The Dreaming

by Barbara Wood

  "You know that Colin MacGregor will marry again, Pauline," Louisa said. "He told Mr. Hamilton that he's not going to send his son away to school when the time comes, but rather he will keep him at Kilmarnock. So the boy will need a mother."

  Louisa watched her friend carefully for a crack in that cool fagade. Pauline's body was perfectly straight, disciplined; whenever she shot during public archery tournaments, Pauline was always praised for her "impressive form and figure," as Frank, in a moment of brotherly adulation, had reported in an edition of the Times. "Miss Downs, winner of her sixth Championship Cup, struck the spectators with amazement and awe, she seemed a modern-day Artemis." Louisa thought that if Pauline was troubled by the fact that she didn't stand a chance of snaring a man everyone knew she was after, she was skilled at hiding it. To Louisa she appeared to be as in control as ever.

  "Even though he's been seen with Vilma Todd," Louisa continued. "I'm putting my money on Verity Campbell. After all, Verity is only nineteen years old, while poor Vilma is nearly twenty-four. A man with a mind for starting a family wants a young wife."

  Pauline, who was facing her twenty-sixth birthday, let fly another arrow.

  Another bull's-eye.

  "I was talking with Mrs. Gramercy the other day," Louisa said. "She said that Maude Reed is having female trouble...."

  While she talked on, it occurred to Pauline that it had been over a year since Louisa had lost her baby during the typhoid epidemic, and that she had yet to get pregnant again. Pauline wondered if Louisa had in fact found out about the secrets of birth prevention.

  "Poll Gramercy told me something else," Louisa said, carefully watching Pauline. "Joanna Westbrook is pregnant."

  "Yes," Pauline said. "I know."

  Pauline needed to concentrate to maintain control over her next shot. The news of Joanna's pregnancy, when she had heard it, had sent her into a cold rage, making her wonder what madness had driven her to commit that selfless act of letting Hugh go. It must have been the atmosphere of sickness and death, she decided; in the midst of so many new graves, Pauline had felt a rare and strange nobility of spirit. But she would not allow herself to live with regret. Regret, in Pauline's mind, was a waste of time and it got no one anywhere. Hugh was married; that was that.

  But was he happy, Pauline wondered, with his little English bride?

  "I understand," Louisa said, "that Angus McCloud has been calling on you."

  Pauline sighed and, lowering her bow, signaled to the groom to bring her a glass of lemonade.

  She thought of the men who had started paying attention to her, as soon as news of her break with Hugh was known in the district. They came with airs and promises, they came in all sizes and shapes and ages, most of them wealthy and all of them boring. There were times when Pauline would much rather not have to get married at all; she cherished her independence. But she hated the fact that society marked an unmarried woman as a failure—one who had not been up to the competition. And, too, she was lonely. What was she now to do with her life?

  Pauline thought of Colin MacGregor. Everyone knew about his desire to have more children, more heirs. The sudden loss of Christina and the baby had made him fanatical about Judd; he realized his feelings would have a bad effect on the boy, and he was terrified that he would lose his only heir. The noble line of MacGregor had to go on, and so there was this competition to see who would get him.

  And Colin was a choice prize to win. Even though it was apparent that Colin didn't consider Pauline a candidate, she was making her plans. She didn't want this target to escape. And this involved the second of the two secrets she knew about Colin, the other thing that no one else knew.

  The thought of him excited her. Colin was a man with power; he knew how to use it. And if people were saying that he had been on a rampage lately, was becoming ruthless and unscrupulous, buying up land, Pauline decided perhaps that was the way of the future. Only the strong could be victorious. Men of weak will and faint heart did not become rich, they did not build empires. His strength and power aroused her. What would it be like, she wondered, to be made love to by Colin MacGregor? To be in bed with him, to feel his arms around her, his body against hers.

  She suddenly turned away from the target. It was time, she realized, to play her hand. "You will forgive me, Louisa, but I have to run."

  "Oh?" Louisa said, searching Pauline's face. "Can I give you a ride in my carriage?"

  "I'm afraid we're going in opposite directions, Louisa dear. But you stay and finish your lemonade. I know how sensitive you are to the hot weather."

