by Peter McAra
***
As the first hint of daylight filtered through the blinds, Kate gave up her struggle to sleep. Tired or not, what woman could sleep after those scorching moments with the man she, well, loved? There was no point in lecturing herself now. She loved Tom. Would always love him. She’d read that every woman meets just one true love in her life. There is one man who will, all through her life, be The One. Most women don’t manage to marry The One, nor live happily ever after with him. Life simply gets in the way. They merely dream of him, perhaps on days or nights when the man of the moment has gone stale, or shown he doesn’t care, or worse.
Kate tried to console herself with the thought that she’d had Tom all to herself for a string of deliciously teasing weeks. And their last moment together—it would be the perfect pearl in the necklace of memories she’d wear forever. She’d revisit that moment often. On lonely nights, when some crisis loomed, when she was sick or defeated, she’d fondle the jewels in that imaginary necklace. For the rest of her life, she’d use those memories to remind herself that perfect love can actually happen.
Now it was all over. In the next hour or two, she’d leave Tom forever. Quietly, she bathed and packed, taking care not to wake Prudence. It would be too awkward to explain why she was running away. As she carried her luggage to the cottage gate, Tom appeared. Without a word, he stepped close and took her bag, barely letting his eyes move towards her. As they walked the few yards to the station, he turned to her.
‘You really want to leave?’ His voice cracked. He swallowed. ‘Now?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, looking down, clenching her teeth against the tears that would well like a river in flood if she released her grip for a second. There was no way in this world she could take up his wordless invitation to talk. The sooner their time together was over, the better. Since they’d arrived in the Blue Mountains, every moment she’d spent close to Tom had been pure pain. Except one. She didn’t need to endure that pain again.
They reached the station. As he handed her the bag he’d carried for her, he spoke.
‘Kate.’
‘Yes?’
‘I wish you’d stay.’
‘We discussed that at some length, sir,’ she said. ‘Last night. If you remember.’
‘But—’
He held out his arms for a farewell hug. She sidestepped him.
‘Goodbye Tom.’ Her voice rang clear. In this pivotal moment, she willed herself to be strong. She blinked away the tears that now threatened to burst through the barricade she’d cemented into place. ‘I hope you and Laetitia live happily ever after.’
‘But wait. I want to …’
His words trailed off as she walked down the platform, away from him. Now she’d become a waif trudging through a blizzard, pulling a sledge through the snow. She’d staked her all on travelling to a far country, driven by an impossible dream. And failed. She must struggle forward, find a safe place to shelter, a place where she could build a new life.
Take hold of yourself, woman! She shrugged off her tattered cloak of self-pity and headed for the line of carriages. The waiting train gave a warning toot. She climbed aboard and took a seat in an empty compartment. Never in her life had she felt so abandoned, so alone.
The train’s whistle sounded loud, long. The carriage inched along the platform. Her eye caught a man running alongside the carriage, his face turned towards her, his hand waving frenziedly. Tom. As the train drew away, she caught a last glimpse of his face as he stopped, gasping, unable to keep up. What last minute message was he trying to send her? No matter. If he wanted to tell her something important, he could write a letter.
In the moments that Tom had run beside her carriage, his face, his body, had sent the loudest message—that he was hurting—that he didn’t want to lose her.
There was no way on earth she’d ever see him again. Now, in the privacy of her compartment, the concrete dam holding back her flood of tears broke. She sobbed, free to let her grief flow with no inhibitions.
CHAPTER 12
As Tom walked back to the cottage, pain swamped his consciousness. Somehow he must find out why, in the small hours of the night before, Kate had returned his kisses with such searing heat. As they walked to the station, every flicker of her eyes, every movement of her body, told him she must be well and truly pleased to be rid of him.
I got what I deserved, he told himself. He’d been too blind, too swept away by Laetitia’s seductive game playing, to see the obvious. That Kate had something Laetitia could never give him in a thousand years. Honesty. In his last moments with Kate, he’d smashed to smithereens the delicate bond growing between them. How stupid could a man be?
