by Dorothy Cork
The first morning, she had finished her breakfast of tea and toast before Mrs Wilson came to wash the breakfast and dinner dishes, which Drew had insisted last night she should leave. With her came the two aboriginal girls, shy and inclined to giggle, and taking their time over the sweeping and polishing and dusting Mrs Wilson directed them to do. Edie, sitting on the verandah, more or less on the edge of her chair, and feeling she shouldn't be there at all, thought that if she had really been Drew's fiancée she'd have been eager to learn how to manage the household and the girls. As it was, she kept well away from the activities, and
Mrs Wilson didn't bother her, merely coming through to tell her, before she left, that there was cold meat and salad in the refrigerator for her lunch.
After that, the house was empty again, and presently Edie put on her wide-brimmed hat and went through the garden, past the tennis court and away from the sheltering trees—the bauhinias, the pink and white oleanders, the great mango trees laden with ripening fruit—to see what she could see. It was a big wide world of silence and hot sunshine, the horizons drifting away to nowhere, shimmering in the heat. She saw a man in a paddock where there were a number of horses, but she didn't go and speak to him, and beyond that she saw no one but a few aboriginal children playing in the sand in the shade of the trees. She wondered if any of the stockmen's wives were about, but under the circumstances didn't want to seek them out, and though she heard parrots chattering and the million voices of a flock of green budgerigars crowding across the sky, she heard little else.
She wondered when Drew would be home, but she hadn't liked to ask Mrs Wilson and couldn't bring herself to do so when she came to the house in the afternoon to prepare dinner. It would seem very odd having to ask questions about your own fiancée.
He came at sundown, and by then she was once more ensconced on the verandah, edgy and feeling decidedly keyed up. Drew came up the steps, paused as he reached the verandah, lit a cigarette, and looked at her levelly across the flame of his lighter.
`Did you have a quiet day?' he asked, and those brilliant grey eyes of his examined her openly.
`Very quiet,' she agreed, and somehow managed a smile.
He came to lean against the rails closer to her.
`Did you miss me?'
Her nerves jumped and colour flared in her cheeks. `What do you think?' she retorted—then suddenly wondered if he were talking this way for Mrs Wilson's benefit, in case she was within earshot. A little disconcerted, she glanced towards the sitting room doors, which were open wide. No one was there, she was sure, but she asked Drew pleasantly, 'How did you spend the day?'
`I went out to the muster camp. Ordinarily, I'd have stayed there with the men tonight, but with you here I can hardly do that.'
`No,' she said uneasily. 'What are they—the men—doing at the muster camp?'
`Rounding up the cattle. Marking the calves with the Dhoora Dhoora brand and the year so we can keep tabs on their age. Drafting out the beasts that aren't good breeders—they'll be sold. Mustering goes on most of the year for various reasons—both from here and from the outstation at the western end of the run. I like to be in it—but of course I must take time off to get married,' he finished sardonically.
Edie looked away from him. 'Do they—do they know you're getting married?'
`Sure they know—if by "they" you mean the stockmen. But don't worry, they don't expect to be asked to the wedding ... Anyhow, what did you do with yourself all day?''
`Nothing,' she said, curling her fingers into her palms and looking at her nails—which she had lacquered about an hour ago for want of anything better to do. `What did you expect me to do?'
`I thought you might have been inquisitive enough to poke around and see what you could find out. In fact, I half expected to hear you'd been out riding. Harry-
the yard man—would have saddled up a horse for you if you'd asked him.'
`I don't ride,' she said, reflecting that the man she had seen in the horse paddock must have been Harry.
His eyebrows rose. 'No? Oh well, I should have guessed. Tennis and swimming are your sports, aren't they? I'm afraid it's too late for a game of tennis this evening. In fact, if you'll excuse me, I'd better get under the shower or dinner will be on the table and I shan't be ready.'
