Totally exhausted, Amaris snuffed the bedside candle. She had gone thirty-six hours without sleep.
Francis put his hands on her shoulders and began massaging them. “Tired, darling?”
“I’ve never been so tired in all my life.” Her lids drifted closed only to open a second later as Francis’s hand slid around her ribcage and began to fondle her breast. “Francis, please. I’m not up to it tonight.”
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered against her ear. “I’m so bloody grateful you weren’t hurt. When your parents told me you had gone to fight the fire, I was sick with worry.”
“Well, I wasn’t hurt, but I really need to sleep. Unless you were there, you can’t understand how—”
“Oh, Amaris, don’t risk your life like that again.” He moved up over her. “I love you so damned much.” He began nuzzling her neck.
“Francis, why now?”
“Because you understand me and what I need. You love me for me."
Guilt assaulted her. She stroked the nape of his neck and let his mouth claim hers in a demanding kiss. She could remember when she thought those needy kisses were exciting. But then, Sin had never kissed her as he had today. A kiss of giving, of restoring, of succoring.
Kissing Amaris had been a mistake. A moment of weakness.
Sin wrapped his arms around the sleeping Celeste. She was pathetically thin. The loss of another child, and she might not make it.
He had thought he could sexually satisfy her and still withdraw in time to prevent getting her with child. In spite of his precautions, he had twice done just so.
Since the loss of their last child, a beautiful stillborn son, his practice of abstinence had been a bloody hell of frustration for him.
If it hadn’t been for that bush fire. Amaris had appeared amid the swirling smoke. She had been disheveled, her expression animated, her body pulsating with vivacity—all had combined in an overpowering temptation for him. Like a man athirst in the Never-Never, he had crushed her against him and kissed her, drinking deeply of her nurturing womanhood.
At first, he had been struck by how sweet she had tasted, her breath baby fresh. And then, foolishly, he had forgotten everything to experience that filling of himself, that renewal, that completion of himself.
Maybe it was that sixth sense that often warned him of impending danger, but something whispered of devastation: emotional peril, jeopardy to the soul, the loss of self with the loss of integrity.
And yet, for him, that kiss was an acknowledgment of what he had known all along: that he and Amaris were well matched. The Irish aesthetic in him would proclaim that their souls had been thirsting for the stream of life that ran in the other since the stars in the Southern Cross first made their appearance in Australia’s heavens forty-five million years before.
§ CHAPTER EIGHTEEN§
“Amaris, you’re sure!”
Francis sat up in bed. His face, adorned with a beard now, was alight. Gone were the harsh lines of worry. His once delicate English skin, now sunbaked and porous, glowed with the joyful news.
She nodded. “Sometime this winter, the last of July, the best I can estimate.” She was almost twenty-nine, well past the prime time for a woman to become a mother.
“Then we’ll have more than one reason to celebrate at the Tremaynes’ tonight.” Leaning on one forearm beside her, he pushed the tumbled hair from her face. In his face was a boy’s mischievous expression. “If it’s a son, his given name will be Lord. Lord Marlborough.”
She chuckled. “Don’t even think about it. A plain name it will be.”
They shared the news with her parents on the journey that beautiful fall morning in mid-April to Never-Never, where Celeste was giving a party in honor of England’s new monarch, the nineteen-year-old Queen Victoria. Any excuse for a get-together was reason enough in the outback.
William suggested a name for his future grandson. “I should think Richard or Harry, both fine English kings.”
“But, Willy, the name Robert is the best—a grand king of the Scots, he was,” Rose lovingly teased from the back of the dray.
Francis took the debate over his future child’s name in good stride. What concerned him was the possibility that her parents might attempt to control his son’s upbringing. He had murmured as much that morning before they left for the Tremaynes’. “I don’t want them trying to implant religious dogma in my son’s head.”
Francis’s spirituality bordered on agnostic. “Dear,” Amaris said, “all my parents have ever tried to impart to the congregation is the belief that we are all one and the need to love one another.”
His brows had peaked but he had said nothing. Whatever reservations he had about her parents’ missionary zeal, he liked and respected them, she knew.
Despite the outback’s dry clime, arthritis was twisting the joints of Rose’s fingers. But in her face was complete acceptance of humankind. Nonjudgmental, she went out into the bush with her Willy for days at a time, sleeping on the back of their dray and administering love along with the Word to the aborigines.
Amaris yearned to possess Rose’s no-nonsense spirituality, but for Amaris each day was a seesaw between selflessness and a desire that came not from her ego but from her very soul.
Since the day of that bush fire at Brighton Station, she had tried to resist giving in to what her soul clamored for: union with Sin. It was a daily battle.
From that day on she and Sin had both avoided all situations of potential intimacy. The result had been a decrease in the times their two families visited.
Now, now that she was with child, she felt as if she had donned an amulet against the attraction she and Sin shared.
So Amaris, sitting on the back of the dray with Rose, felt lighthearted and looked forward to the celebration of Queen Victoria’s reign. A woman. A young woman. Anything was possible!
Her hand settled on her stomach. She was well into her fifth month, but because of her height and bone structure her condition did not show.
