by Gloria Bevan
But he brushed her words aside, his tone sharpening. ‘Now I get it! That farmer guy, the one in the Land-Rover—I saw the way he looked at you! He took the kids away too, and he called you Maggie!’ Suddenly he was gripping her shoulders, his mouth twisted in an ugly line, his eyes dark and angry. ‘So that’s the way it is! It’s his place you’re on! That’s why you didn’t want me around!’ His grasp tightened savagely. ‘Now I know why you didn’t want anyone to know where you were, or who you’re with?
She was tugging frantically at his hands, those soft white hands that were suddenly so strong and unyielding. ‘You’re hurting me!’ she gasped, and at last he loosened the cruel grip.
‘You're hurt! What about me? All this time I’ve been thinking of you, imagining you as different, above all this sort of thing, and all the time—I suppose,’ he said bitterly, ‘his wife would be the last one to know.’
‘Colin—’
‘No wonder you wouldn’t shift away from here, from him,’ he sneered. A note of self-pity crept into the hoarse tones. ‘You could have told me, though, instead of letting me go on and on, building up a pretty picture, thinking of you the way you used to be.’
Maggie put her hands to her neck, bruised and sore where his fingers had marked the delicate flesh. ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ she said in a muffled tone. ‘You—never let me explain—’
‘Explain what? Don’t trouble telling me any more lies, Maggie. You’re in love with the guy, and you know it!’
Her cracked laugh was a poor attempt at lighthearted amusement, but it was the best she could do. ‘You must be crazy!’ She was unaccountably angry with him.
‘Am I?’ He leaned back in the seat, studying her. Something in her expression must have given her away and to her intense mortification she could feel the hot, tell-tale pink creeping up her cheeks. She turned away, but it was too late.
‘Well, I guess it’s your funeral if you get yourself into a mess—’
‘I can look after myself,’ she said in a thick, unnatural voice that sounded strange even to her own ears. ‘Take me back to the beach buggy, will you? I’m late as it is!’
‘Let him wait. I’ve waited a lot longer than that to see you again!’
Distractedly she twisted a strand of hair round and round her finger. ‘Please, Colin, just—take me back.’
Reluctantly he put the car into gear and moved over the wet sand in the direction of the decrepit vehicle. He had barely reached it when she leaped out of the car, but once inside the beach buggy she could scarcely distinguish the gears for the mist that shimmered before her eyes. At last, after some fumbling, she moved away, catching a glimpse of Colin’s set angry face as she swept past. Glancing back over her shoulder as she took the path leading up between the sandhills, she saw that he was still sitting motionless, staring after her. Thank heaven, she mused, that her route took her far from the main highways. She couldn’t endure the thought that he might follow her, find out where she was staying; perhaps even—she felt a sickness at the pit of her stomach—challenge Danger as to her status in his home. It was bad enough to have her employer thinking—Oh, why couldn’t she forget him! There was no fun in living like this—so close to him in one sense, so far in another—no fun at all.
Oblivious of the passing scenes, she reached the homestead at last and having put the beach buggy in the garage, her dragging footsteps took her into the house and down the long hall.
At the end of the passage a long gold-framed mirror gave back her reflection and she paused, staring in dismay. Could that be herself, that pale dishevelled-looking girl with the disfiguring red marks around her neck? Hastily she pulled up her blouse collar to hide them, at the same moment as a tall masculine figure strode into view. Had he noticed the bruises? she wondered in panic. Impossible to tell from his chilly gaze. The thoughts tumbled wildly through her brain. He’d remember her offer to take the children up to the Gap today. No doubt he’d conclude that her meeting with Colin had been planned, and how could you explain that, it was an accident, that Colin was no longer a married man, and it made no difference now to her own feelings anyway!
Slowly she turned to face him. ‘Danger—’ As she looked up into the stern forbidding face her voice f altered. ‘About today—’ she had to force herself to go on. ‘It was a real surprise to me, running into Colin. He—’
‘No need for explanations, Maggie,’ he said gently, but something in the finality of his tones struck a chill in her heart. He remembers about Colin, she thought sadly, and he’s thinking the worst of me—as usual.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he was grave and unsmiling, ‘young Tony rang again, says you didn’t ring him back today. Better put him out of his misery.’
