Their gazes clashed.
‘I…’ Bridget stopped and started again. ‘I don’t really know what to think now. I mean—do you want to have anything to do with it?’ she asked in a strained voice.
He closed his eyes briefly, in obvious disbelief. ‘Bridget, I may have let you down and not trusted you, but do you honestly believe I’d be content to let a child of mine go through life never knowing me?’
‘But those are the things I don’t know about you,’ she said hoarsely. ‘And I don’t know how it would work—’
He interrupted her in a hard voice. ‘Then I’ll tell you about me. I grew up virtually without a father. He hated me because I reminded him of his own father, who was a cruel man. But Henry could do no wrong. From my earliest memories nothing I ever did was good enough for my father. He and my mother fought over it. They didn’t speak to each other for years. I left home when I was sixteen because I didn’t think I was wanted and I never went back. And the bottom line to it all is this,’ he went on. ‘No, I wasn’t planning to have children, but now it’s happened, and if you think I will allow any child of mine to suffer the lack of a proper father, you’re wrong, Bridget.’
Bridget closed her mouth. It had fallen open not only at what he’d revealed but at the bitter intensity he’d shown.
And although his expression was wiped clean and unreadable as soon as he’d finished speaking, he got up and walked over to the window, and she could see the tension in the lines of his back as he stared out at the street.
She was not to know that Adam Beaumont had surprised himself with the depth of feeling this news had provoked in him. Nor was she to know that the more he thought about it, the more he was struck by the irony of the situation. His uncle causing him to look at his life and his future so recently was one of those ironies.
A certain rumour associated with his sister-in-law, although he didn’t know if it was true, was another. But his mouth hardened at the thought of it, and the bittersweet revenge he could exact with this news…
There was also, though, the fact that even if he was suspicious of or impatient with this baby’s mother, he still felt protective towards her.
In fact, he discovered, not only could he offer his own child a proper father, and that was paramount, but the more he thought about it he also had the belief that there was only one solution, and it was growing in him by the moment…
‘I—I’m sorry,’ she said, barely audibly. ‘I had heard…Julia did mention the divisions in your family, but I didn’t realize—’
He turned back to her abruptly. ‘It’s over and done with now.’
‘But what are we going to do?’ she queried. ‘Of course I wouldn’t stop you from having access to it.’
Access… The word seemed to rebound on Adam, and he pictured it: a child with two homes, a child never quite sure where its allegiance should lie, a child possibly with a stepfather whose influence he, its real father, would have no control over.
‘I don’t want access when and where it suits you, Bridget,’ he said harshly. ‘There’s only one thing to do. We need to get married.’
It took a moment or two for this to get through to Bridget, and when it did she stared at him incredulously. ‘You can’t be serious!’
‘I am.’
‘But we don’t love each other. We hardly know each other! I don’t even think we like each other now, and you certainly don’t trust me—how can we?’
‘Bridget.’ He came back to the table and towered over her. ‘You can’t have it both ways.’
She looked up at him uncomprehendingly. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You’ve laid a few serious charges at my door, but I’m offering to redress the let-downs and the hurt to the best of my ability. Don’t you believe a child deserves both its parents?’
She moistened her lips. ‘Yes, of course—although it didn’t seem to work very well for your parents, and that’s what we would have to be afraid of—marrying then falling out badly,’ she couldn’t help but add. And then she thought of more objections. ‘How come you’re not accusing me of all sorts of crimes?’ She waved a hand. ‘Like trying to trap you or foist someone else’s baby on you?’
‘I was the one,’ he said slowly, ‘who initiated what happened that night. You were the one who got yourself clobbered by a falling branch. I really don’t think you were in a fit state to set about trapping me.’
‘I have to agree,’ Bridget said dryly. ‘But, to be scrupulously honest, I didn’t do anything to stop you either.’
He grimaced. ‘Also, I was wrong about you and those bloody rumours. That’s why I’m here. And I can’t mistake your determination to go it alone. None of it fits in with a girl on the make. The other thing is, you’re a terrible liar.’
