An Indecent Proposal

by Margot Early

  “You nailed that snake. He was big,” Wesley said, now seeming to delight in remembering the terrifying incident. “Was it a taipan?” he asked tremulously.

  Patrick shook his head. “Too far south. It was an Eastern brown snake.”

  As if that’s better. The taipan’s reputation was nearly matched by that of this bad-tempered, venomous reptile. “I sincerely hope there aren’t more of those around,” Bronwyn said, then regretted saying it in front of Wesley.

  “It’s definitely the only one I’ve seen or heard about since I’ve been here,” Patrick said. “You know we just had a big fire. It’s possible that the fire drove the snake out of its usual habitat.”

  “Then more of them might have come out, too,” Wesley said in a quiet voice.

  “I’ll have a good look around, shall I?” Patrick suggested.

  “Yes, please…sir,” Wesley added.

  “And Louisa has said I’m to ask you if you would like to ride horses tomorrow.”

  “That’s very generous of her,” Bronwyn said. “But I’m going to register Wesley for school tomorrow.”

  “Surely that won’t take all day. And how will you be getting into town?”

  Bronwyn had already asked the other kitchen workers what they recommended. They said it would be best to catch a ride with one of the farm utes when someone was heading out on an errand. She told Patrick this.

  “That could mean waiting around all day,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll take the two of you at, say, nine. Then, when we’re done, Wesley and I can go riding.”

  Bronwyn was unsure how to interpret his sudden interest in her son—our son, she reminded herself. Less than an hour earlier he had spoken bitterly of the lesson he supposedly had learned from her rejection of him; he’d said he’d learned the kind of woman he wanted. He’d also made it clear that she was not that woman. Bronwyn couldn’t really believe that he thought she expected a handout from him after all this time. Undoubtedly, he’d suggested it to wound and insult her.

  But now he seemed friendly toward Wesley, taking her son at face value. Well, Wesley was a likable child.

  Bronwyn tucked him in bed once again and said, “If you’re scared, come and get me.”

  Far be it from Wesley to admit fear in front of Patrick Stafford. “I’m not,” he said.

  Patrick stepped out of the room ahead of Bronwyn, who paused to turn out the light.

  In the hall, Bronwyn noticed that the doors to Marie’s and Helena’s rooms were closed. Patrick said quietly, “Are you scared, Bronwyn?”

  “Yes. At least I’ve got faith in these dogs, though.” She paused to pet Sergeant, the estate’s Lab mix. “You’re a good boy,” she told him. “You keep a watch out.”

  She found herself admitting to Patrick that her focus initially had been on Beckham, hoping the snake wouldn’t bite the puppy. “I guess I was too terrified to admit it could get Wesley.”

  “Makes sense to me,” he said and gave another shudder.

  “You really don’t like snakes, do you?” Bronwyn said.

  “No. A brown snake killed my dog when I was a child.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “It’s not my favorite topic. Like you, I’m glad Beck-ham is safe. Not to mention Wesley.” In the darkened living room, where no one had yet bothered to turn on a light, he said, “I apologize for implying again that you came here looking for a handout. But I’d like to know why you are here, Bronwyn.”

  Could she risk it? Had the time come to tell him the truth? She’d almost concluded that it had, but she wasn’t willing to discuss it within earshot of Wesley. “I want to tell you,” she finally admitted, “but this isn’t the best time. Do you mind waiting till—” Till what? “This is turning out to be a good opportunity for me,” she said instead. “Actually, the chef is interested in my background in sports nutrition. Marie and I had some good ideas about dishes which would help Louisa heal from her recent heart trouble. I hope she likes the food,” Bronwyn continued, to fill any silence in which Patrick could ask again what she was really doing at Fairchild Acres. “And we’re having an informal employee exercise class, too, which is fun.”

  Knowing that it was well past time to get out of Bronwyn’s company, especially here in the dark bungalow, Patrick nonetheless said, “You never finished your degree, did you?” He knew the answer, but wanted to hear Bronwyn’s feelings about her failure to get a university degree.

