Unto Death

by Lena West

  “But he'll go running to Archibald! I'll be ruined!”

  Why ever did the stupid boy have to be so open and honest? Didn't he understand how essential it is to be a good liar if you want to enjoy yourself in a way stuffy society frowns upon? If he wasn't so entirely satisfactory as a lover she'd give him his marching orders. She still might, if only there was someone half as entertaining to take his place. Going on and on about how much he loved her was undeniably gratifying, but after a while the constant repetitions became rather tedious. Especially since she didn't reciprocate his high-flown emotions.

  Stephen claimed her fluttering hands.

  “No. He won't,” he assured her. “Dad abhors scandal. So much, he'd never do anything to precipitate one. Anyway, I stopped short of telling him we were lovers.”

  Breathing in the heady scent of her musky perfume, he recalled the undreamt-of pleasures he'd recently discovered in Isabella's experienced arms. His heart raced anew as raw excitement flooded his veins.

  The front of his trousers stretched tighter, making movement awkward. How he wished they were totally alone at this very minute in their private bush hideaway. Better still, in Isabella's wide, comfortable bed, just a few short yards away. It was sheer torture to be so close and yet be denied even the most innocent of embraces.

  Not that their embraces ever remained innocent for long.

  Isabella had taken over his heart and mind long before that magical night she had permitted him to claim her body. He was enslaved by her to the extent that when they were apart he could think of little beyond the next time he'd be making love to her. When they were together, there was time for nothing beyond themselves and the pleasure they gave each other.

  Their hurried secret liaisons never allowed time for the usual social conventions, such as polite conversation. If only they could be together always, living a normal life.

  Stephen's stomach knotted as his conscience lashed him. He absolutely hated all this deceitful sneaking around.

  Now, desperate to appease Isabella, he continued his tale.

  “All I admitted to Dad, was being in love with you.”

  He'd also claimed Isabella returned his love; though he thought that was more than she would appreciate hearing right now; even though he was certain it was the truth.

  How could it not be, when she allowed him such intimacies?

  But she was rather peculiar when it came to admitting their love for each other, claiming it was bad luck to tempt the Devil, or some such female nonsense.

  Isabella gently drew her hands from Stephen's clasp and sat on the rustic bench in the shade of the tall eucalypt sheltering them from the enervating heat. It was only Spring, and already so hot. How she longed for the cool breezes to be found in the homes overlooking Sydney’s harbour, any one of which would suit her better than this isolated farm. Putting aside her discontent, she applied her fan with unwonted vigour, absent-mindedly sliding across to make a space for Stephen to sit by her side.

  “What happened, then? I can't believe he had nothing to say to that.”

  Isabella's lips assumed a bitter twist. Some months earlier, stiff-rumped Thomas Fortescue had spurned her advances, treating her no better than if she'd been filth beneath his highly polished, expensive English leather boots.

  An insult she found impossible to forgive. One she had vowed to avenge.

  Since her first lover had jilted her at the altar twelve years earlier, no man treated Isabella Johnson Cummings so disdainfully and got away with it.

  Thomas's uncompromising rejection had contributed hugely to her decision to relieve her deathly boredom with country life by corrupting his naïve pup of a son; an entertainment she had quickly found surprisingly satisfying. The boy had proved an adept pupil, fulfilling her needs in exemplary fashion. If only he hadn't got this dratted bee in his bonnet about love.

  Better still if Archibald would take her to live in Sydney instead of incarcerating her on this stultifying back of beyond farm where she was forced daily into the company of ex-convicts and the like. Where the stuck-up local matrons looked down their noses at her.

  What good was money if you couldn't flaunt your possession of it? A tiny frown flickered across her perfect visage as she contemplated the adoration in Stephen's rapt gaze.

  There was no such thing as love.

  If anyone knew that, she should. Love was just a word people less honest than herself used to excuse baser motivations such as lust, or greed. For men and women alike, it was all about satisfying one's sexual needs, or acquiring influence or riches. Nothing more. Only Stephen was too young and idealistic to appreciate that fact.

