Sweet Fire

by Jo Goodman

  Lydia and Irish sat in the spotted sunlight under a coolabah tree, she on a blanket, he in his buggy, which she unhitched from Horatio and swung around to face her. They chose food from the basket Molly had packed for them—cold meat, fresh fruit, her sweet and gooey raisin and nut tarts, and drank warm beer from a jug.

  Replete, Lydia leaned back against the dense trunk of the coolabah. “I like your land, Irish. I like your smelly sheep and your blue ribbon streams. The sky is almost impossibly wide here and the light…the light touches everything. What did you call those birds? The ones that were laughing when we rode near them.”

  “Kookaburras.”

  “Yes, kookaburras. Well, I even like them.”

  His dark blue eyes narrowed, watching her, and Irish felt the light from her gentle smile touch him as sunlight never could. “You’re more beautiful than your mother ever was,” he said.

  Lydia’s response was immediately to begin packing the basket. “We should be getting back,” she said flatly.

  Irish swore because he could not get out of his buggy and shake her and make her stop what she was doing. “What did I say?” he demanded.

  “Nothing. You didn’t mean anything by it.” She hooked the basket on her arm and folded the blanket.

  “Stop right there,” he growled. He tapped her wrist with the end of the buggy whip, in no way that would hurt her but that would get her attention. “Stop. That’s better. Now tell me what I’ve said that has you so riled.”

  “You must not remember my mother very well, because you’d never mistake me for being beautiful. I don’t like those sort of comparisons. People, men especially, mean to be kind by it, but it doesn’t endear me to them and never has. They always want something in return for their pretty, empty compliments. Mother was right about that.”

  Irish retracted the buggy whip. “I thought you had already concluded for yourself that kindness is not among my short list of virtues. Also, I can’t think of one thing that I want from you that a pretty, empty compliment would get. And finally, I remember your mother quite well and she was younger than you are now when I knew her. If you would but take all those points into consideration, you’d realize I said nothing more than I believed to be the truth.” He let that sink in for several moments, then he said, “Hitch up my buggy, will you, Lydia. It’s time we were heading back.”

  That evening after dinner Lydia sat with Irish in his study. He was cataloguing his books, the collection of which was an indication of his wealth as much as the size of his holdings. When Irish asked if she would help, she heard herself accepting in a voice that was almost painfully eager.

  “When do you think Nathan will be back?” she asked. Dusty volumes surrounded her on the floor. She picked one up, blew loose dust from the top edge and spine, and began to shine the leather binding with an oiled cloth.

  “It’s hard to say. I think he probably means to stay out a week.”

  She sighed. Three more days.

  “You miss him?” Irish asked shrewdly.

  Lydia didn’t look up, but her dusting became a little more hurried. “He left without anything being settled between us.”

  “Settled?” Irish frowned. “What isn’t settled?”

  “Whether I’m to stay or go, for one thing. The conditions of our marriage for another. An annulment may be possible. At least it’s something we have to consider.”

  “Annulment?” Irish set down his pen and peered down at Lydia from over his desk. “There will be no annulment.”

  “That’s not your decision, Irish,” she said calmly. “Nathan and I will discuss it.”

  Irish wheeled around the desk and rolled himself right up to the circle of books surrounding Lydia. “You should know about the wager, then,” he said evenly. “If it’s an annulment you’re thinking of asking Nathan for, you need to know what it will cost him to give it to you.”

  When it was put before her that way Lydia wasn’t certain she wanted to hear. Some part of her knew she would regret it, and still she faced Irish with clear, open eyes and said, “I’m listening.”

  “The wager involves three of us: Nathan, Brig, and myself. The prize is Ballaburn itself, divided equally among Nathan and Brig and my child if he was a boy, but going almost totally to the husband of my daughter if my child was a girl. If you had been a boy, Lydia, you would have had to settle here for one year to inherit your third of my holdings. That includes shares in my gold mines northwest of here and the properties I own in Sydney.

