The narrow bed looked warm and inviting, though the room was musty and the rain hammered furiously at the roof. Maggie shed her blanket and her damp camisole and drawers once she and Eleanor were alone in the room, and crawled under the covers.
The walls seemed to undulate, and Maggie closed her eyes. Within moments she’d lapsed into a queer state halfway between waking and sleeping, and she began to feel too warm. Every time she tossed back the covers, however, strong, deft hands replaced them again.
By nightfall, Maggie was burning with fever.
Reeve had found few things impossible in the course of his life, but prying that coach from the mud was that and more. Finally, an early darkness set in, and there was nothing to do but unhitch the exhausted team and ride on to the inn. He arrived with the angry driver, Duncan, and all his men hours after the women had been brought in.
Cora, Eleanor, and Elisabeth were all sitting at one of the inn’s trestle tables. Elisabeth was looking through a picture book, while Cora and Eleanor played cards.
“Where’s Maggie?” Reeve demanded instantly.
Eleanor stood up gracefully and swept through the crowd of sodden men to stand facing Reeve. “She’s resting. You must get out of those clothes, Mr. McKenna. After all, you’re not well.”
Maggie, resting? Stubborn, energetic Maggie? Reeve thrust away Eleanor’s hands when she would have taken off his rain slicker. “Where?”
Eleanor sighed. “Upstairs. First room on the right.”
Reeve took the stairs two at a time, driven by some instinct that warned of trouble. He found her lying, half covered, in a cot pushed against the sloping roof.
Slipping out of his canvas coat, Reeve covered her and then stepped back, not wanting to drench her in rainwater. He flung his squishy hat aside and dried his hair with a towel he found in the cupboard beneath the washstand.
“Maggie?”
She opened her wondrous gray eyes and looked at him in an unseeing way that chilled Reeve as his wet clothes hadn’t. “Saints in heaven,” he muttered, touching her forehead with one hand.
Her flesh was hot beneath his fingers.
Whirling, Reeve raced out of the room and back down the stairs. “Eleanor,” he ordered, “go upstairs and see to my wife. She’s running a high fever.” He turned to Duncan, who, like himself, was still dripping wet. “Kirk, is there a doctor around here?”
Duncan shrugged, but his face was drawn, and at that moment Reeve knew he cared about Maggie in his misguided and volatile way. “I don’t spend any more time around here than you do, McKenna.”
“That missionary fellow over on Squatter’s Ridge,” said the innkeeper’s rotund wife, “he’s a doctor, ain’t he, Angelina?”
A young girl in a servant’s cap nodded her head. “Yes, mum.”
Before Reeve could react, Duncan rounded on his men and ordered, “Bring him here.”
Two of them donned their canvas coats and wet hats without complaint, and went out.
Reeve went back upstairs to Maggie, stripping to his trousers and then pulling up a chair to sit beside her bed. He knew that Duncan was behind him, but he said nothing.
“She’s so like my wife,” Duncan observed.
That made Reeve look back over his shoulder at the man who had once, a long time ago, been his friend. “So that’s why you’re so obsessed with her,” he said hoarsely. “She reminds you of Elena.”
Duncan stiffened at the sound of the name Reeve knew was almost holy to him. “She was carrying your child too—just like Maggie is. It’s an odd sort of justice, isn’t it, McKenna?”
They had been over this ground a thousand times before. Reeve closed his eyes and sighed. “I never touched Elena,” he said patiently, bracing himself for the reply he knew would come.
“She told me herself that the baby was yours. She said you were taking her to America—”
“Duncan, for God’s sake, listen to me. I don’t know why Elena lied to you, but there was nothing between us. Ever.”
“She chased after you! Do you know how humiliating that was?”
Reeve touched Maggie’s face again, and alarm made his voice gruff. Elena Kirk had indeed pursued him, but he’d never been in the habit of bedding other men’s wives, and he’d rebuffed her as gently as possible. “She wanted to go home, Duncan. Back to England. Not America. England. It affected her mind.”
“Now you’re saying that Elena was mad?” Duncan rasped in a furious whisper.
“Not mad. Lonely.”
“She had our sons and she had me!”
