Wife to Order: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  For the life of her she couldn’t lean forward those few extra inches to see him getting out of the car and mounting the steps.

  ‘I’ll go down and meet him in the big drawing-room, Carey,’ Mrs. Cleaver said. ‘I’ll send Myrna up for you in a few minutes.’

  As Carey turned towards her she leaned forward and kissed the girl lightly on the forehead.

  ‘All happiness to you, my dear,’ she said. ‘I know you are going to be happy.’ She paused, then added, ‘I always know these things.’

  She smiled and in a minute had gone out of the room.

  Carey walked to the mirror and looked at herself again.

  ‘It’s only Mr. Reddin,’ she told her image reflected there. ‘You don’t have to be scared of him. Not after what you’ve been through up at Wybong. Men? Why, you could write a book about the kind of men that come in off the stations after payoff way back there! You weren’t ever scared, were you? No one ever wanted to hurt you, Carey Fraser. Why, they liked you, even when you had to do a little bossing around!’

  All the same she couldn’t see herself putting Oliver to bed after he’d had a spree. She couldn’t see Oliver having a spree at all.

  Besides, bossiness was Millicent’s privilege.

  Thinking of Millicent gave her courage, and at that moment Myrna tapped at the door.

  ‘Mr. Reddin is in the drawing-room, Miss Carey. Mrs. Cleaver will see you presently in the back drawing-room.’

  ‘Thank you, Myrna,’ Carey said.

  She wondered if it was really herself that was walking carefully and gracefully down the broad carpeted staircase, through the wide hall to the drawing-room door. She seemed to be looking at herself from the outside and saying …

  ‘My, you’re a pretty girl in that new hat and those blue shoes! Not a scaredy-cat either. Must be Millicent who’s brought the Fraser battling blood into circulation again.’

  In the open doorway she paused.

  Oliver Reddin was standing by the window looking out on to the lawns and garden beds. He turned. An expression too fleeting to capture sprang into his eyes. Then it was gone. Carey wanted to put out her hand and capture it for she wasn’t sure it didn’t have the iridescence of a soap bubble. But it was gone and she knew she would never know what it was, or what it had portrayed.

  ‘Well, Carey,’ he said. ‘You look well. Have you been happy with Mrs. Cleaver?’

  She came across the room to him.

  ‘I don’t just look well,’ she said, smiling. ‘I look beautiful. I mean for me. Do you like my dress … Oliver?’ She found it quite hard to get out that Oliver.

  There was a faint ironic smile in his eyes now.

  ‘Very much,’ he said. ‘Stand here in the light and let me look at you.’

  He took both her hands now and held her at arm’s length and examined her. His eyes took in her face, her firm round little chin, her forget-me-not blue eyes and her cherry red mouth. They took in her slender youthful figure and the elegant little suit that had so much chic in it neither he nor Carey would have known just what gave it that air.

  ‘Do you like my shoes, Oliver?’ Carey asked, looking down at her feet. Her lashes rested on her cheek and though she did not know it that fleeting expression not unmixed with pain and pleasure passed over his face again.

  ‘Yes, I do like your shoes, Carey. But you haven’t got over that habit of looking down, have you? Tell me, why do you do it? So that I can admire your long lashes?’ Carey’s eyes swept up to his face.

  ‘It gives me time to think,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t know I had long lashes. Besides …’

  ‘Besides what?’

  ‘I didn’t expect … or want … you to admire anything about me, Mr. Reddin … I mean Oliver.’

  ‘Oh? And why not?’

  Carey extricated her hands from Oliver’s light grip. She turned and looked out the window.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘You see, I’ve never met anyone like you before.’ She glanced at him again. ‘We don’t really know one another, do we? I mean you don’t know me?’

  ‘Not the real you. But we’ve time to learn. Come, shall we go and say good-bye to Mrs. Cleaver? I believe the porter has put your cases in my car. A trunk has already arrived at Cranston.’

  ‘Are we going to Cranston now?’

  ‘Not immediately. I’m going to take you to tea first. The sooner we get to know one another the better, don’t you think? And you must have an engagement ring, you know.’