  “I know. I would have liked to, but Ari thought it was unnecessary.” To Bronwyn, the remark seemed disloyal, and then she wondered why she felt any loyalty toward Ari at all. Ari, whom she would never again see. Ari, who had been her husband and lover.

  “You’re grieving?” Patrick asked.

  “I don’t think about it. I never knew about—oh, the doping of horses, the betting shops, the illegal things— not until he was caught. At first I didn’t believe it. Then, I felt stupid. But he was a human being, not a monster. Which means I can’t just decide to hate everything about him. Because I did love him. Except he wasn’t the person I thought he was, so was it really him I loved?”

  Patrick was unexpectedly touched that she was making these revelations to him. They reminded him of the old Bronwyn, who had always seen the world and the people in it as infinitely complicated, with a wide array of motivations for their behaviors. And, he felt that she was speaking to him as she would to a friend, and that touched him, too. Though he’d always spoken easily with Megan, it was rare in his experience for a woman to try to be a good friend to him. Most women seemed so intent on marrying him that they wouldn’t tell him their real thoughts, perhaps for fear that he wouldn’t like them. Bronwyn had never been like that. She’d always seemed to know who she was and been unafraid of being that person.

  Past time to get out of here, he thought. Friendship was one thing. Befriending Wesley as a courtesy to Louisa was fine. Wesley’s courage with the snake had impressed Patrick. And he was polite. Bronwyn had done a good job.

  But he should be careful about spending too much time with Bronwyn…. He’d already volunteered to take her and Wesley down to the school the next day. It didn’t help that she remained, for him, the epitome of feminine beauty. Everything about her was classic. Even now, in the shadows of the living room, he could make out the perfect curve of her chin and jaw, the line of her straight, slim nose.

  He turned abruptly toward the door. “Well, good night.” He strode out and did not look back. If he had stayed a moment longer, he might have touched her. And as he walked across the lawn toward the big house, he remembered the moment after he’d killed the snake, when Bronwyn had sagged against him.

  And then she’d seemed to remember who he was and moved away.

  Interesting how neatly she’d sidetracked discussion of what had brought her to Fairchild Acres. Well, the story would undoubtedly be interesting, but he wasn’t going to beg her for it. And part of him still believed that it was going to be a request for financial support, in one form or other.

  Chapter Five

  Over the next few days, Patrick fell into a routine with Wesley. The boy had started at the local school and was riding the bus each way. Around four o’clock each day, Patrick wandered over to the bungalow and usually found Wesley finishing an afternoon snack. Then, Patrick and he would head for the barn to saddle Second Chance and Meadow Boy.

  Every encounter with Bronwyn’s son impressed Patrick more. Wesley was a remarkable child, easygoing, compliant and extremely pleasant to be around. And Patrick couldn’t help but see, from her interactions with him, that Bronwyn had a lot to do with the way Wesley was turning out.

  The boy was a natural athlete, and took to riding easily. Patrick soon considered taking him into town to look for some riding boots. But in the meantime, Wesley wore his Nikes.

  On the first Friday after Wesley started school, as he and Patrick were riding around Lake Dingo to check on some of the stock, as Patrick had promised Louisa he would, Wesl
ey said, “How do people dope racehorses?”

  Alarm bells went off for Patrick. All his initial suspicion of Bronwyn rushed to the forefront of his mind. Then, it occurred to him that maybe Wesley was simply curious about what his father had done. “I don’t know exactly,” Patrick replied. “A veterinarian could better answer that question. But why do you ask?”

  “Just wondered,” Wesley said.

  Patrick glanced over at him and saw that beneath the brim of his hat, Wesley was flushed.

  “Are you asking because of your father?” He was going out on a limb here. What if Wesley didn’t know about his father’s convictions?

  “How do you know?” Wesley said, gaping at him. “You don’t know who my father is.”

  “Actually, I do, and so does Miss Louisa.”

  “But Mum said you all weren’t to know, that then you’d think we were going to dope horses, too.”