“She may have had the boys,” Reeve agreed without taking his eyes from Maggie’s fevered face, “but she never had you. You were too busy mining opals—too busy cavorting with your various mistresses. Little wonder Elena took to making up stories about lovers of her own.”
“Dear God, I wish I could believe that she’d never given herself to you.”
Reeve stood up and turned slowly to face Duncan. “What possible reason could I have for lying about it? After all you’ve done to me to avenge your imagined wrongs, I’d take pleasure in being able to tell you that your wife preferred me.”
Duncan looked taken aback, and when Eleanor entered the room an instant after Reeve had spoken, he strode out without another word.
Eleanor was carrying a bowl of water and a cloth. Without speaking at all she took the chair Reeve had left vacant by the bed and began bathing Maggie’s forehead. He wondered why his wife disliked the woman so, when she was obviously a competent and caring nurse.
“Could she lose the baby?” Reeve dared to ask. Eleanor dipped the cloth in the basin and wrung it out, then laid it to Maggie’s face again. “More to the point, Mr. McKenna,” she remarked without looking up, “she could die.”
That, the unthinkable, had not occurred to Reeve. His knees suddenly weak, he scanned the room for another chair and, failing to find one, knelt beside the bed. “No,” he whispered, remembering another cot, in another room and another country, where another woman had died of a fever, long ago.
“We’ll do our best to prevent that, of course,” Eleanor said airily. “The blunt truth is that the doctor won’t be able to do anything for Mrs. McKenna that I can’t. She’ll reach a crisis and then she’ll either live or die.”
Some of the mysteries of Maggie’s antipathy toward this woman were solved. “How the devil can you speak of life and death that way, as if this were a choice between two kinds of tea cakes?” he demanded in a raw whisper.
Eleanor’s slim shoulders moved in a shrug; she went right on trying to cool Maggie’s fevered flesh. “One learns to be philosophical in my vocation, Mr. McKenna.”
“Damn it, I don’t want you to be philosophical—I want you to fight for her!”
She lifted dark blue eyes to his face, and he saw a weariness of soul in their depths. “You really do love Maggie, then?” she asked softly.
“Yes,” Reeve answered, really sure of the fact for the first time.
Eleanor stood up, offering him the basin and the cloth. “Reeve, I think it might be best if you do this,” she said, her eyes lowered now, her face virtually without color.
Reeve took the basin and sat down, gently applying the cloth to Maggie’s forehead.
He knew that Eleanor had opened the door, though he didn’t turn and look.
“I would advise you to keep very close watch on your Maggie,” Eleanor said in parting. “You have enemies, Mr. McKenna, and some of them are people you seem to trust.”
The door closed with a quiet click, and Reeve, pondering her words, went on tending his wife until Cora arrived, some minutes later, with fresh water.
He wondered who it was that Eleanor had referred to before; Duncan was the obvious choice, but, of course, Reeve wasn’t foolish enough to trust him. He’d let Kirk bring Maggie from the coach to the inn, but there’d been no real choice, and Duncan wouldn’t have been foolish enough to try anything with the lady’s husband so close by.
He g
lanced at Cora. She was harmless; just an aging spinster far from home and trying to make an honest living. Besides the retinue of servants staffing his various houses, that left only Eleanor herself. Had she, in some perverse way, been warning him that she was not what she seemed to be?
He sighed and stood up.
“No change, now, is there,” Cora said regretfully, sitting down to take Reeve’s place for a while. “You go and get yourself something to eat, Mr. McKenna. Stand by the fire for a bit. You’ll be no good to Mrs. McKenna if you lapse into sickness yourself.”
Reluctantly, Reeve left the room and went downstairs, where he forced himself to eat a bowl of stew and a biscuit. The warmth of the fire did feel good against his chilled flesh.
Duncan left a hand of cards to join him at the trestle table. “How’s Maggie?”
“No better,” Reeve responded woodenly, without looking at the man. An uneasy truce existed between them, but both knew that they would never again be friends. “And no worse.”
“I regret what I said about Maggie’s illness being a sort of justice. It isn’t and I’m sorry.”
Reeve glanced up from his stew, still deep in thought. “You do care about her in your way, don’t you?”
