The aAborigines, camped on the other side of the waterhole, didn’t appear to have suffered unduly from the elements. Their flimsy-looking gunyahs were obviously stronger than they appeared. Kavanagh had almost forgotten them in the greater urgency of the storm. It was lucky the cattle hadn’t rushed over their camp.
~*~
After they’d breakfasted, Louise was finally allowed to attend to Kavanagh’s wound. The torn edge of his sleeve had congealed to a long gash on his upper arm. Kneeling on the ground beside him, she bathed away the dried blood with water from the billy. He clenched his teeth and winced several times as she worked, so betraying his pain in spite of all his denials. Louise watched his tense expression in concern.
It was disconcerting to find she enjoyed being this close to him. She noted his ruffled fair hair and the beads of perspiration on his skin, the lean, unshaven jaw and the firm, well-shaped mouth. She remembered the way he’d held her last night, albeit so briefly. Over the past few days she’d become accustomed to his touch, thanks to the sidesaddle, and there was a kind of pleasurable familiarity about his closeness that was seductive.
Finally she bandaged the wound with a strip torn from his only clean shirt. ‘Be sure to keep the dirt out of it, now, so it doesn’t become infected.’
He shook his head, smiling. ‘I’ve had worse than this before and never got more than a bit of fever.’
‘It will heal more rapidly if you keep it bandaged.’ She spoke briskly, knowing she must put distance between them. ‘I don’t want all my good work going to waste, Mr Kavanagh.’
His face changed and he seemed to retreat a little. ‘You ought to be a nurse, Miss Forrest. You’re good at this.’
‘Another Florence Nightingale? I don’t think so, somehow. I’m not that saintly.’
He rose to his feet, smiling briefly. ‘No, I daresay you’re not. But thank you, anyway. It’s feeling better already.’ He shoved his hat on his head and turned to his horse. ‘Come on, we’d better get a move on before it gets too hot.’
~*~
Lloyd was frowning as he joined Cecil Divine with the cattle. He tried to concentrate on the job in hand, but it was difficult when his mind couldn’t get past the memory of gentle fingers on his skin and female warmth bending close. His careless words to Sam Naylor came back to mock him. Now he had to stop himself from mooning over the girl, stop his eyes from lingering on her face and hair and that slim body he’d once thought too thin. Strange how it had begun to haunt his dreams at night. There was a responding warmth in her that he wouldn’t have believed possible just three days before. She’d put distance between them this morning, but he knew she wasn’t indifferent to him.
She was so unlike the other girls he’d known. Was it only because he’d been in the bush too long that he’d come to fancy her? It had to be more than that. The shared laughter and talk lured him as much as anything else. After her earlier standoffishness, her friendship and those brief glimpses of softness and sympathy drew him like a moth to the flame.
Perhaps the result would be the same and like a stupid bloody moth he’d end up with his wings singed.
~*~
After leaving Roundstone Creek and the aAborigines behind, they forced the reluctant cattle up a rocky jump-up, as Kavanagh referred to it. It was a steep incline thickly timbered with rosewood, lancewood and wattle, which levelled out to a tableland, but gradually dropped again to the flat floodplain that bordered the Dawson River. This was more fertile country timbered with silver-trunked gums and ironbark.
At this time of the year the river had ceased flowing and was reduced to a string of waterholes in a wide, deep channel bounded by tree-clad banks. It seemed strange to Louise who’d travelled so far, that she was now, according to Kavanagh’s reckoning, no more than seventy miles upstream from James Barclay’s homestead, on the same mighty Dawson. Lloyd Kavanagh’s stock had drunk from the very same water she’d fished and boated on earlier in the year.
They watered the cattle before driving them to the half-completed stockyards on higher ground. In the morning they would be cross-branded with Kavanagh’s brand before finally being turned out to graze.
The living quarters stood about half a mile downstream, on a slight rise above the river. Louise wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but not this crude hut, its walls hand-hewn ironbark slabs, the roof sheets of stringy-bark. Two similar, smaller buildings, the meathouse and the harness room, stood nearby, shaded by a big gum tree.