  It was Patrick’s turn to blush. Because, of course, he had wondered. But that was when Bronwyn first arrived. Now she was working in the kitchens and was, by all accounts, both popular and a model employee. Patrick had seen her and Helena taking nightly walks down the drive, and he suspected Bronwyn was trying to help the heavyset woman lose some weight. Obesity had always troubled her because of the way her mother had died.

  “Well, we both know,” Patrick said. “But I don’t know myself how a person goes about doping horses.”

  “Does it make them faster or slower?”

  “I think both have been done.”

  “So my dad had someone give a horse something to make it slow, and then the people who bet on the horse lost their money.”

  “That’s my understanding,” Patrick said. “But I’m no expert, as I told you.” And Ari Theodoros’s crimes were so numerous that Patrick had been disinclined to look at any of them closely. Because of his own vocation, he’d been most interested in some insider trading from which Ari had benefited. He glanced at Wesley. He could see Bronwyn’s bone structure and something of her elfin facial expressions in the boy. “What are you thinking, mate?”

  “I wish I could give those people back their money. The people my father cheated. Because they didn’t get their money back, did they?”

  Patrick felt awed—awed by the complexity of this child, by his obvious sense of honor, by his thoughtfulness toward the victims of his father’s crimes. “They didn’t,” he admitted, searching for something to say that might help Wesley. “But returning their money— I don’t know how that would be possible, Wesley. It wasn’t your crime, and you and your mother aren’t being allowed to enjoy the rewards in any case. Your father’s assets were seized. And some people might argue that the people who lost money were gamblers— and therefore prepared to lose.”

  “Would you say that?”

  Wesley asked. “I would never say it was right or okay to cheat them,” Patrick told him. “But it wasn’t you who did it, Wesley, and it wasn’t your mother.”

  “Why did he?”

  “Your father? Why did he participate in illegal activities?” Seeing that this was what Wesley meant, Patrick considered at length. “I think that for those of us who don’t do those kinds of things, who wouldn’t consider it, why someone breaks the law is baffling.”

  “He hurt people.”

  Patrick sensed that they were venturing further into waters for which he had no charts. “By taking their money?” he asked.

  “I heard my mum talking. People’s lives were ruined. Some of his friends went to jail, too, and one of their wives had to go to a special hospital for people with mental problems. And little people, too.”

  “Little people?” Patrick listened carefully over the clopping of the horses’ hooves, trying to understand.

  “I heard someone talking, one of their friends. Or he used to be. He said to my mum, ‘Neither of you care about the little people.’ I guess he meant children.”

  “I think he meant people without money or power,” Patrick corrected. “And in your father’s business, there were people with less power than he had—and, yes, they may have suffered for his actions.”

  “I want to fix that. I want to fix it all for him, because he can’t fix it now. When he went to jail, my mum said that maybe he would learn from the experience, but now he can’t learn because someone murdered him. And I think he was murdered by someone he thought was a friend, and my mum thinks so, too.”

  As did virtually everyone. Not by a friend, but on the orders of someone whom Ari Theodoros had counted as a friend.

  Wesley continued, almost as though speaking to himself, “I think I knew he was doing something dishonest. I mean, I didn’t know, but I sort of did know, if you understand.”

  Patrick read between the lines. “There’s nothing you could have done to change him, Wesley, neither you nor your mother.”

  Wesley gaped up at him, as though found out.

  “He was an adult,” Patrick told him, “and he made firm choices. I’m sure that nothing either of you said or did could have dissuaded him from going on with the life he had made for himself.”

  “My mum was mad when she found out. And she was sick, too. She tried not to let me know, but I knew.”

  So Bronwyn had suffered for her choice. Well, he could have guessed that.

  “I’m sure you miss him,” Patrick said, because it must be true. Whatever his own feelings about Ari— both as the man Bronwyn had chosen over him and as a criminal—Patrick knew that this young boy must still feel love for his father.

  “Sometimes I didn’t see him that much,” Wesley said unexpectedly. “I liked it when he’d take me places with him. Sailing. Or to the racetrack. We went there once.”

  “Would you like to go to the racetrack again?” Patrick asked.

  “My mum didn’t like him taking me there.”

