by Margaret Way
“So now I’m an intruder.” Mel had to cast off her feelings of being bereft. “Who are you, Mum? You’re as skilled at concealment as a chameleon. Please believe I wish you every good thing in life. I hope you get all you feel has been denied you. You’re a beautiful woman and, as you already seem to know, a rich one. If you can ever let go of Gregory Langdon’s memory, you may wish to marry again. It doesn’t seem like you want to share the rest of your life with me. After all, you always chose Gregory Langdon over me, anyway. What I came to find out is—are you attending the will reading?”
Sarina didn’t hesitate. It was as though all the humiliations, the torments she had suffered in the past, hidden behind a falsely serene manner, came roaring to the fore. “I’m looking forward to it, Amelia,” she said with great satisfaction. “Any link I’ve had with the Langdons is broken. With Gregory gone, they no longer exist. I’m free at last to be the woman I was meant to be. I’ll be moving out of here as soon as possible. I’d advise you to do the same. These people don’t want us. I know Dev has always been your fantasy, your superhero, but it will never work out. You won’t have him. You’d be wise to heed what I say. He might use you, but marriage is out of the question. You will never be Mrs James Devereaux Langdon. You will never be his choice for a bride.”
It was clear to Mel that her mother was gaining considerable satisfaction from saying this. “You wouldn’t want him to marry me?” she challenged.
Sarina’s great dark eyes flashed. “My poor naïve child, he won’t.”
“Which doesn’t stop me from loving him. I’m always going to love Dev.”
“Then it’s going to be very painful for you to watch him marry someone else.” The flare of hostility was unmistakable. “By the way, Gregory provided for you,” she added as though Mel didn’t deserve it.
Mel stood up. “I don’t want any legacy from Gregory Langdon.” Her body was braced as though expecting more blows. “I’ll give it away. There are plenty of deserving charities.”
Sarina’s laugh held outright scorn. “Who gives away money? Accept it, Amelia. One can do nothing without money. Take it. Then leave this place. There’s nothing for you here.”
“Nothing for you, either,” Mel retorted. “I tried to tell you years ago but you would not be told. I’m smarter than you, Mum. And stronger. I’d rather live a solitary life than subjugate myself to a man’s will.”
Incredibly, Sarina’s black gaze appeared amused. “It’s been a long time, Amelia, but payback time has arrived. Unlike you, I’m not too proud to take Langdon money. I earned it.”
“And we all know how.”
* * *
Mel walked in a daze to her own room at the far end of the gallery. Hard to come to terms with the fact that her mother didn’t really care about her. Even worse to contemplate, Sarina could well be a pathological liar. There was no concrete evidence to back up her new revelations. If Gregory Langdon wasn’t her father any more than Michael was, then who? A man who had abandoned the young woman he had made pregnant? A man to despise.
Mel put up a hand as she became aware there were tears streaking down her cheeks. She hadn’t even known she was crying. She never cried. She had always tried to be brave, fighting her own and her mother’s battles. Now she had to accept Sarina was two people.
CHAPTER FIVE
Through the open French windows leading out onto her room’s balcony, Mel witnessed the steady exodus of mourners. She took refuge behind the sheer fall of curtains watching Dev accompanying the O’Hares to one of the station vehicles. A small fleet was on hand to transport those who had arrived in their own planes and those who had chartered flights to the station airstrip. The O’Hares’ huge sheep and cattle station was some hundred miles to the north-east, more towards the centre of the vast State of Queensland.
She saw Dev shake Patrick O’Hare’s hand. Next he bent his handsome blond head to kiss Mrs O’Hare’s cheek, before turning to the petite flame-haired Siobhan. It was at that point Mel covered her face with her hands. Her heart crashed inside her. She loved Dev so much. No other woman would love him as much as she did, but she had the terrible feeling her life was about to implode. She would lose him, if she ever really had him. Her mother’s taunt came back.
You will never be his choice for a bride.