  ‘You haven’t told me about Tony.’

  Oliver raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Oh, Tony!’ he said without enthusiasm. ‘He’s round and about on Two Creeks somewhere. If anything unusual had happened to him I would have heard about it from the stables or the servants.’

  ‘Don’t you care about Tony yourself, Oliver?’

  He took her arm as they went through the door into the hall.

  ‘That, my dear girl, is going to be your problem,’ he said. ‘Why do you think we’re getting married, Carey?’

  ‘To get rid of your problems,’ she said promptly.

  ‘Very perspicacious,’ Oliver said dryly.

  Carey wondered why he always had that wall of distance and cold reserve between himself and other people.

  All the same she felt happier. He really was ‘terrific’ to look at. Fancy Carey Fraser of Wybong marrying anyone like Oliver Reddin of Two Creeks! She wondered just what it would be like.

  Chapter Seven

  The wedding was a Hollywood dream as far as Carey was concerned. The church, at the end of the road, was full of people, and Cranston was so bedecked with flowers it was like Flower Day in jacaranda time.

  There were hundreds of people … or so it seemed to Carey. The women were most beautifully dressed and wore small hats with roses round them and long flowing dresses. As they passed they left a faint perfume on the air, and they were all smiles and surprise and whispers at Oliver Reddin’s enchanting little bride.

  If they had expected a country yokel Mrs. Cleaver had seen to it they were disappointed.

  This, of course, was why Oliver had sent Carey to Mrs. Cleaver. He had known what a large society wedding in Melbourne meant, and his wife … his wife … was going successfully to pass the muster of those curious but not unfriendly eyes. The men in their tails and top hats were courteous, and bowed over Carey’s hand with an elaborate and old world ease.

  ‘Who’s being Victorian now?’ Carey thought. She had never seen a top hat before … except in the films. And she hadn’t known there were such things as weddings in the late afternoon.

  Uncle Tam had come down from Wybong to give her away. He almost strutted in his new dress clothes; and he twinkled with glee every time he thought how clever he had been, getting this fine husband, this great home, these high-flown society people for little Carey.

  ‘Couldn’t be better pleased if I’d won the Melbourne Cup,’ he told everyone as he shook hands at the reception. ‘Very kind of the Reddins to lend us their house for the wedding. My station at Wybong is too far away … and of course Carey’s farm is not yet in order.’

  ‘Uncle Tam, you’re a wicked old man,’ Carey whispered. ‘And don’t forget when my farm is in order we’re going to pay for this wedding.’

  Uncle Tam’s station at Wybong! A tumbledown house with a few acres of grazing paddock around it!

  Carey sighed but smiled. She was grateful to Oliver that he had brought Uncle Tam to Melbourne … and that he accepted silently the nefarious scheming of this gay but irresponsible little old man from the outback.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ Uncle Tam whispered back. ‘What’s Two Creeks, and Cranston, and all these fine feathered friends beside getting a beautiful young unspoiled girl like you, Carey?’

  ‘Yes, there’s something to that,’ thought Carey, for in her heart she knew she could make Oliver a good wife.

  Then she saw Jane Newbold and her new faith in herself wilted and almost died. Jan
e Newbold was so elegant, so exclusively dressed in a beautiful brocade gown and a peacock blue hat that had small gilded lilies round it! Everyone turned and looked and nodded a head and said, ‘Ah, Jane. She really is the most beautiful creature alive.’ Of course Uncle Tam fell the first victim to Jane’s beauty. She led him away into a corner, ordered champagne to be brought to them and sat down to examine Uncle Tam on the subject of life at Wybong.

  ‘Of course you’re proud of your niece, Mr. Fraser.’ She smiled. ‘I’m surprised the young men of Wybong hadn’t snapped her up long ago.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said Uncle Tam. ‘There’s been many a man up there, young and old, who’s wanted Carey. But we, her father and I, were taking care of that girl.’

  ‘Didn’t Carey have a will of her own?’ asked Jane, still smiling … just making conversation with an amusing old man from over the border.