`Go ahead,' said Edie. He crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray on a table near her chair, and she watched him stride away and tried to analyze her feelings. But they were completely unanalysable. She knew she was finding the situation both unreal and difficult to accept and she had the impression that Drew wished she were different in some way, but she didn't know how. Perhaps he'd have preferred it if she'd been more sanguine, more amused, instead of being so touchy, as she undoubtedly was.
`I'll be glad when it's all over,' she told herself, and getting up determinedly, went into the garden.
She was still there when dinner was ready and Drew came to find her.
`No roses tonight?' he asked dryly, and she shook her head. The roses smelled swooningly sweet, but she hadn't bothered going inside for scissors and was disconcerted now when he pulled a red rose himself—a half opened bud—and handed it to her with a kind of mocking gallantry.
`It's definitely your flower, Edie. Have you a brooch or a pin?'
`I'm afraid I haven't.' She turned away swiftly from the look in his eyes as they went to her breast, and began to move towards the house. She didn't wear the
rose, but in the dining room laid it on the table—and left it there.
Dinner passed uneventfully, and afterwards Drew disappeared to the office—`To do some paper work,' he said. Edie sat alone in the sitting room, with the radio playing and a writing pad on her lap and a feeling of resentment in her mind.
She didn't see him again that night. After an hour or so on her own, she went to bed. He wasn't going to find her waiting meekly for him when his work was finished —not after being ignored like that. She shut her door, got into her pyjamas, climbed into bed, switched off the light and lay there seething. Surely he owed it to her to be just a little bit attentive—presenting her with a rose was hardly enough. She was doing him a favour after all, and right now she couldn't think how she had fallen for it, how he had talked her into it. One thing was for sure, once it was all over, she wouldn't waste a moment getting away from here—and from him ...
The next evening when he came home she deliberately made a point of not being there to meet him. In fact, she was in her bedroom, dressed ready for dinner. She heard the sound of the jeep, and then she heard him come on to the verandah and call her name`Edie !' Commandingly, it seemed to her. Who did he think he was, for heaven's sake? She didn't answer, not even when he called again, this time from inside the house. Instead, she slipped through the verandah door and went into the rose garden. The sky was red and the garden was alive with dramatic colour, and she stood staring around her, wondering why her heart was beating so fast.
It beat even faster when he appeared—gilded by the sun, alarmingly male, intent on her.
`Are you playing hide and seek with me?' he de-
manded roughly. 'Didn't you hear me come in?'
`Yes, I—I heard you,' she said defiantly. But I didn't think you'd particularly want to see me'
The expression in his grey eyes changed subtly to one she didn't understand. 'Didn't you? Well, as it happens, I've been looking forward to it on and off all day long. You're definitely a feast for sore eyes, you know. You can have no idea what the thought of coming home to someone like you can mean to a man who's out in the heat all day—riding with a lot of tough stockmen, jostling about in dust churned up by a mob of cattle. I've thought of the sheen of your hair and the scent of your skin—and the soft curves of your body—a million times since sun-up.'
Edie turned away, her cheeks scarlet. She felt deeply disturbed to hear him talk that way. It—it shook her. She wished now, whatever she'd wished before, that he'd keep the whole thing the way it was meant to be, strictly im
personal, strictly businesslike. She said disdainfully, though shakily, 'How can you talk such—such absolute rubbish? Do you think I want you to talk to me like that? I don't, you know. Especially just now,' she added, her brown eyes taking in the checked shirt clinging to his muscular torso, the dust stains on his narrow-legged cord pants, the dirt on his face. 'You surely can't think you're very attractive when you're covered in dust and sweat.'
She saw a flash of anger fire in his eyes and smoulder still as he answered, 'I might be a little more so when I've washed away the smell of my sweat and got into clean clothes, perhaps, Edie Asher. Is that it? Well, I'm a cattleman, not a city clerk, in case you've forgotten, and the way I feel right now I'm not inclined to wait—to store it all up.' He reached out unexpectedly and grabbed her wrist, pulling her to him with a rough
movement that almost knocked her off her feet. Her heart leaped, her pulses pounded, and a feeling of wild excitement coursed through her veins. Held this way, with one arm doubled against his chest, she could feel the heat and the dampness of his sweat as well as the thump of his heartbeat. His fingers, rough with dust, rasped against her smooth clean skin, and her nostrils flared sensitively as she closed her eyes faintingly against the expression on his face—the sensual twist of his mouth.