After they had turned their horses into the paddock for a well-earned rest, Kavanagh escorted Louise into his home. The first room was fairly large, serving as a kitchen, dining and living area, with an open fireplace for cooking and a beaten ant bed floor. Basic furniture consisted of a slab table, a couple of kerosene cases in place of chairs, a shabby dresser containing a few pieces of cracked and chipped crockery and more comfortable-looking chair with a handmade wooden frame and hessian seat.
Kavanagh looked awkward for the first time since she’d met him. ‘It’s not much,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s a roof over me head and it’ll do until I’m in a position to build something better.’
He strode across the room and held aside another strip of hessian curtaining a doorway. ‘This is the bedroom. You can sleep in here tonight–Cec and I will throw our swags in the other room.’
Louise joined him at the doorway and peered in. This was a much smaller room, again furnished with kerosene cases, an old battered chest of drawers and a stretcher bed built of saplings and hessian.
Louise pressed past Kavanagh and went to feel the mattress. It was horsehair and prickly to the touch, yet looked gloriously inviting after sleeping so many nights on the hard ground. Kavanagh followed her and dragged the blankets from the bed, tossing them into the furthest corner of the room. He took two clean ones from the chest of drawers and laid them neatly on the mattress.
‘The others were due for a wash.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘No sheets. Will this be comfortable enough?’
‘Thank you, it has to be better than sleeping on the ground. I don’t believe I shall ever become accustomed to it.’
‘I daresay you won’t have to. Unless you plan to take up droving for a living.’
She caught his eye and found herself returning his infectious grin. ‘I hardly think so. Though now that it’s over, I can appreciate the experience.’
‘Not many ladies would say that. Not proper ladies like you. Me Irish grandmother would have been used to worse.’
‘Certainly, I won’t compare it to prison.’ She noticed a scrap of mirror wedged in a crack in the wall and walked over to check her reflection, wincing at the grubby, wild-haired baggage who stared back at her. There was a small red lump on her cheek where the wasp had bitten her. ‘I suppose if your Kavanagh grandparents were “rough and ready”, as you phrased it, that must be an inevitable result of living under such terrible conditions.’
‘Perhaps. You must be thinking I’m in no position to criticize, seeing the way I live.’
‘I’m not here to make judgments, Mr Kavanagh. I’m too much in your debt for that.’ She swung away from the mirror, deciding her appearance would have to wait. ‘I’m sure I’ve left myself open to harsh judgments, which I hope you haven’t made about me.’
His colour rose, reminding her of some of their earlier conversations. ‘The truth to tell is, I don’t know what to make of you.’
She moved to the door, wishing she hadn’t started this discussion. ‘Let’s leave it that way, shall we?’
~*~
Everything was relative, Louise realised. Once she would have found Lloyd Kavanagh’s living conditions impossibly primitive. But they were vastly better than a bush camp. Even the lavatory out the back was an improvement in comfort and privacy to squatting behind a tree, and his thoughtfulness as a host couldn’t be faulted. Without being asked, he heated water over the fireplace and made a bath for her in a round iron tub in the bedroom. He provided her with a roug
h, clean towel and homemade soap and left her to wash.
As she undressed, Louise was uncomfortably aware that only a thin sheet of hessian protected her privacy. She’d grown to trust Kavanagh, but being alone with two males in this unusual situation made her feel exposed. Uneasily she wondered if they were thinking of her in here, mentally picturing her as she removed her clothes.
The homemade soap was slow to lather, but after several days without, any sort of bath was a luxury. When at last she was clean again, she dressed in one of the print dresses from her valise and combed the knots from her wet hair. She surveyed her reflection in the mirror, noting how brown her face was. Her lady-like white skin was a thing of the past.
She felt herself blushing as she re-entered the other room. Divine was nowhere to be seen but Kavanagh looked up at her quickly from the fireplace, his eyes seeming to take all of her in, from her demure dress to her tidy hair. Her colour intensified and she joined him to peek into the simmering pot, trying to hide her embarrassment.
