by Various
“So when do your guests arrive?” No need to panic. She could handle an outback party. Lord knows she had organised splendid functions at the manor.
“Could you possibly sound anxious?” He couldn’t resist the taunt, nor the near-overwhelming urge to pull free the yellow ribbon that tied back her billowing golden hair. It reached to her shoulder blades in sinuous curls and waves, unlike the evenings when she reverted to her smooth head-hugging arrangements.
“Do I sound anxious?” She put on her best formal tone.
“Actually, yes. I’m getting rather good at reading what goes on behind the high-born facade, Ms Balfour.”
“That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?” He flushed with vexation. “I have no inflated opinion of myself or my class.”
“Of course you have,” he said. “A whole battery of airs and graces. Some of them I like. But humility is clearly not your scene. Anyway, to get back to business. All of my guests will be flying in by midday Saturday at the latest. I’ll be home by then.”
“Would you mind putting that in writing?” she said, fighting for her habitual dignity.
He gave a low laugh. “Why, Olivia—I really like that name—my word is not enough?”
She felt as though she was on strange new ground. “It’s just that I would like you to be here when your ex-wife and your daughter arrive.” She wouldn’t tell him she had the dismal notion Marigole would hate her on sight. For that matter so might Georgina, his troubled young daughter. Her father had never warned her about any of this, she thought bitterly. If things turned out very badly at Kalla Koori she didn’t feel she could forgive him.
McAlpine suddenly caught her arm impatiently as though he had had quite enough of her backchat. Every time he did it she had to catch her breath. “Though I’m absolutely certain you can hold your own with anyone, Ms Balfour, I give you my word I’ll be back before the others arrive.”
She dared to give him a sideways glance. Their eyes held. Neither of them looked away. She couldn’t. Much as he got under her skin—took delight in doing it—the man possessed fatal charm. It would throw any woman, even a woman of backbone like herself, off balance. Worse yet, it frightened her. She was a deeply reserved woman at heart.
Wasn’t she?
Before she could react, he stretched out his hand and grasped her hair ribbon, setting the masses free.
She gave a mortified little cry while he watched with evident satisfaction as her hair cascaded around her agitated face. “Tell me, why do you feel the need to tie your hair back all the time?” He could see her fluster. Dusky pink coloured her cheeks, increasing the beauty she opted to play down. God knows why! “It’s gorgeous hair. Darn nearly turns you into a femme fatale!”
He was making fun of her, of course. “Oh, stop that!” she ordered in queenly fashion, vigorously pushing her hair back over her shoulders. “It’s my hair and don’t you forget it. I like to be neat.” She held out an imperative hand. “May I have my ribbon back?”
“Not today,” he said briskly, jamming it into the breast pocket of his khaki bush shirt. “I know the stories about your grand manner are legion, Ms Balfour, but we’re going to have to make an effort to modify it. Reveal the less starchy you. Otherwise you’ll never get a husband. Now meet you outside in five minutes. We’ll take the Range Rover. Don’t forget your hat and your sunglasses.”
In the act of hurrying away she turned back, blue eyes burning defiance.
“Kindly allow me to look after my own wardrobe, Mr McAlpine.”
“Delighted to. Especially as it appears to be vast!” he shot back.
It was the most brilliant of days. Cloudless. So good, Olivia was starting to think she could love this place. Of course, it was hot—no denying that—and they had long records of cyclones, fires and floods, but it appeared to be taken by Territorians as on-again, off-again events. It was simply the power of nature at work. Even the fact that glassy-eyed saltwater monsters lurked in the beautiful lily-festooned pools and lagoons was something Territorians lived with on a daily basis. It didn’t appear to worry them. It was foolhardy tourists and the stupidly intoxicated most likely to ignore all the warning signs—posted in several languages—who came to grief.
McAlpine kept up a running commentary which she had to admit was both fascinating and engrossing. They had agreed to “lay down our weapons,” as he put it. It was oddly liberating. She had travelled much of the civilised world but Kalla Koori was something else again. As was the force of McAlpine’s presence.
