Margaret Way - Master of the Outback

Derryl’s muffled reply held irritation, which his brother ignored. Obviously Derryl thought his position in the scheme of things put him far above hauling luggage.

It was hard to stop herself from being thrilled. She was going on a journey that might take her to the brink of discovery. Potentially dangerous or not, she was on her way. Plenty of women would fall down in unabashed adoration before Bret Trevelyan. She was not going to be one of them. Every moment, every minute, every day she had to keep in mind her kinswoman Catherine, who had lost her young life on Djangala Station. Had she made a fatal mistake falling in love with Geraint Trevelyan, a man beyond any doubt the wrong man for her? Falling in love with the wrong man could be dangerous. Historically, there were mountains of evidence of that.

Trevelyan would be dropping the cattlemen off along the way. He made brief introductions, and all four men responded with genuine friendliness and courtesy.

Less than five minutes later they were all seated in a superior styled and fitted-out cabin. She could see that the very comfortable fully articulated club seating had been configured for the cattlemen to continue their discussions in private. She sat farther back in the aircraft, pretty well on her own, which suited her, marvelling at the state-of-the-art technology—fingertip controls, an audio-visual system, LED lighting, etc. Aft was a restroom, no doubt offering toilet, vanity and other upmarket amenities.

They were underway. The aircraft was taxiing down the runway, then within moments, smooth as silk, it gained height, fast climbing into the dazzling blue air. There was no loud drone from the twin turbo props. Inside the aircraft it was remarkably quiet. She could even darken the window, if she so chose. Derryl had elected to take the trip in the cockpit with his brother, which told her he wasn’t about to waste time on her. She was grateful for that.

Some change in the aircraft woke her. A change in altitude. She straightened up, amazed to find she had drifted off. Smoothing her hair, she stared out of the window. Trevelyan was bringing the King Air around in a slow tilting curve, making a descent onto what appeared to be a fairly large settlement in the middle of nowhere. A whole collection of buildings sprawled beneath her, and further off mobs of cattle browsed peacefully on a lushness she had not expected to see. But then this was Australia—a continent of searing drought and raging floods.

The great irony was that the arid red landscape had turned into a wild paradise. The Three Great Rivers system of the Outback—Georgina, Diamantina, Cooper Creek—now mostly dry, had run with water in some places fifty miles wide. What lay beneath her was the nation’s fabled Channel Country in the remote south-west. It was the country’s leading producer of beef, the home of the cattle kings.

The Great Flood, as it was now called, had filled every channel, billabong, waterhole, and clay pan. The floodwaters had even reached the ephemeral Lake Eyre at the continent’s centre, the lowest point. Lake Eyre filled rarely—maybe twice in a century. She had seen pictures published in all the newspapers of the thousands and thousands of birds, including the wonderful pelicans that had flown thousands of kilometres to breed there. How did the birds know? They had to fly continual reconnaissance missions. But this was Australia—a land of ten-year droughts and monstrous floods. Somehow the land and the people came back.

She found herself gritting her teeth as they prepared to land on the all weather airstrip. She had never been ecstatic about flying, even in the Airbus. This flight had been remarkably smooth, but she wasn’t at home in light aircraft, however splendid. Landing was more dangerous than taking off. The four cattlemen were ready to disembark, all four remembering her name, doffing their akubras politely. Painted on the corrugated iron roof of the hangar below, she had seen the name of the station: Kuna Kura Downs.

Derryl Trevelyan followed the disembarking cattlemen, talking all the while, Trevelyan came last. He beckoned to her, brilliant dark eyes continuing to measure her, the sort of person she was.

“Opportunity to stretch your legs,” he said, a smile deepening the sexy brackets at the sides of his mouth.

“Thank you.” God, how a smile could challenge one’s composure! “But the seating is anything but cramped.”

“You enjoyed the flight?”

She nodded. “I have to admit it was so smooth I fell asleep.”

“Flying conditions were excellent,” he said. “Come along. You might like to meet our friends and closest neighbours to the north-east—the Rawleighs. We won’t be staying more than ten minutes. I want to get home.”

She did what she was told. Trevelyan commanded. People obeyed. She felt a touch jittery, as though he knew all about her but had still allowed her to come. Surely that couldn’t be so? He couldn’t know about Catherine and the family connection? A man like that would be too busy to check out a mere ghostwriter. Something he might think akin to a ventriloquist’s dummy.

A tall, athletic young woman, with long dark hair worn in a thick plait down her back, detached herself from the small group, running towards Trevelyan, arms uplifted in greeting, her lightly tanned face wreathed in welcoming smiles.

All hail the conquering hero!

Genevieve guessed he was long used to it.

“Bret!” the young woman exclaimed in a kind of ecstasy, launching herself at him.

Genevieve waited with great interest for Trevelyan’s response. He didn’t draw her to him, as the young woman clearly hoped. He didn’t go so far as to give her the salute with a kiss on both cheeks either, but he did dip his handsome head to brush her cheek. “How are you, Liane?”

Information started to drill through Genevieve’s brain. Rawleigh? Hadn’t he once been engaged to a Liane Rawleigh?