Not even Celeste could believe the news. No jealousy showed on her gaunt face when Amaris told her. Celeste hugged her. She was astounded by how painfully thin the woman was. Almost all bones, she no longer looked the younger of the two.
“That’s wonderful, Amaris! A beautiful blessing for a beautiful friend."
Celeste and she, along with Rose, bustled around the kitchen, dominated by the large fireplace where dishwater boiled. “Since Molly left Jimmy and ran off with that drover, I’ve had to learn how to cook all over again for the hands," Celeste was saying.
Amaris hefted the steaming caldron over to the iron trivet on the table. “Everyone cleaned the dishes of every last morsel. I think that proves you are the best cook in the outback, Celeste.”
“We all know Elizabeth is by far the best,” Celeste said without a trace of mock humility. “She swears it’s the cast-iron stove the major ordered.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
Rose began stacking the dishes in the cauldron. “An old hand like meself can wash these in no time. You two inexperienced young women join the others on the veranda.”
The sun had set, although a vibrant faint pink lingered in the western sky. The veranda was cool, and the scent of honeysuckle Celeste had planted competed with the evocative scent of the men’s pipes.
Celeste settled in a leather slung chair beside her husband and slipped her hand into his free one. Their fingers intertwined. Amaris glanced away. She was acutely aware of her big, ungainly hands.
She sought out a wicker chair slightly behind and to one side of Sin. Through her lashes she peered at his strong profile. Watching him as he listened to her father, she felt sexually charged. This disappointed her mightily. All her feelings of being above that sort of thing now that she was carrying Francis’s child seemed suddenly pompous.
“Well, Francis,” Celeste said, beaming, “did you tell Sin your wonderful news?”
Francis grinned boyishly. “I was
getting around to it. I thought maybe William here might make the announcement, considering all the babies he has christened—and that the news concerns his future grandchild.”
It seemed all eyes turned on Amaris. She saw only Sin’s speculative gaze. “I think you just made the announcement.” She felt uncomfortable being the sudden object of attention.
Francis said, “Sin, we need another mount. For Amaris. I want her to learn the sport of fox hunting after the birth of our child.”
“Or dingo hunting,” Sin said. “As the case is here?”
Amaris kept the subject on horses. “A mount at the right price, of course. Everyone knows how wily you Irish horsetraders are when it comes to filling your pots of gold.”
He tapped out his pipe. “Only the leprechauns deal in pots of gold. The rest of us Irish are content just to toil in the soil.”
“And raise the best horseflesh anywhere. Well, will you let us see your wares, sir?”
Chuckling, Sin rose. “I think I have a mount you might be interested in.”
“Drive a hard bargain, Amaris,” Francis urged. “I trust your judgment.”
“My daughter will get the best of you, son,” William called after her and Sin. “We menfolk must stick together. Don’t let her try to talk you down.”
She and Sin walked in silence toward the stables. Their bantering had been for the sake of the others. Now she didn’t know what to say. It was he who broke the quiet of the early evening. “Congratulations, Amaris.”
“Congratulations?” For a moment, she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Oh, yes.” Automatically, her hand went to her stomach. “My child. Francis’s and mine.”
His gaze lowered to her stomach. She flushed and quickly dropped her hand. “I have a gift for the wee one,” he said, shifting his eyes to the grass-denuded track leading into the stables.
“You do?”
“Aye. Over there. The third stall. A blooded mare out of Wind Runner. She’s just foaled. A colt. Come look.”
Amaris peered over the stall door. The colt stood on spindly legs, nursing from its mother. “Oh, Sin, it’s absolutely beautiful!”
“It’s sire is a Morgan. A New England breed noted for their strength, endurance, and speed. They’ll do well here in the outback. When it’s weaned, I’ll bring it over, just about the time you are . . .” His voice trailed away in a loss of appropriate words.
Feeling secure in her maternity, she laughed. “About the time I am ready to foal?”
He slanted her a grin, and all her newfound security was vanquished. He smiled so rarely that when he did it caught the attention. At the moment, his devil-take-it grin was loaded with seductive power. “Knowing you, Amaris, you’ll give birth and be up and at it as easily as this mare did.”
“Do you?” she asked quietly. “Do you know me? Really know me?”
The soft glow of the lantern enveloped them. In the quiet of the evening, a low whinny, a horse pawing the straw, were the only noises. “I’ve known you since before either of us were born.”
She couldn’t force her gaze away from his. Nor could she deny what he said. Her equanimity was in jeopardy. “Don’t say such things again.”
She brushed past him, but he caught her elbow. She looked from his hand up into his face.
He gazed at her long and intensely, then said, “The mount you wanted—I think I have what you want. The second stall from the end. ’Tis a Rockingham. Caught the brumby running wild near Teather Creek. Had a hell of a time breaking him.”
She followed Sin deeper into the stable where lantern light was faint. His broad back and powerfully muscled hips held her gaze.
He stopped before a stall, and she almost ran into him. To back away would show her unease. She held her ground only inches from him. “Rocky stands sixteen hands and can carry up to seventeen stone all day. I guarantee you the Rockingham can outlast and outpace any camel. He’s been doing well in the brush.”
