Louise didn’t realize that the horse-buyer was based in Banana until Mary made a chance remark on the day of his visit. Even then his name, Ted Weatherby, wasn’t familiar to her. She was relieved, for she preferred not to meet anyone who had known her as Lucy Forrest.
She was dusting Mary’s best china on the sideboard when the buyer rode in shortly after lunch. She was vaguely aware of male voices outside, of James mounting a horse and riding off with the buyer to the stockyards.
The entire afternoon must have been spent in haggling, for it was late when James returned. Mary told Louise that Weatherby was camping overnight by the river and had been invited to stay for dinner.
‘It will be nice to have company,’ she said cheerfully. ‘We so seldom have visitors that even a horse-dealer makes a pleasant change. James said he had a young chap with him, too.’
The two men walked up to the house at dusk. They stood talking to James and his sons on the front veranda while Louise helped Mary put the finishing touches to the table. Then James appeared in the doorway of the dining room with a portly, florid-faced man who greeted Mary jovially and was then introduced to Louise. For a moment Weatherby took her full attention, but it was the name James next uttered that made everything spin out of control.
‘And I would like you to meet Mr Kavanagh, Mary. This is my wife, Kavanagh. And this is my young cousin, Miss Ashford.’
Louise’s gaze flew past Weatherby to the tall, young man who now stood in the doorway beside James. The blood drained from her face and her mouth fell open in a soundless ‘Oh’. He was obviously as startled as she, standing rigid with shock. She swallowed and put her hand to her throat, the words of greeting she’d been about to utter frozen to silence. Mary was looking from one to the other of them and Louise pulled herself together enough to murmur, ‘How do you do, Mr Kavanagh.’
She stepped hastily aside and James and Weatherby, laughing together over some joke, entered the dining room. The younger visitor followed slowly and, in a daze, Louise heard Mary asking him if he lived in Banana too. His answer was lost in the roaring sound that seemed to have filled her ears. Jack made up the rear and Mary directed everyone to their places.
Louise couldn’t remember experiencing anything as ghastly as that meal. She thought she might faint, but all the while she was forced to make polite conversation, responding when spoken to, keeping the muscles of her face in place when they threatened to crumple with the strain.
And Lloyd... oh God, this was Lloyd Kavanagh sitting across the table from her, like a stranger. She kept stealing furtive glances at him over the food she could not eat. He seemed not to look at her at all but ate doggedly, saying little. But as he raised his fork to his mouth she noticed how his hand trembled.
He was hardly changed at all, at least not in ways that were visible. Perhaps his mouth was set a little harder and she’d seldom seen him look so unhappy, but he was only subtly older. He would be twenty-five now, almost twenty-six and he was just as brown and slim as she remembered.
This man that she’d loved too well. After all those months of longing to see his face again, she had to sit opposite him and pretend he was a stranger. Her heart threatened to thump its way out of her ribs and her throat was so heavy, she could scarcely breathe. And she could see it was hurting him just as much.
Oh, for a moment alone with him. It was impossible now to let the matter rest as she’d resolved to do. Perhaps he was already married to someone else, but she couldn’t let him walk out of her life without finding out.
The meal seemed interminable. It was obvious Lloyd was longing to be elsewhere. She wasn’t surprised when he excused himself as soon as he decently could, leaving Weatherby, who seemed in no hurry to leave, to accept James’s invitation to stay and enjoy a glass of port.
Louise was in turmoil. Every instinct, every shred of upbringing rebelled against following Lloyd out there in the dark, but this wasn’t the moment for discretion. If she didn’t seize her opportunity now she might not be granted another and the prospect of watching him leave in the morning without having exchanged a single meaningful word with him was intolerable. Waiting until Mary signalled her to retire from the table, she excused herself, lit a kerosene lantern and slipped outside by way of the kitchen.
Lloyd had disappeared and would doubtless be already at his campsite. She knew he and Weatherby were staying by the river so she hurried down there, the flickering lantern lighting her way through the long grass.