  A few minutes later Pauline was mounted on a handsome dapple-gray named Samson, riding away from Lismore. She gave the horse free rein and soon they were galloping over the grass-carpeted plains, with Samson flying over hawthorn hedges and wooden fences, his hooves thundering through clumps of scarlet honeysuckle, past stands of blackwood trees and she-oaks. Cockatoos flew up out of gum trees to flutter startled in the sky, their hundreds of coral pink bodies etched against the blue. Pauline thought of Colin MacGregor as she rode, as she felt the horse's massive body move between her legs, and she held tightly to the reins and controlled him.

  "Shoot her!" Colin shouted. "Shoot her, I said!"

  Judd struggled to take aim, but he was shaking so badly that he couldn't control the rifle.

  "Damn it, Judd! Shoot!"

  Judd pulled the trigger and the shot went wild, ricocheting off a rock and sending the big kangaroo to flight.

  Colin cursed under his breath. The animal had gotten away, again.

  "I don't know what gets into you, Judd," he said, shaking his head as he tramped over the dry grass toward his son. "We've been after that doe for weeks. You couldn't have asked for a better shot at her. And you let her get away."

  Judd didn't say anything, he just stood there with his rifle in his hands, staring at the spot where the kangaroo had been. Now all he saw were grass and shrub and wild flowers.

  "Ah well, at least we got these. Not bad for a morning's work." Colin gestured toward a large pile of kangaroo carcasses heaped under a gum tree, but Judd stared at them despondently. They were all different sizes and colors, but mostly they were young ones, with the kind of soft gray fur and big, deer-like eyes that made him loathe kangaroo hunting.

  "All right," Colin said to the men who were standing near the pile. "Set fire to it. We've done enough for today."

  And that was the worst part of it for Judd—they weren't killing the animals for meat or fur, but just for the sport of it. Judd recalled how it used to be, in the days when his mother was still alive. Visitors would come to Kilmarnock, and there would be a big hunt and maybe four hundred kangaroos would be slaughtered, then left behind in a fiery heap. Sometimes the fire would be started while the animals were still alive, and you could hear them screaming as you rode back to the homestead.

  "Don't be upset, Judd," Colin said. "You can't win every time. At least not yet. You'll get better at it. And next time, I'll wager you'll get that doe. It looked as if she had a joey in her pouch. That would be a double trophy!"

  But Judd was upset, and for reasons his father didn't suspect, and so he couldn't help the tears from coming. Finally he dropped his rifle and sobbed into his hands.

  Colin was on his knees at once, taking the nine-year-old into his arms. "That's all right, son," he said. "I know how you feel. I was frustrated, too, when I was your age, and my father took me out shooting and I wasn't as good at it as the men were. But you're only a boy yet. You'll be a marksman someday, I promise you. Come on, then, stop the crying."

  Little Judd gulped back the sobs and then ran his hand under his nose.

  "That's better," said Colin. But when the boy wiped his hand down his pants, Colin MacGregor frowned. "Where's your handkerchief? Here. Use this on your nose, not your hand, you know."

  And when Judd, taking his father's handkerchief, said, "Aw, bugger it," Colin's eyebrows shot up. "Where did you learn language like that?"

&
nbsp; "It's what the stockmen say."

  "Well, you're not a stockman and you're not to use such words. Do you understand?"

  As Judd nodded dumbly, Colin said, holding his son by the shoulders, "Listen. Someday you're going to be the laird of Kilmarnock. You're going to be a lord and a gentleman. Gentlemen don't use words like that."

  Colin studied Judd's face—so like his beloved Christina's—and thought once again: This boy needs a mother.

  It was a brutal fact that had to be faced, much as Colin loathed the thought. It had been fourteen months since Christina's death; it was time to be thinking of remarrying. He couldn't risk losing Judd, and find himself with no heirs. Colin refused to believe that all his hard work would be for nothing.

  When young Colin MacGregor had arrived in Australia to find no established ruling class and no peasantry, just a hodgepodge of social strata with no clearly defined top or bottom, he had known that an aristocracy would eventually emerge. He had built his castle as a vanguard of civilization in a rambling half-tamed place and as a reminder to those of common blood that a true lord was living among them. He had worked hard to give Kilmarnock a name that meant power and influence, a name, Colin sincerely believed, that made the ordinary man proud to live near him. A name that needed to be carried on.