Duncan nodded. “I’d have married her, but she wouldn’t have me.”
“After what happened in your carriage in Melbourne that night, Duncan, you shouldn’t be surprised.”
Duncan was holding an enamel mug of coffee between his hands. He lifted it to his mouth and took a steadying draught before answering. “I’m sure you’d agree that passion can do very strange things to a man.”
“What would you have done—if my brother hadn’t interfered?”
Duncan set the mug down with a thump. “That sheepherder was your brother?”
Reeve nodded. “I asked you a question.”
His face twisted with a memory of pain suffered, Duncan unconsciously rubbed the place in his shoulder where he’d been stabbed. “The truth is, I intended to raise welts on her bare backside. I hadn’t thought much beyond that, frankly.”
“Maggie thought you meant to rape her.” Duncan sighed. “Maybe it did appear that way from her viewpoint. She made me so crazy—”
“That,” Reeve said, “I can understand. But if you ever force yourself on her, Duncan, I’ll kill you.”
Duncan indulged in a speculative, thoughtful silence for a few moments, then asked, “Suppose I can woo her? Suppose she gives herself to me, Reeve?”
“Then I wouldn’t want her,” Reeve replied, and with that he shoved his half-finished stew away and went back upstairs.
It was the middle of the night when the missionary doctor arrived. He was surprisingly young, with an earnest face and a small, agile build. Briskly, he examined Maggie and then tucked the covers in around her again.
“Pneumonia?” Reeve hardly dared to ask.
The doctor shook his head. “No, mate. Just exhaustion, I’d say, and a very bad cold. Has she been under a great deal of strain or tension in recent days?”
Reeve considered all that Maggie had been through and nodded.
“There you have it, then. Your wife needs a good long rest and lots of sunshine.” The physician made a wry face at the intruding clamor of the rain on the roof. “That is, if the sun ever chooses to come out again.”
Reeve was weak with relief. He paid the doctor a generous fee and, when he was gone, stripped off the clothes he’d put on earlier and crawled into bed beside Maggie. The space was scant, considering the width of that cot and his own size, but Reeve didn’t care. Though she was hot as a cheap pistol, he held her close and fell asleep.
The next day the sun was out with a vengeance, drying up the muddy lakes that filled the roads and turning the mud to cracked dirt. Maggie was awake, though not nearly well enough to travel.
She made a face at the bowl of broth Reeve held out to her. “Tastes like dishwater,” she said.
Reeve chuckled, too glad of her recovery to be annoyed at her sullen mood. “The doctor said you need to eat. Are you going to take this yourself, Yank, or do I have to pour it down your throat?”
Maggie took the bowl with a wrenching motion that slopped some of the broth over onto her bedclothes. “When I married one of the richest men in Australia,” she said testily, “I expected better things to eat than a chicken’s bathwater.”
Reeve grinned. “Did you, now? Pity. It’s a steady diet of bathwater from here on out, though we’ll try to vary the meat. Sometimes we’ll dip a kangaroo into the pot, now and then a wombat.”
Maggie was trying to frown, but she didn’t succeed. A sheepish grin curved her mouth. “Have I been too impossible?”
“Much. I’ve never believed in beating women,” Reeve joked, “but I may take it up.”
“Lay a hand on me, Reeve McKenna,” Maggie retorted cockily, “and I’ll skin you with a paring knife.”
He laughed. “It’s good to have you back, Yank,” he said hoarsely.
She looked toward the window, which was aglare with the light of the fierce Queensland sun. “Have the others gone?”
“Eleanor went on with Duncan to get the house ready. Cora is still here, looking after Elisabeth.”
Maggie sighed, and the sound was forlorn. She clearly wasn’t used to staying in bed while life went on without her. “I never get sick, you know,” she said. “Even on the ship out from England I was up and around every day, while most of the others lolled in their berths.”
“Lazy no-gooders,” Reeve commiserated, hiding a grin. “I suppose if they weren’t in bed, they were hanging over the rail.”
Maggie nodded quite soberly. “It was disgusting,” she said.
Reeve couldn’t help laughing. “You’re an arrogant chit, do you know that?”
