At the thought of Lisa’s coming disappointment she felt suddenly sick at heart and very angry.
She did not know that her troubled thoughts showed very plainly in her small face as she unfolded her napkin with trembling fingers.
Steve Forrest said more gently. “We can talk business in the office afterwards, Jane. We’ve a lot to unscramble. But eat first—or Mrs. Newbery will be disappointed. She’s delighted about your coming, you know. It’s lonely for a woman in the homestead here.”
Jane could not reply because the rattle of trolley-wheels announced the arrival of the housekeeper with two more man-sized breakfasts.
“There, my dear. You’ll feel better when you’ve a good meal inside you after all those snippetty-snacks they give you on the journey.” Mrs. Newbery placed a plate of mixed grill, piping hot, in front of Jane and the girl thanked her in a small voice. “Will it disturb Lisa if I fetch her tray? We don’t leave dishes about here, it brings the flies:”
“I shouldn’t think she’s asleep yet.” Jane found her voice and smiled back at the housekeeper. She was the one real and comforting thing about this fantastic situation.
“Will you pour out? I prefer tea, please, for breakfast,” Steve said conversationally when Mrs. Newbery had bustled away.
To Jane’s surprise he was smiling at her almost kindly.
“I like it hot, strong, and sweet—three lumps of sugar,” he added, and seemed as if he was laughing at her as she obediently poured his tea from the big, old-fashioned silver teapot.
She thought the heavy meat meal would choke her, but watching Steve demolish his plateful made her realise she was hungry and she started to eat slowly, still confused by many conflicting emotions. The grill was delicious. It reminded her suddenly of the other Steve’s appetite for meat, and she saw the brilliant colours of the bougainvillaea and the morning glories climbing the veranda posts through a mist of tears.
Steve’s voice, low and mocking, brought her reluctant gaze back to his. “We don’t have to write any sob-stuff into this touching farce, do we? You’ve done very well so far, Jane. You’ve come twelve thousand miles to Blue River to marry me. Spare the crocodile tears, darling.”
She stared at him furiously. “The—coffee—it’s scalding hot,” she muttered rebelliously, and went on with her breakfast. The fresh pineapple was delightful and Steve told her conversationally that the fruit—the grapes and mangoes and apples too—was grown on the station.
“We have the best of both worlds here, in this latitude. Do you know much about Australia, Jane—beyond Waltzing Matilda and the coolibah tree—and Rolf Harris?”
She shook her head. This man was even more insufferable when he was being the conversational host.
“Please—can we go and talk now?” she said when he had lighted her cigarette. He was still watching her with that odd gleam in his deep grey eyes, as if he found her both amusing and exasperating.
He got up at once and led the way into his office, a long narrow room adjoining his bedroom. They walked along the veranda that ran right round the house, every room having a french window opening on to it. Steve indicated a chair in front of the big desk with account books piled on one end of it, and went round to seat himself behind it, facing her. The windows here were wide open and outside the sunlight was dazzling on the terraced garden. The air was heavy with the perfume of flowers and the pungent sweetness of the gums and the earthy smell of ferns—a smell that brought the ferny lanes of the West Country suddenly to Jane amidst the tropical exuberant growth of Blue River.
It was so quiet that she could hear the droning of insects in the garden, and the cool-sounding splash of a stream running from the rocky hillside down to the river below.
The heat outside seemed to throb with a life of its own, the sun was almost overhead though it was only ten o’clock. It was all very beautiful and exciting, Jane thought bitterly, just as he had described it to her ... a new Garden of Eden.
Steve Forrest flicked ash into an ashtray with an impatient gesture, and swivelled round in his chair to face her. For the first time she really looked at him, this brown-skinned craggy-looking man in his khaki shirt and shorts. With his free hand he pushed his dark thick hair off his forehead, before diving into a desk drawer and bringing out a bundle of letters. Her letters and Lisa’s. Taken out of the large enclosing envelopes, they looked quite a lot.
