Ghost Gum Valley (32 page)

‘Not surprising. They're so inbred they look like brothers and sisters. Marmaduke's the first fresh blood in their family for generations. They should pay
me
for his stud rights!'

‘Mr Appleby states that the widower, Silas de Rolland, is in correspondence with His Excellency Governor Bourke's secretary, Mr Deas Thompson. The widower plans to visit this Colony at the end of his mourning period.'

Garnet was suddenly quiet. ‘Hasn't taken the grasping bastard long to make his move. His wife is hardly cold.'

‘I take it you know him well, sir?'

‘Only too well. He was the manipulator that held up the marriage contract, kept demanding more money. Silas de Rolland was born with two faces. He loads the cannon for his uncle Godfrey to fire. I wouldn't trust him to put his big toe in the Pacific Ocean without trying to steal it.'

The secretary ventured a question. ‘I take it your condolences are not required, sir?'

‘Not likely! Instruct Appleby I want details of that man's every move. Silas is the rotten apple in the de Rolland barrel. Old Godfrey is the head of the clan and full of born-to-rule arrogance. But he has his own code of honour – his letter about Isabel's sleepwalking sickness proved his concern for her.'

Rhys Powell looked discomforted. ‘Excuse me, sir, but I must remind you that is a letter that
you have not actually read.'

Garnet was quick to respond. ‘Quite right. You managed to reseal it?'

‘I copied his handwriting on a fresh envelope.' Rhys confessed.

‘Good man, you're getting the idea! We must keep one step ahead of those tricksters.' Garnet paused in the act of leaving the room to clap his secretary on the shoulder. ‘You're not doing such a bad job, Powell.'

The young man quickly jumped to his feet, clearly unable to decide whether this was his master's lukewarm praise or a veiled insult.

Garnet remembered overhearing Powell say in bemusement to Elise, ‘Australians have a strange way of distorting the English language.' It amused Garnet to leave the young man feeling unsettled.

You've got a lot to learn about us, boyo.

Garnet took the back stairs and, with Amaru the cockatoo perched on his shoulder, strode down the length of the picture gallery past the rigid faces of the ancestral portraits. All stared back expressionless. It was only Miranda who came vividly to life each time he gazed at her picture. Amaru was suddenly quiet as if he recognised the woman who taught him to speak.

‘My beauty!' Garnet said under his breath. ‘I don't believe you're gone. You're just out of sight, teasing me with the sound of your footsteps, the smell of your perfume. Well, your dream is at last coming true. Your beloved son will soon be home wedded and bedded with his bride. Time to relinquish your title, m'dear. Isabel will be the new mistress of Bloodwood Hall. I trust you'll make her feel welcome and not frighten the lass.'

He was distracted by strange sounds coming from the far end of the corridor.

Miranda's room.

Garnet pushed open the bedroom door, his breath tight in his chest, hoping to catch a trace of roses, proof that Miranda had just left the room. He saw a wisp of bridal veil in the mirror and thanked the God he had ceased to acknowledge since the hour of her death.

Miranda, you've come back to me at last.

The image grew clearer. His heart sank. Elise turned to face him, smiling coquettishly, her pale shoulders gleaming above the low neckline of the white satin gown, the pearl coronet pinned to the
crown of her flowing auburn hair. He saw reflected in the mirror a slash of her naked back where the gown was unlaced. Beautiful, yet all wrong. He hated the sight of Elise in Miranda's bridal gown.

‘What do you think you're doing?' he said quietly, his voice husky with disappointment.

‘I wondered if it would still fit me? I couldn't resist trying it on.'

‘You had your chance. Now it's Isabel's turn.'

‘But darling, you promised I would be your bride.'

‘There were conditions, remember?'

The layers of silk rustled as Elise moved towards him with intent, nestling her head against his chest, kissing his throat, her hands eager to arouse him to the state of passion she had always done, cleverly caressing his body as she began to undress him.

Garnet felt cold as he watched her. ‘Are you with child?' he asked, knowing the answer.

‘Not yet, I think. But the moon is with me.
Now
darling, take me now.'

Her mouth was hungry but he saw the need in her eyes was too calculating to be lust.

‘Why now? Feel threatened, that Marmaduke's bride will give me the Gamble heir that you've failed to do?'

Elise bit into his shoulder in a desperate attempt to arouse him to the violent pitch of their lovemaking.

‘No,' he said coolly. ‘I'm not in the mood for that today.'

Her eyes flashed in anger and frustration. ‘Garnet, give me a chance. How can I fall if you avoid my bed for weeks? I can do it – you know I can. I'm not barren. But you've taken to slipping downstairs to that slut Bridget. Do you think I don't know?'

Garnet didn't bother to deny it. ‘That's always been my way. You knew that when you first came to my bed. I like variety. Nothing has changed. You wanted money more than any man's love. I give you what you want and take what
I
want,
wherever
I choose to find it.'

She grabbed hold of his shirt and shook him, helpless with rage. ‘No other woman would do for you what I do!'

‘You get well paid for it.' He pulled her hands away and pushed her off balance to fall on the bed. His question was polite. ‘Are you hungry for more money now, Elise?'

‘Why do you always talk of money? I come to you because I love you. I want nothing more than to give you a child.'

‘To earn you a wedding ring, make you respectable,' he teased. ‘All right. I've nothing better to do this afternoon. But first take off Miranda's wedding gown.' He added with a smile. ‘You've grown too fat to wear it, m'dear.'

Elise's eyes widened as his words stung her with the memory they could never erase.

Garnet coldly watched her as she shed the bridal gown and left it lying in a silken heap on the floor. Then while his anger was still under his control he took her quickly, violently, without bothering to kiss or caress her. Coldly he observed the fear in her eyes, the realisation that her world was in danger of being stripped from her.