  As if she was ever going to run off with him as he had begged her, thereby throwing away the hard-earned gains accruing from her recent marriage to Archibald Cummings.

  Her husband might be a boring old goat, but he was rich; rich and malleable. Except on the one issue of importance to her. However, she wasn't ready yet to give Stephen up. Not when dangling him on a string was such an enjoyable revenge on his father.

  Not to mention the rest of this hide-bound rustic society. It was also the only entertainment available to her at present in this God-forsaken backwater!

  There wasn't even a decent shop, or a theatre, nearer than a journey taking several long, wearying days. Even longer if the road conditions were worse than usual. Merton's Store had nothing to offer beyond the most basic of general merchandise, and it took weeks for mail-order deliveries to arrive.

  Isabella let her eyes rove possessively, savouring her lover's tall, rangy body.

  Lean, work-hardened muscles filled out a broad chest and shoulders topped by a shapely head covered in thick, springy, waves of sandy-blond hair.

  His boyishly smooth skin, clear, periwinkle eyes and regular features were saved from prettiness by a strong, dimpled chin and an uncompromising, straight blade of a nose. He showed promise of one day becoming a man to be reckoned with. For the present he was still an untried puppy, sufficient to amuse herself with, but not man enough to tempt her into an ill-considered elopement.

  Hiding a yawn behind her fan, she tuned back in to his tale of woe.

  Stephen grimaced.

  “Oh, Dad ranted and raved for a while. I'd never heard him shout and carry on like that before. He really lost control. Well, I got angry too, at being treated like a child. Next thing, I was yelling back at him. Things were getting nasty.”

  He still felt sick in the stomach remembering how close he and his father had come to tearing an unbridgeable rift in their relationship.

  “I was about to walk away until he cooled down, when suddenly he backed off. Apologised for shouting at me, and suggested we sit down and discuss the situation, man to man.”

  Isabella disguised an unladylike snort as a cough.

  “Anyway,” Stephen concluded impatiently, “I ended up asking Dad's advice, much good that did me.”

  Curious to know what that wily old fox, Thomas Fortescue, might be planning, Isabella ventured to ask, “Apart from ordering you to give me up, which I'm sure he tried, did he have any practical suggestions?”

  She acknowledged Thomas as her implacable enemy, and hoped to gain an advantage by learning how his thoughts were tending.

  Too agitated to sit still any longer, Stephen sprang to his feet. After a few hurried steps to the other side of the tree, he swung back, bursting into angry speech.

  “Oh, he had a suggestion alright. A couple of them, actually. Both totally out of the question. Giving you up was the very least of it! You don't want to know the rest!”

  Intrigued to know what solutions Thomas could have arrived at to force her out of his son's life, Isabella clasped her hands coyly in her lap and turned an inviting smile in her lover's direction.

  “Oh, but I do, Stephen Darling,” she cooed, using her brilliant, dark eyes to sap his resistance.

  “I most certainly do.”

  At the intent gaze fixed upon him, Stephen's blood quickened i
n his veins, and his body stirred anew. He groaned, took a few hurried steps away, then returned, shaking his head as he reclaimed his seat. This time it was Isabella who reached for Stephen's hands, forgetful of watchers for the moment.

  “Tell me Darling,” she commanded, a thread of steel underlying her dulcet tones.

  “No secrets between the two of us, remember?”

  Stephen, pressing an urgent kiss to Isabella's knuckles, took little persuasion. Maybe if he told her the whole of it, she would take his father's threats more seriously.

  “First off, he suggested I should do what we've been discussing recently and take a trip to Queensland to look into buying land there. He said it would give me the chance to study our situation from a distance and decide what I truly want out of life. Of course, he hopes I'll forget you if he separates us. But there's no chance of that, Darling,” he hastened to reassure her.

  “I already know exactly what I want, so I told him I was perfectly willing to go, just as long as you come with me. Won't you Darling? Please?”

