Lindsay Armstrong - He's My Husband!

He released her abruptly. ‘I do. Goodnight, Nicola.’

But something stopped her from moving immediately, something that made her look at him fleetingly, into his eyes, to discover that everything—the amusement and everything else—had been leached from his expression so that it was like looking at a blank wall.

‘Goodnight, Brett,’ she said then, quietly and evenly, and slipped away.

Brett Harcourt stood in the same spot for some moments and wondered, as he’d found himself wondering from time to time over the last two years, if his wife was essentially naive and genuinely had no idea how attractive and desirable most men found her. Because it was true that he couldn’t accuse her of appearing to have much interest in men at all, although he’d been right about her effect on them.

But was it something she still had to grow into? he mused. Or had this marriage of convenience been even more successful than he’d thought, from the point of view of keeping the daughter of a man he’d admired immensely safe? But safe in an ivory tower?

He stared at nothing for a moment, then shrugged.

CHAPTER TWO

SUNDAY dawned clear and hot, although not nearly so hot as Cairns could get. May was one of the nicest months in the far north of Queensland, Nicola often thought. By May the threat of cyclones had receded, the stingers and box jellyfish were removing their deadly tentacles from beaches and the weather was generally cooler and dryer—if not exactly autumnal by southern standards. Although she’d been brought up in Cairns, there was no doubt the hot steamy summers took their toll.

She walked out onto the veranda and absorbed the view.

Brett Harcourt had built a house at Yorkeys Knob, a northern beach suburb of Cairns dominated by a small, steep and wooded headland—the Knob. He’d built his house on the Knob to take in spectacular views of the ocean, as well as the cane fields, of which he owned a large slice, that stretched inland to the range. Sugar cane was not his only investment. He owned banana and avocado plantations, as well as mango farms—for that matter, so did she.

But it was not the injustice of having her inheritance in someone else’s hands until she was twenty-three that was on her mind as she gazed at the view, it was only how lovely it all was that preoccupied her.

Out to sea there were magic reefs and cays, not visible at this distance, but once you’d visited them they stayed in your mind whenever you looked out. Michaelmas Cay, Upolo—a lovely little hoop of pale gold sand in a turquoise sea studded with coral—Green Island, Arlington Reef, and to the north Batt and Tongue Reefs, the Low Isles, Agincourt Reef and many more as the Great Barrier Reef rose from the depths of the Coral Sea.

Closer to home to the north was Trinity Beach and Palm Cove on the mainland, then Buchans Point—the venue for lunch today. And the Range, cloaked in its dense, dark green foliage, rose majestically behind them to Kuranda and the Atherton Tablelands.

The other advantage of having a house on the Knob was the wonderful privacy. The road was actually above their roof level, and their neighbours were hidden by a glorious tangle of tropical shrubbery: pink, purple and white bougainvillaea, yellow allamanda and scarlet poinsettia. There were palm trees and causurinas on the front lawn, and beyond, a sheer drop down to the sea.

She breathed the clear, sparkling air deeply and turned to look at the house. Built on two levels in a mixture of stone, timber and glass, it blended well with the hillside and made the most of the wonderful views. The upper level, containing the bedrooms and where she was now standing, had its own deck around the front of the house, whilst the lower level opened onto a paved terrace with an in-ground pool and a thatched open barbecue pavilion. There were big terracotta pots scattered about, in which Nicola grew flowering perennials, and some flourishing pandanus palms.

Louvred doors onto the deck and terrace, as well as simple cotton blinds, let the air flow through the house as well as giving it a slightly Oriental air. The floors inside were all sealed timber or polished slate, and the rooms were uncluttered to minimise the heat but furnished beautifully, with a mixture of modern and colonial. Curiously, the fact that some of it had been Marietta’s doing didn’t offend Nicola.

There was also a garden for the children, a shed and a kiln for her pottery, and a shady, secretive courtyard outside the front door that was definitely Oriental in design and a delight to Nicola. More of her pottery pots and most of her statues ended up in it, and she grew herbs, lemon trees in tubs, impatiens, and miniature capsicum and chillies beneath a magnificent tree that was at present a blaze of bloom and spreading a pink carpet on the uneven tiles that surrounded it.

The sight of a small face at her bedroom doorway, which was instantly whisked away, alerted her. She waited a couple of moments, then padded back to her room silently and sneaked up to the bed that now had two still mounds beneath the covers. She fell on the bed, causing screams and loud gurgles of laughter to emanate as the mounds wriggled joyfully and they all ended up in a heap.

‘Who’s been sleeping in my bed?’ Nicola demanded, feigning utter surprise.

‘You knew, you knew!’ Chris, short for Christian, chanted.

‘How could she know?’ his sister contradicted, coming up for air. ‘We didn’t make a sound. We didn’t even breathe!’

‘I bet you she knew—’

‘OK.’ Nicola gathered them on either side of her and plumped up the pillows. ‘Let’s not start the day with a fight. How about a song instead? Let’s see...’

They sang ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’, then, because The Wiggles were such a hot topic, embarked on one of their songs about a dog that barked all day and night. They sang the chorus with great gusto and much hilarity, alternating from basso profondo to a shrill, scratchy falsetto.