But fear aroused her lust and she swung her body up on top of him and took control, as if trying to force the essence of a child into her womb with each thrust of her body.

‘Yes, yes! I will give you what you want. Another son. Better and stronger than that wastrel Marmaduke.'

His hands gripped her so hard she cried out, forced to break her rhythm.

‘Don't you
dare
try to come between me and my son! My battle with Marmaduke is a private war. We may choose to fight to the death. But no woman – no slut – will ever come between us!'

Garnet was now total master and Elise cried out in pain and relief each time he mounted her.

At last he lay on his back, satiated, with Elise's limp body sprawled across him. His eyes were fixed on the closed bedroom door.

The memory would never die. That terrible look of confusion and pain in his son's eyes as Marmaduke burst through the door, crying out, ‘Father, please help me, Elise has run away!' And then the dawning realisation on the lad's face as he froze in shock, standing at the foot of the bed, forced to see the whole truth – that his bride lay half-naked in Garnet's arms, wearing Miranda's wedding gown.

Chapter 23

‘I don't believe what I'm seeing!' Isabel said in awe. Seated alone inside the carriage she moved back and forth between the open windows on either side trying to absorb the changing patterns of the bush landscape. ‘This must be the way explorers feel when they discover new lands.'

There was nothing like seeing the bush
in situ
. In Sydney Town she had pored over books of botanical drawings that recorded in exquisite, microscopic detail hundreds of flowering plants, shrubs and species of native eucalypts, their leaves, blossoms, bark and seasonal changes. But nothing had prepared her for the sheer grandeur of the landscape or the magical transitions of scenery that kept unfolding like an endless giant tapestry. One moment she felt exhilarated by its beauty, the next so awed by the towering cliff faces, the impenetrable density of the bush that she felt God had reduced her to the size of an ant.

Discarding the veiling that Marmaduke had swathed around her hat to shield her from the red dust that rose from the convict-built road, Isabel thrust her head through the window and yelled into the face of the wind.

‘Marmaduke! Tell Thomas to slow down. He's going too fast!'

The coach screeched to a halt so unexpectedly that Isabel was thrown to the floor.

Marmaduke stuck his head through the window. ‘Get out! Be sick on the side of the road, but be quick about it!'

She jumped down onto the road unaided and brushed herself down. ‘I'm not ill! Just frustrated. You've seen all this magnificent scenery before. But it's whizzing past me like a kaleidoscope!'

It was then she saw the pistol in Marmaduke's belt and the shotgun he was nursing and realised from his serious expression that the route to Bloodwood was not nearly as safe as she had been led to believe. She pointed at his firearms.

‘You told me you were sitting beside Thomas to give him a spell from driving!'

‘I lied,' he said. ‘Hop back inside, soldier. There are reports bushrangers are active in this locality. We need to reach the inn before sundown.'

‘I don't suppose I could sit up there between you?' she asked hopefully.

‘That was an order!'

Isabel barely had time to clamber back inside before Thomas cracked the whip and the team charged off again. She stretched out her legs to bolster herself against the opposite seat, reminded of Marmaduke's preoccupied mood since their departure. Was he unhappy to leave his ‘sweet lady' behind in Sydney?

I could hardly blame him. Josepha St John is a fine figure of a woman.

Isabel had oddly ambiguous feelings about her wedding night. She remembered Marmaduke taking his leave before going to the theatre, no doubt to spend the night with his actress. Yet next morning Isabel had woken to find him seated by her bedside, holding her hand even in the depths of his sleep. How long had he been there? Feeling an unaccustomed sense of protection she had fallen asleep again. Next morning he had talked about the previous night's performance but in truth had he stayed by her bedside all night? And if so, why?

Isabel was relieved that Thomas was their driver on this long journey as he was unusually cheerful, glad to escape for a while from his outspoken de facto wife, a Currency Lass of whom he said, with rueful pride, ‘My woman takes no lip from no one.'

Marmaduke had left his father's flashy landau behind in Sydney Town in readiness for their next visit, when it was expected Isabel would be invited to balls and assemblies at Government House.

The thought of her entrance into a world dominated by the colony's Top Thirteen families both attracted and worried her. She had never attended a ball and had little experience of the codes of Society outside the pages of Miss Austen's novels.

When they stopped at the Harp of Tyrone Isabel sank into a chair on the verandah, waving her handkerchief in a vain attempt to fan away the swarms of flies that stuck to her face as if she were a bowl of sugar.

Marmaduke idly snapped off a swatch of leaves from the branch of a eucalyptus tree and handed it to her with the laconic invitation, ‘You'll find this works better.'

Isabel felt hot, tired and thirsty. ‘Is it always so humid at this time of year?'

‘You call
this
heat? You'd best get used to it. As Byron said, “What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, is much more common where the climate's sultry.”'

Isabel recognised the quotation from
Don Juan.
‘I wonder how you libertines managed to seduce women before you had Lord Byron to quote?'

‘Don't fret,' he assured her mildly. ‘You're in no danger from me. If I'd had half a mind to seduce you I'd have done the deed long since.'

Isabel felt her cheeks burn with anger. ‘You flatter yourself. You might prove irresistible to other men's wives, but your own wife is immune. You would be the last man in the world I would choose to take to
my
bed.'

The corner of Marmaduke's mouth twitched in that maddening half-smile. ‘Methinks the lady doth protest
too
much.'

Isabel felt triumphant. ‘That's a common misquotation. Queen Gertrude's actual line to Hamlet is, “The lady doth protest too much,
methinks.
” You'll find it in Act III Scene II.'