  Clutching at straws, he tried once more to persuade his lover to see things his way.

  “You know Isabella, I've racked my brains and no matter which way I look at it, I can't see how we can be together unless you agree to leave Archibald? We could be so happy together, you and I.”

  He lifted pleading eyes to hers, unsurprised with Isabella's tiny, impatient shake of her head negating that idea. He sighed. There was no point going over old arguments yet again. Isabella was adamantly opposed to their running off together.

  “I didn't think so,” he muttered with another grimace, dropping his head into his hands.

  “You said he had two suggestions. What was the other one?”

  Once again Stephen was too agitated to sit. He stood, leaning his face against the smooth bark of the gum tree.

  Drawing in a deep breath, he turned, anger directed at his absent father radiating from every inch of his stiffened posture and flung himself back down at her side. Isabella reclaimed his hand.

  “He said I should get married!” he burst out. “To someone else! As if I could! As if that would work! You know that if I can't marry you, my love, I'll not marry at all!”

  He was totally unprepared for the full-throated laughter with which Isabella greeted his dramatic declaration. Affronted, he pulled away.

  “How can you laugh, Isabella? I don't see anything at all funny in that idea.”

  “Sorry Darling. I know you would never look at another woman.” Isabella reached out to draw him back to her. Clasping his hand in her lap, she gave it a mollifying pat.

  “I'm quite surprised, I must say. Just who did he imagine you might marry, out here in the middle of nowhere? None of the local families have daughters who are old enough to marry. Even Rosie Mannering is only fifteen.”

  A shocking possibility occurred to her. Suspicion sharpened her voice as she suddenly recalled the handsome, red-haired sisters who worked in the Eden Vale homestead.

  “He can't expect you to marry a servant girl, can he?”

  “No, of course not,” Stephen answered, mollified by her possessive tone. Isabella did love him. Really, she did, despite her refusal to elope with him.

  “As you say, there's no-one local who would fit the bill. Dad suggested Lucy Gordon. We're old friends with Peter Gordon, our lawyer, and his family down in Morpeth. Mr Gordon was with the East India Company and Dad met him while he was serving in India,” he explained.

  “He steered Dad into some profitable business ventures and their friendship continued when they both came to settle in New South Wales. Anyway, Lucy Gordon is just eighteen. Dad's always cherished hopes of a match between us.”

  Not so long ago, before he met Isabella, Stephen would have been more than happy to marry Lucy Gordon. He liked her well enough, and it was, after all, what he had always expected to do.

  Now it was totally out of the question. Despondent, his own eyes were fixed unseeing on the ground at his feet, otherwise he might have noticed the calculation gleaming in Isabella's tannin-dark eyes.

  “Actually, his suggestion may have merit. Let me think a minute.”

  She waved Stephen to silence when he opened his mouth to protest.

  “Yes! Yes, Stephen, I do believe that's it. Listen. If you agree to his terms, agree to marry the chit, he'll stop pestering you, and everyone else will stop gossiping and spreading malicious rumours about us.”

  Excited by the possibilities inherent in the idea, Isabella warmed to her theme.

  “Especially after the wedding. And since no untutored little schoolgirl has the power to come between us, we'll be completely free to pursue our love as we have been doing; just as long as we're careful how we go about it. Even Archibald will never suspect the truth. Oh, Stephen, it's a Godsend. Your father has played right into our hands.”

  His mouth twisted as anguish tore at Stephen's heart. He recoiled, yanking his hand from her grasp. How could the woman he loved find this preposterous idea a desirable solution to their problem? It was utterly inconceivable.

  “But Isabella, how could you tolerate seeing me married to someone else? How could I bear to be married to another woman when you're the only one I want to be with; to make love to? I can't do it!”

  “Certainly, you can, my dearest darling. You keep saying you'll do anything for me,” she cajoled. “Surely you're not going to baulk at the first hurdle.”

  Her cool accusation rocked him. Her next words had him writhing with guilt.

