by Margaret Way
Genevieve was startled. “I’d ask her if I could. Only the dead don’t speak. They come to you in dreams. They walk towards you or they walk away from you. We can only dimly understand. Even before I arrived on Djangala I felt this sense of destiny. I was meant to meet you. You were meant to meet me. My mind and my body carry the conviction like the seed of truth. Hester won’t want me here any longer, will she?”
A groan came from deep in Trevelyan’s throat. “Hester has no say. None at all. I’ve done everything I can to look after her. It hasn’t been easy. I’ve often felt Hester has a darkness inside her. I’m pretty sure my father felt the same way. But she is a woman of our family, and well up in years.”
“She has money?”
“A lot,” Trevelyan said, his handsome mouth compressed.
“She could have made a life of her own. Instead of that she let it all go—her career…”
“She couldn’t move away. She must have felt there was nothing left for her if she did. God, Genevieve, I don’t want to talk about Hester any more. She’s another responsibility I have to carry. I want to talk about us.” Passionately he took her face between his hands, bending his head low so he could press his hungry mouth against hers. “Hester has no say, Genevieve,” he repeated emphatically.
“But she doesn’t want me around.”
He drew her into his close embrace. “I won’t allow Hester to cast a shadow over us, Genevieve. You’ve changed my life. Even if you went away I could never forget you. But that’s not going to happen. You have me to hold on to now. We have a life before us, full of wonderful things as long as we’re together. You believe that, don’t you? Tell me you do?”
She turned up her face. “I love you, Bret. I love you with every breath I take, with every beat of my heart. It’s a tremendous thing to love someone that much. I am greatly blessed.”
Trevelyan felt jubilant, yet immensely humbled. “Then I need your promise you’ll marry me—and soon,” he said sweepingly. “There’s not a single atom of me that could bear to let you go. I want your promise you will never leave me.”
“Leave you?” she echoed, hot blood rushing to every extremity. “When you bring me closer and closer to fulfilment and joy? When a heart is truly given it can never be withdrawn.”
Here at last. Here at last! He was swept by elation. The woman I love. The woman I want to share my life with.
“You have to be with me tonight.” Genevieve—his woman—so passionate, so loving, so open to him.
“Oh, yes,” she whispered.
“Let’s go inside now. I know other things matter, my love, but nothing matters more to me than you.”
And that was the way it was to remain for ever.
EPILOGUE
THE passing of Ms Hester Trevelyan of historic Djangala Station in the Brisbane hospital to which she had been airlifted was treated with professional respect by the media. Ms Trevelyan, after all, had been a member of a prominent and distinguished Outback family—a true pastoral dynasty.
No one knew how many private tears were shed. The Trevelyans were very private people. And as was nearly always the case, Hester Trevelyan’s sins were buried with her.
Much was made of the fact she had been denied by only a week or two the great pleasure of seeing her great-nephew Bretton Trevelyan, present Master of Djangala Station, married to the beautiful Genevieve Grenville, who just happened to be Michelle Laurent, the bestselling author. The wedding had not been the marvellous society spectacle women’s magazines had been hoping for. It had been a private ceremony on the historic station with only friends and family, including the bridegroom’s mother, who it was thought had been estranged from the family for some years. Apparently that was no longer the case.
The first leg of their honeymoon was reported as being in Hong Kong, and from there the great cities of Europe, taking in New York and San Francisco on the way back to Australia.
“What are you thinking, my love?” Genevieve, dressed in a sheer white nightgown trimmed with silver, came behind her husband, laying her radiant head against his broad back.
“What a sight!” he said, drawing her hands around him. They were looking down at Central Park through a window of their suite in one of New York’s most prestigious hotels. “It’s been the most wonderful honeymoon any man and woman could possibly dream of—”
“But she wants to go home,” she broke in, giving a low laugh.
“You too?” He swung to face her.
“Me too,” she said, with a richly contented smile. “My love for Djangala is scarcely less than my wonderful husband’s!”
“That means so much to me!” Trevelyan heard his own grateful sigh. “It will be waiting for us, Genevieve. Welcoming us.”
On a wave of jubilation he scooped his beautiful wife up into his arms, carrying her back to bed.
He bent over her, his brilliant dark eyes aflame. “I adore you. You know that?”
“I should.” Genevieve had never felt so womanly, so wondrously desirable in her life. She stretched luxuriously, before reaching up to lock her arms around her husband’s neck. “Come to bed,” she whispered, letting her head fall back and closing her eyes.
This was Catherine’s true legacy, she thought, her heart at peace. Whatever she had been looking for, she had found it. Catherine had brought into her life her husband, her passionate lover, her dearest and best friend.
And Bret, loving his wife so much, had determined he would never tell her that as Hester had been being wheeled into the operating theatre for what should have been a minor operation she had looked up at him, her formidable old face etched with anguish.
“It was never Addie,” she said.
* * * * *
ISBN: 9781459219434
Copyright © 2012 by Margaret Way, Pty., Ltd
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