“This is the crocodile’s natural habitat,” he said. “Man is the invader. From time to time there has to be a cull if they start becoming too much of a threat, but we rather like our crocs.”
“And to think they were probably around when the whole continent was jungle. A Jurassic Park when the great reptiles were dominant and the birds were only starting to appear.”
He nodded. “The outback is famous for its birdlife. If we can fit it in I’ll take you to one of our Channel Country stations in south-west Queensland. Legions of budgerigar without number colour the sky green and gold. As for the prehistoric reptiles, they may have disappeared—save for the croc—but we have miniatures of the mighty reptiles in our lizards. The Japanese in particular are fascinated by these little lizards. Even I think they look fantastic with their armoury of spikes. We have the frill-neck, the bearded dragons, thorny devil lizards, not to mention the geckos, snakes, goannas and skinks. You might as well call the entire region the land of the lizards. Goannas can look pretty fearless, especially when they rear up on the hind legs. The perentie, our second largest to the Komodo dragon, can grow up to seven feet and more.”
They were driving across open boxwood-studded savannah, with great flights of birds filling the sky with colour and raucous calls. The sheer vastness of the landscape was having a powerful effect on her. “In many ways I’m reminded of Africa,” she said, “especially this never-ending sea of tall billowing yellow grasses. Look at the way they sway this way and that in the prevailing wind.”
“African lions have the perfect camouflage in such grasses,” he said. “Just little glimpses of the dense mane. I’ve been to South Africa several times. We have great friends in the Cape Colony and Natal. Magnificent creatures, lions, though I’m glad we don’t have lion around here. We have quite enough to contend with. Those great spiky tussocks you see are the ubiquitous spinifex. This is cattle country. No sheep.”
“But you do have stations where you run both sheep and cattle.” She felt more settled as he was clearly determined on being pleasant. She couldn’t help knowing he found her—or her manner—an irritant. She didn’t actually like him either.
Did she?
“Read up a bit on us, have you?”
“Of course.” So he was back to the sarcasm! She glanced out the window.
“Well, you might know, then, there are fourteen stations in the chain. They’re spread right across the outback—the Queensland Channel Country with its mighty sand dunes and flood plains, the Kimberly in Western Australia and the Territory right up to the much cooler Barkly Tableland. I make it my job to look in on all of the stations and the permanent outstations like Naroo Waters from time to time.”
She realised he was driving with care over the rougher spots. For her benefit she was sure; he wouldn’t have done it on his own. He wasn’t a complete barbarian. His aim obviously was to protect her from the worst jolting. “The Americans call your stations ranches?” She turned her head to question. Or could it be just another excuse to study his striking profile. He was an extraordinarily handsome and charismatic man. It would be unnatural not to imagine what he might be like as a lover. She was woman enough for that. But not woman enough to get involved. Such men were difficult to tame, let alone handle.
So be warned!
“We don’t call our stations ranches.” He glanced across at her, probably catching her out assessing him and the dangers he presented. “It was our early British settlers—th
e McAlpines among them—who called their vast pastoral holdings stations. It simply meant one was stationed or situated there. Farm is for something on a small scale, not a few million wild acres. Station was in common use right through the 1800s. We don’t use the term ranch. It was the Americans who came up with stampede. Here a stampede is known—or was known—as a rush but stampede has caught on. One only has to live through one to appreciate how stampede says it.”
“I don’t believe I’ll ever ask that question again,” she said. “I’m on Kalla Koori Station.”
“You are. Does that account for the little tremble?”
“What tremble?” She was worried he would notice. He had.
“Relax,” he said. “You’re perfectly safe with me.”
She gave him a long look with her bluer-than-blue Balfour eyes. “I should jolly well hope so.”
“Then there’s no need to jump whenever I touch you.”
“I do not!” she protested strongly. All the more so because he was right.
