by Jo Goodman
Nathan glanced at it, smiled, and slipped it under his coat to put it in the breast pocket of his shirt.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Not now.”
“It’s from Kit,” she said.
“Why should you think that?”
“I recognize his handwriting. I taught him, remember?”
Nathan continued to smile, refusing to say one way or the other.
“Oh, very well,” she said, sighing. “Have your secrets.”
“Thank you. And was there anything for you?” he asked.
She shook her head and her eyes were grave now. “Nothing. It’s been a week since the robbery. I don’t suppose my letter will ever be found.”
“Probably not.” Especially if Brig had it. There had been no robberies of Cobb & Co. coaches since the one a week ago and that only reinforced Nathan’s belief that Brigham had been responsible. Nathan had no idea if Lydia’s letter had been the motive for the robbery or if Brigham had been after money and chanced upon the letter. The strongbox had been found two days after the holdup in a thicket a few hundred yards from the road. The contents of the box were scattered, some of the mail had been opened in a hurried search for money, but it appeared that a large portion of it was recovered. Lydia’s letter was not among the items. “You’ve written to your father again, haven’t you? Told him what happened?”
“A few days ago, when I realized the Cobb people most likely would never have anything for me. But it will take so long, Nathan.” She hugged her knees against her chest and stared off at the house in the distance. “Things that are happening to me now, things I want to share with my parents, won’t be known to them for weeks and it will be weeks again before I know a reply. I wonder about them: what they’re doing, what they think of the decision I’ve made to stay here. I wonder if they think I’ve betrayed them.”
“Is that what you think?” he asked.
“No…well, sometimes I thought it when I was living in Sydney without you. I felt I belonged in San Francisco if I couldn’t really be happy anywhere else. I worry that Papa will think my love for him has lessened in some way because of what I’ve come to feel for Irish.”
“I think Samuel will understand.”
“I hope so.” She blinked back a sudden rush of tears and glanced at Nathan, a sad half-smile on her lips. “Mother won’t.”
Nathan pitched the chicken bone over his shoulder, wiped his hands on his napkin, and caught Lydia by the arm and pulled her closer. When she was nestled comfortably against him he said, “Your mother’s not old enough to understand. She may never be. She’s still the reckless, spoiled girl she was of seventeen when she met Irish. Marriage and childbirth never changed her. She was jealous of Samuel taking Pei Ling to his bed, yet she never recognized that she bore some of the responsibility for their affair. She kept you in her shadow so it was a rare occasion when you shined, and when you did, she managed to make you believe you hadn’t.”
“Nathan.” Lydia said his name quietly, wanting him to stop. “She’s my mother. I don’t always like her, but I do love her. I’m more familiar with her faults than you. I’m the one who could never be bright or pretty or accomplished enough to suit her. She tried to make me in her image and failed miserably.”
“Thank God,” Nathan said feelingly. “If you were any brighter, any more beautiful, or a fraction more accomplished, you would have married that James Early fellow years ago.”
Lydia laughed. “Especially if I were brighter.”
“Especially that.”
She picked up the basket and put it on his lap. “You better eat something else, I’m not—” Lydia turned her head as something she saw out of the corner of her eye got her attention. Gray curling smoke was rising above one of the hills in the distance. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.
Nathan was on his feet immediately, pulling Lydia to hers. “Go back down to the house and tell anyone who’s left at the stable that we’ve got a bushfire near Coolabri. They’ll know what to bring.” He caught her elbow as she started to go. “And don’t come back yourself, Liddy. I mean it. Stay at the house with Irish. He’ll want to come rattling out here in that buggy of his and it won’t be safe.”
Lydia only looked behind her once as she raced her horse back to the stable. Nathan and the stockmen had already mounted and were charging in the direction of the smoke.
From high ground Brig watched the fire march forward. Occasionally the orange-and-red flames would break rank and leap ahead to lick at the stringy bark of a gum tree or a high tuft of grass. The sheep had corralled themselves in the valley’s dead end and were bleating helplessly, struggling for position and protection as the fire approached.