She moved convulsively but he took her hand. ‘No, just listen. I mean that as a compliment—not that you lie really frequently or well. As in the case of Mr Smith.’
Bridget subsided somewhat.
‘And—’ he studied her narrowly ‘—you’re deadly serious now, aren’t you, Bridget?’ He waited.
She nodded at last. ‘But I’m not going to do anything I may later regret,’ she murmured. ‘And, forgive me—I do appreciate your feelings now I know them—but marrying you could fall into that category. We just—we just don’t know each other.’
A fleeting look that was so grim touched his eyes as their gazes locked. She shivered involuntarily, but she didn’t look away.
His lips twisted. ‘I should have known there was a touch of steel in you.’
Bridget raised her eyebrows.
‘Yes,’ he went on. ‘A lot of girls would have been content to sit and wring their hands rather than put themselves at risk, struggling down a flooded creek in a Godalmighty storm to save some children.’ He shrugged. ‘Think of this, though. This child is going to be with us for the rest of our lives. However it happened, we’ve forged that link and it can’t be broken. But—and forgive me for saying this—’ a wry little gleam lit his eyes ‘—the way it happened was quite amazing, I thought.’
Bridget’s gaze fell before his at last, and a little pulse started to beat at the base of her throat. At the same time some pink coursed into her cheeks. If all that wasn’t enough of a give-away of the power of her memories of that night in his arms, a little tremor ran through her.
He said nothing, but when she looked up she knew her disarray had been noted and filed away, probably for future reference.
She licked her lips. ‘Are you not even a little surprised, let alone reeling from shock like I was?’ she queried huskily.
He let her hand go, but pushed her hair out of her eyes with one long finger as a smile twisted his lips. ‘Of course. But then nothing we do is simple and straightforward. It’s always been one thing out of the blue after another.’
She had to concede this with a slight smile of her own. It faded as a sudden thought came to her. ‘Does this have anything to do with your brother’s wife?’
He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Bridget thought back to Julia’s other revelation—her considered opinion that neither Adam nor Henry Beaumont would ever get Henry’s wife out of their system.
She said slowly, ‘If you can’t have her you’ll have to make do with second best, and this second best—’ she patted her flat stomach ‘—has the advantage of coming as a package deal?’
‘On the contrary,’ he said, looking very directly at her. ‘This has nothing whatsoever to do with my brother’s wife. You never did, Bridget.’
‘I wish I could believe you,’ she murmured.
‘Why don’t you let me show you?’
She blinked at him and said a little warily, ‘H-how?’
‘Well, first things first. Come and see my place. It’s about an hour’s flight away.’
She lifted her eyebrows at him. ‘Fly? Just like that?’
‘I have my own helicopter.’
He not only had his own helicopter, he piloted
it himself. And the speed with which he organised the day almost took Bridget’s breath away.
He called his bright young assistant, Trent, and they went through all his appointments for the day and rescheduled them.
‘Uh, by the way,’ Adam added, when his diary had been sorted out, ‘I forgot to tell you, but I’m having dinner with my great-uncle Julius—let me see—tomorrow night. Ring up his housekeeper and tell him I’m bringing a guest. Thanks, Trent.’ He clicked off his phone and turned to her. ‘Ready, Bridget?’
She was only able to nod dazedly.
He piloted her towards his property in the Rathdowney Beaudesert area, over the Great Dividing Range from the Gold Coast. They flew over rugged country and he actually circled the creek they’d followed that tempestuous night, and the grassy plateau that had been their saving.
The shed looked smaller than she remembered. The tree had been removed, but the scar where it had uprooted itself on the hillside was still a raw gash.
‘I never did get around to replacing those pyjamas,’ she said ruefully into her mike, above the noise of the rotors.
‘Don’t worry. I compensated the owners. They’re a youngish couple, and they do use the shed on weekends while they build their house. See the foundations there?’