  Patrick wondered if Bronwyn would see things differently now that she worked for Fairchild Acres.

  “She didn’t like me exposed to the gambling,” Wesley explained, using curiously adult phrasing.

  “Well, if I took you to the track,” Patrick said, “we would go down to see the horses. That’s the reason to enjoy Thoroughbred racing. To watch the horses, because they’re great athletes.”

  “I didn’t like horses at first,” Wesley admitted. “But now I like to watch the morning gallops before school, while my mum’s working in the kitchens. I like that horse Indecent Proposal. I like to watch him run.”

  “So do I,” Patrick admitted.

  “And I like Meadow Boy. Can we canter now?”

  Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, Bronwyn thought exhaustedly that night. She’d listened to Wesley chatter all the time he was getting into bed. Patrick this and Patrick that. And still she hadn’t told Patrick what she was doing at Fairchild Acres. He hadn’t asked again, and she was relieved to keep the matter to herself, relieved not to have to face his reaction to the news that Wesley was his son.

  Not yet, anyhow.

  The evening was warm, and she stepped out onto the porch, then wandered through the twilight toward a paddock where three horses stood. One was Meadow Boy, whom Wesley rode and to whom her son had introduced her. Now, the old horse came toward her, apparently recognizing her, and Bronwyn reached out to touch his nose. Where would any of them be without animals? All humans needed touch, and for some, touch was hard to come by. During her second walk with Bronwyn, Helena confided that she hadn’t had a boyfriend for three years.

  After Ari’s deceit, rushing into another relationship wasn’t the number one priority in Bronwyn’s life. As she grew older, she found it was other relationships she valued most. Friendship, motherhood. Because happily ever after hadn’t worked out that way, and now she was no longer certain it existed at all. Not in love and marriage. Perhaps simply in living and working and loving the people around her.

  “You haven’t ridden since you’ve been here, have you?”

  She jumped—and knew who had spoken even as she spun to face him. She quickly turn
ed back, focusing on the horses. The two others had followed Meadow Boy to the fence. “I’m a kitchen employee,” she said. “I didn’t come here expecting to ride.”

  “Didn’t bring any boots?”

  She had brought riding boots, simply because she was going to a place with horses. That didn’t mean she expected to ride. “I did,” she admitted and quickly changed the subject. “Thank you for taking Wesley riding.” Now was the time. Tonight, out here, unheard by others, she could tell Patrick the truth. “He enjoys your friendship,” she said.

  “Would you like for me to arrange a horse for you to ride?”

  She mustn’t become sidetracked. She must say it now, say it while they were on friendly terms. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, formulating the words she wanted to use.

  “It always worries me when people say something doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean?” In spite of herself, she glanced up at his profile, her eyes lingering on his finely cut jaw, on the chin and lips and all the features she’d once loved and still found so terribly attractive.

  “It’s a bit like saying life doesn’t matter,” he replied. “Isn’t it?”

  “Life matters,” she assured him.

  “Is it so bad without Ari?” he asked kindly.

  “No. No, not exactly.” She had been asked about her feelings so seldom since Ari’s death. People simply ascribed to her whatever they thought she ought to feel: anger at his betrayal, grief over his death. Her real feelings were so much more complicated—and always colored by worry. “I just never expected to find myself in this position.”

  “Having to feed yourself.”

  She wheeled, preparing to defend herself from another attack on her personal ethics.

  Instead, he touched the side of her face, his own expression infinitely compassionate. “For you especially, the way you grew up, to be suddenly homeless with a ten-year-old boy must be terrifying.”

  There was no arguing with this. Bronwyn didn’t know the name of the process which had shaped her in life or caused her to feel as she did now. She just knew that nights on the street, encounters with other homeless people who were too often drunk or mentally ill, had been frightening for the child she’d been. Yet she’d grown used to the fear. And the fact of adjusting to constant danger, constant fear, had changed her forever. She would always react with horror to the thought of being on the streets again. Her first reaction was never: I’ve done it before. I will survive. It was, simply, No! No! Don’t let it happen!