Nathan was among the first group of men to arrive. Brigham saw immediately that they had nothing with them to fight the fire. That suited him perfectly; it meant he had perhaps as much as an hour before more help would arrive, if it ever did. The fire would spread and accidents could happen. It was what he had been waiting for since he seeded Coolabri with kindling.
The split among the men occurred more quickly than Brig anticipated. Most of them went to the far end of the valley in an attempt to drive the sheep out to safety. One man dismounted, tore the saddle blanket free of his horse and began beating out the small fires that broke free of the main block of flames. Brig was only interested in Nathan’s movements, and as he studied his old friend, he made a succession of wagers with himself about the next direction Nathan would take. He watched Nathan check the wind and search the smoldering burnt-out area on horseback, but it wasn’t until Nathan rode clearly into Brig’s sights and out of the sight of the other men that Brig could do anything.
Brig dug more comfortably into the grass, steadied himself carefully, and raised his gun. He was an excellent shot, but he didn’t overestimate his abilities, wanting no accidents to remind him of the last time he tried something so risky. No matter how he felt betrayed by Nathan, he didn’t want to maim him. Not for Nathan, the life of a cripple. The shot had to be clean and...
Nathan moved slowly along the outer edge of the flames. The heat must be enormous, Brig thought, following Nathan with the nose of his gun. He waited. The wind shifted.
He fired.
Lydia helped gather supplies from the stable and the house and load them on a wagon. Axes, shovels, blankets, and picks were thrown onto the bed. Molly and Tess packed food and drink for the men and drove the wagon themselves to deliver it all. Irish wheeled into the kitchen just as Lydia was waving them off.
“What the bloody hell’s going on?” he demanded. “People running up and down the stairs. Everyone shouting.”
“Bushfire,” said Lydia. She drew his attention to the kitchen window and pointed northwest. A gray haze was lying flat on the horizon. “There. Nathan called it Coolabri. Everyone’s gone but us. I think this is what’s known as holding down the fort.”
Irish swore colorfully. “Whoever heard of a nursemaid and an invalid holding down anything? That’s what we are. Whose idea was this? Yours? Nathan’s?”
“Nathan’s. But I agree with him. Anyway, you’re just feeling sorry for yourself and I’m not paying it the least attention.”
“That my own daughter should treat me so,” he muttered. Irish stopped rolling his eyes when Lydia flashed him one of her beautiful smiles. “How long ago did it start?”
“I don’t know. It’s only been thirty minutes, though, since we first saw the smoke.”
“Wrong time of the year for bushfires,” Irish said, staring at the smoky haze. “Coolabri, you say? It’s hard to tell from here.”
“That’s what Nathan said. We were on the hill over there.”
“Well, he’d know from that angle.” He wheeled to the back door and pushed his way out onto the porch. Lydia followed. “Wind’s picking up. That’s not a good sign.” In the distance a flock of magpies took to the air. They soared and swooped and finally chose to settle in the boughs of some snow
gums closer to the main house.
“What will the men do?”
“They’ll try to clear a path to stop the fire in places where they can’t beat it out. There’s a stream near Coolabri that might help cut it off, but they can’t get water to the fire. There’s no pump, and running a brigade would be like trying to plug a volcano with sand, one grain at a time. The best they can hope for is containing it.”
“Why are you frowning? Don’t you think they can do it?”
Irish hadn’t been aware that he was frowning at all. He made an effort to control it, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if he were only being thoughtful and not worried. Motioning Lydia to help him back in the house again, he chose his words carefully. “They’ll contain it. It might take them a few days, less if we get some rain, longer if the wind keeps rising. Depends if the fire moves out of the valley.”
“A few days,” she said softly. Lydia was only now beginning to understand the nature of what Nathan and the others were fighting, the urgency that prompted Molly and Tess to send food with the other supplies. “No one explained it to me. I thought…I don’t know what I thought. I’ve never seen a bushfire.”