She gasped out, `I—I really don't think I find cattlemen attractive at all, Mr Sutton.'
`No? Then you've left your discovery a bit late, haven't you? You knew what I was when you wrote to me so prettily,' he said thickly. He had jerked her arm behind her back and now he captured her other wrist, and brought the full length of her body into suffocatingly close contact with his own. Her eyes flew open and she took in the tiny lines on his face—beside his mouth, radiating Out from his eyes, each one drawn in finely in red dust—dust that followed the curve of his nostrils too, and blurred with its film the customary Fitter of his dark eyelashes. She tried to feel repelled, but instead that mad excitement surged up in her again. She had never been held so brutally by a man before, never been so close to a male who looked so earthy and acted so rough. Instinctively, her eyes sought his mouth, then went to the day's growth of beard on his jaw, dark and intensely masculine, and she caught her breath as suddenly he held her harder against him and his mouth came down on hers.
His hands were flat on her back, crushing her body to his, and a physical response ran through her swift and painful as an electric current. The touch of his lips
made her discover almost shockingly nerve centres she had never before been aware of.
It was seconds before she recovered her senses enough to pull away from him and to wipe her mouth hard with the knuckles of one hand.
`What—what did you do that for?'
`Do what? Kiss you?' He said it so flatly she recoiled inwardly. Kiss her! Was that what he called it? `I wouldn't have thought that would be open to question, seeing we're being married tomorrow. It's unthinkable that a girl should go unkissed to her own wedding, now isn't it?'
`Don't be so—infuriating!' she exclaimed. 'Ours isn't going to be that kind of a marriage.'
`Well, you never know,' he said calmly. 'Anyhow, the temptation was quite irresistible.'
She could hear her own breathing. 'You'll just have to learn to resist it, I'm afraid, Mr Sutton. I don't find you—attractive.'
His mouth curved in a slow smile. 'Unpalatable words ! Well, I'll get rid of the dust and sweat, shall I?'
`I couldn't care less whether you do or not!' she exclaimed, but she said it to his back, for he was already striding through the garden in the direction of the house. She watched him go with a confusion of emotions. Her nerves felt tangled and her legs were shaking. The thought that tomorrow she was to be married to him was utterly unbelievable. She couldn't think how she had been so weak as to get herself into such a situation—nor could she think why she didn't simply refuse to go on with the charade.
They were married the following day in Mount Isa, in
a civil ceremony. Edie wore a cream lace blouse and a
pale blue skirt, while Drew was in a lightweight beige
suit with a finely striped shirt and a plain navy tie. He looked excruciatingly handsome and she knew that the witnesses who had been called in from the street thought them a good-looking couple.
But to Edie it was all like some mad thing she was dreaming, and she was convinced that when she went outside into the burning sunshine with Drew she would suddenly wake up and find herself back in the flat with Barb. But of course she didn't.
They had flown over from Narrunga in the afternoon, and since they had arrived in town barely a quarter of an hour before the time fixed for the marriage, she had scarcely had a moment to consider what happened next. But now with a ring on her finger and legs that persisted in feeling distinctly wobbly, she began to wonder nervily what plans the man beside her —her husband ! —had made for their wedding night.
`We'll have a little celebration dinner at the hotel,' he told her at exactly that instant, glancing at his watch. 'A drink first. I guess you feel like a drink, Alfreda.'
Yes, at that moment Edie badly needed a drink, though she wasn't the sort of girl who resorted to alcohol. She asked nervously, 'When will we be flying back to Narrunga, Drew?'