  He took Judd's hand and led him to the refreshment tent. Colin towered over the servants and grooms, a tall, aristocratic man elegantly dressed in a cableknit sweater, tweed jacket, and moleskin trousers tucked into shiny black boots. There was no dirt on Colin MacGregor, no mud or dust marring his perfection. The working of the station he left to his agents, while he himself engaged in more gentlemanly pursuits.

  He accepted a whiskey from one of the grooms and turned to see his manager, Locky McBean, ride up, removing his hat and twisting it in his hands. Colin didn't like the man, but he was necessary, and he did as he was told without asking a lot of questions.

  "I'm afraid I've got bad news, Mr. MacGregor," he said. "It's about Jacko Jackson."

  "Well? What is it?"

  Locky's eyes slid to the liquor cart, rested there for a moment, then came back to his employer. "Jacko's sheep have got the scab all right, and there won't be no wool clip this year." Locky looked at the cart again, licking his lips.

  "And?" Colin said. He knew that other graziers, such as Westbrook and Frank Downs, drank with their station hands and allowed other laxities in propriety, but he did not drink with his overseer. "Get on with it then," he said. "What about Jacko?"

  "He turned you down—your offer of a loan."

  Colin said, "But how can he? There isn't a bank in the colony that will lend him money."

  "Well, sir, it seems that Hugh Westbrook will. Jacko got the money from Westbrook."

  Colin's face darkened. When Westbrook had first appeared in the district nearly twelve years ago, Colin MacGregor and the rest of the graziers hadn't thought he would survive. But Westbrook had surprised them all, not only by surviving, but by making a success of a run that had known only bad luck. Now Merinda was growing into a prosperous and desirable station, and it occupied one of the best stretches of river frontage, with excellent grazing grass and plentiful wells.

  It wasn't fair, Colin thought, that Westbrook should prosper so, while Christina lay cold in her grave.

  "All right," Colin said, dismissing the overseer. He stared into his whiskey, then glanced up to see someone riding across the plain. A woman. She was not riding sidesaddle, but the way a man rode, which could only mean one person: Pauline Downs.

  Colin suspected that Pauline considered herself a likely choice to be the next Mrs. MacGregor. He recalled the last time he had paid a visit to Lismore, to discuss with her a certain five thousand acres of woodland that lay along the southern base of the mountains. It was a piece of property that had been in the Downs family for thirty-three years, ever since the elder Downs had bought it when he had first carved out his domain in the Western District back in 1840. It was considered useless by most men, being unsuitable for grazing, having a poor water supply and unable to support wheat or other crops. But it had one thing in its favor that made it priceless to Colin: It stretched along the northern boundary of Merinda.

  Colin recalled now how happily Pauline had first greeted him, using her best charms and wiles, and then how abruptly her manner had changed when he had told her the purpose of his visit. Pauline had turned cold and had archly informed Colin that she didn't know if her brother would sell, and that she wasn't sure she would want him to.

  Colin had once briefly contemplated the idea of considering Pauline for marriage, but after assessing her character—the streak of independence, the fiercely competitive spirit—he had decided that it would be a mistake. Colin wanted not so much a wife and partner as a mother for his children, and he wanted to make sure that the next Mrs. MacGregor would be compliant, obedient and fertile. Above all, it was essential that she made no demands of him and that, outside of the bedroom and nursery, they had little to do with each other. Pauline Downs did not fit into this picture.

  "Good day, Mr. MacGregor," she said, as she rode up. "I trust I am not intruding?" She looked at Colin standing tall and erect in the sunshine, his black hair stirred by the morning breeze. She was surprised to feel a stab of sexual desire.

  "You're not intruding at all, Miss Downs. I am just ridding the countryside of vermin. Would you care to join me? I've brought along extra rifles."

  "Rifles aren't necessary," she said, gesturing to the bow that rode across her saddle.

  "Come now, Miss Downs," Colin said. "Bows and arrows aren't the weapons for a real hunt."

  "I can hit anything with an arrow that you can with a bullet."

  He smiled. "Very well then, how about that tree over there? Would you say it's perhaps a hundred feet away? Can your clever arrow hit it?"