‘No, I forgot, I’ll do it now,’ she said contritely, uncaring, for what did it matter about Tony?
‘Seems you’re very popular around here, Maggie,’ he murmured grimly.
She could have wept. With everyone but you, her heart answered.
She summoned all her willpower. ‘I wanted to tell you—’ There was so much she wanted to say, to explain, but how could you with Danger regarding her like that, so distant and withdrawn.’ The lines etched around his mouth were all at once stern and forbidding, his eyes when he turned towards her were chips of blue ice.
‘Yes?’
She turned despairingly away. ‘Nothing.’ Oh, what was the use? What was the use of anything? They moved away together in a constrained and uneasy silence.
CHAPTER NINE
It was fumy, Maggie told herself with an unconscious sigh, but when it came to affairs of the heart, lovers never arrived singly. Either one was lonely and neglected, or else they came two at a time, like Tony and Colin. But never the man you wanted. Fate wasn’t all that generous! Trying desperately and ineffectually to forget Danger, she was finding it more and more difficult to put him out of mind. Lean, burned, wildly exciting, and way beyond her dreams, he towered above everything else in her life. The thoughts beat endlessly like dark butterflies against the cage of her mind: How can I get over this feeling for him? How can I make him understand? Forget him, she told herself sternly, but she couldn’t do that either!
Deliberately keeping herself endlessly occupied with household chores, she was indifferent to everything and everyone else. Tony’s daily telephone calls barely registered with her, and Philippa’s unconcealed air of resentment scarcely penetrated the fog of anguish in her mind. She had other more important problems, for which she could find no solution. How to endure the pain of being here with Danger, aware of the careful politeness in his tone, the icy disdain in his eyes. In the face of all that, what mattered a child’s grudge?
Nevertheless, she felt a faint surprise when one morning Philippa approached her, a sheet of drawing paper dangling from her hand. ‘Please, Maggie, have you got a stamp?’
‘Oh,’ Maggie turned from her task of throwing a sheet over Mark’s bed, ‘you did do the entry, then?’
The small girl stuck out her chin in a defiant gesture. ‘It’s nothing.’ With an assumption of nonchalance laughable in one so young, she extended the picture. ‘You can look at it if you like,’ she offered with vast condescension.
As she studied the sketch Maggie had to admit that the scene, crudely coloured though it was, possessed some quality that held her. There was a freshness about it, an impression of clarity in the air, and yes, she marvelled, the sky really was that incredible blue, up here in the hills. Nevertheless she had no wish to raise false hopes in the small artist. ‘It’s worth putting in,’ she murmured. ‘Look, I’ve got some card and a big envelope that would just about fit it. I’ll fix it up for you—’
‘If you like.’ As the child turned away Maggie resisted an impulse to give the thin shoulders a sharp slap, but the next moment she forgot Philippa and the picture, for she could hear Danger’s step, his familiar whistling in the yard outside, and as always her stupid heart began playing tricks with her.
It was later i
n the day that Ian wandered into the kitchen and as Maggie expected, began talking of the approaching agricultural show that they were all planning to attend at the weekend. It was an annual event held in a farming district eighty miles distant.
‘It’s mighty!’ He watched her take a batch of cookies from the oven. Then gingerly picking one up, he waited for it to cool a little. Maggie was spreading butter on a stack of sliced bread that she was making up into sandwiches to be packed into a chilli-bin in readiness for a picnic lunch at the show grounds on the following day.
‘Danger’s going to drive the horse float with Pancho and you’re taking us kids with you in the car. Mrs. Wahonga’s coming too,’ he munched happily on a cookie, ‘with her boy.’
Maggie nodded. She was thinking that to her the day at the show would be fraught with the bittersweet pleasure of being with Danger—that was, if he could bring himself to stay near her. Since the incident on the ocean beach where he had come upon her in Colin’s embrace he had been noticeably cool and distant. Which was ridiculous, she mused, seeing that he hadn’t the slightest romantic interest in her himself. It was really very strange. But then she and Danger never seemed to manage to understand each other. Even without understanding him, though, she loved him, no use denying it. No use thinking, hoping, longing either. She forced herself to concentrate on the matter in hand.