She forced her attention to the horse, a black. Its confirmation was excellent—a muscular, crested neck, strong shoulders, and clean lines. Delighted, she said, “It will make a marvelous hunting horse.”
“With its stamina, it should.”
“What do you want for it?”
He stared down at her. His face, cast in shadows, was difficult to read. “More than you can give.”
“Give or have?”
“Give.”
It was a challenge. Excitement surged through her. “What is your price?”
He shifted his stance, glanced away as if deliberating, then returned his gaze to her. “Consider the horse a loan.”
Just playing the word game with him exhilarated her. “To be repaid . . . when?”
He ended the game. “Repayment isn’t necessary between friends. Shall we go back to the house?”
His curt tone made her feel foolish, childish. “No. I don’t want to be beholden to you, Sin. Name your price.”
Even in shadows, his face seemed to darken. “You are pushing for it, aren’t you?”
It was too late to back down. “Aye.”
He took hold of her shoulders and backed her against the stall door. His mouth ground down on hers. At the same time, his hand dropped from one shoulder to splay over the slight mound of her stomach. He rubbed it gently. “Mother Earth,” he murmured against her lips.
“Aye,” she whispered, glorying in the one thing she could give him Celeste could not, a child. At the same time she felt shame and guilt stab like a blade into her conscience.
His leg wedged itself between hers, and his hand moved upward to cup one breast. He began kneading it gently. “Full, suckling breasts. Are their nipples darker?” he rusked. “A dark, rich brown?”
“Aye. Aye.” That was all she could murmur. She wanted him to take her, there on the straw floor. Now.
His head dipped to nuzzle her neck. His breath was hot on her skin. Her hand crept up his corded neck into his hair. She pressed his head against her breast.
He shook her hand free and raised his face so that he could see hers. “Me price?” he said, his voice hoarse, his lids heavy with unslaked passion. “Me price is that you deny me the love I would take from you.”
Her insurgent desire evaporated with his clipped words and was at once replaced with a deep aching sorrow. “A heavy price,” she whispered.
“A heavy price for both of us.” He bent his head once more and grazed her forehead with his lips. “Gads, ‘tis been so long since last I held you.” With a sigh, he straightened. “Shall we go back now?”
She brushed past him and hurried through the now-dark evening across the yard to the house. Rose had finished the dishes and joined the others on the veranda. Her knitting needles clacked while her husband talked.
Apparently, William was discoursing on the aborigines. “ . . . Dangar’s property, the aborigine women are living with his overseer, Hobbs.”
Francis took a swallow of rum left in the bottom of his glass and said, “That’s not unusual in the outback. A man has needs, William.”
Embarrassed by the crude statement, Celeste lowered her head.
Realizing his blunder, Francis tried to clarify himself but only made it worse. “I grant you the church looks upon this as a sin, but—”
“The sin is not in loving,” William said, “but in hurting. Men like Hobbs are destroying the aborigines’ way of life. The aborigines know nothing of ownership. Everything is provided by nature. That a person can own sheep is as preposterous to them as claiming to own the geese.”
Rose ceased plying her needles. Her voice echoed her husband’s concern. “As the aborigines’ wild food decreases with each new white settlement, they are facing certain death by starvation. We must help them.”
“While they slaughter us like sheep?” Francis asked. “Two sawyers were speared last week, and just before that several aborigines attacked the workers at a limekiln. The stealth of these . . .”
Amaris only saw her husband’s l
ips moving. His words made no impact on her brain, because at that moment Sin returned from the stables to rejoin the group. Rather than take a chair, he slouched to the wooden floor beside Celeste’s chair, his back against the wall. Celeste’s hand drifted down from the arm of her chair to alight on his shoulder. The gesture went unnoticed by everyone but Amaris.
She loved them both . . . her half-sister and Sin, her soul mate. Nevertheless, observing their obvious devotion to each other was a pain equal to an unseen hand squeezing her heart.
Like a creek, the months flowed gently by for Amaris. Toward the end of her term, she grew so large she wondered if she might be carrying twins.
In bed at night, Francis would feel her stomach and jest that she had swallowed a melon seed. She wasn’t as agile, that was true, and Baluway assumed many of her duties.
“You want I should take the hands to the western paddock and dock the sheep tails?” he asked her.
They stood on the veranda, watching the sun come up. Her parents had driven out in their dray to take food and supplies to Baluway’s tribe. Francis had risen early and taken the bullocks to plow the wheat and potato paddocks. With the coming of fatherhood, he was acting more responsible, taking the initiative.
“Aye,” she told the little man who still insisted on wearing nothing but a breechcloth and boots. “That would be a good idea. I’ll go with you.”
His expression never changed. “You will ride?”
She laughed. “With difficulty. Saddle Wind Runner for me, and I’ll change into a riding habit.”
The habit didn’t fit, of course, so Rose had sewn panels into the jacket. Ryku was helping Amaris pull on her boots. “When my husband comes in for lunch, tell him I should be back by late afternoon.”
Ryku’s sloe eyes regarded her steadily. “You are sure?”
Dream Time (historical): Book I Page 22