  “I didn’t have much faith that a daughter, on the other hand, would elect to come here, much less agree to stay—especially not a daughter who had been raised by Madeline. Therefore, in the event my child was a girl—which you certainly are—I told Nathan and Brig the only way they could have the land was to bring you to Ballaburn as a wife. Since Nathan was the one who succeeded, he must now keep you here a year if he’s to take over the land. I would prefer you stayed at Ballaburn, but Nathan pointed out that our agreement only said you should stay in the country a year. That could mean Sydney or Melbourne or some humpy in the outback. A humpy’s a shack, by the way, and I don’t suggest you live in one.”

  Irish’s hands folded over the curved arms of his chair. “Have I been clear enough, Lydia? There’s no part of this wager that makes any allowance for an annulment. Nathan can only take the property through marriage. Where you live is negotiable. Marriage is not.”

  Lydia set down the book she had been holding like a shield. She regarded Irish steadily. “So you’re saying that Nathan won’t agree to an annulment.”

  “He won’t. He wants Ballaburn more than anything. You’d have to have known the deprivation and torture Nathan’s suffered to understand what this place means to him.”

  “You used him,” she said quietly. “You knew how hungry he was for something this fine and beautiful and you used him.”

  “I make no apologies for it. He knew he was being used. So did Brig. He was a good choice, too, not because he loves Ballaburn particularly, but because he’s greedy.”

  “I might have married him.”

  “Sure, you might have,” he said, his brogue surfacing. “And if you were more your mother’s daughter and less your father’s, you would have. A pity it would have been, I know that now, but I didn’t know it when I set them up with passage, clothes, and enough money to stake their venture in San Francisco. I even gave Brig the advantage of a month’s head start because he had waited so long for the opportunity to go. Nathan could well have arrived and found the matter settled. Apparently it wasn’t.

  “No,” she said. “Nothing was settled. I met them both the same day.”

  “And chose between them fairly.”

  Lydia’s dark brows arched in question. “Chose? I had no choice. Fair? There was no fairness to me. I don’t know what Nathan told you about what transpired, but our marriage could not have occurred without Brig’s attempt to drug me and Nathan’s lies. That’s the sort of men you sent to find your child, Irish.” Her shoulders slumped tiredly, no anger in her voice, merely a certain sense of hopelessness and rejection. “To treat me with so little regard, you must have regretted my conception more than my mother.”

  Irish frowned deeply, marking his high forehead with ridges. “Madeline told you that? That she regretted your conception?”

  “Not in so many words,” Lydia answered, looking at her folded hands in her lap. “But it was always clear. I don’t blame her. It stands to reason that she should regret my very existence.”

  “Because I raped Madeline.”

  Lydia winced but said softly, “Because of that.”

  “I see.” Irish looked at his daughter, regarded the bowed head, the slope of her shoulders that spoke of her weariness, the full line of her lower lip that quivered in spite of her best attempts at controlling it. She seemed vulnerable to him in a way that she had not before and he realized he might never have a better chance to be heard. “I loved Madeline Hart,” he told her. “I was t
hirty-eight when I threw my luck in with some other convicts and went to San Francisco. I had gold fever like the rest of them, dreams of a rich strike that would buy me back the dignity of my birthright. The bloody Brits had taken everything from me and this was my chance to turn the world right again.

  “I panned the streams, worked the hills, and never found so much as a fingernail’s worth of gold. I did find Madeline, though. She was a flame-haired witch at eighteen, all flashing green eyes and a smile that turned this old man’s heart over. I should have known better, I suppose. I had a score of years on her, had seen and done things she couldn’t even imagine. Perhaps that was part of the attraction I held for her. I don’t know.”

  He eased back slightly in his chair, looking older than his years now as a lightning flash of pain shot down his spine and disappeared in the part of his body that could not feel anymore. “Madeline and I were only together—intimate—three times.” He saw Lydia’s deep flush and went on. “On none of those occasions was it rape. You could have been conceived at any time because I did nothing to protect your mother. I wanted her to have my child and I wanted her to be my wife. Whatever you might choose to disbelieve, Lydia, know that I wanted you.”