‘How many events are you entering in the Pony Ring tomorrow?’
‘Only two. One over hurdles and Best Kept Pony.’
‘Best kept pony! You’ve got to be joking!’
He looked a trifle shamefaced at Maggie’s incredulous expression and teasing smile.
‘Well,’ he shifted uneasily beneath her gaze, ‘I know I don’t groom him and exercise him every day like you do Pete, but Pm going to give him a good brush down tonight. I can still enter him, can’t I?’
‘You haven’t a hope,’ Maggie told him, ‘but I guess there’s no harm in trying! Better get on with cleaning your gear too, and how about your jodhpurs? Bring me out your white shirt and tie and I’ll give them a press.’
‘Okay ... I’m leaving Pancho in the corral tonight all ready for the morning.’
‘Tell you what,’ Maggie offered, ‘I’ll go down to the paddock with you later on if you like ... help you give him a good brush down. We’ll give him a wash first, to make his coat really shine and—’ She broke off, becoming aware of Philippa standing silently in the doorway, stroking the thick dark fur of the small possum she held in her arms. ‘Oh, Phil,’ a thought ran through Maggie’s mind and she smiled appealingly towards the small girl, ‘I expect your horse could do with a spot of grooming too, even if he isn’t going to the show tomorrow. How about if you come with us and give the Saint a rub down too?’
Philippa shrank back and a wary look came into the grey eyes. ‘No, I won’t! I won’t go near him! He hates me—’
‘Not even if I hold him? You wouldn’t mind just brushing him?’
‘He wouldn’t let me brush him! The minute I come just a teeny bit near him he rolls his eyes and all the white parts show. He knows I’m scared of him,’ she added, ‘I don’t know how. He just—knows.’
Maggie sighed and put the suggestion aside. Well, it had been worth a try. Perhaps if she could persuade the girl to ride Ian’s placid pony she might gradually wean her from her obsession about horses in general and the big white show jumper in particular. ‘I was wondering,’ she said gently, ‘if you’d like to enter one of the pony events at the show tomorrow? On Ian’s pony, I mean.’
‘Aw, heck,’ the boy put in disgustedly, ‘she’s not going to have Pancho! Pie doesn’t want her riding him! She’d ruin him,’ he complained bitterly.
‘I don’t want your old pony anyhow! I only want my little Dandy!’ Philippa fled from the room with tear-filled eyes, slamming the door furiously behind her.
Maggie sighed as she cut through the pile of sandwiches. What a hope! And she had been so confident in her powers of persuasion, the quick charm of manner that so often in the past gained her her own way, especially when it came to swaying masculine opinions. Yet with Philippa it seemed that nothing she could do made the slightest difference. She was further away than ever from fulfilling her boast that she could make the child forget her fears and trepidations, her terrifying nightmares of the Saint. Time was going by fast, so fast, and she was no nearer to her promise given so lightheartedly to Danger that she could banish from the child’s mind her fear of the famous show jumper.
Was it all to be mere wishful thinking? Like that other idea that she’d had in mind in those early days of her stay here. Had she really imagined that she could influence the master, of Amberley, make him fall a little bit in love with her—just like that? She must have been out of her cotton-pickin’ mind!
Fearful of sleeping in in the morning, Maggie awoke just as the first rose-and-gold shafts of sunrise spread across the eastern sky. Perched on a branch of a nearby macrocarpa tree, a tui was earlier still, his bell-like notes falling clear and pure into the stillness.
Getting out of bed, she went to the window and parting the curtains looked out to an early morning scene that gave promise of a glorious day. There were sufficient fleecy white clouds to make the journey to Tamona not too hot, and a fresh breeze was blowing. If only things were different between Danger and herself. But in spite of everything she couldn’t help but feel a faint feeling of anticipation as she showered and slipped into an impeccably tailored pants suit of grape-coloured linen, swept back the long black hair and caught it back with a matching chiffon scarf. A little thrill of pleasure shot through her as she met her reflection in the mirror. The translucent dark-gold tan had come on her so gradually that she had been scarcely aware of it. Not that he would notice her, not the way he felt about her at the moment, and with Ann in the party!
