by Margaret Way
Carrie drew in a raw ragged breath. “You mean you’re hiring me?”
“What does that bloody woman say to you?” he asked, his scrutiny intense.
For a moment she felt drained of all strength. “I’m not her child, her daughter. I desperately need to get away.”
“So she won’t damage you further.”
“You can’t know,” she protested. “Glenda isn’t all that bad.”
“Isn’t she? James filled me in. Besides, I’ve had a pretty event-packed life. I know a lot more than you, Miss Twenty-Two.”
“A great deal more,” Carrie said. “I’m sorry I’m being rude. You must bring out that side of me.”
“I expect being mad at the world has helped a lot.” He studied her with a mixture of mockery and sympathy.
“It’s not easy to come to terms with the shattering of one’s dreams.”
“My feelings exactly,” he replied with quiet irony. “You can tell me all about it over dinner.” He bent suddenly and, while she felt a rush of pure panic, kissed her cheek.
“What did you do that for?” She tried but couldn’t find more than a shadow of her voice.
“What do you think, Catrina? For the benefit of step-mamma. She hasn’t moved away from the curtains.”
“She’ll tell Dad!”
“I don’t care who she tells. Do you? Besides a peck on the cheek doesn’t mean I’m about to steal Jeff Russell’s little girl.”
“Then who exactly are you supposed to be?” she asked with difficulty.
He gave a brief amused laugh. “I know it’s a dreadful role but at the moment I’m your knight in shining armour. Don’t worry, Catrina. We’ll decide on a story tonight. Now I simply must go.” Briskly he moved around to the driver’s seat of the parked Jaguar. “By the way…” A moment’s hesitation before he got behind the wheel. “Do you have a yellow dress in your wardrobe?”
She was astonished by the turns in the conversation. Astonished at his being there at all. “You like yellow?”
“I think it would be perfect for you, Catrina,” he said as though he knew she needed cheering up. “I want you to dress up. We’ll go to Vivaldi’s. I’m in the mood for something grand.”
It was the perfect way for a knight to exit, Carrie thought.
When she returned to the house, Glenda and Melissa were very nearly dancing on the marble floor of the entrance hall in their excitement and need to know.
“What have you got to say for yourself?” Glenda challenged her. “You are a dark horse.” She laughed with a shadow of bitter envy. “So secretive. Were you frightened your father was going to forbid you to see him? Is he married? He must be married. There isn’t a woman alive who’d make the mistake of letting him get away.”
“Come on, Carrie,” Melissa urged when her stepsister remained silent. “At least you can tell us now?”
When she was on the verge of being thrown out. “Why exactly, Melissa?” Carrie asked. “It’s not your business really. Now more than ever. Wasn’t it decided I move out only minutes before…Royce arrived?” She barely tripped over his Christian name.
“Is it possible you’re thinking of moving in with him?” Glenda abruptly questioned, her eyes narrowing to mere slits.
“Why would that upset you, Glenda?” Carrie said it as though it were of no consequence.
“You know I have to tell your father.”
Angered but trying to hold on to herself, Carrie made a move toward the stairs. “Glenda you have no authority over me,” she said quietly. “I’m twenty-two years of age. I love my father but it’s high time I stood on my own two feet. Royce McQuillan is a friend. He comes from a highly respected family with a fine pioneering name. He was married, as it happens. He has one child, a little girl in his custody.”
“You mean he’s divorced?” Glenda gasped, her skin flushing a dark red.
Carrie hesitated, one hand on the banister. “Unhappily many marriages lead to divorce, Glenda. The happily ever after we’ll have to leave to you and Dad.”
“Are you in love with him, Carrie?” Melissa called, her hazel eyes round with excitement. “You must be. He’s gorgeous.”
“No, I’m not in love with him, Mel.” Carrie paused on the first landing, wondering what they would say if they knew she and Royce McQuillan had only just met.