Irish didn’t tell her about the wall of incandescent flame that ripped through dry sheep country in the summer. Ballaburn only had patches of land like that and Coolabri wasn’t one of them. Lion’s Ridge and Willaroo Valley were more likely to be overtaken by fire, but this was still the wrong time of year. The paddocks were green and the scrub in the bush wasn’t tinder dry. The stringy bark from the gum trees made good kindling, but it probably wouldn’t have ignited spontaneously. There had been no storm in recent days, no lightning that might account for the fire. “Well, you’re not going to see a bushfire now. Nathan left you here as much for your sake as he did mine. How about giving me a push to the study?”
Feeling a little sorry for herself now, Lydia did as she was asked. She had known there was some danger, of course, but Nathan hadn’t tried to convey the full extent of the hazard. Now Irish was doing his best not to convey it, either. “What happens if they can’t contain it? Will it come this way?”
“It’s possible, but not likely. Wind’s wrong for that. It’ll burn itself out eventually. The question is how much good pasture and forest will it take in the meantime? Coolabri is good grazing. Nathan and the men will try to move out the sheep that didn’t trample each other in the first panic.” Irish wheeled himself over to his desk and opened the bottom left-hand drawer. Pretending to leaf through a stack of papers in the drawer, he checked his Remington to make certain it was loaded. It was. He closed the drawer only part way.
“I feel as if I should be doing something,” Lydia said. She went to the windows of the study and drew back the curtains, craning her neck to see. A thin film of smoke shadowed the underside of the lowest lying clouds. It was impossible to see anything else. “Perhaps I’ll make some tea. Would you like some?” The kitchen had a better view.
“A drop of whiskey in it wouldn’t be amiss.”
“All right.”
As soon as she was gone Irish went into the entrance hall and threw the bolt on the front door. He secured windows on the ground floor in his bedroom, the parlor, the dining room, and when he returned to the study he checked those as well. Waiting for Lydia to come back with the tea, he wondered what else he could do. He’d have to send her upstairs on some pretext or other in order to lock the back of the house. Holding down the fort was more apt than Lydia could have known when she said it. How long before Nathan realized it was no ordinary bushfire he was fighting, but one deliberately set? How long before he understood the danger wasn’t only at Coolabri but probably at the very heart of Ballaburn?
Irish wondered if telling Lydia his suspicions would make her safer or only cause her to panic. “Lydia!” he called. “Forget about the bloody tea and come here. I’ll pour us two stiff shots. For what I—” He broke off, driven to silence by Lydia’s presence in the doorway. She was carrying a china tea service on a wooden tray and her grip on the handles was white-knuckled. She was pale, her eyes large and vaguely bruised by the nature of her thoughts. She stared at Irish, unblinking. Behind her and a little off to the side, stood Brigham.
“I let her finish making your tea,” he said pleasantly, giving Lydia a nudge to enter the room. “It was the least I could do.”
Lydia set the tray down. When she attempted to go to Irish’s side behind the desk, Brig stopped her, pulling her back by the waistband of her skirt. Her movement had been enough to permit Irish to see Brig’s gun. “He set the fire,” she said tonelessly.
“I thought as much.” Irish’s hand lay carelessly on the open drawer at his side. The Remington was within his reach.
Brig laughed as though he were genuinely pleased. “How clever you both are. It wouldn’t be any good at all if you were slow to catch on. Nathan’s been a bit of a disappointment today. I’ve already shown Lydia his coat and the bullet hole. She knows the truth. By now the bushfire’s taken care of him and the coat’s being destroyed in your wood stove.” He smiled faintly. “Everything consumed by fire.”
Irish’s upper body snapped to attention. His head jerked up. The sickly pallor that had shaded his complexion was replaced by the first flushes of deep, unforgiving anger.