He had salt beef, jacket potatoes and onions boiling in a large camp-oven, while a second camp-oven presumably held a damper. A blackened kettle full of water stood ready to hang over the fire for brewing tea.
His approving smile sent a surge of warmth through her body. ‘Do you mind watching this while I clean up?’
Twenty minutes later he reappeared from the bedroom in clean, respectable clothes and with the four days’ stubble shaved from his face. The fresh, wholesome smell of soap replaced the odour of horses, dust and sweat. He looked better than she’d thought possible. She swallowed and dragged her gaze away, knowing he was aware of her scrutiny just as surely as she’d been aware of his a short time before.
Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how good-looking he was. She tried to picture him in the cutaway coat, waistcoat, bow-tie and fashionable narrow trousers that Charles appeared so distinguished in, knowing he wouldn’t possess such garments and probably wouldn’t be comfortable in them. Yet there was something in his personality that intrigued her more than clothes or good looks ever could–something vibrant and quirkily humorous, even the touch of impudence that had infuriated her at first. As if to illustrate her thoughts, he threw a teasing grin at Divine, who had just come through the door.
‘How about it, Cec? Are you going to use the tub?’
The lad, perching himself on a kerosene case in the furthest corner of the room, shook his head vigorously. ‘Aw, no, I’ll be right. It’s getting a bit cool for it, I reckon.’
Kavanagh winked at Louise but merely said, ‘Suit yourself,’ before carrying the tub outside and depositing the water on the ground. Louise hid her smile. Judging from Divine’s grubby appearance he must belong to the school who considered an all-over wash once a month quite sufficient. But at least he’d rinsed his face and hands and combed his hair. Such details hadn’t concerned her in the bush, but it was surprising how quickly her old fastidiousness had returned now that she was once again sitting to a table to eat her meal.
Divine was more withdrawn than ever within four walls, leaving her and Kavanagh to dominate the conversation. Louise floated on a wave of exhilaration, the words bubbling out of her. She laughed at very little, aware of little else but the man sitting opposite her. If only this interlude didn’t have to end. If only she didn’t have to face going to a houseful of strangers, to be very likely treated with the disdain most families showed their governesses.
Kavanagh was the first to mention her immediate future, bringing that tiny corner of dread to life. ‘I’m sorry I won’t have time to take you to New Haven tomorrow, Miss Forrest. Cec and I will be most of the day branding these cattle. Are you in much of a hurry?’
No, I’m not in a hurry, she thought. But she didn’t say it aloud.
‘What is today? Friday, isn’t it? The Greenwoods are supposed to be meeting me next Friday, on the coach. So there is certainly no urgency. However I don’t wish to impose on your hospitality any longer. If you give me directions, I could make my own way.’
‘No need to do that. I’ll take you Sunday morning, if you can think of a good reason for turning up a few days early.’
‘I shall think of something.’
He laughed drily. ‘I bet you will. You’ve certainly spun me enough yarns–I just hope you convince them better than you convinced me.’ He turned to the lad. ‘Cec, I hope you’ve got a short memory, because you’re going to have to forget that Miss Forrest was ever with us. Hear?’
The lad looked startled at Kavanagh’s emphatic tone. He nodded his head vigorously. ‘I won’t say nuthing to nobody. I’m no gabster.’
They both had to laugh at that. ‘No, Cecil,’ said Louise. ‘That is one thing it would be difficult to accuse you of.’
Chapter Six
Louise was too exhausted to notice the dubious comforts of Lloyd Kavanagh’s makeshift bed. Recent habit had her waking early, but when she entered the main room of the little shack only Cecil was present to greet her good morning.
‘Lloyd’s gone over to the neighbours,’ he informed her diffidently. ‘Said he’d be back for breakfast, though.’
Since Divine seemed to have the preparations for the meal well in hand, Louise decided to relieve him of her unwelcome presence and went outside.
She wandered a little way down the track that led to the river, pausing where another road branched off and headed downstream. Noticing fresh horse tracks turning that way, she guessed that this must be the direction Kavanagh had ridden. She perched on a fallen log and gazed towards the river, enjoying the pleasant warmth of the early-morning sun on her bare head. She lapsed into a peaceful daydream, more pressing worries for the moment forgotten.