`Tomorrow,' he said briefly. 'We're spending tonight at the hotel here. It will be a very short honeymoon,' he added dryly, 'but there's work waiting for me back home at Dhoora Dhoora.'
Edie swallowed hard. A night at the hotel with him ! He had hired a car, and now he installed her gallantly in the front seat and climbed in beside her while she watched him edgily.
'We—we don't need a honeymoon at all,' she said. `Why can't we go straight back to Dhoora Dhoora?' `You'd have preferred that?' He sent her a glittering
sideways glance from his ice grey eyes.
Edie didn't know what to say. She was, frankly, too mixed up to know if she'd have preferred to go straight back 'home', or if it would have been any less nerve-racking.
`Don't worry,' Drew said almost soothingly when she didn't answer. 'I really haven't forgotten the terms of our union.'
Of course he hadn't! What on earth had she been imagining? That he was going to force himself on her —make love to her? She gave a sickly smile and said with difficulty as he drove along the wide street, 'I hope you've booked separate rooms.'
`I'm sorry, but I haven't. That would be going too far—we do have appearances to keep up,' he said abruptly.
She sank back in the seat biting her lip, and after a quick glance, he told her impatiently, 'Don't make too much of a thing of it, for heaven's sake. Why don't you try to see the rainbow at the end—the pot of gold? Picture yourself in twelve months or so marrying some handsome young guy from the city—won't you be pleased then you've got a nice little cache stowed away to buy yourself some of the good things you'd like in your home? Good God, you'll think of me with friendliness and gratitude then. Nothing terrible's going to happen to you after all, is it?'
No, he was right, nothing terrible was going to happen to her—though exactly what was going to happen she didn't care to think about. She couldn't really think why she was being so uptight, and she edged herself forward on the seat and smoothed down the silky skirt she was wearing and looked covertly at the man beside her—his handsome, forceful profile, the straight line of his brow, the enigmatic mouth, Suddenly she felt a
shiver deep within her. Her cattleman ! 'Exactly what you're looking for, Edie,' Barb had said. 'A man who wants to get married.'
She moved uneasily and asked him in a small voice, `Is it a good hotel?'
`The best,' he assured her solemnly ...
Some five minutes later Edie—Mrs Drew Sutton according to the hotel register—was standing in the middle of the hotel bedroom looking, with a sickening sensation in the pit of her stomach, at the double bed that dominated the room. Drew was busy adjusting the curtains or the windows—she didn't know which and didn't care—and by the time he'd turned towards her again she'd more
or less composed her reeling senses and was able to ask him chillingly, 'Is this a joke? If so, I find it in very bad taste.'
`A joke?' he repeated. 'What do you mean?'
She bit her lip. `The—bed. You could at least have asked for twin beds.'
He looked at her steadily for several seconds, then stooped to pick up her suitcase and fling it on to the end of the bed. 'What man has twin beds on his wedding night?' he asked grimly. 'No, it's not a joke, Edie. I've already told you, for me it's dead serious. As for the damned bed—whatever its size it's not going to make any difference to our relationship. If it'll make you happy, I'll sleep on the floor. It won't be any hardship—I've slept outside on the ground half my life, you know—a soft and downy bed is not something I can't do without.'
He opened her suitcase as he spoke, and she moved forward embarrassedly to get her toilet things. Being married to Drew Sutton was going to be even more difficult than she had imagined. She'd vaguely pictured their lives barely touching—separate rooms, closed
doors, politeness. Why, she didn't really know. Instead there were going to be dangerous intimacies, moments when she would wish she could quite simply disappear through a hole in the ground. This was one of them.
She almost snatched her things from the open suitcase, and turned towards the bathroom. A moment later she was locked in there alone, aware of every quivering nerve in her body. The thought of him sleeping on the floor disturbed her, which was absurd. As she splashed her face at the basin she caught a glimpse of her brand new wedding ring—a plain wide band of yellow gold—and a rush of tears came to her eyes. Tool!' she told herself with a touch of hysteria as she wiped her eyes furiously on the hotel towel.