“Don’t think you can escape your father’s questioning,” Glenda cried in a threatening tone. “He looked a dangerous man to me. Striking, rich, years older than you. Light-years in experience, all that suave charm. Without doubt you’re having an affair. A secret affair it now seems.”
“The one thing you won’t be able to interfere in, Glenda,” Carrie called down lightly.
“Your father will be shocked when he discovers it.” Glenda moved to the base of the staircase, looking up.
“Well, maybe he will be, but Dad trusts me to look after myself, to do the right thing.”
“And to think the way you’ve taken us in!” Glenda was the very picture of betrayal. “Pretending your life was ruined and all the time you had a man like Royce McQuillan tucked away. McQuillan…. McQuillan…surely I know the name?” Glenda shook her head vigorously as if to clear it. “It will come to me,” she muttered.
“Gosh, I think it’s wonderful!” Melissa exclaimed, totally ignoring her mother and her sentiments. “You lucky thing, Carrie, you’ve found your dream man.”
At least one who might take me out of my misery.
She had the choice of two dresses, both slip dresses, very much in fashion. One white chiffon with yellow stripes and yellow daisy appliqué. The other, which she finally settled on, golden-yellow chiffon with a rather exquisite floral print; gold high-heeled evening sandals on her feet. Her father’s twenty-first birthday present, which had been made to order, went perfectly with it. A large topaz pendant set in 18 kt gold hung from a beautiful gold chain with topaz gold earrings to match.
She was applying a dab of perfume to the insides of her wrists when Melissa came through the bedroom door without knocking, a large book under her arm.
“Mum finally cracked it,” she chortled, opening up the coffee-table-sized book at a marked page. “‘Kings of the Cattle Country,’” she read. “Your boyfriend’s grandad is in it. The book’s a bit old but it’s all about the cattle empires and today’s cattle kings. Here he is, Sir Andrew McQuillan, the master of Maramba Downs. A pretty glamorous figure, don’t you think? You can easily see the resemblance. There’s a picture of the homestead, too. It looks out on a lagoon. It looks fabulous. Huge! And there’s a photo of a lot of cattle standing in a kind of billabong with the Great Dividing Range or spurs of it in the background. Tropical North Queensland. Don’t you want to look?”
Carrie pretended to be unimpressed. “I know all about it,” she said casually. Lord forgive me for the white lie. Nevertheless she couldn’t resist moving behind the shorter Melissa to glance over her shoulder, catching an aerial view of the station and its numerous outbuildings and a large herd of Brahmins penned in a holding yard.
“I’m just staggered you never told us, Carrie,” Melissa said, her voice light with disbelief.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Carrie answered mildly. “I don’t even know Royce particularly well.”
“He kissed you,” Melissa pointed out, making it sound like a passionate embrace.
“On the cheek. A friendly farewell.”
Melissa, looking unconvinced, returned to the book. “‘The McQuillan operation encompasses a chain of strategically placed stations to safeguard against drought stretching from the Channel Country in the far southwest right to the Northern Territory border,’” she read. “Here, I can’t hold this, it’s too heavy.” She set the book down hard on the long chest at the foot of Carrie’s bed. “You look beautiful,” she suddenly said at a rush, a trace of real caring in her eyes. “I bet he thinks so, too.”
“Thanks, Mel.” Carrie gave her stepsister a poignant little smile, wondering how Glenda co
uld have spread such devastation. “I want to say I’m sorry you think I robbed you of Dad’s attention. I never wanted that.”
There was a long wait for a response. “On my good days I realise that,” Mel said with a kind of embarrassment. “The trouble is, always was, you’re far more everything than I am. It’s not easy being outshone. I guess that’s why Mum and I are always attacking you. I’m sorry for that, Carrie. If you’d have been ordinary like me we’d have gotten along fine.”
“But aren’t you going to be a cordon bleu?” Carrie asked in a challenging voice, catching up her gold evening purse. “What’s ordinary about that?”
“I hope Dad lets me.”