He had stoked up their fire and was sitting on a log staring into the flames, his face lit into angles of misery. He didn’t look up at first, obviously expecting Weatherby. Louise paused, heart thudding, and murmured his name.
Lloyd leapt to his feet and stood looking at her with his back to the fire and his face now in darkness. She couldn’t read his expression, but when he spoke his response was painfully clear.
‘Jesus, what are you doing here?’
She flinched at the harsh, derisive note in his voice. ‘I want to talk to you–please, Lloyd!’
‘Well, I’ve got nothing to say to you. And if it’s a roll in me swag you were thinking of, I’ll say no to that too.’ He was hateful, jeering—a hostile stranger. ‘Isn’t Jack Barclay man enough for you? He couldn’t keep his eyes off you tonight.’
Louise stood transfixed, hardly grasping the full horror of his words.
‘Well?’ he sneered, after a moment’s silence. ‘It’s not like you to be stuck for words, Miss Ashford!’
It was the loathing with which he spoke her name that struck through her disbelief. What had she done to make him hate her so much? She’d followed him in the dark like a shameless trollop but surely that didn’t warrant these insults.
Suddenly the full impact of everything she’d lost burst upon her. Her child, the respect and acceptance of her parents–a poor substitute for the love she’d always craved from them, but better at least than nothing–the affection of Richard Langley. Throughout it all the memory of Lloyd’s love had helped to sustain her and in the space of a few words he’d shattered that.
There was nothing left.
She uttered a choked sob, turning from him and running into the night. She stumbled over a clump of grass and nearly fell, weeping bitterly. Slowing to a walk she kept on, her breath coming in choking gasps. She was heedless of the danger of snakes in the dark, unsure of her destination but unable to return to the house to face her cousins’ stares and probable censure. Angling towards the river, she eventually stopped beside a low bush. The ground beneath it was worn bare by sleeping kangaroos, but she hardly noticed the musty odour. She dropped under the bush, sitting with her knees drawn up and her face pressed into them, her whole body racked with great, gulping sobs.
~*~
Lloyd looked after her helplessly, immediately regretting his crudity. Her forgotten lantern fluttered forlornly next to a pile of saddles and swags. He could hear her crying as she ran and in his guilt it hardly seemed right to let her go. Yet every instinct told him that he must. Whatever mess she was in now was probably of her own making. He couldn’t let her destroy him again.
He was still sitting there beside the fire when Weatherby joined him an hour later. ‘You left early, Kavanagh. You weren’t very sociable tonight.’
Lloyd didn’t reply and he added in a different, curious tone, ‘Did you see Miss Ashford? They were looking for her when I left. Apparently she left the house not long after you did and she hasn’t come back.’
Lloyd looked at him quickly. ‘Are they worried about her?’
‘Yeah, they are a bit. I don’t think they’re sending a search party just yet, but they asked me to keep an eye out for her.’ He paused and surveyed his companion. ‘I think they were afraid I might find her down here with you. Mrs Barclay seemed to get the impression you’d met before.’
Lloyd flushed and shifted restlessly. He didn’t want to talk about Louise, but guilt gnawed at him. He couldn’t just ignore the situation. If she was stil
l out there somewhere he owed it to them all to search for her, since it was him she’d run from.
‘I know which way she went. I’ll go and look for her.’ He took the lantern she’d left behind and quickly departed before Weatherby could ask any questions.
It was the sound of her weeping that eventually led him to her. Crouching beside her he set the lantern on the ground, looking at her impotently as she hunched under that scrubby bush. In her grief she seemed oblivious to his presence. Nothing in his previous knowledge of Louise had prepared him for this. He was shocked and dumbfounded, his guts curled into a hard painful ball. He’d spent the last two years hating her and now her crying was shredding him into pieces.
‘Louise, stop it!’ He gave her a little shake. ‘What’s happened to you?’
Her body jerked and she shrank away from his touch without lifting her head. ‘Just leave me alone.’ Her voice was a broken whisper. ‘I never dreamed you would hate me so much.’
