‘You think so?’ The slow but dangerous drawl came from the door, which had been opened silently. Kane stood in the aperture, tall and slim and repelling in the extreme. ‘Make no mistake, Rachel, Gail is here for good.’
Again the woman shrugged.
‘Time will tell, Kane ... yes, time will tell.’
‘Gail is here for good,’ he repeated, coming slowly into the room.
‘And so am I,’ with a sort of malignant triumph. ‘You’ll never move me alive, so you can resign yourself to having me here until I die.’
Had he gone a trifle pale? wondered Gail. He was certainly furious beneath that calm exterior.
‘You’re a thoroughly unpleasant woman,’ he said forthrightly. ‘You have no place here and you know it—’
‘No place? Why, then, did your father make provision for me to remain here? This, he said, was to be my home for as long as I wished to stay.’
‘He was infatuated.’ Scorn edged the tone. Gail guessed that there had not been a very close relationship between Kane and his father after the marriage had taken place. ‘And also, he had no idea of the difficulties he was making for me.’
‘If you’d resigned yourself to my being the mistress here, then we’d have got along together much more comfortably.’
‘As you’re no longer mistress here, then surely it’s time for you to accept my offer of another home?’
‘It wouldn’t be a home like this. I’m used to luxury, Kane, and I’m making sure I don’t lower my standard of living by accepting something far smaller and inferior.’
‘Smaller, yes. You couldn’t expect to live in a place of this size. Inferior – most certainly not!’
‘If it’s smaller then it’s inferior. In any case, the house you offered me is in Sydney, and I don’t wish to live there.’
‘I said you could choose where you wanted to live, then I’d buy a house for you. The one I offered was for sale and as you came from Sydney and, at first, swore you’d never settle here because of the loneliness, I naturally asked if you’d care for a house in that part of the country.’ He shrugged and would have let the matter drop, but his stepmother had a complaint to make.
‘I’ve been meaning to mention this ever since it happened,’ she said, throwing a malicious glance at Gail. ‘Your – wife cancelled an order of mine which I gave to Miranda. I wanted her to leave what she was doing and tidy out my wardrobes and cupboards, but Miranda thought fit to tell your wife, and the next thing was that my order had been overruled. Gail told Miranda to carry on with what she was doing and then come up to my bedroom. I will not be humiliated in this way with the servants! They’ve been taking orders from me for some considerable time and I’m not retiring simply because another woman has come to live here!’
‘My wife,’ he said dangerously. ‘Kindly refer to her as that!’
‘She shall not override me!’ snapped his stepmother, glaring at him. ‘I have seniority, if nothing else, and the sooner you both accept this the better it will be for all of us.’
Kane’s eyes narrowed ominously.
‘Be careful,’ he told her softly. ‘I’m not a patient man, as you should know.’ Mrs. Farrell made no answer and Gail guessed that it was choked-up fury that prevented speech rather than a desire to bring this scene to a close. ‘Much as you dislike the idea you’ve no alternative but to step down now that my wife has arrived. She is the mistress here and as such her orders will always come before yours. In fact, you should already have stopped giving orders at all,’ he continued in a firm inflexible tone. ‘So I’m telling you now - no more orders from you at all. Keep away from the servants, understand?’ His face was set, his eyes hard as the slate they resembled. He was a man of authority, a man commanding, warning, and yet proffering’ advice.
‘The child,’ inserted his stepmother defensively, ‘do you expect me to tolerate her?’
‘My daughter?’ His dark brows shot up arrogantly. ‘Her place, like that of her mother, is here, in my house!’
‘There’s something strange about this whole situation,’ she murmured, quieter now and looking drawn and tired. ‘These two ...’
Alertly he shot her a glance.
‘Well?’
‘Nothing,’ she replied, and then, rising from the couch on which she was seated, she sent both Gail and Kane baleful looks before sweeping wordlessly from the room.
A few silent moments passed after the door had closed, moments during which Gail’s nerves fluttered, for she strongly suspected she was in for a reprimand and, be it ever so mild, she knew she would resent it.