This could be their last conversation for a while, Carrie thought. “My advice, Mel,” she said earnestly, “is don’t let him stop you. You’ve got to make a life for yourself.”
“Well, we’ll see.” Melissa blushed. “Enjoy yourself, Carrie. Deep down I think I really love you.”
CHAPTER THREE
ROYCE MCQUILLAN arrived on the dot of seven, spiriting her away with such practiced charm Glenda was left with very little to say.
“I don’t think I could have liked a dress more if I’d picked it out myself,” he complimented Catrina as they walked to the car. “No trace of tears, either,” he added, experiencing a powerful urge to see this young woman out of the house. The “atmosphere” could have been cut with a knife.
“You’re just too observant,” Carrie managed wryly, so overwhelmed by his sudden appearance in her life she was floating.
“Very much so,” he said briefly, not adding because it would panic her she had aroused in him a potentially dangerous sexual response. He couldn’t dress it up as anything else. Now he had more or less committed himself to taking her under his roof. This beautiful young woman wasn’t in the least what he wanted as a governess for Regina. She had problems of her own to cope with, most notably coming to terms with the destruction of a promising career. That presented quite a trauma in itself. He had to be mad. Yet her light fragrance filled the interior of the car with such images of spring blossom and sweet breezes. “Your stepmother seems most insistent I meet your father,” he remarked when they were underway, driving down the street with its splendid old colonial homes set in leafy gardens and river frontages.
Carrie glanced out the window, into the star-filled indigo night. “Please don’t be angry, or worse, laugh, but she’s under the impression you and I are having a secret affair. Nothing I could possibly say would affect her thinking. Glenda believes what she wants to believe.”
“That was fairly obvious. So what did you tell her?”
“Only that you were a friend. That you were divorced and you have a little girl aged six.”
“Nothing about coming back with me to Maramba?”
She was shocked by the effect of his words on her. “I wasn’t totally sure you wanted me,” she confessed.
“I would have hoped for someone quite different.”
She turned her amber head, the long full pageboy swinging to her bare shoulders. “What have you got against me? My education hasn’t been neglected. I was an excellent student. Teaching a six-year-old her lessons couldn’t be difficult.”
He glanced at her. “Catrina, I’m not referring to that aspect of it. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. You’re over qualified and you’re lovely, not the sort of young woman who can escape into the background.”
“Of course I am,” Catrina contradicted, a soft flush rising to her face. “I’ve had to be very self-effacing at home. My stepmother and I have had a very difficult relationship. It’s useless to hide the fact her attitude poisoned my relationship with my sister. She set us up as competitors and it wasn’t fair to either of us. If you want me to disappear into the furniture I’ll do it.”
“Okay.” He laughed. “You really want this job?”
“At the moment I desperately need it,” she admitted frankly. “Before you arrived this afternoon, Glenda and I had a few words. She wants me out.”
“Does she!” His voice deepened with evident disapproval. “What does your sister have to say about that?”
“Mel does what she’s told. She’s only nineteen. She doesn’t have a job yet.”
“I understood from James you’re very much the apple of your father’s eye.” He eased into the freeway traffic, a scintillating ribbon of light.
“I suppose you could say that’s been a lot of the trouble. I don’t make mischief. Dad misses a lot that goes on. He’s a very busy man and Glenda is always very careful when he’s around.”
“How will he take your coming with me?” he asked bluntly, turning to look at her as they stopped at the red light.
“Badly, I would think.”
“You’re twenty-two. You can’t be Daddy’s little girl forever. I’ll speak to him, naturally.”
“You will?”
“Of course.” His mouth compressed at her surprised tone. “I wouldn’t want my daughter haring off to the wilds with a complete stranger. Moreover a divorced man. It might help for you to know—you’re so traumatised you haven’t asked—I have a fairly full household so you’ll be well chaperoned. There’s my grandmother, Louise. My father’s mother. She’s into her eighties now and a remarkable woman. Then there’s my uncle Cam, my father’s younger brother, and his second wife, Lindsey. His first wife was killed in a riding accident on the station. A great tragedy. I was only a boy when it happened but I clearly remember how warm and attractive she was. She and my mother were very close. In fact she was my mother’s bridesmaid. Cam remarried only two years ago. A whirlwind affair. Lyn swept him off his feet. And of course there’s Regina.”
