Cattle Baron Needs a Bride

by Margaret Way

  “Recycle them if you like!” his mother said. It was what she did.

  He hadn’t bothered.

  Two magnificent gilded bronze sculptures of horses took up the centre shelves of matching bookcases on opposite sides of the cedar-panelled room. He’d had to have a shelf removed to accommodate their size. Another magnificent bronze of the station’s famous prize-winning bull, Atlas, stood on a black onyx plinth. He might get the two big armchairs recovered. The fabric wasn’t worn but it looked a bit tired. The room was spacious enough to place a big Asian chest between them as a coffee table, though he never had coffee there. Books on architecture and photography, a passing interest—he rarely had the time—sat atop it. Lord knew how long it was since he had opened the yellow rosewood chest. He pulled the sofa nearer it, threw off the rug that had been draped across it, then removed the books, placing them on the Persian rug.

  A musky scent, far from unpleasant, mixed with mothballs, assailed his nostrils the moment he opened back the lid. The first thing that caught his attention was a cricket bat inscribed by their great batsman, Don Bradman. He pulled it out, deciding on the spot to find a better place for it. He had been a very dashing cricketer at school and university. Fast bowler, but a handy, big hit batsman when needed. More books. Modern, ancient history, travel. A dozen or more photo albums. He would go through them with Zara when she came home. Another smallish antique rug he had folded away when he’d found the bigger, more stunning one that was here now. He opened the top one, ambushed by memories. This was his hideout for the countless photographs he had taken of Zara and she had taken of him. The old pain touched his heart.

  Zara, oh, Zara!

  Perhaps he hadn’t opened the chest in so long because he saw it as some sort of mausoleum. Death of a dream. Well, in a large way he was responsible for it. Better close up. He had a mid-morning meeting with two of his fellow cattle men. Lots of issues within the industry to discuss; an overseas trade mission coming up. He wanted to check on the station’s new mechanic before that.

  Blind luck illuminated what looked like the edge of an envelope tucked into one of the books. A moment of premonition.

  “What’s this?” he muttered aloud into the silence, considering the protruding edge. An envelope, fine quality paper, palest grey. For another full minute he sat there like a man paralysed before he was finally able to pick up the book. It was very finely bound, burgundy leather, gold tooled. An anthology of the major British poets. Zara loved poetry. Keats was one of her great favourites, Shelley another. She had loved reading poetry to him while they lay in the cool shade at their favourite swimming spot, Blue Lady Lagoon.

  Come on, man, what’s wrong with you? jeered the voice in his head. Don’t have the guts to see what it is? Don’t have the guts to actually open it?

  He felt his jaw tighten. Guts be damned! He postponed the moment no longer. He already knew with certainty what it was. One of Zara’s letters. Somehow it had escaped the bonfire. But how had it? Whatever part of his brain that had forgotten or chosen to forget, his holding the grey envelope in his hand triggered a memory. Getting very drunk. A rare event. But he had taken a bottle of his father’s very best single malt, sprawling back in his study brooding on his heartbreak long after his parents had gone to bed. No way was he going to allow them—indeed anyone—in on his heartache. Alcohol only numbed it. It didn’t go away. “I nearly opened it.” Again, he said the words aloud.

  He’d come close, so close…staring at the envelope with his name and the address of the station written on it in her elegant artistic hand. He hadn’t destroyed it. He hadn’t left it out on the chest so he could put it with all the rest. He had shoved it back between the pages of Shelley’s To Night and When the Lamp is Shattered.

  Kiss her until she be wearied out.

  He had even bound her beautiful long sable hair with paper daises. He’d been a man “rocked by passion”. Mocked and left. Then let it be so! He had slammed the anthology shut. Never opened it again. Alcohol had taken care of memory. Now he moved to one of the armchairs, paper opener in hand.

  Oh, thank you, God, for giving me this break. Or is it you, Dad?

