Resolute. It was a word that defined the land and the people.
Tobias straightened against the infirmity in his back. He grunted.
"It didn't matter that the land wasn't her native Ireland. She loved your father, Zach, and everything that was him, including this land. She put her roots down deep, boy, and raised you here." Tobias laid a hand on the younger man's shoulder.
"Mourn her loss, boy, but don't mourn her love of Resolute. She pledged herself to this land just as she pledged herself to your father. It isn't likely she had any regrets." He fell silent, remembering the fair-haired young lass who'd come to Sydney so long ago.
They'd all begun in Sydney—he, Megan, and Zach's father, Nicholas. Had it really been so many years? He rubbed his hand thoughtfully across his chin, grizzled with silvery whiskers. Time had a way of slipping away from you. He watched the boy, then smiled gently. Zachary Tennant was no longer a boy. He had to remind himself, more often than not, that he was twenty-seven now, a man full grown, very near the same age his father was when he'd arrived from England in the early years.
Zach swallowed, emotion thick in his throat. As earth fell from his fingers, his gaze returned to the valley. Herds of sheep swelled across the landscape, their bodies lean from clipping and recent lambing. He loved this land; loved its harshness, the unrelenting beauty and starkness of it. He knew Tobias was right. He could almost hear Megan's reproval of his anger. She'd loved Resolute almost as much as she'd loved his father.
Zach stood, eyes closed as he breathed in the pungent camphor of trees damp with early evening dew. This land was home, his parents were buried here in the wild place they loved. He understood the sadness of that and accepted it. But the restlessness he'd felt since Megan's death was less easily understood. Some vague thought, half-formed, nagged at him. He should have come back when he'd first learned she was gone. But Tobias was right, it would have served no purpose. Not then.
She'd always been Megan to him, never Mother or Ma. Just Megan. Perhaps it was because she had to be both mother and father to him. She and Tobias and Resolute had formed the core of his life. And then, when she'd needed him, the one time he should have been there, England had denied them that, just as it had denied them so many freedoms.
Tobias waited silently. There was a time to mourn and a time to heal, a time to all seasons according to the Bible. He knew he must give Zach his time. And then he must fulfill an old promise. He shifted, feeling all of his sixty years as he watched the man beside the three graves, one new, the other two different in size and one of those marking the death of a small child, Megan's firstborn. Tobias sighed heavily.
Had Nicholas really been gone so long? Yes, yes of course, he thought. He'd been gone since just before Zach was born. The lad had never known his father, except through Megan's memories and stories. But then, Megan hadn't known everything.
He looked up as Zach walked toward him, brimmed hat in hand, the early evening breeze gently lifting golden hair so like his mother's.
"Come on, Tobias. Megan wouldn't want us wasting time. Minnie should have supper waiting, and I want to meet with Jingo first thing in the morning. There are stray lambs to be brought in." He wrapped an arm around the older man's shoulders. The bond between them was deep. Tobias had been like the father he never had, making his home here at Resolute. They'd made an odd family; a widowed woman with a son to raise, an assortment of itinerant workers, and Tobias.
"Aye, lad." The older man nodded brusquely. "Yer mother never did hold with grievin' for long. She used to say the land couldn't wait for such things. It just goes on bein' what it is. She got that from yer father."
Together, they walked from the small hill above the house, the wild grass damp and pungent beneath their boots.
Inside the dwelling, the smells of the evening meal bolstered them, reminding both men that, like the land, appetites didn't understand the need to mourn. A robust woman emerged from the kitchen, steely hair pulled sharply back from her face into a neat bun. A ladle was clenched in the hand she propped against an ample hip. Clad in men's work pants and clean white shirt, Minnie scrutinized both men.
"Dinner's gettin' cold," she announced. But her soft brown gaze lingered on Zach. "You all right?"
Minerva Halstead had been at Resolute since Zach was a small boy. Almost as wide as she was tall, she was chief cook and housekeeper. The two women in the house had been an odd pair, Minnie's robust girth overshadowing his mother's slender height.
She'd arrived at Resolute over twenty years ago, a child tucked under each arm and no husband. She'd informed everyone she was a widow, although no one had ever bothered to verify that fact. She just arrived, went to work, and never went backtowherever it was she came from. It had been Megan's policy never to ask about a person's past. She'd always said nothing mattered but today and what tomorrow could bring.
Zach nodded, his smile not quite reaching his eyes, eyes different from Megan's soft blue ones. "Yeah, I'm all right. She wouldn't want me wastin' time."
"Right ya are. I never knew a woman like yer ma for work. Yer the same way?" Minnie nodded. Suddenly, thoughtful, she stared down at her boots. "I suppose you won't be stayin' long this time."
"We've got wool for the ships in Sydney harbor. The Queen's Navy will be startin' their regular patrols, so I want to get two more ships out, and a very special cargo." Zach nodded. "I think Resolute is in safe hands for a little while."
"Megan wouldn't want you riskin' yer neck like the last time," she reprimanded with motherly affection. "Besides, my Tess is comin 'up from Adelaide." Her eyes sparkled with old mischief.
"She's turned into a right proper young lady in spite of herself."
Zachary laughed. "Still the matchmaker, Minnie?"
"My Tess would make you a fine wife. She's got a temperament to match yours, and it's about time you thought about settling down. It just ain't right for a handsome man like you to be shying away from the ladies," she scolded.
Zach watched her with amused eyes. It was a frequent topic of discussion, and she was right. He and Tess were of the same temperament. That was precisely why he was convinced life with someone as volatile as Tess would be pure hell.
As long as he could remember, Minnie had been scheming to get them together. He tried imagining the high-spirited Tess complete with proper manners. The last time he'd seen her, she'd had her skirts hiked practically over her head, and was astride a nervous brush pony that threatened to unseat her at any moment. He'd ordered her off the beast for the animal's sake.
Tess had a wildness about her he found difficult to believe anyone could tame. He remembered how she'd followed him into the barn that sultry hot afternoon. There in the cool shade she'd stripped down to bare skin without so much as a flush appearing on her adolescent body. Raising her dampened, long blond hair off her sweat-beaded back, she'd calmly proclaimed she was hot all over. It was almost more than any man could be expected to endure. Yet Zach had endured it and politely refused, heaving her into a stall and covering her light body with scratchy hay. He could still hear the obscenities that had followed him all the way to the main house. Two days later, Minerva had bundled Tess off to a distant cousin in Adelaide and what she'd hoped was a proper education. With a faint twist of a smile, Zach wondered just who had been the instructor and who the pupil. It might be interesting to see what changes Tess had gone through, but more urgent matters demanded his return to Sydney.
The local parliament was allowing itself to be dictated to by the home government in London, on matters including the raising of impossible tariffs on all imported goods. As for exports, such as valuable cargoes of high-quality wool, Mother England was rapidly taking the final steps toward monopolizing all shipping, the Barrington Shipping Company out of London being their approved carrier. All independent shipping lines were forbidden to carry any cargo for export to Europe. Slowly, but surely, the Crown was imposing an economic stranglehold on the colonies in Australia, and vast profits were making their way into the pockets of the powdered and pompous overlords in London.
Zach and others he knew felt it was time to loosen that stranglehold. Some would call what they did in secret off the coast of Australia acts of piracy against the Crown. But loyal colonists considered it a bid for independence every time a ship of the Barrington line was attacked and sent to the bottom of the ocean along with its cargo.