“Your uncle’s wife can’t help with her lessons?” Carrie asked.
“Children aren’t Lyn’s scene,” he answered briefly.
“Oh! How depressing for Regina.”
“We’ve had two governesses already.”
“I hope they were suitably plain?” she couldn’t resist asking, but absolutely sweetly.
“To tell you the truth I didn’t notice. One was better than the other but unfortunately neither could handle the job. Regina didn’t make things easy. She can be a little terror.”
“I’d like to meet her.” Carrie laughed.
“You should do that more often,” he commented.
“What?” He had such an expressive voice; her musical ear was vastly unsettled by it.
“Laugh.”
“Does Regina see her mother?” she asked.
“She hasn’t seen her for some considerable time. It’s very hard on Regina, but it suits me. My ex-wife is not my favourite person.”
“You must have loved her once?” she commented in a low voice.
“I thought I did.” There was an underlying note of self-derision.
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothing for you to worry about.” He turned his handsome head briefly. “My wife’s sister, Ina, comes to visit from time to time.”
“Regina would enjoy that.” Catrina absorbed this new piece of information with a sense of affirmation in family, but she was soon put straight.
“Not noticeable,” Royce McQuillan commented dryly, “although Ina is very much like Sharon. I suppose as a family we’re every bit as dysfunctional as yours appears to be.”
The maître d’ showed them to a candle-lit table for two with the best view of the multicoloured dappled river and the city night-time glitter from high-rise towers to spanning bridges. What was total astonishment at what was happening to her if not a cure for the miseries? Carrie thought. She felt stirred and excited; her confidence such, she resisted the temptation to smooth her shoulder-length hair, which in fact looked perfect. Before today she had never even heard of Royce McQuillan, tonight she was dining out with him, attracting a great deal of attention in the process. Without vanity Carrie didn’t fully understand the attention from the spacious beautifully appointed dining room was about equally divided. Th
e men, recognising a beautiful young woman when they saw one, were looking at her; the women couldn’t force their eyes away from the charismatic Royce McQuillan. Carrie in fact had to swallow every time she looked at him. He was an extraordinarily compelling man. A man who did things with style. Too daunting and too coolly charming all at the same time. Puzzlingly she vaguely resented it even as she blessed his intervention in her life. With Glenda on the attack she had been feeling all but worn out.
“Hungry?” he asked as Carrie began to peruse the lengthy menu.
“I can’t honestly say I am.” She was absorbing so much excitement from him it was frightening. “The turn of events left me unsettled. I never dreamed this morning I’d be having dinner like this tonight.”
“I’m that kind of man,” he answered casually. “You ought to try and relax. Have you been here before?”
“No.” She shook her head, glancing around the room. It was decorated in luxurious European style in keeping with its name. Beautiful blue moiré silk on the walls, large floral paintings in gilded frames, dazzling chandeliers, impressive china, silver service, crystal, formally dressed guests. “My father and Glenda come here often. It’s very impressive.”
“So is the food.” He scanned his own menu, his striking dark face downbent so she could study him without his noticing. The golden flame from the candle-flower arrangement centre table lent his skin the sheen of polished bronze. Hair and brows, ebony. “What about seafood? That’s light.”
It really didn’t matter. She felt so strange she was content to follow his lead. The wine waiter approached and without even looking at the wine list or consulting Carrie—perhaps he knew full well how she was feeling—he ordered a vintage Bollinger.
“I don’t believe anyone can have a glass of really good champagne without feeling better,” he commented lightly. “Don’t worry, Catrina, I’m not going to ply you with alcohol. I’m in pursuit of a governess, remember?”