She nodded as she followed the line of his finger, then was struck by an unanswered question she had.
‘What were you doing driving around the Numinbah Valley in that elderly Land Rover that night? Especially if you can fly in this?’
He patted the control panel. ‘This bird had mechanical problems, but I needed to get back to the Coast so I took one of the property vehicles and took a back road. It’s hard to imagine being worse off that night, but if I’d flown into those storms I might have been.’
Bridget shivered.
Half an hour later he landed the helicopter on a concrete pad and said, ‘Welcome to Mount Grace, Mrs Smith.’
Bridget stared around with parted lips. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Thank you. It’s—so beautiful.’
She was even more impressed after a guided tour.
Being over the Range was like being in a different world from the sub-tropical coastal plain. Here there were great golden, grassy paddocks, and there was little humidity in the air. It was still hot, but it was a different kind of heat, and you could imagine cold, frosty winters and roaring fires.
Nor did the vegetation resemble the tropical profusion of the Coast. There wasn’t a palm tree in sight, but the gardens were magnificent all the same—even if not tropical—and the homestead, sheltered in the lee of a wooded hill, was a delight.
White walls, steep thatched roofs, French doors leading onto a paved terrace, and an unusual design of circular rooms. And the whole length of the terrace was dotted with terracotta tubs holding every coloured flowering bougainvillaea you could imagine.
The occupants of the great grassy paddocks were mostly horses, mares and foals, although deep rich red cattle were to be seen too.
‘So—you breed horses?’ she turned to ask Adam.
‘It’s my hobby. My uncle Julius—he’s my great-uncle, actually—is my partner. He lives for horses. It’s his greatest ambition to breed a Melbourne Cup winner. He used to go down for the race every year. He’s not well enough these days, but he’s a mine of information on the Cup.’
Bridget smiled to herself, but didn’t explain why. Instead she turned back to the house. ‘It’s—it’s very unusual.’
‘It’s a South African design. Thatched roofs and rondavels—round rooms—are traditional and common over there. My mother was South African. Her name was Grace.’
‘So she’s no longer alive?’ Bridget queried.
‘No. She and my father were killed in a car accident.’ He paused, then decided not to tell Bridget that his father had been drunk at the time. ‘Come inside and have a look, then we’ll have lunch. Do you feel up to lunch?’
‘I feel…’ Bridget drew some deep breaths of the clear air ‘…dangerously hungry, as it happens. I would kill for some lunch, in other words.’
He grinned.
Mount Grace homestead was vast and cool. There were no ceilings to hide the soaring thatch roof, the floors were polished wood, and there were stone fireplaces in all the rooms.
The main lounge-dining area was exquisitely furnished. Some of the furniture was in woods she didn’t recognise, and looked very old. There was a zebra skin on one wall, and a Zulu shield that reminded her of the movie of the same name.
‘All in all,’ she said, breaking her rather awestruck silence, ‘there’s one phrase that springs to my mind—out of Africa.’
‘Yes—ah, there you are.’ Adam turned at a sound behind them. ‘Bridget, this is Fay Mortimer—housekeeper extraordinaire.’
‘No such thing,’ the middle-aged woman who stood before them replied. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here to meet you, but I had my hands full. How do you do, Bridget?’
They shook hands.
Fay Mortimer might be middle-aged, but she was slim and trendy-looking, with a shining bob of greystreaked brown hair.
‘Hands full?’ Adam queried.
‘I’m babysitting my granddaughter today. She’s only three months,’ she said to Bridget. ‘But I have got lunch ready, and I thought it might be nice for you to eat on the terrace?’ She raised an eyebrow at Adam.
‘Sounds good to me. We’re ready when you are. Bridget is actually starving.’
‘Right-oh! You sit down. I’ll bring it out.’
Lunch was delicious: a light consommé followed by a Caesar salad laden with smoked salmon, anchovies, and crispy bacon pieces. There were warm rolls to go with it, and it was followed by a cheese platter, biscuits and fruit.