  He didn’t care that he was talking to himself. He was overwhelmed by gratitude. His thwarted passion for Zara had made his memories and emotions warp. A single saved letter could turn out to be his redemption.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE dry heat of the Outback hit her the moment she put her head outside the open door of the charter plane. It had been a smooth flight. Corin had arranged it all. Garrick would be picking her up. She wondered if he had flown in yet. Knowing Garrick, he was probably waiting for her inside the terminal.

  She had so much enjoyed her stay with Miri and Corin. It had revived her flagging spirits. Not only that, she had found real meaning in Miri’s fluent comments and tolerant advice. So wise for someone so young! Qualities like that would make Miri a fine doctor. Miri had certainly helped her come to the full realization that it was a totally pointless exercise agonizing over the errors of the past. And that was what she had been doing. Repetitive patterns most people found hard to break. In her case, those patterns had been in play way too long. True love didn’t reject. True love didn’t threaten. She and Garrick had made their commitment. Garrick was her destiny. She wanted no one else.

  All sorts of ideas about a June wedding had been filtering through her mind. June was a lovely month, the start of the crisp blue and gold period that passed for winter. She and Miri had actually sat by the swimming pool one day discussing the latest trends in wedding dress design. Miri had told her with soft dreamy tears in her eyes that Corin had confided he would always carry the image of her on their wedding day in his mind. That was the way Zara wanted to be remembered as a bride.

  “Don’t let anyone tell us there’s no such thing as perfect love,” Miri declared. “Corin says he’s a bigger, better, stronger man with me by his side. Isn’t that lovely? I feel the same way.”

  She saw him before he saw her. He stood head and shoulders above the crowd that had arrived some ten minutes earlier on a domestic flight. His attention had been diverted by a stocky grey-haired man who came forward with a wide grin on his face, his hand extended for the usual handshake.

  A moment more and Garrick turned back to look over the heads of the swirling crowd. Voices all around him were lifted in greeting—newly arrived family or friends. He knew a lot of these people. Most knew him. They exchanged friendly waves. He had long since accepted his pioneering family, and other families like his, were held to be something of Outback royalty. And, similar to the real thing, the position carried obligations that went along with the job. He was always stopped wherever he went in public as people—even those who didn’t know him personally—took the opportunity to speak to him.

  Zara stood exactly where she was, waving. To know he was there, waiting for her! Every last anxiety dissolved like shards of ice in the sun. She waited with an intoxicated heart. She knew she could travel the length and breadth of the world and never find anyone she could love more than Garrick. They belonged together. Drawn from the beginning like magnets. Her father had sought to control her life. Not a moment too soon, she had her life back.

  Now isn’t that amazing! applauded that voice in her head. You finally realize just how lucky you are.

  He opened his arms wide. She ran to him on winged feet. Felt his arms close strongly around her, wrapping her in a powerful sense of comfort and security. Home to Garrick. No doubt was left in her mind. She would make him a wonderful wife; a wonderful loving mother for their children. Peace at last! And she had it. Mind, body and soul. One could only marvel at it.

  In the cool of late afternoon they took the horses to their favourite haunt from their early days, Blue Lady Lagoon. With the horses tethered, Garrick took the lead as they plunged under the trees through a thick break of coolabahs then wave upon wave of feathery golden cassia—acacias with masses of tiny purple fringed lilies growing thickly a
t their feet. The whole area was suffused in a glow that one often saw when diving underwater—a cool misty green shot through with rays of honey-gold. Birds shrieked, whistled and called to one another, flashing their brilliant colours as they rose higher and higher into the branches of the trees. The reed-shadowed emerald waters of the lagoon shimmered before them, alight with a floating canopy of blue lotus, the exquisite waterlily found naturally all over Australia and North Africa and once the sacred flower of ancient Egypt. No wonder! It was fantastically beautiful in its smouldering blue-violet splendour.

  In a euphoric state—this spot was sacred to her in many ways—Zara took off her cream Akubra and threw it unerringly to land on top of a flat-topped silvery-grey boulder. She lifted her arms, stretching them ecstatically to the blue chinks of sky that showed through the interlocking branches. “Oh, I love this place!” she cried with delight. “It’s life itself! Isn’t it, darling?” She turned her dark head and a low slanting sunbeam fell across her lovely face.