The sound of a horse roused her and she turned to see Kavanagh approaching. He was accompanied by two big yellow kangaroo dogs who gambolled ahead at the sight of her, alarming her with their raised hackles and stiff, faintly wagging tails until a word from their master brought them to heel.
‘Good morning.’ He reined in beside her. ‘Don’t worry, the dogs aren’t savage.’
‘Cecil said you went over to the neighbours.’
‘Yeah. They were looking after the dogs.’ He dismounted as he spoke. ‘Come on, I’ll walk back to the house with you. That young feller should have breakfast ready by now.’
His dogs crowded about him the moment he stepped off his horse, whining excitedly and vying for his attention. He rubbed their heads with rough affection and then pushed them away. ‘Down, Soda. That’s enough, Buster. Thought I was never coming home, didn’t you?’ He grinned at Louise. ‘They’re just trying to make out they missed me.’
As with Dynamite, the horse, his fondness for the two animals was obvious. Louise imagined him living alone here, month after weary month, with only these four-legged brutes for company. The mental picture of him playing and romping with Soda and Buster touched her, making him seem young and vulnerable.
They walked together towards the homestead, their boots scuffing up small clouds of grey dust from the track. ‘Do you see much of the Jamiesons?’
He nodded. ‘They’ve been very good to me. Mrs Jamieson often has me over for a meal, just to make sure I don’t starve myself. And they always keep an eye on things for me if I’m away. Jock Jamieson and his boys give me a hand with the mustering and I return the favour. It suits us both.’
‘You’re lucky to have good neighbours.’
‘Yeah.’ He slapped at one of the dogs playfully. ‘They’re a sight better than most.’
~*~
Lloyd and Divine were busy for the remainder of the day, cross-branding the cattle in the crush with his LK brand, finally letting them out of the yard and holding them on the river flat until they had settled down to graze. Miss Forrest had asked about washing her clothes, so he’d shown her the wooden washboard he used along with the iron bathtub. When he returned to the house for dinner he wasn’t surprised to see her riding habit hanging from the clothesline, a wire strung between two
trees. He averted his gaze from the white undergarments next to the habit and then looked back again. Two pairs of his moleskins hung beside them, along with a couple of his shirts. Luckily he didn’t usually wear underwear, or they’d probably be hanging there as well.
He had to say something to her when he went inside. ‘Thank you, but you shouldn’t have done me washing, Miss Forrest. It’s not right–a lady like you.’
She looked down at her hands, reddened about the knuckles from all the scrubbing she’d done. ‘I’ll admit I hadn’t washed clothes before today. But I wasn’t a drover until a week ago, either.’
‘She’s sweet on you,’ Divine mumbled crossly to him later. ‘She never did my washing.’
‘No, and do you blame her? By the time you’ve worn the same set of clothes for a fortnight they’re that stinking and stiff with dirt they’re only fit for the fire!’
Cecil didn’t flinch. ‘She’d make a terrible wife. She can’t cook and she was too la-di-da to help with breakfast this morning.’
Lloyd stared at him in surprise. ‘Who’s talking about marriage?’ He cheerfully cuffed the boy under the ear. ‘Now cut out the cheek, Divine!’
~*~
On Sunday morning Louise was still wrestling with her problem. It was one thing to arrive in Banana on the appointed day on the mail coach, accompanied by numerous articles of luggage. To turn up unheralded at the Greenwoods’ doorstep almost a week early, on horseback and in the sole escort of a young man who wasn’t her relative, with nothing more than a valise and a couple of changes of clothing to her name, was quite another. It was going to involve careful explanation and so far her ingenuity had failed her.
Cecil Divine had left straight after breakfast to return to his home in Banana, so it was a relief not to have to worry about listening ears. She rehearsed several stories for Kavanagh’s benefit as they rode down the rough bush track that led to the town. He merely laughed and contradicted her, shaking his head when she asked him for suggestions.
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