Soon she’d likely take a teaching position somewhere a long way from Sydney, settle happily into a country town, marry a fellow teacher, or perhaps a local doctor or lawyer. He toyed with strategies for tracking her down, for picking up those snapped threads. Should he write to her, post the letter to the address she’d sent when she applied for the governess position?
No. As he walked, he sensed the true power of the magic attraction between them—a power he’d never acknowledged, never consciously understood, until the moment those delicate threads were broken. Now the damage was done. He must get on with his life.
***
Back at Sydney’s elegant Melton Lodge next morning, Tom walked into the breakfast room to see Laetitia and Prudence drinking tea as a waitress hovered. As he sat, she poured him a cup.
‘You haven’t deigned to tell us,’ Laetitia said. ‘Why you took Kate to the station yesterday morning. You simply murmured that she had to dash back to Sydney. For goodness sakes, why?’
‘She said her job was done.’ For a second, Tom toyed with papering over the reality of Kate’s strange and sudden decision, then decided against it. He’d tell the truth, but make it sound dreary. ‘She said she was in the way.’
‘In the way of what, may I ask?’ Laetitia’s voice signalled that she knew perfectly well what Kate had felt she was in the way of.
‘Well …’ Tom had resolved not to lie. It would be difficult. But he’d stick to his guns. ‘As you know well enough, her job was to help me with my language. So I wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb in company. And last night Kate told me she thought, and I thought too, that I’d passed muster.’
‘Mmm.’ Laetitia grinned. ‘I mustn’t ask how she leapt to that conclusion.’ She giggled at her own joke. ‘Give her credit for a job well done. I noticed a definite improvement in your language from the first moment you spoke to me. Well, the second moment. Give or take another seven years or so, you might sound almost educated.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Fetch yourself another cup of tea, Tom. We need to talk.’ Laetitia was back in command, a general addressing the troops. ‘Prudence, kindly take a walk. Tom and I have things to discuss.’
‘Very well.’ Prudence stood, cup in hand. ‘And when should I—’
‘You should know better than to ask, my girl.’
In that moment Tom saw that Laetitia’s endemic master-servant sarcasm, bottled up while they were in company, had resurfaced. ‘I’ll call you when I need you. As per always.’ Tom watched Prudence melt into the distance.
‘Now Tom. To business.’ Laetitia took hold of her cup, saw that it was empty, and fired an imperious stare at the waitress. ‘We must have a serious talk. With Father.’
‘Very well. May I ask what we should talk about?’
‘The future. What else?’ The waitress scurried to the table with a fresh cup of tea, her face apologetic.
‘Sorry, ma’am. Can I fetch you—’
‘That will be all, thank you.’ Laetitia fired a sizzling glare at her. ‘And I might remind you that I shouldn’t have to grovel to a waitress whenever I need a fresh cup of tea.’ She refocused her stare onto Tom as the waitress returned to the kitchen.
‘Father will be back in our rooms at two o’clock,’ Laetitia said. ‘We’ll meet him t
here.’ Tom pulled his watch from its fob.
‘It’s not even nine o’clock yet,’ he murmured. ‘That gives us a few hours to ourselves. We could—’
‘Really, Mr Fortescue!’ Laetitia sat straight in her chair. The look on her face reminded him of an imperious queen about to put her uppity subjects in their place.
‘Kindly listen to me, Tom. For every second of the last few days—and nights, I’ve followed you round like a lapdog, jumped whenever you snapped your fingers.’
A grin flashed across her face for a thousandth of a second. Then she erased that grin so fast, Tom wondered if he could still believe she’d actually enjoyed their few too-short romantic moments. She slid a bored glance toward the door.
‘Really, Tom. I must have some time to myself. I have so much to do. My book about the history of Barrington Hall. That damned rude publisher. Having the audacity to tell me to delete a whole chapter. Telling me my family’s comings and goings were not going to nourish devotees of Hampshire’s Regency history.’
‘What should I do until two o’clock, then?’
‘Why ask me? I’m not your superior.’
