Scott had asked no further questions about Clare, and the baby had enchanted him just as she did everyone else. She took her first steps for him and the doll he gave her was her prized possession. He didn’t even flinch anymore when she called him papa. Things were going along smoothly, almost too smoothly, thought Angela, hoping against all odds that this time their happiness would last. After all what else could happen? The Bratach Sith was only a distant memory. They had all weathered the worst and clear skies had to be ahead.
One morning while Maggie was in the garden watching the children Angela called Kate into the sitting room. When Angela told her to be seated she perched on the very edge of the chair opposite her and clasped her hands nervously in her lap.
“Is somethin’ wrong, milady?”
“No,” Angela smiled reassuringly. “There’s no need to be upset. This is a personal matter.
“I have come to depend on you and Maggie a great deal. Both of you have been completely devoted to me and my family and I wanted to thank you. I care what happens to you because I think you are fine, very brave girls. That’s why I wanted to ask you about your sister. I hope you won’t think I’m prying.”
“Oh, milady. Ye have every right to ask anything. We’re bound to you for seven years.”
“Kate, I’m your friend not just your mistress.” Angela plunged right in. “Has Maggie ever spoken?”
Yes, milady. Before we were sent to prison.”
"But never since, not even to you?”
Kate shook her red head vigorously.
"One night, not long ago, I heard her singing—a lullaby to Clare.”
"Are ye sure? Maggie?”
"Positive. I was on the veranda and she was singing in a foreign language. I looked in the window. There is no doubt.”
" 'Singin’ in Gaelic was she? Is that a good sign? Do you think she may start talkin’?”
"It’s a very good sign. But if we could only find out what happened to make her so silent—”
Kate hung her head but Angela could see the fierce color rising on her face. “It was a babe she had—on the ship comin’ out. We are good girls, milady! But one of the turnkeys took a fancy to Maggie, forcin’ himself on her, but she loved that babe. It came too soon—a pitiful wee girl. It was so close between decks we were faintin’ and some died. It only lived three days. It never had a chance.
“I was thinkin’ Maggie would die with grief for her poor unbaptized babe. Not even a proper grave to mark her bones, just tossed in the sea!”
Tears spattered the twisted hands and Angela blinked rapidly to keep from crying too. “Poor Maggie,” she murmured. “If only I could help her in some way.” And she couldn’t help thinking of herself and the strange similarity between them. Except she had never wanted Clare and Maggie had wanted her baby and lost it. And now Maggie didn’t speak, and Angela harbored a dark secret and in her own way she couldn’t speak of it either.
After her conversation with Kate, Angela began giving Maggie more duties with the children and even though she didn’t speak they behaved amazingly well for her. And Maggie was never so happy as when she was with them.
As Lorna slowly recovered under the tender care of the whole household every dark cloud vanished and Angela laughed at herself for worrying needlessly. She just wasn’t used to the children being sick, for they were unusually healthy by any standards. But now they were back to normal, tearing the house apart and back to their pranks. It was wonderful to live in such well-ordered chaos. She had sorely missed it during their illness.
But now that her worries were over she began longing to see Scott again. It had been three weeks and although she had received a letter that could never be the same as his presence. Their being apart began to tell and she found herself needlessly snapping at Kate or Ezra for nothing. At night her room and bed were so empty that she imagined other terrible obstacles that could separate them for good. Celeste was always uppermost in her musings. She didn’t trust her in the least and when Clyde invaded the house one morning, she ran to greet him with an overeager welcome.
Angela gave him a quick hug and for an instant Clyde’s arms closed possessively around her delicate body. He felt deprived at the fleeting nature of the embrace, more like the affection between a brother and sister or old friends. As she laughingly ordered coffee and biscuits he marveled at the bloom in her cheeks and the vitality leaping from her eyes.
She positively glowed, a startling contrast to the last time he had seen her, exhausted with tending the children. Her glossy black hair was braided into a heavy coronet on the back of her head and though she wore a simple muslin gown there was the magnificent emerald shining against her bodice.