She was right in her suspicions. When presently her ‘husband’ decided to give her his attention his eyes were glinting in a way which sent ripples of apprehension running along her spine. What a powerful man he was! And what an awe-inspiring personality he possessed! Never had she felt so uncomfortable when in the presence of one of the opposite sex.
‘You went out with Dave, I was told?’
‘We went for a stroll, yes.’
The grey eyes regarded her disconcertingly.
‘You and he were gone for some considerable time.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘What were you doing?’
A hint of anger lit her eyes.
‘Walking,’ was her brief and rather curt reply.
‘All the time?’ A narrowed gaze and an attitude of waiting. He might have been a judge, she thought resentfully.
‘No, we stopped to talk for a while.’
Kane hesitated, choosing his words with care.
‘You heard what Rachel said — that tongues would wag and scandal flow—’
‘I didn’t take any notice of it. How can scandal flow when there’s no ground for scandal?’
‘Having been recently reconciled to your husband, you ought not to be strolling in the bush for several hours with another man. Most certainly scandal will flow if this leaks out - which it will, I’m afraid.’
The colour mounted Gail’s cheeks, the result both of anger and embarrassment.
‘Who can talk — in a place like this?’ she wanted to know. Her nerves were still fluttering, for Kane was stem in his manner and his mouth was set in a thin straight line.
‘There are many people who can talk. We have the stockmen and their families, as you very well know. There are the others too - the two schoolteachers, the many other people who make up our community. But besides all these, and much more important as far as my prestige is concerned, there are the other graziers, most of whom are my friends.’
‘I thought there were no near neighbours,’ she said, diverted. ‘Dave tells me that the homesteads in the far Outback are separated by great distances.’
‘So they are. But great distances don’t trouble us overmuch. My nearest neighbour is thirty miles away. But I have friends whose homesteads are as much as three hundred miles away. We meet from time to time at parties or polo matches or dances. We do have some entertainment,’ he added, ‘as I think I mentioned to you once before.’
She nodded her head.
‘Yes, you did. However, I shouldn’t think that my stroll with Dave would reach the ears of people all that way from here.’
‘I’ve just said that it would - or implied that it would. I must ask you, Gail, not to become too friendly with Dave.’ Implacable tones which plucked sharply at her temper. All she could think of was that she was doing him a favour, helping him to get rid of two people he did not want in his house. And here he was, ordering and censuring, adopting the most magisterial attitude . . . just as if she were really his wife! She refused to have it and she ventured to tell him this.
‘It isn’t as if I’m doing anything wrong in walking with him,’ she added, speaking swiftly so as not to give him an opportunity of interrupting her. ‘I shan’t become more friendly than I should, of course, simply because it would not be practical anyway. But as regards your attempting to restrict my movements or control my behaviour - you can be sure that you’ll soon discover I’ve a will of my own.’
An awful silence followed. Gail felt a tightness in her throat and was furious to own that it was the result of fear.
‘You appear to forget whom you’re speaking to.’
Pale, but determined not to be subdued by the power of him, Gail lifted her chin and replied haughtily,
‘And so do you, Kane. I am not your wife, and I’d be obliged if you remembered that—’ Before she had time to finish a hand was clapped over her mouth, Kane having almost leapt across the room towards her.
‘Be quiet!’ he hissed furiously. ‘Have you no more sense than to say a thing like that! – with ready ears about, as they must be!’
Twisting, she swung out of his grasp.
‘I don’t believe anyone would stoop to listening at doors!’ she retorted.
‘I’m taking no chances - mark that!’ His face, tight with anger, came close to hers as with an arrogant gesture he again touched her face, this time forcing her head up with a hand under her chin. At the same time he stooped, bending his own head. ‘You’ll learn to guard your tongue as well as your actions – or there’ll be trouble—’
‘Just a moment!’ Once again she twisted from his grasp, white with fury at being treated in this way. ‘You seem to forget—’ A flick of his finger cut her short. She watched, fascinated, as with four quick but silent steps he was at the door. Wrenching it open, he then stepped back.
‘Were you coming in?’ he inquired suavely of his. stepmother. ‘Have you forgotten something?’
With a face as crimson as the roses in the vase on the table, Mrs. Farrell stuttered and stammered for a few seconds before the door was closed in her face.