Jane flushed to the roots of her hair. For the first time she realised fully that this man, this stranger, had opened and read every one of those letters and she wanted to die with shame.
He said evenly, “Now suppose you tell me what you and Stewart have been cooking up with all this, Jane Lesley.”
“Stewart?” Jane said stupidly. “Who is Stewart?”
Steve Forrest made a small impatient sound. In another country he would have been swearing. Jane was to learn that the tough Australian men of the Outback never swore in front of a woman ... it was one of the many strangely incongruous things about them.
“Oh, come, Jane!” he tapped the letters with long brown fingers, giving her that brief, scornful smile again. “He must have put you up to this nonsense and I think it has gone far enough. Stewart always had a macabre sense of humour—I suppose this is his way of getting his own back on me. But it’s going to be a bit hard on Lisa, isn’t it? That child believes every word you and Stewart told her.” He sorted out Lisa’s two letters from the pack and suddenly his voice and smile were really gentle, “She’s not a humbug, anyway, poor child. She’s obviously happy about the idea of living here—and she makes no bones about liking money.”
Jane’s throat was so dry that she couldn’t utter a word.
Steve added with a flicker of anger, “A bit cruel to her, wasn’t it? Or did you and Stewart think I’d fall for a pretty child in a wheel chair and keep you here after all?”
Jane said hoarsely, not looking at him, her hands tightly clasped in her lap, “I don’t know anyone called Stewart, Mr. Forrest. The—the man to whom I wrote those letters called himself Steve Forrest. He—he asked me to marry him. To sell my home and come here as soon as we could, to meet him when he got back from the Argentine.”
He stared at her incredulously. His mind could not accept that those passionate love letters had been genuine. Yet Stewart had gone to England and he was still in the Argentine as far as Steve knew.
He frowned. “Not even Stewart would have the nerve—” he muttered, shuffling the flimsy letters over. He glanced at the last two letters and from them to the girl across the desk in a puzzled way. “You’re telling me that you’ve really sold your home to come here?” She nodded unhappily, unable to look at him. “Why didn’t you write or cable me after you had the first letters?” she whispered indignantly. Her mind was boggling at the trick the other man had played on her. Worse, on Lisa.
“Would ‘Miss Jane Lesley, Lilac Cottage, Tavistock, Devon’ have reached you?” he asked sarcastically. “If I remember rightly, Tavistock is a fair-sized town and there must be hundreds of cottages around it. The postmark just said Tavistock.”
“Oh,” a fresh wave of humiliation engulfed her as she remembered the instructions about not putting her full address on the letters. About sending them in batches once a week. She blurted, “He—he said Mrs. Newbery treated him like a son, that she was possessive and curious, and might even open my letters if he was away—” Jane felt utterly bewildered; her story sounded weak even in her own ears And behind the bewilderment and hurt and anger there was mounting panic. She had spent the deposit Mr. Merriman had paid her for Lilac Cottage, a thousand pounds, on their fares and on clothes for herself and Lisa—and on gifts for half the village. There was another three thousand pounds to come on completion—and by the time they got back to England that would have dwindled to two. She doubted if she could buy any house suitable for Lisa for two thousand pounds.
Steve made that small sound like a muffled swearword again. “Could you cable and stop the sale?”
> She shook her head. “I’ve signed the contract.”
He stared down at the letters, frowning again, and from them to her small set, stubborn face. “You’re asking me to believe these are genuine letters to a man you met by chance and fell in love with, in two weeks?” She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders with an odd dignity. “I—yes, I am. I sold up my home and came twelve thousand miles—didn’t I? I’m sorry, Mr. Forrest. We’ve both been fooled. We’ll go back as soon as Lisa has recovered from the journey.”
“We’ll talk about that later. Have you any letters from this man you claim was impersonating me?”