  Colin watched as she got down from her horse, selected an arrow and sighted her bow. The way she stood in the morning sunlight, in a long dress with a tight bodice and voluminous skirts, her full breasts counterbalanced by a bustle, and a feathered hat sitting on her platinum curls, her left hand stretched before her clutching the longbow, her right arm pulled back behind her ear as she took aim—it reminded him of a poem he had once read: "Cold Diana, Huntress of the Moon, Slayer of the Stag, Eternal Virgin ..."

  He knew that Pauline's appearance was deceptive. Tall and slender, with fair skin and a decidedly feminine air, Pauline made people think she was delicate in the way fashionable women were supposed to be. But Colin knew that Pauline was a strong woman, in body as well as in spirit. Not everyone was aware that she used a man's longbow, and that she pulled forty pounds.

  As he watched her release the bowstring, sending the arrow shooting straight and sure to the target, Colin realized that there was something sexual about the way Pauline handled that bow and arrow, with her back so straight, her shoulders square, her chin even with her left shoulder. She struck him as being a woman made for the bedroom.

  As Pauline selected a second arrow from her quiver and prepared to shoot again, Colin said, "It seems unfair competition, Miss Downs, to hit a target that doesn't move."

  Pauline whipped around, bow held before her, string pulled back behind her ear, arrow aimed directly at Colin. He gave a start, then he laughed. "Can you hunt with that primitive apparatus, Miss Downs? Or do you only go after trees and haystacks?"

  She relaxed the bowstring and lowered the bow. "There is nothing I cannot shoot with this, Mr. MacGregor," she said.

  "But is it as good as a gun?"

  "Do you wish to put it to the test?"

  He grinned. "There's a blue-gray doe that's been sighted by the river, with a joey at foot. I've promised her to Judd. He's nine years old now and has yet to make his first kill. Would you like to join us? Or perhaps you're not so sure about that bow and arrow."

  "On the contrary, Mr. MacGregor, I am very sure of my bow and arrows. I should be only too glad to demonstrate what a hunting arrow can do."


  The party was headed toward the river, Pauline and Colin in the lead, with Judd on his pony between them. Grooms followed, bearing blankets, picnic baskets and guns. Lastly came the old Aboriginal tracker, Ezekiel, who rode bareback.

  "By the way, Mr. MacGregor," Pauline said, "are you still interested in those five thousand acres?"

  "Has your brother decided to sell them?"

  Frank didn't know anything about it yet, but Pauline knew he wouldn't object. The land was useless to him, and if selling it made Pauline happy, then he would agree to it. "I'm sure he can be persuaded," she said.

  "When can I meet with him to discuss the terms?"

  "Frank is too busy with his newspaper to bother with something like this. You can deal through me."

  "What are the terms then?"

  "I don't know yet, but I'm sure you and I can come to some sort of agreement."

  He gave her a look, but said nothing.

  "How old is Judd now?" she said. "Nine, did you say? You'll be sending him away to school soon."

  "I've decided not to send him to school. I want to keep him with me."

  "Poor child, such a difficult age for him to be without a mother. There is talk around the district, Mr. MacGregor, about you and Vilma Todd."

  "The people of this district seem to have nothing better to do with their time. To set the record straight, Miss Downs, I am not thinking of asking Miss Todd to be my wife. Nor Verity Campbell, whom I'm sure you have also heard linked with my name."

  "You plan not to remarry then?"

  "I have every intention of it. But I plan to marry out of the district."

  While he talked about the various candidates he was considering, daughters of substantial Melbourne men, Pauline felt her self-assurance suffer a tremor. But then she remembered what she knew about him, what none of the hopeful young ladies in the district knew—that on the night Christina died, Colin had sworn revenge against the man whom he blamed for the death of his wife and unborn child: Hugh Westbrook. Joanna had not come when summoned; Colin blamed that on Westbrook. Since then, Pauline had watched Colin and she had witnessed his growing obsession with ruining Hugh. She knew that that was what was driving MacGregor in his determination to buy up so much land: to ultimately seize Merinda and destroy the man he had convinced himself should suffer for Christina's death. The fact that he might actually succeed didn't trouble Pauline. Hugh was a competent adversary; he would put up an excellent fight. Pauline thought it would be interesting to see the competition between the two.