  ‘Certainly she did,’ said Uncle Tam enthusiastically. ‘You’d be surprised how Carey can run her own life. Behind that quiet little smile of hers there’s a real liveliness. Why, there were times when she danced herself off her feet …’

  ‘With someone special, of course? You didn’t allow her to go to dances unaccompanied? I mean, Mr. Fraser, that is simply not done, is it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mr. Fraser stoutly. ‘There was always Harry Martin the contractor. Everywhere Carey went Harry Martin took good care of her. He was very fond of her. Very, very fond.’

  ‘Of course, like everyone else, he loved her?’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Mr. Fraser happily. ‘Would have cut off his right hand for Carey.’

  ‘And now she’s left him with a broken heart.’ Jane laughed gaily. ‘What a thing it is to be young!’

  ‘Smashed to smithereens,’ said Uncle Tam. Then, remembering to defend Carey against the charge of cruelty, he quickly added, ‘Of course Carey loved him, too. Why, they couldn’t be separated. But what’s a fellow in a country town for the niece of a station owner, Miss Newbold? I couldn’t possibly allow it, now could I?’

  ‘Of course not. And Oliver Reddin would be such a very desirable match. I expect you worked that out very carefully.’ She tapped his hand gaily. ‘Very clever of you, Mr. Fraser.’ Then, changing her voice, ‘And very wise. From Wybong to St. Kilda Road and Two Creeks … that’s quite a long way. What a fairy god-father of an uncle you turned out to be!’

  ‘Why not? Carey’s only got one uncle. Up to me to do something for the girl, you know.’

  ‘And being young, she and this … this Harry Martin … will get over it?’

  ‘Of course, of course. Why, he’s planning to come down to Victoria to look at that farm for her. That’s one of the jobs I’ve got to fix while I’m down here myself. See that Oliver takes on Harry Martin to organise the place. A better worker never lifted a muscled arm. Besides, there’s nothing he’d stop at to help Carey.’

  Carey, standing under the arch in the great reception room, wondered if Oliver beside her noticed that gay tête-à-tête in the corner. She closed her eyes in a little prayer that Uncle Tam would see that Jane Newbold was not a person to whom one unburdened one’s heart. And why didn’t he see she was too beautiful, too much in demand really, to be wanting to spend the whole evening talking to an elderly man from outback!

  She glanced up at Oliver. How different he was now! He was being friendly and charming to everyone. It was as if something in him had thawed out. Or was he putting up a front to convince all these people this wedding was born in heaven and destined for a paradise on earth?

  She wondered if he liked her in her wedding dress. She wondered what he thought about her at all.

  She wondered what it would be like when he kissed her. For he had not kissed her yet.

  Unexpectedly she felt grateful to Millicent, who was managing everything and everybody with a slightly dictatorial manner, but without whom Carey could not have run her own wedding. She was even happy about Mrs. Reddin because her mother-in-law had escaped into a bevy of well-dressed chattering ladies; was receiving the handshakes and the bows of tall elderly men in tails and white tie, and was so immersed in this occupation that Millicent couldn’t get to her to tell her how to hold her nosegay, or with whom to shake hands next.

  Hours later the wedding was over, yet now it all seemed to have passed in a flash.

  Carey had taken off her wedding dress and come back in a pale primrose lace evening dress. The lights from the chandelier overhead brought out the red lights in her gold hair. She stood beside Oliver and said good night to everybody.

  When the last guest had gone Millicent said:

  ‘You two had better go up to your rooms. After all, it is your wedding. I’ll see to the servants. Well, Mother dear, I think we managed everything satisfactorily. Now we’ve got time to talk about everyone. Oliver, did you see how marvellous Jane looked? She really did outshine everyone.’

  ‘That is Jane’s destiny, surely,’ Oliver said. ‘I would be disappointed if Jane didn’t do exactly that.’ He turned to Carey. ‘I’ll come to the top of the stairs with you, Carey, then I’ll come back and have a glass of wine with my mother.’ That small tell-tale ironic gleam was in his eye. ‘After all she has just lost her only son to another woman,’ he added.

  ‘It should have been …’ began Millicent and then stopped. ‘Oh, well,’ she said, turning away, ‘I suppose sons were meant to be lost to other women. Yes, do go upstairs, Carey. You must be very tired.’