After that everything was a rush, getting the picnic hamper packed, slipping ice-cold bags in the chilli-bin, placing the big fruit cake in a coloured tin.
Philippa looked a different child when she was feeling happy, Maggie thought. The girl’s grey eyes sparkled with anticipation. She wore daisy-spattered thongs on her narrow feet and her gaily patterned floral shift was freshly laundered.
Ian she scarcely recognized in his neatly fitting jodhpurs, canary yellow pullover and hard black riding hat. Only Mark was his usual chubby, endearingly aggressive small self, and Danger ... The dark blue of his stretch T-shirt pulled over corduroys made his eyes seem bluer than ever, a cool icy blue whenever he encouraged Maggie’s direct look, although she had to admit that he was polite enough to her—in an impersonal, employer-to-housekeeper sort of way.
When everything was in readiness, Danger guided the horse float down to the corral. Fortunately, Maggie thought, Pancho appeared quite accustomed to road transport and stepped willingly up the landing and into the float. Down in the paddock below Pete whinnied and Maggie knew a moment’s regret that she had refused Danger’s suggestion to take Pete too in the double float and enter him in the hack events. But it was too late now, and anyway, she wouldn’t have stood a chance of competing against Ann who she knew was planning to enter a number of hurdle events with her bay thoroughbred Redwood.
‘You okay?’ With the float in readiness, Danger came back to stand beside the car; where already Maggie sat behind the wheel, with the wildly excited children in the back seat.
She nodded.
‘We should make it in a couple of hours,’ Danger was saying. ‘Over the river, then on up the main road until you come to the turn-off—you’ll see the signpost. Keep me in sight if you can, and if you have any problems just pull in and wait for me to come back and sort things out.’
Taking in his strength and grace, the lines of the lean tanned face, she was thinking that she would wait for ever, if it would do her any good, which of course it wouldn’t!
‘Got it?’ With a start she realized he was staring at her with his old penetrating look and she dropped her gaze guiltily. ‘Yes, I know
.’
‘Right! We’re away, then!’
It was easy enough to keep Danger in sight as they went down the winding slope, through the gate and over the farm road that circled the sheep-threaded hills. Maggie caught up with him at the landing where a cluster of dust-smothered cars filled with adults and children waited for the arrival of the car ferry.
Once on the main road, however, it wasn’t so easy, for transporters, horse-floats, jeeps, Land-Rovers and cars, it seemed,, were all bound in the one direction. Apparently everyone in the remote scattered farming area was intent on attending the country show that was no doubt a focal point for the outlying districts. Gradually, however, the traffic spread out, the miles dropped away and at last, following Danger’s Land-Rover, Maggie turned at a signpost and presently found herself passing through a small township where each side of the road was lined with bungalows painted in rainbow colours. Then the houses and country stores were left behind and there was only the expanse of fenced paddocks with grazing cattle and sheep.
‘I can hear a merry-go-round!’ shouted Mark, and turning a corner Maggie came in sight of the showgrounds, a green expanse surrounded by tall evergreens. Cars, trucks and horse floats were milling around the entrance where a man in a white coat directed her with his flag towards a wide parking lot on the grass. Maggie drew in at the side of the Land-Rover, where already Danger was letting down the flap door of the float and leading Pancho out on to the grass.
He helped Ian to saddle the pony, then as the boy sprang up on his mount, gave the pony an affectionate slap. ‘Off you go, both of you! See what you can find out about the course.’ Maggie watched Ian put Pancho to a trot as he guided the pony up a grassy slope and rode towards an area where horses and riders milled about amongst the painted jumps and bush hurdles.
‘His events aren’t on until this afternoon,’ Danger remarked, ‘but he can get an idea of the course. Here, Philippa,’ fishing in his pocket he held out some coins, ‘take these and give yourself and Mark a go on the merry-go-round and anything else you fancy in the side-show department. Just look after him, will you, and make sure you’re back here in an hour. You’ve got your watch?’