  Lydia had raised her face. She was looking at him now, listening.

  “Your grandfather, Madeline’s father, surprised your mother and me in the hardware store he owned hours after he had closed it for the night. Madeline was naturally embarrassed and frightened and she said the first thing that came to her mind. She accused me of breaking into the store and raping her. I didn’t even try to deny it. Madeline was too hysterical to reason with and her father had a shotgun leveled at my belly.”

  “So you ran,” Lydia said.

  “Your mother told you that much, I see.”

  She nodded.

  “Too right I ran, and kept on running. I was a Sydney Duck, despised by every proper Yank, and I could feel the noose tightening around my neck. But I didn’t leave California. I waited Madeline out, giving her time to think about her situation and realize she didn’t have to lie to her father. After six weeks I met her in secret and proposed.” Irish shook his head as though still incredulous about events more than twenty years in the past. “She refused me, Lydia. More to the point, she laughed at me. Her father was already a wealthy man; his store went from bust to boom with the discovery of gold. Pickaxes at forty dollars. Canvas tents at a hundred. What could I possibly offer her? Nothing, she said, so she turned me down.

  “I waited another two weeks and went back to her, hoping I could make her reconsider. She knew she was pregnant then—with my child—and she hated me for that. There was no chance of making her listen to anything I had to say. I tried to tell her about the conversation I overheard in one of the pubs, about the land west of the Blue Mountains being a lot like the land where gold had been discovered in California. A drunken Duck named Hargraves made the boast within earshot. He swore he’d find gold back in Australia if Frisco wouldn’t give any of it up.

  “I’ll be rich, I told her. Richer than she could imagine. And I’d have a fine home and land enough to support a dozen children.”

  “She didn’t believe you,” Lydia said.

  “No,” he said, sighing. “Madeline didn’t believe in me. She didn’t love me—probably couldn’t love me, or anyone else for that matter. She clung resolutely to her rape story, no matter that it was bound to force me out of the country. Days before I sailed I heard she had plans to marry Samuel Chadwick. I knew him by reputation, not by acquaintance, and I knew he had come across one of the richest strikes in California. I remember thinking I wanted to kill him for his good fortune.”

  “Papa is a fine man, Irish,” Lydia said. “He deserved more happiness than my mother ever gave him.”

  “So Nathan tells me. He says my escape was most fortuitous.”

  Lydia’s smile was soft with regret. “She’s still my mother. I won’t sit here and say word after word against her. She can’t help being the kind of person she is any more than you can help being who you are.”

  “What sort of person am I?” he asked.

  “Cross and hard and resentful. Still angry at her, I think. A manipulator. Hurtful and mean-spirited.”

  Irish sucked in his breath at her hard appraisal. “Don’t forget boorish.”

  “And boorish,” she said. “But there are people here at Ballaburn who think you walk on water. Molly says you’re generous. Tess says you’re kind. Jack says you’re fair, and I’ve never heard Nathan, for all that you’ve used him for your own needs, say a word against you.” Lydia pushed aside the stacks of books in front of her and moved closer to Irish’s chair. She sat up on her knees, placing her hands on his lap, and because he couldn’t feel them there, she took his hands in hers. “Which leads me to believe that you’re either exacting your revenge on Madeline through me, or you’re so frightened I may not like you that you don’t know how to act.” She looked at him earnestly with eyes that were as a deeply blue as his own. “Which is it, Irish?”

  He blinked hard, forcing back the veil of tears that blurred his vision. “Scared to death, I’m afraid.”

  Lydia raised his hands to her lips and kissed the thick knuckles. “That’s all right, then. There’s no shame in being scared.”