  “If I can suffer Archibald pawing at me, night after night, surely you can also make a tiny little sacrifice. It's either that or we part forever; and oh, my dearest love.”

  Isabella brought all her histrionic talents to bear.

  “I simply couldn't survive if I couldn't be with you ever again. I need to feel your arms around me; your lips on mine.”

  She suited her actions to her words. Clasping him to her impressive bosom, she kissed him till he was in a mindless frenzy, then deliberately withdrew, reminding him primly of the nearby presence of hostile eyes.

  If she could persuade him to follow her lead in this, what a delicious revenge it would be on all those backwoods upstarts who dared to look down their supercilious noses at her. A cruel feline smile curled her lips.

  *****

  Stephen didn't succumb to Isabella’s urgings immediately; or even at their next, more heated, totally private assignation where Isabella was free to bring even more pressure to bear when she held him naked in her arms. He did succumb though. Eventually his lust for his paramour overcame his scruples.

  Fathoms deep in love, Stephen could deny Isabella nothing she set her heart upon. Not when she employed every single one of her feminine wiles in the task.

  His opposition worn down by constant pressure from both Isabella and his father, Stephen finally accepted defeat and agreed to ask Lucy Gordon to marry him, in spite of his deeply ingrained sense of honour telling him it was wrong.

  Isabella's will eventually proved itself stronger than his own, and while he would never give voice to such a disloyal thought, he felt less of a man for his complicity in such a dastardly scheme.

  Indeed, deep down, he experienced a twinge of dismay at the duplicity of his dearest love. It was a side of her nature he had not previously encountered.

  It was his unspoken prayer that either Lucy Gordon or her parents would deem him unworthy and refuse his suit. He rode slowly home, eyes blind to the brilliant displays of golden wattle blossom beside the path. When the cackling laughter of a pair of kookaburras jerked him out of his dark introspection, he cursed them to hell and back.

  Even nature knew him for a weak fool.

  How could he carry out such a momentous deception?

  But he'd given his promise to Isabella.

  Somewhere he'd find the strength to follow through with the scheme, since the alternative, to give Isabella up, was utterly unthinkable.

  2

  My doom was
sealed the moment Isabella placed her perfect, tiny hand in my great paw. Like the most foolish of callow youths, I fell in love with her at first sight. For the first time in my long, hedonistic existence, I loved a woman. Heart and soul. More than life itself.

  Never known as a ladies’ man, I should have realised how utterly improbable it was that I could attract a true love equal to my own, despite her deeply moving avowals.

  But I was blinded by passion.

  “Sit down Lucy.”

  Her father, an amiable greyhound of a man with neatly trimmed thinning hair and rimless spectacles perched on his long beak of a nose, held a chair for her beside her mother.

  He then rounded his desk to settle comfortably in his own well-worn leather chair. Lucy's head was in a whirl. She hadn't been summoned to an interview in Papa's office for several years; not since her last escapade, slipping off to go adventuring along the river with the free-spirited settler children Mama had forbidden her to play with. Papa, more tolerant, fondly called her his little tom-boy, but to Mama, she was, plain and simple, a hoyden.

  Growing into a young lady had meant forgoing such hoydenish activities as tree climbing and fishing in the Hunter River just downstream of the back garden of their house on Swan Street, where she had fond memories of landing her first perch.

  Some days she wished she could revert to childhood again. Those pastimes were so much more fun than taking tea with Mama's gossipy friends, or dancing sedately with insipid suitors under Mama's watchful chaperonage.

  Rapidly she searched her memory for any recent misdemeanour worthy of a dressing down, failing to recall one, let alone one worthy of incurring Papa's wrath. Besides, since both of her parents were smiling at her, it seemed this meeting wasn't about discipline. A little less nervous, she looked to her father as he cleared his throat, preparatory to making a statement.

  “As you know, my dear, you are now of an age to marry.” He smiled benignly upon her.

  “It is my pleasure to inform you that I have received a most respectable offer for your hand. Most respectable,” he repeated, rubbing his hands together.