  Garrick moved swiftly, stirred as ever by her beauty, both inside and out. He came behind her, locking his arms around her waist and drawing her against him, feeling absolutely complete. “It is!” He expelled a deep quiet breath. “But then anywhere would look infinitely beautiful with you by my side.”

  “Oh, how lovely!” She nestled her body back into his, still drunk on their passionate lovemaking of only a few hours before. Passion was magic, but a perfect understanding was the pinnacle of a binding relation between man and woman.

  “Zara, I love you!” he muttered fervently, his mouth moving voluptuously against the smooth skin of her neck. “I should always have trusted you. I threw away your letters, God forgive me, and they meant so much to you. To me!’

  There was real anguish in his tone. It made Zara spin in his arms so she could stare into his blue flame eyes. “Garrick, we have one another. That’s the only thing that matters.” She was struck by the depth of emotion he was making no effort to hide.

  “You’re so forgiving.” He bent his head to kiss her. And then he began to speak in a deep, emotion charged voice, “Alas! is even love too weak, To unlock the heart, and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal, To one another what indeed they feel?”

  “But, Rick, I wrote those exact lines to you in one of my letters. Yet another one of my appeals.”

  “If only I had opened it at the time,” he lamented. He held her one-armed as he reached into his breast pocket. “But the angels decided in their mercy to grant me a pardon. I found your letter tucked into an old anthology in my study. Long awaited deliverance, you could say, because in it you poured out the integrity of your soul. I must have left the letter there, tucked into a page of your favourite, Shelley. I confess I was in an almighty alcoholic haze at the time. Feeling sick and sorry for myself, of course. I took care never to have another session like that again, but sadly the memory of leaving your letter there vanished from my mind.”

  “But you’ve read it now?” she asked on a note of rising elation. Even one letter. Wasn’t that what she’d always wanted?

  “Over and over and over,” he said with a profound gravity. “I can recite it for you word perfect. It’s burned into my brain. I’m in a place now, my precious girl, where I should have been all those years ago. Forgive me.”

  “Oh, Garrick!” The glitter of tears was in her great dark eyes. “I do. I do.”

  “I have to confess to a tear or two of my own when I read it,” he told her, giving her a beautiful half wry, half tender smile.

  “How wise for a strong man to know when to cry,” she said shakily. His words had touched a healing finger to her heart.

  “And it does prove one thing.” Garrick drew her body ever closer into his arms. “Miracles are to be taken seriously.”

  She offered up a face alight with love, with laughter and with tears. “I’ll say amen to that,” she murmured before his mouth came down to burnish hers.

  Oh, the enormous lightness of being!

  EPILOGUE

  ELLIOT ARNOLD MASTERMANN III arrived safely, screaming lustily at the transition from the lovely peaceful cocoon of his mother’s womb to a noisy, light-filled world. All went well for mother and child. Garrick and Zara were honoured to be asked to be godparents on the mother’s side. The Mastermanns had candidates lined up for their side, including American friends.

  Little over eighteen months later, Zara safely delivered her first child, a bouncing baby boy. Even as a newborn, Sean Daniel Rylance looked exactly like his father.

  “We have to try again soon for a daughter who looks exactly like you!” exorted the doting father, cradling their precious child in his strong arms.

  Two years later, Kathryn Helena Rylance made her entry into the world. Miranda and Corin already had their planned baby, their son Alexander, named after Corin’s maternal grandfather. Miranda, a petite superwoman, was well on her way to achieving her life’s ambition to become a doctor. Her babies had to fit into her tight schedule. Happily, they did.

  Eventually five children—two boys and a girl for Garrick and Zara; a boy and a girl for Corin and Miranda—were to become the closely knit Rylance clan.

  “What with all these children, we need a doctor in the family,” as Zara often remarked.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6994-5

  CATTLE BARON NEEDS A BRIDE

  First North American Publication 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Margaret Way, Pty., Ltd.

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