As they talked and drank their coffee from translucent bone china cups he noticed the way her fingers occasionally caressed the green stone, as if it was something alive—or a lover. It almost seemed to offer her some comfort. Clyde was more in love with her than ever and though he tried to keep away he couldn’t. Just knowing she was in Sydney drove him to distraction and he had finally broken down and beat a path to her door. But seeing her and knowing she would never be his was worse than not seeing her and he knew he had been mistaken in coming.
But still he lingered, watching her laugh over some inane statement of his. The way her lips curved revealing white pearly teeth, the dimples deepening beneath her high exotic cheekbones, the fantastically unbelievable color of her eyes were all a conspiracy against him enticing him to defeat. Her slim smooth fingers touched his as she handed him another cup of coffee and he almost dropped it, thinking of those hands on his body rousing him to as yet unattainable ecstasy.
She was unique, Angela—that fierce, sweet mixing of cool English blood and wild Scottish blood that made her half angel, half devil, and totally mysterious. Celeste was right, such a fragile, ethereal, passionate, temptress could never belong in this land or with the hard, savage man she was married to. They were so completely different that one or both of them would be destroyed by their union. So as Angela gazed at Clyde, her green-blue eyes mixed with sorrow and joy, just as they were with two colors, he vowed to have her for his own wife—no matter how long he had to wait, no matter what he had to do.
“The Hawkesbury!” Angela clapped her hands in delight. “Let me go with you. I’m dying to see Scott!”
“But I’m leaving straight away....”
“I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes—less! Please, Clyde,” her eyes melted his resistance, “say yes.”
“Very well.” At least she would be alone with him all day before he turned her over to her husband.
She fairly danced from the room calling, “Kate, Maggie, Ezra!” And Clyde sat staring into his coffee, hating the thought of her in Scott’s arms tonight.
He would talk to Celeste! Between them they could surely come up with a plan to separate the Harringtons. She had been very encouraging and sure of success at their last meeting. This was it! He would dally no longer. Before the week was over Angela would belong to him and Scott to Celeste.
True to her word Angela was ready in fifteen minutes, dressed in her very disturbing riding costume. They left the house in a flurry of kisses and good-byes with a worried Ezra looking speculatively after Clyde.
“This time it won’t rain,” Angela told Clyde as they trotted side by side down the dusty street. “I dare it to rain! I challenge the heavens!”
He couldn’t help but laugh at her carefree good spirits, the vivacious eagerness to put the city behind her and plunge pell-mell into the uncrowded reaches of the colony.
“I even have a picnic lunch for us to eat on the way,” she said. “My Murrays are quick and efficient aren’t they, Clyde? Did you ever think on that day in the garden that those two scarecrows would turn into Irish wonders?”
“You spoil them, Angela.”
“Spoil them for what? They are perfect for me, and besides people sometimes need to be spoiled. It makes up for so much.”
The summer
was over already and a tinge of cool air reminded the riders that fall was fast approaching. As they covered the miles between Sydney and the Hawkesbury Angela longed with an intensity to be back in England for the autumn. Here there was hardly any change but at home the change of seasons was one of nature’s splendors. But right now it was barely spring in England. Why the daffodils wouldn’t even be venturing forth at Seafield Castle yet.
Soon—soon now, she would hand over the pardon to Scott and they could set sail in the Cygnet for home. Why if they left now, this very day, they might be home for the last of summer. Angela was tired of the tropics, tired of strange primitive lands where the seasons practically stood still. She longed to feel the snow stinging her face, to see the lochs glazed with ice and the mountains like crystal castles.
She talked to Clyde of home because he understood, but even though he longed to visit Scotland and make a whirl through London something about Australia had captivated him. He was more interested in the Blue Mountains than his own bare bleak Cuillins on the Isle of Skye. There was a challenge here, unexplored primitive land for the asking, and the bravest and those there first would reap the rewards.