She lifted her stubborn little Yankee chin, and at that moment Reeve had no doubt what he felt for this woman: It was love, pure and simple and dizzying in its scope. “I was merely recounting circumstances as they happened,” she said.
Reeve restrained his mirth. “Of course,” he said primly. “If we ever take a sea voyage, Mrs. McKenna, I’m sure you’ll acquit yourself in a heroic manner.”
Maggie’s silvery eyes widened. “You’d do that?” she whispered. “Take a sea voyage after what happened to you?”
She clearly didn’t intend to have any more of the broth, and Reeve took it away, lest she spill it. “I won’t go after a whale again,” he said seriously. “They’re magnificent creatures, Maggie, too special to be made into lamp oil and corset stays.”
Her small hand crept out to cover his. “It was the whaling that made you rich, wasn’t it?”
Reeve nodded. “Aye, but its time is past. From now on I’ll be a gentleman farmer and invest my money in sheep or something.”
Instantly, Maggie lowered her eyes, and Reeve knew she was thinking of Jamie.
“So he has sheep, does he?” he asked hoarsely. She looked at him with an expression of dread. “A great many, I suspect,” she said.
Given Maggie’s recent illness, Reeve found it easy to keep his voice calm and gentle. “You know something more about Jamie, don’t you, Maggie? Something you’re afraid to tell me?”
She swallowed, her eyes averted now. “It’s not me I’m afraid for, Reeve. It’s Jamie. He’s sure that if you know, you’ll never forgive him, and he’d rather you didn’t find him at all than to have you hate him—”
Reeve held up his hands in a bid for silence. “It’s all right, Maggie. I won’t ask you anymore. When you’re ready to tell me, you can.”
“I promised I wouldn’t,” she said sadly.
“Then I’ll have to accept that for the time being,” Reeve replied. “But I’m warning you, Yank: I won’t always be this charitable.”
A small smile quirked one corner of her mouth. “I know,” she answered. “Come here and kiss me, please.”
Reeve shook his head. “And catch your cold? Never!”
“If you don’t kiss me rig
ht now, I’ll be forced to do something truly decadent and even bawdy,” Maggie announced firmly.
Reeve cocked an eyebrow. “Such as?”
She tossed aside the covers with a gesture of daring, only to find that she was wearing a nightgown. “How did I get into this?” she asked. “I was naked—”
Reeve laughed and pulled the bedclothes back into place. “Eleanor put it on you when you fell sick. Decent sort, Eleanor.”
Maggie crossed her eyes.
Chapter 22
REEVE’S HOUSE, BUILT OF WHITE STONE, LAY AT THE END of a red dirt road lined on either side with banana trees. Beyond the structure were acres and acres of sugar cane, standing as tall as corn. Riding beside Reeve, in the box of a wagon borrowed from the innkeeper, Maggie drew in her breath at the sight of it. “You run a place like this with no servants?”
Reeve grinned at her and, with a swift motion of his hands, brought the reins down on the backs of the two-horse team, urging them to go faster. “No house servants to speak of. Field workers are another matter.”
“Aborigines?”
Reeve nodded, then frowned slightly. “They’re a migratory people, though. When the spirit moves them, they just put down their tools and leave.”
In the distance Maggie caught the shimmer of sunshine on blue-green water. She remembered that the ocean was near, and looked forward to walking on sandy beaches and searching for shells. “Does this place have a name?” she asked, spotting Elisabeth and Cora up ahead, waving from the porch of the house. Smiling, she waved back.
“Aye,” Reeve said quietly. “It’s called Seven Sisters, because of a story the Aborigines tell. A legend from the Dreamtime.”
“The Dreamtime?”
“That’s what the Aborigines call the period before recorded history.”
“Tell me about the legend,” Maggie pleaded, for she loved such stories. Samuel’s tale about the kangaroos, told to her that day at the menagerie, had delighted her.
They were nearing the house, and Reeve’s expression was suddenly sober. Maggie followed his gaze and saw Duncan Kirk standing on the porch with Eleanor. “Another time,” her husband told her. He brought the wagon to a stop in front and leapt agilely from the box to walk around and lift Maggie down.
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