‘All right, all right!’ Brett Harcourt appeared at the doorway with his hair hanging in his eyes, wearing only a pair of sleep shorts and with blue shadows on his jaw. ‘Doesn’t anyone in this house believe it’s Sunday?’

Nicola said through her laughter, ‘Sorry, but they both have perfect pitch, you know!’

Sasha and Chris leapt off the bed to besiege their father, and presently to partake peaceably of a late breakfast, and then get through the whole traumatic business of being dressed and groomed for an outing without one squabble.

‘There.’ Nicola slung a large bag into the back of the BMW between the children and stood for a moment with her hand on her hip.

She wore a filmy beige and white paisley overshirt and white linen drawstring pants. Her hair was in a simple knot and she had beige canvas rope-soled espadrilles on her feet. She held up a finger for each item. ‘I’ve got two spare sets of clothing, sun-cream, hats, togs, buckets, spades, toys in case they get bored, books—I’ve got the lot.’

She swung herself into the front seat and exchanged a wry glance with her husband, who said, ‘It’s like moving an army.’

‘You’re not wrong. Now listen, kids,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘we’re going to visit Mr and Mrs Mason for lunch. Don’t forget your manners, will you?’

‘I never do,’ Sasha said proudly and pointedly.

“Course you do,‘ Chris responded. ’Who threw a plate of jelly at—?‘

‘That was because he pulled my hair! And don’t forget the time you spat at—’

‘Kids,’ Brett said, mildly enough, but they subsided—as they always did for Brett, Nicola thought ruefully.

‘Wish I had you around more often,’ she murmured with a faint grin, and glanced at him expressively.

Gone was the dishevelment of earlier. He was shaved, his brown hair was orderly and he wore a brown and white striped T-shirt, off-white thin cotton jeans and white deck shoes. The hairs on his arms, she noted, glinted chestnut in the sun.

‘I might not be so effective then—familiarity could dull the edge.’

‘I doubt it. They’re always good for you.’

‘Do you find them such a handful, Nicola?’ he asked after a moment. ‘By the way, I presume I’m forgiven?’

‘For last night?’ She shrugged. ‘Yes. You know I don’t find them a handful,’ she added with more warmth. ‘And on the odd occasion that I do,’ she said honestly, ‘I’ve always got Ellen to fall back on.’ Ellen doubled as housemaid and babysitter, and had been with the children since birth.

‘I just wondered,’ he said slowly, ‘whether they had anything to do with your seeking counselling. Whether you felt tied down, were yearning for a career or something like that,’ he said, before she could speak.

Nicola paused. ‘I never could decide whether I wanted to be a potter, a pilot or a musician—that’s strange, isn’t it? No. It’s not that, Brett.’

‘But what would you do if you left us?’

The question hung in the air—air that rushed by as they drove up the highway past Palm Cove towards Buchans Point with the roof down. And it was a question that affected Nicola suddenly and curiously. Was it because, she wondered, it was the first time Brett had actually asked her? Not in the context of pointing out her lack of purpose in life, or her unwisdom et cetera, but just as a simple, genuine enquiry?

And it came to her with a little stab of shock that perhaps he was entertaining the idea of her leaving...

‘I...I could start my own gallery,’ she said at random. ‘A lot of people are very taken with my pottery.’

‘Anything else?’

She cast around in her mind a little desperately. Before anything presented itself, she remembered suddenly that Brett had gone out the night before, alone, and come home very late. Well after midnight, in fact, as she’d seen on the luminous dial of her bedside clock when the opening and closing of the garage doors had woken her briefly—something she hadn’t recalled until now.

Not that there was anything particularly unusual in it. She often went out with girlfriends, and he didn’t always include her in his socialising, but...had this been a different kind of socialising, with a woman? she found herself wondering. A woman he was serious about? Serious enough to be contemplating putting an end to this marriage of convenience. But what about Marietta? she thought. And...

‘Nicola?’

She jerked her eyes to his to find his gaze narrow and probing, but all he said was, ‘We’re here.’

‘Oh, sorry.’ She shrugged, but it was a long moment before she could tear her gaze away from his. Then she got out of the car and helped the children out.

‘Now, let’s see.’ She straightened Sasha’s pretty sun-dress and smoothed her red-brown curls. ‘You look gorgeous, darling,’ she said, and turned to Chris. ‘Whereas you are very handsome, young man!’

Both children exuded gratification and put their hands into hers, leaving their father to deal with the large bag.

And that was what the Masons, Rod and Kim, as well as their resident guest, saw advancing up the garden path as they opened their front door, causing Kim Mason, in her forthright way, to say, ‘Nicola, dear, welcome! But how can you possibly be old enough to have two children this age?’

‘Oh, she’s not our mother,’ Sasha piped up with a world-weary air. ‘She’s our aunt.’

‘Sasha.’ Nicola frowned down at her. ‘I’m not your aunt, I’m your stepmother. Where did you get that idea?’

‘Excuse me—how silly of me,’ Kim murmured, but Sasha was not to be denied.

‘I ’scussed this with my friend Emma, and we decided you can’t be any kind of a mother, Nicola, because you don’t do the things mummies do.’