As they ate, and Bridget sipped iced water while he had a beer, he told her about the stud and the stallions he had. He told her that Fay Mortimer’s son-in-law was stud master, and lived there with her daughter—the mother of the three-month-old baby she’d been looking after. He also told her that they all lived in apparent harmony, although in separate cottages on the property.
It was utterly peaceful as they ate, with bees humming through the flowerbeds and dragonflies hovering, their transparent wings catching the sunlight. And the view was spread before them like a lovely sunlit tapestry under a blue, blue sky.
But when she’d finished Bridget laid down her linen napkin and said, ‘I can’t just walk into all this.’
Adam plucked a grape from the cheese platter and toyed with it in his long fingers. ‘Why not?’
She hesitated, then swept her hair out of her eyes and took a sip of water. ‘All this—it doesn’t seem right.’
He ate the grape and plucked another, but it must have had an imperfection because after he’d studied it he tossed it into the shrubbery. ‘I don’t really understand what “all this” has to do with it. Are you trying to say if I’d been a wood-chopper at a country show you’d have married me?’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Bridget replied coldly.
‘Why?’ He stared at her derisively.
‘Because—well, apart from anything else it is obviously not a good idea to marry anyone you don’t really know!’ she said through her teeth, and felt so frustrated she picked up the last few grapes on the stem and threw the lot into the shrubbery.
‘Temper, temper,’ he admonished softly.
‘You started it!’
‘Well, before we denude the table, may I point out that we do know each other pretty well in one way—the way they euphemistically refer to as the biblical way.’
Bridget had gone from angry to feeling slightly embarrassed at her rather childish display, but this taunt brought a tide of bright scarlet to her cheeks. She said, with as much dignity as she could muster, ‘It’s not the only way you need to know someone.’
‘No, but it helps greatly if all is well in that direction,’ he said wryly.
It was Bridget’s turn to stare at him, and then to draw a deep breath and say, �
�I appreciate your offer, but I’m of a mind to do this on my own.’
He swore under his breath.
‘As for all this,’ she continued, with a sweep of her hand, ‘it’s a bit like a carrot being dangled in front of me.’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that.’ He eyed her narrowly. ‘But I would see it as an apt setting for a girl who’s told me she loves horses, gardening, painting. It could be a landscape painter or a gardener’s dream—and there’s a grand piano in the music room we didn’t get to see, as well as a harp, come to think of it.’
Bridget was silent.
‘You don’t think that would make life enjoyable for you?’ he queried.
She looked around, and had to smile involuntarily as a mare and a frisky young foal wandered up to the fence on the other side of the garden. But she sighed as she said, ‘You don’t understand, do you? Or—and this could be another problem—you’re so used to getting your own way you don’t want to understand how I feel.’
‘I have to admit I would have understood better if you’d jumped at the chance—not so much of marrying me but of getting my money.’
‘Ah. Well, I’m glad I surprised you.’ Her words were accompanied by a lethal little look.
It was his turn to stay silent. Then he pushed his chair back and changed the subject completely. ‘Come and say hello.’ He indicated the foal.
She got up and followed him to the fence. On the way she pulled up a dandelion, which she offered to the foal. The dark bay colt sniffed it, lipped it, then chomped it greedily.
She laughed and rubbed his nose.
Adam Beaumont smiled and turned to lean back against the fence. He said quietly, ‘I’ve had cause to think I should rewrite my life recently.’
Bridget turned to him in some surprise. ‘You have?’
He nodded and stretched his arms along the fence. And then he told her something of his last encounter with his great-uncle Julius.
‘I don’t want his proxies,’ he said. ‘If I do ever get to chair the board of Beaumonts I want to do it on my own. I don’t want anyone ever to be able to say I rode there on my uncle’s coattails. But for the rest—’ he shrugged ‘—it is time to bury the past. Including Marie-Claire.’
One-Night Pregnancy Page 8