* * *
Gregory Langdon had married a highly eligible woman he had never loved—a marriage of convenience uniting two powerful families. Dev could make the hard decision to do the same. Siobhan was such an attractive, happy and confident young woman, he could well find himself falling in love with her given a little time. A marriage between the Langdons and the O’Hares could bring big benefits to both sides. Siobhan had no big question mark hanging over her. Right throughout history, passion had carried people away. But in the end physical passion wasn’t enough to base a life on.
* * *
Mel turned away, finding the zip at the back of her black dress. The will would be read in the library, a room exceptionally generous in size, beautifully proportioned, with very fine crown mouldings and twin chandeliers hanging from ornate plaster roses. It was a room that could easily accommodate a crowd, let alone a dozen people. Her mother was to be one of them. She shuddered at the thought. Sarina Norton, Kooraki’s housekeeper for close on twelve years, had overnight shed her former persona, transforming herself into a force to be reckoned with.
God knew how much Gregory Langdon had left her. Mel wanted nothing from his will herself. Whatever it was he had left her she would donate it. Breast cancer research, premmie babies, a donation to the Royal Flying Doctor Service. She would take steps to do good with Gregory Langdon’s money, though she couldn’t brush aside the fact that he had been a philanthropist on a grand scale.
It might take a while but when the coast was clear she would head down to the stables and take one of the horses out. Just gallop and gallop and keep going until she came to the edge of the world. She desperately needed to be alone. The knock on her door startled her, she was so lost in her thoughts. Ava, perhaps? They were friends. Her dress half sliding off her, she pulled it back up, adjusting it on her shoulders, before redoing the zip.
Only it wasn’t lovely, compassionate Ava standing in the doorway. It was Dev. There was an expression on his face she had never seen before. It was as though he had realized he was going to be handed the reins of power. Even before the will was read he had stepped into the role.
“What is this, Mel?” He crossed the room to her, catching her by the shoulders, staring down at her so intensely he might have being trying to fix her image for all time. “You look very distressed.” Her eyes were glittering with unshed tears and her warm golden skin looked unnaturally pale.
“That’s because I am.” Mel’s voice splintered. “I shouldn’t have come here, Dev. My mother has entered a new phase of her life that doesn’t include me. What do you want? I’m not attending any will reading. I couldn’t bear it.”
“Who’s forcing you, Mel?” There was a decided edge to his voice. Above average height, she had taken off her high-heeled shoes. Now he loomed over her, six foot plus, his sculpted body lean and hard. “You’ve spoken to your mother again.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Dev. She’s not here, in any case. Her twin stayed on. The twin is going to take the money, then leave. I’m sure you won’t see her again.”
“It’s not going to be as easy as all that.” Dev’s voice turned hard.
“What do you mean?” She felt another worry. “Is there something else I should know?”
“Your mother won’t leave with the money,” he said crisply. “Settlement could take time. A lot of time, maybe. I don’t think we’ll be in any rush.”
Mel pulled away from him. “You really dislike her, don’t you? I suppose you never liked her.”
“Why would I?” Dev retorted, eyes brilliant. “She regarded my grandparents’ marriage as a mere inconvenience.”
“What about him?” Mel ex
ploded.
“They both went off the deep end. What do you expect of me, anyway? I have no saintly attributes. I’m a Langdon. My grandmother mightn’t have been anyone’s idea of a nice gentlewoman, but she had good reason to be jealous of Sarina. Jealousy is a very powerful emotion. People kill when caught in its grip. The knowledge her husband preferred a servant over her must have stuck in Mireille’s throat. She would have thought she had no option but to try to drive your mother away.”
“Only she had no hope of doing it. Your grandfather was all powerful, manipulating us all. My mother and I were forced on your grandmother.”
“Indeed, you were,” Dev confirmed bluntly. “Sarina would never have been able to escape my grandfather’s grasp if he wanted her.”
She could feel the tide of anger sweeping up in her. “History isn’t going to repeat itself, Dev.” Her lustrous dark eyes flashed.
“Oh, cut the melodrama, Mel.” Dev was all hard impatience. “In many ways you’ve put me through hell. It’s the humiliated child in you taking a stand, the I’m not going to be my mother thing. You’re nothing like your mother, Mel. You’re an entirely different person. You have fire and pride, beauty and intelligence in combination. Only you have to see who you are before it’s too late.”