“N-no, only some cables—” she got up and went swiftly towards her room, to fetch the cables from her handbag. On the way she slipped quietly into Lisa’s room and peered at her sister through the mosquito-net, which Mrs. Newbery must have tucked into the mattress all round like a tent. Like a wedding veil, she thought bitterly.
Lisa was sleeping with one hand under her chin, as peacefully as a child. Exhausted by the long journey and all the excitement, yet obviously happy. Happier than she had been since the accident, Jane realised with an added pain in her heart, because she had something to look forward to, a new life with new interests ahead after eighteen months in a wheel chair and hospital beds ... poor darling Lisa. She wasn’t the child they all seemed to think her, but she had the uncomplicated mind of a child...
Jane began to hate the man who had called himself Steve Forrest as she took the three long, extravagant cables from her handbag. Cables wouldn’t prove much, she thought angrily—if she had been in league with this imposter he could have sent her cables in Steve’s name. She searched in her wallet for the cheque for five hundred pounds, the cheque she had been too proud to cash. It was stamped with the Blue River rubber stamp and signed, Steven Forrest.
She put the cables on the desk in front of Steve, whose nostrils flared a little scornfully as he read the flowery messages.
“He laid it on with a trowel, didn’t he? And you fell for it,” he glanced at her with those cool grey eyes, and held out one of Lisa’s letters, “you, a sensible girl who was running a guest house—a girl who was a nurse—a girl who has shouldered family responsibilities for the last three years? According to Lisa, you’re something of a heroine, Jane.”
“I’m not a martyr, if that’s what you mean,” she retorted angrily. Under his steady regard she managed a small wry smile. Somehow, she would have to carry off this intolerable situation for a few days anyway. “I’ve been a fool, that’s all. I suppose I was a bit lonely since—since the accident. And a bit tired of trying to make ends meet Steve—I mean Stewart—told me so much about Blue River. He was very convincing...”
“And he has a way with women. Generous, too—with other people’s money.”
“I didn’t know it wasn’t his own money,” Jane stared back at him, and threw the cheque on the desk defiantly, “anyway, I didn’t use it. I suppose that’s a forgery too.”
Steve picked up the cheque and scrutinised it carefully, whistling under his breath. “My goodness, I could put him in prison for that,” he said quietly, “this time he has gone too far.”
Much too far, she thought wearily. Remembering his blue laughing eyes and his assured manner, she was filled with all kinds of conflicting doubts.
“Why—why did he do this to us?” she demanded, suddenly aware that the real Steve Forrest had been put to considerable inconvenience and expense too. And embarrassment by this ludicrous situation. “Who he, anyway?”
Steve didn’t answer at once. He seemed to be debating whether to trust Jane or not. She sensed that he had still not quite made up his mind about her integrity. But the cheque had convinced him that she had believed Stewart was Steve Forrest.
He passed her his pack of cigarettes and when they were both smoking she added, “Is he crazy or something? He didn’t seem crazy. Everyone around thought he came to Melcoombe to have a look at the stock for sale at Barton Manor—he said he might import some of their Devon Long-wools for his ... for the Blue River stud. He was going to the Argentine ranches for the same purpose.”
“That’s crook to begin with,” Steve blew smoke-rings towards the white-painted ceiling, “the importation of stock is strictly forbidden—ruminant animals especially, as we’re free of many cattle diseases in this country. It’s strictly under the control of the Department of Agriculture. We get our breeding stock from the Government studs.”
Jane laughed shakily. “He seems to have fooled me—and my friends—about so many things. Everyone liked him—he must be a good actor.”
“Too right he is.” Steve leaned back in his swivel chair, staring out of the window as the sun moved across the high blue sky, so bright that the colours of the flowers in the garden seemed to be blotted out. Somewhere out of sight a child laughed, a great fat gurgling laugh. Jamie, Jane thought. She wanted to die of shame at the way she had been taken in by this Stewart, even to believing that Mrs. Newbery was a nosey-parker who would open other people’s letters.