‘I’m sorry, Louise. I shouldn’t have spoken like that. Let me take you back to the house.’
She shrugged his hand off her arm. ‘No. I can’t face them now.’
‘You have to, Louise. You can’t stay out here all night. They’re worried about you.’
She shook her head and blew her nose. She seemed to gather herself a bit, but still she didn’t look at him. ‘I’m sorry for that, because I caused them enough trouble before. God, what am I going to do?’
The despair in her voice was more disturbing even than her tears. ‘Louise, I’m sorry for what I said–it was crude and uncouth. But surely I don’t matter to you? When your brother came you left me without a second thought.’
‘How can you say that?’ She turned to stare at him, the note of incredulity in her voice making him pause. Ashford had made him believe she hadn’t cared, but he supposed that was the bastard’s intention.
‘Louise, I think we have some talking to do, but we can’t do it now, out here, while your relations are out looking for you. I’ll take you back to the house and in the morning I’ll come and see you.’
Sensing her capitulation, he helped her to her feet and brushed off her dress. She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and pushed back her dishevelled hair.
‘Oh God, what a sight I must look! They’ll all think I’ve run mad.’
Certainly she presented a dejected figure in the lantern light. Just a short while before she’d sat across the table from him in her evening gown, looking elegant and untouchable despite the revealing nature of that same gown. It was a garment no Banana woman would dare to wear unless she was a barmaid or a whore. He supposed it must be acceptable dress for the fashionable English gentry, but when the decent women he knew wore necklines buttoned to their throat and long sleeves to their wrists, it was a shock to see her bare shoulders and arms. Even now, as she bent to dislodge a stone from her shoe, he could see the shadowy swell of her breasts revealed by the low neckline and he dragged his eyes away. It was disconcerting to find that even in her disordered state, she had the power to stir him still.
He slowly walked her back, bypassing Weatherby at the camp. It would be soon enough to answer questions there when he returned. For now the situation with the Barclays was going to test his inventiveness.
There was silence between them until Louise broke it, her voice and manner more composed now. ‘So James and the boys have been out searching for me?’
‘They just took a look around the house and outbuildings, I think. Weatherby told me they were worried about you.’
She bit her lip, looking mortified. ‘I seem to make a habit of this. I ran away from here two-and-a-half years ago, you know, when I was trying to escape from Charles. They searched high and low for me then and it was only the purest luck that Charles didn’t uncover my tracks at Bauhinia Downs.’ She turned her face away. ‘If only he had found me then.’
Lloyd flinched at her bitter tone. ‘Looks like we’re both sadder and wiser. I must’ve got the wrong impression, but I thought when Ashford took you off to better things you’d have put all this behind you. What’s been happening to you, Louise? I’ve never seen you cry like that before.’ His voice caught as he remembered the only other time he’d heard her cry, that bittersweet night when he’d made her his. And yet she’d never been really his, as it turned out.
She cast him a sideways, resentful glance. ‘Oh, if only you knew.’
There was no chance to say more, for James had seen their approach and was hurrying to meet them, carrying his own lantern.
‘Louise, thank God you’re all right! Where have you been?’ He glanced at her companion, his tone anxious and more than a little shocked. ‘Was she with you all the time, Kavanagh?’
‘No sir, she wasn’t. I just found her down by the river. But can you leave the questions until the morning, Mr Barclay? She’s very upset.’
James looked at Louise searchingly in the lantern light. ‘What happened to upset you, Louise? I was unaware you and Kavanagh were acquainted.’ He paused, glancing from one to the other, his voice growing heavy with irony. ‘I’m beginning to suspect there is a lot more to this than meets the eye.’
‘Please, Cousin James.’ Louise’s embarrassment and contrition were there in her voice. ‘I’m sorry to have made such a stupid display of myself. It’s an unhappy story, but I’ll try to explain in the morning.’