The message, delivered in a deeply frustrated and deadly serious voice, resounded in her ears. “So there it is—the ultimatum. I’ve been expecting it. Why have we never been unable to let each other go, Dev?”
“It’s perfectly simple,” he said acidly. “I must be out of my tiny mind!” When he spoke again, his tone was modified. “I know what you’ve had to go through, Mel. God knows I’ve been patient and I’m not a patient man. When did I fall in love with you? Maybe when you were seven and I was nine? Even then I wanted to protect you.”
“So you had two little sisters, Ava and me?” Her voice was woefully off-key.
The blaze in his eyes gave fair warning. “Don’t go there, Mel,” he said in a deadly quiet voice. “My grandfather might have desired Sarina from the moment he set eyes on her but you can’t damn a man for his desires. You can’t damn him for wanting some happiness in life. Who are you to judge him? Well? Go on. Answer the question,” he challenged with a good lick of censure.
Mel sat down, her nerves horrendously on edge. “It’s easy to conjure up darkness from a heavy veil of secrecy, Dev. I know you had your doubts at one time.”
A ray of sunlight fell across the room, dipping his blond head in gold. “To harbour passing doubts isn’t unnatural, Mel,” he said testily. “To hold onto them is. I want you to come downstairs. I want you to sit with me while the will is read. I know it will be painful, but I don’t want you to hide away up here. My grandfather gave many things to you, most importantly your education. You’ve never had to struggle. You didn’t have to haul yourself up the ladder. You were supported. You owe my grandfather, even if you try to shut that fact away. You’ve always shown courage, even fearlessness. Do it now.”
“Under orders?” She threw up her dark head to stare at him, so superbly, arrogantly male.
“A request, Mel,” he said.
Mel didn’t answer. She rose, a graceful figure, her hands going to her long, thick hair. She had pulled the pins out of her aching head. Now she needed to rearrange her hair in a coil.
“Leave it,” Dev said. Her beauty, her endless allure and her vulnerability was breaking over him, ripples spreading out strongly from his centre, threatening the control he needed to maintain. By some miracle, things might come right. Mel had struggled so long to reconcile all her conflicts, her heartbreaks. The situation with his grandfather and Sarina had dragged them all down, Mel more than anyone. But she had to understand he had reached his limit. There was no place for indecision left in his life.
* * *
Showdown time, Mel thought.
Feelings in the library were running dangerously high. Mel received quiet acknowledgements. Nods here and there. None of them appeared as distant as she had anticipated. Maybe the clan had a more benign view of her than they had of her mother. Despite her entrenched defences, she found herself relieved.
* * *
When the revelation came that Sarina Norton, Kooraki’s former housekeeper, had been bequeathed twenty million dollars it came like a massive king hit. For long moments one could have heard a pin drop in the huge book-lined room, such was the seismic shock. Even the expression on Dev’s handsome face was grim. Two million dollars had been his estimate and Mel had the idea he’d thought that way too high. Mel felt her own prickle of horror and disbelief. Twenty million dollars! So that confirmed it. Gregory Langdon and Sarina Norton, young enough to be his daughter, had been lovers. There was no longer any room for doubt. The cover-up was exposed.
“Dear God!” A muffled exclamation broke from one, seconded by another, then another.
Mel’s limbs were locked in tension and a kind of shame. Her mother, at the far end of the second row of chairs, looked neither left nor right. She sat with aristocratic grace amid the wealthy Langdon clan, who sat as though petrified. Mel had taken her place well to the back. She had agreed to come. Sometimes she thought she would do anything for Dev. But she had refused to sit beside him. Not even within touching distance. Dev, who could pick up on all her signals, knew better than to try to persuade her otherwise.
Another bombshell, but nowhere approaching the same magnitude. She, Amelia Gabriela Norton, had been left two million dollars. Far more money than she could ever have saved in her life. No way was she jumping for joy. She hadn’t asked for it. She didn’t want it. Her charities would. To no one’s surprise, James Devereaux Langdon had been handed the reins of power. In truth, they all had secretly nominated him the right man for the job.
