her the trees from which the bellbirds could be heard, if one got up early enough, or stole out late enough.

  Everywhere the gully had been thick with fern trees and silvery with the sound of running water. Tony and Carey had clambered on granite boulders and slid down fern banks. Now at ten in the evening, escaping from the drawing-room and the Reddin family, all this activity took its merciful toll of Carey. She put her head on her pillow and went to sleep.

  In the morning she did not run away for the simple reason that at eight o’clock, before she had finished breakfast with Tony in the little room next to the kitchen, Oliver had sent for her.

  Besides, her plan of walking to Wybong didn’t seem so easy in the cold logical hours of early morning. She was still in the silk dress because the things ordered for her from Myers’s had not yet come and she knew now that the brown dress, or the old grey woollen dress, simply would not do at Two Creeks where Mrs. Reddin and Millicent might turn a passage corner any minute.

  Oliver’s command was not to be denied. There was nothing for it but to follow Hannah down the long passage, across the hall to Oliver’s study.

  He stood up as she came into the room, walked round the big square table and indicated the chairs under the window. They were those she and Tony had sat on the day Uncle Tam brought her to Two Creeks.

  Oliver pulled his chair forward and turned it at an angle so he could see Carey.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.

  When she had sat in this room before she had thought him a cold man, but terrifically impressive. Now she thought him just as impressive but no longer so very cold. He was not as friendly and affable, laughing and joking, as Harry Martin at Wybong, perhaps; but he was quiet and strong-minded, something she liked in a man.

  When he asked her did she sleep well he watched her face as if it was not her words that would matter but how her eyes would look, or her mouth, as she uttered them.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said, and she looked down again at her hands in her lap.

  ‘Don’t do that, Carey,’ Oliver said abruptly. ‘It is a very pretty gesture, especially as you carry your head well. However, the lowering of eyes on the part of young ladies went out with the Victorian era.’

  Carey raised her eyes to meet his.

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said, his eyebrows raised quizzically.

  ‘If I had thought about it,’ she said slowly, ‘I guess I would have known that.’ She thought for a minute. ‘I wasn’t doing it as a gesture, Mr. Reddin. I was doing it to pass the time. You see, I didn’t have anything to say.’

  ‘Oh, indeed? Why didn’t you have anything to say, Carey?’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t understand me, Mr. Reddin, any more than I understand you. So I didn’t want to waste time.’ There was a look of surprise in his clear grey eyes as he looked at the girl now.

  ‘You thought it would be wasting time talking to me? Your executor? The man who is to look after your affairs?’

  ‘Yes,’ Carey said simply and truthfully.

  ‘I see!’ Oliver said carefully. ‘Then what did you think of my statement to my mother and sister last night? That I intend to marry you?’

  ‘I didn’t think about it at all,’ said Carey and remembered just in time not to let her eyes drop to her hands in her lap.

  ‘Why not?’

  Carey smiled.

  ‘It was a silly thing to say. Besides … I hadn’t thought about getting married just yet.’

  ‘You hadn’t thought about it? Then you’d better think hard now, Carey. Because that is the best possible thing for you. And incidentally it will be useful to me.’

  ‘Why is it the best thing for me?’ Carey asked, surprised in her turn.

  ‘Because you haven’t got a home. Or any visible means of support. At least not until we put that farm next door in order. And that will take some time.’

  ‘Oh, I can support myself,’ Carey said, with a smile. ‘You see, I can work. I’ve always worked at Wybong. My uncle used to paddock the horses for the stock plants coming into town for a rest-up after the pay-off … and I used to look after them. I used to look after the men too when they’d spent all their money. They would come and camp on our veranda and I would cook …’

  She stopped short as if alarmed at herself doing so much talking.

  There was an ironic gleam in Oliver’s eyes.

  ‘That is what your uncle calls being gently bred, I suppose? Being brought up as a lady? Caring for euchred stockmen after they’d bust their cheques wide open at the local store?’

  Carey’s head went a shade higher. Her small round chin was very firm and her blue eyes looked directly into Oliver’s grey eyes.

  ‘We never sat in a room called a drawing-room, Mr. Reddin. It was just the “sitting-room” where I come from. But everyone talked to the stranger … and never talked about her while she sat there and listened. I would have thought that a very unladylike thing to do, and no one in Wybong would have done it.’

  There was a slight smile at the corners of Oliver’s mouth.

  ‘You
’ve touched home there, young lady. Incidentally I apologise for my mother and sister. You see … they were very worried. On your behalf.’

  ‘On my behalf?’

  ‘Exactly. Where we come from young ladies do not live alone in a bachelor’s household.’

  ‘But I’m not alone. There’s cook, and Hannah and Tony.’

  ‘Ah, yes. There’s Tony.’

  Oliver sat silent a minute then he got up and went across to his desk and took a cigarette from a silver box. He lit it and walked to the window. He stood looking out thoughtfully.

  Carey watched him, and marvelled that a man could look ready for work out on the property yet be so well-groomed. He wore a stock round his neck … a dark blue stock with white spots. The men at Wybong tied an old khaki-coloured handkerchief round their necks. And his shirt was clean and very well cut, of good material. The men outback would have had on tight-fitting trousers of brown or blue cotton but Oliver Reddin wore a perfectly cut pair of riding-pants. His brown leather riding-boots were not elastic-sided, and he didn’t jingle spurs. His hair brushed down and away from his forehead, and altogether he looked as if he had recently stepped out of a bath. Quite often the men at Wybong had the billabong mud still in their hair when they rode into town.

  Yes indeed, he was terrific to look at, Carey thought. Underneath, however, he was proud and hard and selfish. And a little intimidating. When she did get back to Wybong she knew she would love to tell people … especially the girls … about him. But just now she would concentrate on his faults, not his virtues.

  That is what one had to do with a brumby pony. If you let yourself forget his faults for a single moment, he would throw you. And maybe there wouldn’t be any getting up quickly from that fall.

  If Carey had been thinking over Oliver’s points, he had certainly been looking over hers.

  She had beautiful, little, endearing features with that round chin of hers, the short straight nose and the clear brow. Her eyes were frank and honest, too … if just a little dreamy.