No time to ponder. There were introductions to be made. Up close, Liane Rawleigh put her in mind of a sleek thoroughbred. She was exceptionally good-looking, with ice-blue eyes in stunning contrast to her dark hair. She appeared unable to extricate herself from Trevelyan—indeed she was clinging to him with possessive pride. The engagement might well be off, but it was obvious Liane hadn’t fallen out of love with him. So who had ditched whom? How had it come about?

Liane continued to hang off his arm while he introduced Genevieve as the writer his great-aunt had hired to help her with her book. Liane regarded her with what Genevieve interpreted as an expression of guarded superiority. Genevieve wasn’t an invited guest.

Ms Rawleigh had an educated, rather assertive voice. “Have you ever done anything like that before?” she questioned, as though Genevieve’s chances of successfully ghosting a distinguished biography of the Trevelyan family were extremely slim. Her air of general disregard struck Genevieve as very off-putting. In a way it was much like Derryl Trevelyan’s manner. Liane’s tight smile to her was a far different variety from the one bestowed upon the cattle baron Trevelyan. She couldn’t see why, but Genevieve thought there was something vaguely malicious about it. Maybe it was a trick of the heavy-lidded eyes.

Super-athletic in her sapphire T-shirt and skin-tight jeans, she had a high full bust over an enviably narrow waist and slim hips, and as Genevieve was appraising Trevelyan’s exfiancée, Liane Rawleigh was giving her a comprehensive once over. Women were much harder to fool than men. Liane would have checked her eyes, skin, hair, her figure and either consider she had deliberately played down her looks or she had little style to speak of.

“I’m confident I can do the job,” Genevieve responded pleasantly, without actually answering the question.

“Well, I wish you luck.” Liane spoke like a woman who never ceased to be amazed. “Come over and meet Daddy. He wants a word with you, Bret, if you have a moment. I should warn you, I think it’s about Kit.”

Trevelyan responded with an elegant shift of a wide shoulder. He had beautiful, thick raven hair that curled up at the collar of his bush shirt. No time for the hairdresser, like his brother. He didn’t have his younger brother’s insufferable arrogance either—and he was the boss.

“Well, he is having a very tough time of it,” Trevelyan commented.

Genevieve liked his compassion.

“Wallowing in it,” Liane offered derisively.

Trevelyan didn’t respond. He began to move off—a man blessed with vibrant energy.

Lew Rawleigh looked the part of a prominent, prosperous cattle man. The surprise was he was short. No more than five-nine in his high boots. Trevelyan towered over him. But his body was substantial—heavy shoulders, tightly muscled arms, trim through the middle—and he had iron-grey hair, charcoal-coloured eyes. He greeted Genevieve in cordial fashion. Certainly he was friendlier than his daughter.

“Ms Grenville.”

“Please—Gena.”

“Good to meet you, Gena. We hope to see more of you while you’re here.”

“I’d like that.” A white lie. She knew Liane Rawleigh hadn’t taken to her, nor she to Liane.

Genevieve had her hand pumped twice. She just managed not to wince. Trevelyan, a big man, hadn’t subjected her to a bonecrusher, though she was sure Lew Rawleigh was unaware of his vice-like grip. His gaze was keen, as though he was trying to place her. That would be an ever-present anxiety. Some flicker of recognition. She was a woman harbouring a secret. Some might call it a guilty secret. She did bear a resemblance to her great-aunt Catherine. But her colouring was of a different palette. Anyway, Lew Rawleigh was somewhere in his mid-fifties. He would have been a small child at the time.

Nevertheless he would know of that early tragedy on Djangala Station. She supposed everyone in the Outback would have accepted it as a terrible accident. Sadly, people all too frequently stood too close to rocky ledges, shelves of cliffs, even precipices. The thrill was in the danger.

Liane had lifted her dark head eagerly to Trevelyan, all sweetness and light. “You’re going to come up to the house for coffee, aren’t you, Bret?” she urged. “Derryl said he’d like some.”

Trevelyan declined. “I’m really sorry, Liane, but I need to get back. Another time, perhaps?”

The sweetness vanished. Liane couldn’t control her reaction. “God, you spend too much time on Djangala as it is!” She couldn’t hide her disappointment, or the edge of anger in her voice.

“That’s my job, Liane,” he said smoothly, but with an air of finality.

Clearly this was a very sore point with Liane. To Genevieve’s keenly observant eyes Trevelyan looked utterly unmoved, although Genevieve could sense upset as well as sexual excitement in Liane.

“Is there something you wanted to say to me, Lew?” He turned back to Liane’s father with an entirely different expression.

“If you wouldn’t mind sparing me a few minutes?” Lew Rawleigh shoved his large hands into the pockets of his dusty jeans. “I just heard the stock squad have frozen Kit Wakefield’s account. Just about everything has gone wrong for poor Kit.”

“All the afflictions of Job,” Trevelyan remarked, placing a hand on the older man’s shoulder to lead him a short distance away to discuss the financial plight of the man Genevieve supposed was a fellow cattleman.

“Poor old Kit be damned!” Liane huffed and puffed. “He’s only himself to blame. His wife drowned in a freak flash flood last year. She paid a lethal pride for a piece of utter stupidity, but she wasn’t an Outback girl. Everyone rallied around Kit—we were all very supportive—but before long he was hitting the bottle big-time and making a lot of bad decisions. I’m not the least surprised he’s in trouble, and expecting us to bail him out.”