‘And now do you see what I mean?’ from Kane in frigid accents. ‘How much she heard I don’t know, but I warn you that, should she have learned enough for my plans to have failed, then you can get your belongings packed up — and Leta’s!’ and with that he strode past her and went on to the verandah where, later, she saw him sitting when she looked from her own verandah outside her bedroom window. He was alone, and there was a glass in his hand.
With a deep sigh Gail stepped back, into her room. But she hesitated about closing the window, lest, hearing it, Kane should guess that she might have stepped out on to the verandah above him, and seen him sitting there. Not that it really matters, she thought, but for some strange reason she was reluctant to reveal the fact that he had been in full view of her. She stood for a while, the cool night breeze pleasant on her face. Away in the distance the dark indistinct shapes of animals could be discerned. So still they were, like the age-old hills behind them. She glanced around, into the infinity of space and solitude, remembering that, millions of years ago, this region had been a sea bed, and the mountains would then have been islands. No human had ever set foot upon it, and even now it was untamed land, defiant in the face of man’s supreme efforts to bring it under his domination. Fearsome, immense, desolate at this dark hour when the sky and stars seemed to be one with it, and yet she was already affected by its peace, by the unsullied virgin earth, by the total absence of smoke or grime or hideous concrete blocks, or indeed any of those things which man in his haste and greed called ‘progress’.
Here, time was way back, with a near-feudal society existing - the lord and his underlings, all living close to nature, where the clear sweet-smelling breeze blew over the spinifex plains where men and cattle roamed, free as the air around them. Some of the men, out on the run, would be away for months at a time, living on ‘saddle-pooch tucker’ - damper, salt-beef and billy tea., Dave had told her that they loved this nomadic existence, riding from one waterhole to another, often alone for weeks on end, or with Abos for companions. Every so often these lonely stockmen would return to the homestead to report, or to take a well-earned leave, and in the case of Vernay Downs all these men came into the house and were accommodated in comfort until the time when they went off again to roam the wild territory, mustering the cattle.
‘There’s something about it that gets you,’ she murmured to herself when at last she decided to try to close the window quietly and go to bed. ‘I’m going to miss it ...’ In her mind came a picture of Dave. Given time he and she could come to that point when he would ask her to marry him. She could then remain here ... But as she had said to him, there were too many problems. She could not possibly marry Dave and remain here, at Vernay Downs. And it was here that she wanted to stay—
Her thoughts were cut suddenly. Wanted to stay? What a thing to say to herself! She wanted to go home, back to England, to her parents and the new job which she must find. A smile touched her lips as she recalled the letter she had sent to her parents. She had told them that she had accepted an offer of the post of nanny to Leta — and told herself that it wasn’t actually an untruth. She could scarcely tell them she was posing as the child’s mother, and the wife of her father! She had said that it was the spirit of adventure that had got into her, that the chance of having a few months in Australia was too good to miss. ‘I’ll be back almost before you’ve missed me,’ she had added confidently, unable to imagine Mrs. Farrell’s wanting to remain at Vernay Downs once her authority was taken from her. ‘Please phone my boss and give him my sincerest and most humble apologies for leaving so suddenly and without handing in my notice. I expect he’ll be angry, and I can’t blame him. I shall have to find another post on my return to England. Send out some clothes — just what you think I’ll need, and also some books and other personal belongings that you will consider to be useful here, in this wild place so far from civilization.’ There had been a little more; she had described Leta’s father and added that on the surface, he did not seem the kind of man who would act in so dastardly a manner as he had towards Sandra.
Gail knew what kind of reply she would receive. Her parents, as she had told Kane, had never interfered in her decisions. She was old enough and level-headed enough to be able to keep out of danger, they would say this after declaring she was quite mad to think she could manage that dreadful child - that she must please herself, but they would be glad when she returned to the fold, as it were. Her mother would say little about the job her daughter had lost, but she would secretly assert that Gail would never find such another, no matter how hard she looked. She had short hours and long holidays, this because her boss was himself working fewer hours than normal, as he was sort of semi-retired yet spending some of his time at the office.