Brig didn’t respond to the accusation in Irish’s eyes. “Get me the strongbox, Irish. I want to see the wills you drew up. Go on. Get them.”
“Get them yourself. You know where the box is.”
Lydia felt the nose of Brig’s gun stop pressing on the small of her back. He turned it aside long enough to fire a shot in Irish’s direction. The bullet missed Irish entirely because it was intended to and shattered one of the windowpanes behind him instead. Lydia’s knees buckled. She was held upright by Brig until she recovered her balance and her strength. She hated him touching her, hated the fact that he was aware of her fear.
“Show me the wills,” Brig said calmly.
Reluctantly Irish’s hand left the drawer. With Brig using Lydia for cover it was impossible to use the revolver. He wheeled to the bookcase and opened one of the bottom cupboards, withdrawing the strongbox. A key he kept wedged between the arm and seat of his wheelchair opened it. “There’s only one will left,” he said, raising it to show Brig. “I destroyed the other a little while back.”
Lydia’s lips parted around a small gasp. She forgot Brig’s presence for the moment. “You did?”
Irish nodded. “The night you went out to Lion’s Ridge after Nathan.”
“But you never said. I thought—”
“I wanted to be sure.”
Brig jabbed at Lydia, infuriated that he was no longer at the center of their thoughts. “I’ll have a look myself, if you don’t mind. Put the box down.” When Irish had moved out of the way, Brig pushed Lydia over to the table and sifted through the contents. Skimming the will that remained, he understood his worst fears had been realized. Everything would be Nathan’s.
“I’m not entirely surprised,” he said. “Father Colgan told me how taken you were with Lydia. It stood to reason that you’d be set on giving the land to Nathan, if you haven’t been set on it all along. I had hopes their marriage might come to nothing, but apparently there is to be no divorce. The question that had been plaguing me was how to get Ballaburn?”
Irish slowly wheeled back to his desk, trying not to look purposeful about it. “There’s no will, I told you. You’ve seen for yourself that there isn’t.”
“You’ll have to write another then, won’t you?” Brigham followed Irish’s progress around the desk. When Irish was situated directly behind it, Brig said, “Put your hands flat on the top. That’s it. Lydia, sit down.” When he had compliance he went to the desk, found Irish’s revolver, and tucked it in his trousers. “Did you think I would forget? Your actions are almost laughably predictable, Irish. I thought you might be waiting for me, and you were. With you and Lydia alone here it was the opportunity I had been waiting for, the one I
created.” Without turning his back on Irish, he went back to Lydia and seated himself casually on the arm of her chair. His gun rested comfortably on his thigh. “You need to start writing, Irish. The exact terms as before, then no one need know you got rid of the original. Do it, and I’ll let you live out your days here naturally. More, I might add, than you were willing to offer me.”
“I’ll be damned if I’ll—”
Lydia’s glazed, grief-stricken eyes met Irish’s. “Write whatever he wants, Irish,” she said dully.
Brig smiled. “Your daughter has good sense. Listen to her.”
Irish stared at his daughter and felt her pain more deeply than he felt his own. There was no accusation in her eyes, no reminder that they had come to this pass because of his wager, yet Irish could not have felt more responsible for Nathan’s murder if he had pulled the trigger himself. Several long, silent minutes passed. Irish’s shoulders slumped at the moment of his decision. He found paper, a pen, and began writing. When he was done he pushed the document across the desk toward Brigham.
“There should only have ever been one of these,” Brig said as he examined it. “The day you drew up two, you made the price of owning Ballaburn Nathan’s life. I’d hoped to win the wager and make killing him unnecessary, but it wasn’t to be. Don’t think I’m not mourning his death.”
A cry was wrenched from Lydia as she came to her feet. “You bastard! Don’t you dare speak of mourning him! You had no feelings for Nathan when he was alive and surely none for him now that he’s dead! You’ve always used Nathan to serve your own ends! You think Ballaburn is yours? Well, you’re welcome to it, Brig, but you can’t make me marry you.”