Erik Langdon, one of the few genuinely grieving Gregory Langdon’s death, far from letting fly with multiple resentments, as some of the clan might have expected, looked unperturbed by his late father’s decision. He sat calmly with his estranged wife, although that no longer appeared to be the case as they were holding hands. Erik Langdon had inherited more than enough to last him a dozen lifetimes. He didn’t have to bear the burden of heading up Langdon Enterprises, even with all the people they had working for them, the accountants, the bookkeepers, the high-priced lawyers, the various boards and their members. It was not a life he had been suited for. On the other hand, it had been easy to tell from an early age that Dev had been cut out for the job. Hadn’t Gregory been grooming him for years until that final roaring, raging split about which both men had kept silent?
In many ways Gregory Langdon and his grandson were alike, Erik thought, tightening his grasp on his wife’s elegant long fingered hand. They were the movers and shakers. Not him, though he couldn’t think he was all that incompetent. He wasn’t. Only he hadn’t come up to his father’s exalted standards. He was one of the lesser mortals. It didn’t matter now. His parents were gone. He had other plans. Plans for himself and his long-suffering wife. No other woman he had met compared with Elizabeth. He didn’t blame her for shifting far away from Kooraki. His mother, Mireille, had been a spectacular troublemaker, the worst in their feuding families, the Langdons and the Devereaux, with a particularly cruel tongue. He almost had it in his heart to understand the path his father had taken. It was like they said. If you couldn’t find love at home you’d find it elsewhere. His father had been a very sexual man. A man of strong passions. And he had wanted Sarina Norton, that strange unknowable woman.
Did Sarina, who he had spent years addressing as Mrs Norton, feel guilt or shame at the wrong she had done her young daughter? Erik wondered. Amelia had been a highly intelligent child with a real understanding of what was going on around her. Beautiful, enigmatic Sarina Norton had been a huge embarrassment to them all and worst of all to her child. Amelia had suffered real damage. No child should ever be under constant attack. It was Sarina Norton’s fault. She could have left. She would have received help. His mother would have paid her anything to
go away. But she had elected to stay. Now they all knew why.
Erik and Elizabeth heard with pleasure their lovely Ava, who had married so unwisely, was now one of the richest young women in the country. Would that affect her marriage? Elizabeth wondered. The marriage wasn’t a great success, though Ava never complained nor spoke ill of her husband. The handsome husband, Luke, was pleasant enough, although totally eclipsed by Dev. The Selwyns were well-to-do people, quite the socialites. It seemed no amount of money could buy Ava the happiness she craved and she had deserved much better in life. Erik felt both he and Elizabeth had failed one another and ultimately their children. On his part, it was a lack of strength, the courage, the backbone, to take a stand against his father’s overwhelming presence. Time now to measure up.
Erik Langdon turned to his wife. “Everything okay, dear?” He could see clearly that she was upset.
Her head hovered close to his broad shoulder. “May Gregory rest in peace,” she said very quietly. “But I can’t think a one of us wants him back.”
“Not even Sarina,” Erik whispered.
“She always put Gregory above her own daughter,” Elizabeth murmured sadly. “Do you suppose she feels guilty about that?”
Erik didn’t hesitate. He answered with an emphatic, “No!”
* * *
Luke Selwyn waited for the opportunity to catch up with the beautiful Amelia. She was a gorgeous creature, so glamorous with exotic looks, full-lipped mouth, come-to-bed eyes and a slow sexy smile. She was the polar opposite of his angelic, near-breakable Ava. He still carried the titillating memory of the little tussle he’d had with Amelia at his wedding reception, just holding her sleek body in his arms. For some reason, even given the time and the place, he had been desperate to kiss her, if only for a moment. He knew about her and James Langdon. Even he could feel the sparks around them but he was certain Langdon would never marry her. She was the housekeeper’s daughter—a housekeeper, now an extremely rich woman. History had its courtesans. They were a species who would always survive and prosper. But beautiful Amelia had no real status in the clan’s eyes. He knew a great many young women were seriously attracted to Langdon. When he married, he would marry well. Maybe the O’Hare girl.