  Nathan had a rough scrub of beard on his jaw and above his upper lip when he returned to the house. His hair needed cutting, especially at his nape where the dark strands brushed his collar. A well-worn hat, broken in over years of time, fit the shape of his head exactly and had protected his complexion from the hardening edge of the elements. His clothes smelled of the bush and the meadow, of eucalypt oil and sheep dung, of campfires and cattle. He caught his reflection in the clear smooth water of Balbilla Creek as he crossed the bridge and wondered what Lydia would think when she saw him now.

  It was certain his appearance would do nothing to improve her opinion.

  Raising the brim of his hat with the back of his hand, Nathan reined in his mount and sat staring at the house, as if something on the face of it might hint at what he could expect. How had she fared these last days? Was she even there? he wondered, or had Irish managed to drive her away? He couldn’t imagine Lydia spending all her time in her room, but what would she have done? She must have sickened of her embroidery by now and Molly and Tess had most things in the house well in hand.

  Where was Lydia’s place at Ballaburn as the daughter of the owner and wife of the heir?

  Nathan stabled his horse, brushing the animal down himself to delay going to the house that much longer. Eight days in the bush and not a single one of them passing without missing Lydia. He would find himself turning, wanting to point out the koala in the gum tree or the roo springing powerfully on his hind legs through the scrub, and there was no one there to be delighted or confounded. She wasn’t there to share his shelter in the rain or the warmth of his fire in the inky cloudless evenings. He missed her questions, missed her making him think about things he took for granted.

  He turned to her during the day and reached for her in the night. His saddle roll was small comfort when he wanted to be pillowed against Lydia’s breasts and feel her fingers sift through his hair. He ached to touch her as well, recall the sweet fragrance that touched the curve of her neck and the soft underside of her elbow. He wanted to caress her with his hands, his lips, his tongue, and make the loving warm and sweet and lingering.

  Nathan’s horse whinnied, bringing Nathan back to the present. He finished filling the feedbag, straightened, and jammed his hands in the deep pockets of his wool-and-leather jacket. Striding from the paddock to the house, he felt the taut strain of his body against the button fly of his jeans. What he wanted now was Lydia arching under him, crying out as he took her hot, hard, and fast.

  On the threshold of the kitchen he stopped. Lydia was pouring hot water into a large copper tub. Steam rose from the surface of the water and lent her flushed complexion a damp glistening sheen. She dipped her fingers i
nto the water, pulled them back abruptly, swearing under her breath, and added a pan of cool water from the kitchen pump.

  Nathan’s eyes wandered over the slender line of her back, the narrow waist belted by a plain white apron, and the hips that curved so gently as she bent over her work. He leaned against the jamb, letting the door swing closed behind him. “Dare I hope that’s for me?”

  Lydia jumped and spun around, holding the empty bucket in front of her protectively. Her heart thundered along after her initial fright was over. “You startled me,” she said obviously and inadequately.

  “I see that.” He studied her with a lazy, hooded glance. Her heart-shaped face was tilted toward him. She was all dark blue eyes and a wide inviting mouth.

  “It is for you,” she said.

  For a moment Nathan couldn’t think what she was saying. What was for him? Her eyes? Her mouth? Then he remembered what he looked like. The bath was for him. He rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand and his smile was rueful. He wasn’t even fit to kiss her. Nathan pushed away from the jamb and began shrugging out of his coat.

  Lydia unconsciously moved to the far side of the tub as Nathan entered the room. He seemed to fill every available space with his presence, leaving her little room to maneuver or protect herself. Although his appearance now was the polar opposite of how he had looked on their first meeting, Lydia felt as she had then, drawn to the dangerous appeal of his remote eyes and the mouth that merely hinted at a smile. She wanted to respond as she had that first time and run as far and as fast as she could.

  She lowered the bucket in front of her. “I saw you from one of the upstairs windows when you were crossing the bridge. I thought you might welcome a bath.”

  “I looked bad even at that distance?”

  “No,” she said quickly, looking away. “Oh, no…I mean...” He had looked so weary, she thought, pausing on the bridge as he had, reluctant to journey the last hundred yards to the house and equally reluctant to set out in the bush again. “I just thought it might be a small comfort,” she said.