“Sheep,” Clyde told Angela, “will be the gold of this new continent. Someday they will stretch as far as the eye can see. I’m breeding merinos in Parramatta and as soon as my farm in the Hawkesbury is producing, I will transfer half of them there.
“They say there are vast, lush grasslands on the other side of the mountains. Once we aren’t confined by that barrier to this area on the coast the whole country will open up. Hundreds, thousands, why millions of acres could make up just one vast estate! There’s room to spread and grow here—room for everyone."
“But you can’t be sure. No one has crossed the mountains yet. Those grasslands might not exist. There could be more mountains, a desert, anything—if they are ever crossed.”
“Well I mean to find out! I would give anything," he glanced at her, “well almost anything to be the first across. Someday I will have a million-acre sheep run on the other side.”
Angela laughed at his enthusiasm and shook her head. “You can have your sheep and your million acres and your Blue Mountains! All I want is my family—Scott and the children and an ancient castle on an island. . . .”
“Good lord, Angela! If I could have you I’d never look at another sheep. I’d live in a dungeon—”
“Oh, Clyde,” she reprimanded with a toss of her raven head. “You had better stick to unexplored territory. Your dreams will make you happier than I ever could!”
They stopped to eat at mid-afternoon and the mountains that enamored Clyde were huge and close, misty in the shifting sunlight. They faced them as they ate and she saw his eyes return again and again to the peaks and ridges, almost as often as he glanced at her face. She smiled secretly. Clyde was torn between her and his mountains, each with their own attraction for his divided attention. She hoped the peaks would win.
As Clyde went to help her mount he took her in his arms, kissing her startled parted lips. He groaned as his tongue found hers and he tasted the honeyed mouth that had tempted him from the first. Surprisingly, for half an instant, she lay pliant against him, her soft breasts molded tightly to his chest. Their heat through the thin blouse made his head reel.
Angela jerked away from him a moment later and pushed him firmly away. He was very good at kissing and she couldn’t deny that caught off guard she had yielded at first. Before he could react she mounted her horse and stared unsmilingly down at him.
“If you ever do that again you will have Scott to answer to! He was gentle with you the last time; this time, he would kill you!”
“That convict?” spat out Clyde.
“He is not all he seems,” she replied enigmatically touching her heels to the horse’s flanks.
There was no pleasant conversation the rest of the way. Their silence deepened even as the shadows of the Blue Mountains enveloped them in twilight.
It was dark when they reached Thornhill and Angela rode straight to Scott’s cabin. At the sound of hoofbeats the door flew open staining the earth with yellow light. He rushed to her side and as she slipped from her horse she fell straight into his strong arms.
“Scott, darling!”
“Angel, love!”
Clyde watched them embrace and kiss, straining toward each other in the pooled candlelight. Scott’s arms were hard and brown around her and Clyde shuddered at the ferocity with which he almost devoured her. Didn’t her husband realize what a fragile flower Angela was? If he wasn’t careful he would crush or bruise her. He would never treat her in such a harsh savage way; she was a lady and needed delicate handling.
That was only one more log added to the fire of his determination to separate them. A moan from Angela added another, as he silently cursed the man’s cruelty. With firm resolution he turned his horse and headed for the house, and Celeste.
Clyde rode over to the cabin to say good-bye to Angela and found her hanging dripping clothes on a line stretched between two trees. She paused and waved as he approached and the fury in him blazed that she, a duchess, should be toiling like a drudge for her good-for-nothing husband.
“I’m going to Parramatta for a few days and then I’ll be back in this area. Is there anything you need?”
“No, thank you, Clyde. I’m so grateful to you for bringing me here.” He looked at her swollen lips, the bruise on her neck and the slightly shadowed eyes, and realized that Scott had wiped every thought of his kiss from her mind and body. How could she stand for that—the casual way in which Scott used her and then betrayed her with other women?