Tom eased himself out of his chair, performed a low mock bow, and stepped outside.
***
He chose to walk to a manicured park he’d spotted near Melton Lodge some days before. There would be time to relax, enjoy the charm of the place. A park bench overlooking a large pond beckoned. A pair of white swans, likely a male and a female, looked up at him for a moment as he sat, then swam on, going about their business. Swans behaved a lot like Laetitia, he realised as he drifted into the relaxed ambience—elegant, self-centred, fixated on their own needs.
Too much had happened to Tom in the last twenty-four hours. He needed time to reflect, to consider. He should start at the beginning. His confusion had begun a couple of nights before. As the party sat in the Lazy Duckling enjoying their dinner, Laetitia had plastered herself all over him. What was that stupid line she’d dropped? ‘Languidly amorous.’ Now, as he said it aloud, it sounded childish, artificial.
The words had implied everything Laetitia wasn’t. And like a child promised a lollypop if he behaved himself, Tom had believed it. She’d set him up to believe that when they returned to the cottage, she’d want his manly attentions. He’d been excited at the time—a child expecting a lollipop. After all, he’d been through a rather long drought.
Then, back at the cottage, he’d learned soon enough that something had disconnected. Laetitia had told him, in so many words, that there would be no shared moments in the spa. The minute they’d farewelled Prudence and Kate, she transmuted into her cold, imperious self. A few minutes later, she’d ordered him from her room, then slammed and bolted her door the second he stepped into the passage.
Laetitia was not a creature given to sudden impulses. She planned every moment of her complicated life. Ever since they’d met a year before, she’d planned everything. Their first kiss, their trips with her mother to Europe’s fashionable destinations, their pseudo-romantic dinners. So why had she led him on at the Lazy Duckling, then reverted to her cold, calculating self the minute they were alone? Why, why, why?
The swans glided back into view. As the couple cruised sedately by, a third swan approached them. As it swam close, one of the couple squawked at it. With flapping wings and thrusting beak, it scared the interloper away. Then, after another half-baked attempt to join the couple, Swan Number Three read their message. Flapping its huge wings, it ploughed a track across the still water until it took off and disappeared.
The truth hit Tom like a sledgehammer blow. Kate was the third swan. Laetitia had seen her as the intruder, threatening her hold on Tom. So she’d acted out the oldest trick in the book. Whenever Kate was around, Laetitia had created, like an actor on a stage, a play of her affection for Tom. She’d fired off a signal that females—be they beetles, swans, or women—would read as ‘hands off, he’s mine’. It had worked too well. Like Swan Number Three, Kate had flapped her wings and flown away from the loving couple to goodness knows where.
What would Kate be thinking? She had nothing to go home to—no job, no respectable place to live, no plans for the future. Had she nursed feelings for him? He began to replay the times they’d been close. If only, if only they’d shared a few quiet moments with each other before her train pulled away.
For the thousandth time, he mentally smacked himself for kissing her as she lay on her bed in her beautiful gown after the long drive home from the Pioneers’ Ball. At least she’d been asleep, probably drugged from Doctor Harry’s injection. He relived his spur-of-the-moment impulse to kiss her after he eased her limp body onto the bed. Without any conscious decision, driven by some animal instinct, he’d brushed his lips over hers as she lay still, eyes closed.
What if she hadn’t really been asleep? Minutes before, she’d woken as he stopped the landau. As he lifted her from the back seat, she’d answered him, if rather drowsily, when he asked about the pain in her ankle. What if she’d feigned her sleep—had been awake all the time? She would have read that kiss as Tom perhaps having feelings for her. But as he’d carried her into her cottage, her eyes had been closed, her breathing even. Doctor Harry would have given her a powerful shot to protect her from the pain of the bumpy ride home.
Then Tom relived the passionate farewell of their last night at Blackheath. As Kate stood in the summerhouse in her diaphanous moonlight-dappled nightdress, he’d felt himself drawn to her like iron to a magnet. He absolutely could not resist the feminine glow that radiated from her—a flame to attract a willing moth. He’d stepped close to her, planning to give her a friendly farewell hug. He’d simply wanted to show her he valued her, that he’d miss her.