“Of course you do. Then you become as awkward as a novice nun.”
“Well, I have to tell you I’m not used to men invading my privacy,” she huffed.
He only laughed. “Lighten up, Olivia. What say we take a rest?”
“Why not!” she retorted shortly. Out in the open she might be able to breathe freely again. She knew he was baiting her. Worse, he enjoyed it.
They had been driving over his land for the best part of two hours. Mile after mile of vast empty distances, broken by broad streams of Brahman cattle, silver to dark grey in colour, en route to the nearest waterhole. Brahmans were better able to withstand tropical heat than European cattle, he’d told her. She could easily identify them from the distinctive large hump and the big droopy ears. Only a few stockmen appeared to be handling these large mobs. She couldn’t imagine what might happen in a stampede.
“Brahmans are docile and intelligent animals,” he said, “but they can on occasion be excitable. A lot of cross-breeding has gone on to up beef production. These days with the world in recession the public want cheaper cuts of meat. One of the reasons I sold off the central Queensland property to buy another in the Kimberly. With vast areas to cover, the cattle on the boundaries turn into very cunning rogues. They only have to pick up the slightest movement or sound and they scatter, finding shelter in the sand hills. Mustering unmarked cattle is very tough work. We won’t ask you to do it.”
“How do you know I wouldn’t like to try? You underestimate me, McAlpine.”
“I don’t. Nor have I ever,” he said bluntly, throwing her a glittering gaze.
That effectively shut her up.
From savannah, they were traversing a landscape of short green grass that looked for all the world like an infinity lawn. Millions of tiny wildflowers, mostly dark blue to purple with black white-flecked centres, rode the grass. Olivia rolled her window down to see if the wildflowers had any fragrance.
They did. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” She breathed in their fresh floral fragrance.
“Native ground cover,” he told her. “We can’t match the sublime displays of wildflowers our Channel Country stations put on after the flood waters subside. And 2009 was a bumper year. Lake Lady Eyre in the Centre received a massive in-flow from our three great rivers system. The best flooding in living memory.
“Right now in case you’re wondering, we’re heading for a cluster of billabongs called Noola Lakes. Back in the Dreamtime, so the local legend goes, an arrogant young warrior named Wapanga was captivated by a beautiful young girl of another tribe called Noola. Noola, promised to another, scorned him. Furious and humiliated Wapanga set fire to the dense scrub that surrounded the place where Noola was camped with her mother and sisters. The fire came down on them so fiercely and with such speed only Noola and two of her sisters were able to escape. When the fire was almost upon them Noola called out to the Great Spirits to help them with their magic. Whereupon she and her sisters were transformed into three lakes and Wapanga was turned into a black crow.”
“And that’s where we’re going?” Her face, usually so composed, lit up.
Glancing at her, he realised he was taking a surprising amount of satisfaction from seeing her open up a little. Spread her petals as it were. Here was a genuine nature lover. Marigole had not been one for the bush, although right up to the time he had married her she had kept up an amazing pretence. Marigole was the mistress of devious behaviour.
“Oddly enough, you can always count on a single black crow hovering around the lakes.” He gave the patrician Ms Balfour a half-smile.
To his surprise she returned it. It made him suck in his breath. She had a lovely smile. His hands on the wheel tightened imperceptively. Crisp-and-cool Ms Balfour could be a very sexy woman if she only knew it. Maybe she did know it and adopted the reserved front as the best way to deal with it. Her father had expected so much of her as his eldest daughter. Maybe too much.
The ground was becoming more marshy, Olivia saw. Strangely gnarled trees like living sculptures rose from shallow water. Around the trunks vivid green fernlike vegetation was sprouting, fanning out in great profusion.
“Noola Lakes are ponds of permanent fresh water,” McAlpine said. “They have the great advantage of being safe. No salties lurk there, though I’m not recommending a swim today. It’s simply a beautiful place on the station I want to show you. There are plenty of freshwater crocs in the Territory but they’re not in the same league as the salties. About half their size, for a start, with a narrow snout. We consider them harmless to humans unless provoked.”