It would be soon now, this plan he and Celeste had spent half the night devising. He had only to go to Parramatta and return and the time would be ripe. He would have in his possession the means to sever Angela from Scott forever.
Clyde rode off so preoccupied that he didn’t even glance back at Angela. He held the reins tightly in his hands guiding the horse as firmly as he was controlling his own destiny. Their plan was deceitful and compromising but it would work. It was the only scheme that would work and it all revolved around Scott’s bad temper and perfect timing.
Angela was making a cherry pie when Scott came back to the cabin early. Her eyes lit up with pleasure as he opened the door and his bold presence filled the room with vitality. How empty it was when he was gone and even though she had been busy all day she had missed him immensely.
Scott caught her in an embrace as she crimped the crust and placed a scalding kiss on the bowed nape of her neck. Wisps of ebony hair tickled his lips and he let his hands search out the full curves of her breasts, squeezing gently.
“You devil! You’ll make me ruin my pie!”
“I remember another day and another time but you were making apple pies.” Scott nuzzled her shoulder watching her quick movements. “You ruined my coat and sent me packing that time. You will not get off so easily today.”
“Scott,” she said laughing huskily as she helplessly felt one of his searching hands trail down over her flat belly. She couldn’t help wriggling against him. “What?” Very gently he nibbled the lobe of her ear. “I don’t think I want to make pies today.”
“Let’s make a baby instead,” he suggested and she whirled around throwing her arms about his neck.
“Would you really like another one?” Angela’s eyes were huge with disbelief. “You’re only teasing me!”
“I don’t care if we have any more or not—but I am partial to the process involved in trying to make one.” He smiled wickedly, hugging her tightly as she planted a moist kiss on the cleft in his chin. “You missed the target,” Scott scolded lowering his mouth to hers but she pulled away, wiping her hands on her apron, sliding from his grasp with a coquettish glance over her shoulder.
With a laugh he darted after, chasing her around the room, overturning a chair in the process. By the time he caught Angela she had slipped all the pins from her hair letting the heavy mass spill
over her shoulders and breasts. As he pressed her against his chest Scott felt the row of undone buttons on her blouse and slid his hand inside the gaping material.
Her head fell back against his arm as his fingers found the smoothness of her flesh and sent rivers of sparks exploding through her blood. He watched her eyelashes flicker closed and felt the hot arch of her supple body against his. Very slowly he lowered his head to hers rubbing the softness of her cheek against his lean brown one, losing control as her hands clutched his thick wavy hair and pulled his lips to hers.
There was an inevitable ending to this encounter but one that never failed to delight them both. Only when they lay panting with pleasure and exertion, tangled on the bed in a chaos of seething emotions did they fulfill the total oneness that was bringing them closer together day by day.
And when they could speak again Angela whispered breathlessly into Scott’s ear, “This is much better than baking pies. I think I will create another little boy that looks just like you!”
“Angel, Angel—all I want is you!”
“And to be free? To go home to Scotland?”
She heard his indrawn breath. Freedom was in his blood as fiercely as she was but he wouldn’t admit it. “You are enough, my love. With you I hold the world in my arms.”
But, she corrected him silently, you would do anything to be free. And she vowed to give him the pardon as soon as they reached Sydney.
“Don’t go.” Angela twined her arms around Scott’s neck and wouldn’t release him.
“You are insatiable,” he laughed, the corners of his sherry-brown eyes crinkling in a way that made her think of new ways to make him linger. Kissing her nose he loosened her clinging arms and slapped her playfully on the bottom. “Be good, now. You know I have to go. The meeting is important. It’s only held twice a year and everyone at Thornhill attends. Everyone’s grievances get aired and new ways of increasing productivity are discussed. I’ll probably be very late.”
“Very well,” Angela pouted, then looked at her handsome bronzed husband with a mischievous teasing look. “Then don’t be surprised if I have dinner with Clyde. He got back from Parramatta today.”
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