A split second later, that whole innocent farewell had exploded. It wasn’t simply his own sudden surging animal passion. Kate had responded so fast, so passionately, she’d swept him into the rushing current that carried the two of them to another place. In that moment, they’d each abandoned themselves, swept along in the cataract of their shared emotions. Neither chose to fight it. Now, in the granite reality of a couple of days afterwards, what would she be thinking? From the first day they met, she’d known about Laetitia. Then day after day, week after week, he’d told her he planned to marry the beautiful Englishwoman. At best, Kate must be confused.
Tom had liked Kate from the moment she looked down at him from the verandah of the Big House as he walked from the stables. He remembered looking her over, taking in her trim, petite body, her swathe of wavy dark hair, the way dimples popped into her cheeks when she smiled.
His feelings, brotherly back then, had grown as they shared their first beer, their dinner, their after-dinner talk.
Then, as she’d guided him, gentle but determined, through his lessons over following weeks, she’d shown she understood his pain. She’d felt his hurt, his shame over his lack of education, his disadvantaged childhood. She’d shown that she sympathised, that she’d give whatever caring, whatever hard work it took to help him. Each day he’d looked forward to their afternoons in the study, their friendly dinners, their shared Sundays.
Over the weeks he’d come to—well—admire her. She’d taken over his mind, slowly, subtly, like wildflowers invading the fields in spring. He knew those plants grew quietly for months before their colourful blooms carpeted the hillsides on the first warm spring day. Now she’d vanished from his life. He’d better return to Melton Lodge. Laetitia would be waiting to take him to the two o’clock meeting with her father.
CHAPTER 13
‘Lovely to see you again, old chap.’ Charles Barrington-Smythe, dressed in tweedy suit and subdued tie, eased himself from the leather armchair in the large room he’d appropriated as his office. He shook Tom’s hand, beamed. Then the tubby, grey-haired man flopped back into his chair. Tom listened to the squish of air escaping through holes in the worn leather upholstery.
‘Whisky?’ Charles offered.
‘Perhaps later, t
hank you.’
‘Oh, I forgot. You’re probably a beer man. Orstralian and all that, what?’
‘Whisky will be good. Later.’
‘Well then. Let’s get to business, shall we?’ Charles nodded towards an empty chair. ‘Laetitia wanted to join us, but I told her this was men’s business.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Now Tom. We don’t want this little chat to be all formality. Of course not. But you’ll be aware that there’s a tradition of sorts appropriate to situations like this.’ He smiled. ‘When a young man has, shall we say, serious intentions about a young woman, then it’s traditional for said young man to have a little chat with said young woman’s father.’
‘Indeed.’
‘The fact of the matter is, there are some traditions which have, shall we say, stood the test of time.’
‘Indeed.’
‘I’ll come straight to the point then, Tom. First, the little matter of where you’ll take up residence. As a married couple, I mean.’
‘Yeah.’ As he said the word, Tom almost laughed. Kate would have told him not to use it in polite society. At this moment, it sounded exactly right. Apposite, she’d have called it.
‘So what has Laetitia said to you? So far,’ Charles said. Tom felt a mite uncomfortable.
‘Nothing, really.’
‘I’m surprised.’ Now Charles looked uneasy. ‘I say. I rather think our tete-a-tete would flow more smoothly if we had a nip of whisky.’
‘Very well.’
Charles flicked a bell on his desk. An expressionless woman entered, wearing a shapeless grey dress. He’d likely have recruited her as secretary for their weeks in Sydney. Her lips held their thin unsmiling line.
‘Whiskies, sir?’ she murmured. He nodded and she left. Seconds later she returned with a decanter and two glasses on a silver tray. Charles poured two generous nips, and took a man-sized mouthful. Tom ignored his glass.
‘So what are your views on the matter, Tom?’
‘I’m a farmer. I run a property that carries a few hundred thousand sheep. I have to be there a fair whack of the time.’