  Millicent had been going to say, ‘It should have been Jane.’ Carey knew that and she wondered, as she turned away, if she would ever know why Oliver had married herself and not Jane. Perhaps time would unfold that mystery.

  In her room Carey undressed, and after bathing put on her pink satin dressing-gown. Was this what one did while one’s husband was having a last glass of wine with his mother?

  She wished she knew how to receive Oliver when he came in. Supposing he didn’t come in? Supposing he didn’t even kiss her at all? Supposing she went through life unkissed?

  Did she go to bed, or did she wait up? If only her long-lost mother could speak from the grave and tell her what to do next! And why hadn’t she asked Mrs. Cleaver?

  She was tired; and anxiety had drained the colour from her cheeks. The more uncertain she became, the more the shadows of weariness darkened under her eyes.

  There was a tap on the door and before she could answer it, it opened and Oliver came in. He closed the door behind him and as he came in he saw Carey standing in the middle of the room, her face so white, her eyes with dark rings around them, she might have been on the point of fainting.

  He stood quite still, and looked at her. Carey thought she had never seen anything so distinguished looking as Oliver standing there in his black evening clothes, and for some odd reason, his white gloves in one hand.

  Quietly he came across the deep pile carpet. He put his hand, the one carrying the gloves, on Carey’s shoulder and with the other tilted up her chin.

  The look of inquiry left his face and there instead was one of anger and sudden pain.

  ‘Carey,’ he said sharply, ‘are you afraid of me? What sort of a person do you think you’ve married that you should stand there looking so white-faced; as if you are expecting an ogre?’

  She didn’t answer.

  He shook her shoulder slightly.

  ‘Answer me,’ he said. ‘Are you afraid of me, Carey?’

  Yes … she was afraid. Not of him, but of being awkward, stupid, embarrassed. She wanted to do everything simply and easily, and she didn’t know how to go about it. Nor did she know that if he had put his arms round her then the worries would all have resolved themselves in that warm comfort.

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Yes, yes.’ She brushed her hands across her eyes as if they hurt her. Why didn’t she know what to do? What did all the other brides do in this great personal historic moment?

  Oliver dropped his hands to his side.

 
‘If that’s the sort of person you think I am …’ he said evenly, then stopped. He walked around the room, then came back to where she stood watching him, her face paler than ever. Tears for her own ineptitude were shining at the back of her eyes. He put out his hand and tilted her chin up and looked at her again. His own eyes were dark.

  ‘You had better grow up some more, Carey,’ he said with a touch of bitter weariness in his voice. He turned and went to a second door. ‘I have a room next door,’ he added. ‘If you want anything … I will be here. But I assure you, you have nothing to fear. I’m an ordinary human being, not a brute, Carey. I would not harm you.’

  At the door he turned. He looked suddenly older.

  ‘Rest well. You probably need that more than anything else. In the morning you might begin to learn how to become adult from observing Millicent and my mother. There’s a big responsibility at Two Creeks …’

  Carey stood unable to move or utter a word.

  Perhaps he didn’t want her, after all. He only wanted to find a home for her and find someone to learn to run Two Creeks. That accounted for his cold manner. He didn’t really want her, Carey, as his wife at all. Was that it?

  Whatever he did or didn’t want, right now he was a tired angry man, and he was quite indifferent to how she felt.

  Yes, she would go to bed … the only unkissed bride in history. For the truth of it was Carey had never been kissed by boy or man … not even by Harry Martin.

  Carey had indeed been very tired, yet she did not sleep well. Oliver’s attitude on the previous night left her with the bottom knocked out of her world. She was hurt that he had not bidden her a generous or kindly good night.

  When she came to think of it she had not expected anything. She had left aspirations and expectations out of her thinking, for in truth she had thought no further than the wedding ceremony. Yet instinctively she felt that Oliver had been cruel. Once she realised this and accepted it, she became angry in her turn. No one had any right to be so hurtful. He was indifferent to her as he was indifferent to Tony. Everything he had done for them both had been according to a code of ethics. Duty! Full stop.