“Why did you write so many letters,” Steve asked suddenly, swivelling round to look at the girl sitting in quiet desolation across the desk, “Why not to the Argentine?”
“He asked me to—he said he wanted to have them all waiting for him here, at home, when he got back,” she answered listlessly. With a flicker of irony that sounded strange in her gentle quiet voice she added, “He said he would be moving about so much in the Argentine, but that he would be back here by the twenty-third. Yesterday.” She felt terribly tired and her head was beginning to ache.
She said bitterly, “I don’t think he expected me to sell Lilac Cottage so quickly, or to take him at his word so literally. I suppose it was some sort of practical joke to startle you with letters from a complete stranger who was apparently coming out to marry you. But why, Steve—why?”
She said again, “Who is he—and why does he hate you?”
She had called him Steve for the first time quite naturally. The other Steve with his glib tongue and laughing eyes was already assuming the character of a dream. But it was no dream that she was sitting here in the homestead of Blue River facing a man who was very much alive and very much entitled to feel the anger that was showing in the grim set of his lean jaw.
“He’s Stewart Finch, a distant cousin. A very distant cousin,” Steve said laconically. “When his father died five years ago he left his family pretty badly off; he was an unlucky prospector with gold fever in his blood.” Steve smiled at her suddenly. “You wouldn’t know about that, would you? Laurie Finch was a farmer in poor scrubland for years, then a small vein of gold was found in one of his hills, but it petered out before it paid off. Laurie’d got the fever by that time, he neglected everything for the prospecting but he never found gold again. His wife Miriam married again, a widower with four children who hadn’t much time for Stewart or Alison—” he shrugged his broad shoulders expressively. “Mrs. Newbery was sorry for them. My parents had been fond of Laurie before he got the gold fever. When Stewart and Alison were children we used to have them here to stay—” he seemed to be hurrying over a family history that embarrassed him. “I suppose Stewart got a poor-relation complex or something. He always envied me Blue River. So they came to live here.”
“That was kind of you,” Jane said wanly. “He told me he was an orphan. Like Lisa and me. It was a—a sort of bond.”
“He is now. His mother died soon after she remarried. So Alison and Stewart came to live here. I suppose they think of the Blue River as home. But that doesn’t give him the right—” he broke off, frowning at the cheque on the desk.
“I made him my station manager,” he said quietly, “and Alison was going to be my wife. But it didn’t work out according to plan. Alison had been to school in Sydney and she hankered after a spell in the city, so she started a boutique there about a year ago.” His expression was non-committal, but he stubbed out his cigarette almost savagely.
“She was com
ing back this month for the wedding. Then in June I discovered that Stewart had been cooking the station books—” and fooling about with the Abo girls, he thought contemptuously, but he thought Jane had better not hear about that. She had had about as much as she could take, by the look of her.
“I sacked him,” he said simply. “I could have sent him to jail, but in a sort of way he was family. So I gave him twenty thousand dollars and told him to clear out. That was enough to buy him a share in another station—he’s good with cattle when he feels like working. The fool’s blowing it on a trip round the world instead.”
Jane nodded, remembering the Jaguar, the lavish spending in the Ring of Bells, the well-cut clothes ... she felt so ashamed for Stewart that she wanted to drop dead.
“And—Alison—?” she said in a small voice.
“Oh, Alison broke off the engagement.” He laughed shortly. “She knows darned nicely that her brother is a crook but she pretended I had misjudged him. Maybe the fact that her boutique is doing well had something to do with it.” He touched the cheque lightly. “The accountants had plenty of proof and this clinches it. After the way he’s behaved to you and Lisa I’ve a good mind to prosecute this time.”
She had been moved around like a pawn in a good-looking young crook’s game, Jane thought, sick at heart. Suddenly she couldn’t take any more humiliation. With a murmured excuse she got up and went out on to the veranda, and down the side steps beside the little stream, and out into the blazing sunshine.
Wedding at Blue River Page 4