“Well, I have no intention of provoking a single one of them,” she said with an uncontrollable shudder. “I’m not given to rash deeds.”
“My dear Ms Balfour, I would never have known.”
She coloured. “How you do love to tease. Of course you’re referring to my disgrace?”
“What disgrace,” he said. “Was it such a great scandal after all? Personally I think Oscar has been a bit hard on his daughters.”
“Maybe, but it wasn’t my finest hour,” she said quietly. “Bella and I just lost it.”
“Everyone loses it from time to time, Olivia. I sure have. So don’t keep beating yourself up about it. But surely it was Oscar who brought a lot of the trouble down on your heads. You and Bella meant well.”
She released a grateful sigh. “Only Bella proved more compassionate than I. I will have to make it up to Bella though—we parted in floods of tears. One would have thought we were never going to see each other again instead of in a few months’ time. I love my sister. I hated to row with her.” She shook her blonde head rather miserably.
“Get over it,” he said briskly. “What I saw of you and Bella, any number of rows wouldn’t break the powerful bond. Oscar told me you had been an exemplary daughter and a most caring sister to your siblings.”
“It wouldn’t have hurt him to tell me,” she said, shocked into showing her resentment. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t criticise my father. He’s been wonderful to us all.”
“Sometimes men forget to say what needs to be said.”
Both of them were silent for several minutes pondering that.
“The land has a religious feel to it, hasn’t it? A quality of time immemorial,” she ventured.
Her perceptions, her sensitivity, pleased him a great deal, he suddenly realised. “Not so surprising when you think Australia is a most ancient continent. For the aboriginal people the land is sanctified ground.” He threw her a long glance. Her beautiful skin was glowing, as were her blue eyes. She might have been Sleeping Beauty coming slowly out of her trance. “Some areas the elders regard as too holy to walk on.”
They were on a winding track the colour of rust. “On the station?” she asked in surprise.
“We’re talking an area of nearly four million acres,” he said. “We can accommodate the holy spots. It’s a primordial thing. It goes a lot deeper than Christian belief. The aboriginal tribes hav
e been on this continent for more sixty thousand years as far as we know. They know the power of the land. They believe the land is not always benign. They have their Great Ancestral Beings. There are nurturing spirits and destructive spirits. A person’s special essence, the soul, is a deeply held belief. Death and the afterlife are very important to them. Death is always associated with ritual, far longer and intense than our funerals and wakes. The elders on the station sing sacred songs daily. The chanting that went on after my father died—the sound of it, the wailing and the very real grief—will never leave me. To the aborigines on Kalla Koori my father has passed to the Sky World. He ascended on the bright rays of the setting sun.” Despite himself he released a pent-up breath. He missed his father greatly.
Very gently she reached out to touch his arm. “I’m sorry. So sorry. I can see how much you loved him.”
The muscles along his jaw line tightened. Her compassion had both surprised and moved him. “I admired him, respected him. He was a magnificent man. My mother adored him. It was a real love match. They don’t happen as often as one might think.”
“Well, good men are somewhat sparse on the ground,” she observed with obvious regret.
He broke into a laugh. “Don’t turn into a man-hater, Olivia.”
“I can’t afford to,” she admitted. “I want children.”
“And you’ll make a good mother.” She had been an admirable big sister. “May you be blessed with a round dozen. Better get a move on though. Your biological clock is ticking away. You’re twenty-eight?”
“Not, I would have thought, over the hill,” she said, incensed.
“Forgive me.” The amusement was back. “Of course you’ve got time.”
“You’re at it again, are you? Can’t stop yourself?”
“I’m just trying to loosen you up. Anyway, I’m no one to talk. All the marriages in our family have been very happy. Parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. Wonderful love matches that lasted. I broke the mould.”