‘Mr Barclay, will you let me call on Louise–Miss Ashford–tomorrow? As you’ve guessed, we aren’t strangers, far from it. It looks like we’ve got some sorting out to do.’
James stared at him dubiously. ‘I’m not so sure...unless Louise wishes it.’
She gave Lloyd a wavering glance. For a moment he thought she would refuse him, but then she said, ‘I do wish it.’
‘In that case,’ James responded ironically, ‘there’s no more to be said. I’ll bid you goodnight, Kavanagh and thank you for finding her. Let us hope we can resolve this situation in the morning.’
~*~
Weatherby was sitting before the fire, drinking from an enamel pannikin when Lloyd returned to their camp. He held up a flask with an inquiring look. ‘Would you like a drop? You probably need it.’
Lloyd duly splashed a quantity of rum into his own pannikin and added water before sitting on the other side of the fire.
Weatherby regarded him curiously. ‘You having petticoat trouble?’
‘You could say that.’
‘Where’d you meet a girl like that?’
‘It was before you came up here. I haven’t seen her for two years. She was governessing for the Jamiesons for a while.’
Weatherby’s eyes widened. ‘I think I heard something about her. She sure don’t look like a governess. To be frank, she don’t look like your type, either.’ And then, when no more information was forthcoming, he added, ‘What happened?’
‘Her brother took her away. As far as I know she went to England.’ Lloyd spoke shortly, hoping to dissuade Weatherby from further interrogation. The firelight flickered over his companion’s questioning features and Lloyd abruptly changed the subject. ‘Do you mind waiting for me in the morning, Weatherby? We’ve got to thrash this out.’
He guessed Weatherby had hoped to get away early, but the horse buyer merely commented in a bantering tone, ‘Hell, I never thought I’d be getting mixed up in your affairs of the heart when I brought you along. I’ll think twice next time.’ He grinned. ‘But we can’t let it be said I stood in the way of true love.’
Lloyd smiled without humour. ‘It’s over. But I suppose I owe it to her to hear her side of the story.’
The other man sobered. ‘There were rumours flying around when I first came to Banana. How you’d been unlucky in love and gone on the spree to forget her.’
‘And you thought, “That’ll be a Kavanagh,” I’ll bet.’ Lloyd stared at the flames, remembering that futile time and the stupid way he’d set the town talking with his drinking and shacking up with Eva. It was amazing that Eva had taken him
back after the way he’d dumped her the first time.
It still hurt to remember how he’d drunk to stop thinking of Louise and his dread of going home again. And when at last he did go home, the cool reception he’d got when he finally plucked up the courage to visit the Jamiesons.
Not that Jock had ever entirely deserted him, good old Jock–and when tragedy struck the Jamiesons again it had shocked Lloyd out of his self-pity. Jock had needed him then. He had got himself back on track and even eventually found himself planning for the future.
But here was Louise threatening to destroy his hard-won peace of mind once more. If he had any sense he’d leave in the morning without even seeing her.
Chapter Twenty-two
Breakfast at the Barclay house was an awkward affair, with Jack looking hurt, bewildered and disapproving, while James was grimly silent. Louise had filled Mary in with the basic details of her relationship with Lloyd, but had yet to speak to James.
They hadn’t finished eating when Louise heard Lloyd call from the front step. She pushed her plate of steak and eggs aside, her appetite gone. James went to the veranda to greet him and her throat constricted as she listened to Lloyd’s broad Colonial accent. It was one of the many things she’d missed while in England.
‘Sorry to bother you so early. Weatherby wants to get away as soon as he can. If you’d let me speak to Miss Ashford in private, I’d appreciate it.’
‘Certainly. I’ll call her.’
Louise nervously joined them on the veranda. Her heart flipped at the sight of him, standing there with his hat in his hand, looking so dearly familiar in his moleskins and Crimean shirt. During all those months in England his image had become blurred, without substance, and the flesh and blood reality evoked an emotional response that was disturbing in its intensity. Something inside her began to ache and she knew if he left her today she would have to begin the slow road to acceptance all over again.
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