Irish swore colorfully. “Whoever heard of a nursemaid and an invalid holding down anything? That’s what we are. Whose idea was this? Yours? Nathan’s?”
“Nathan’s. But I agree with him. Anyway, you’re just feeling sorry for yourself and I’m not paying it the least attention.”
“That my own daughter should treat me so,” he muttered. Irish stopped rolling his eyes when Lydia flashed him one of her beautiful smiles. “How long ago did it start?”
“I don’t know. It’s only been thirty minutes, though, since we first saw the smoke.”
“Wrong time of the year for bushfires,” Irish said, staring at the smoky haze. “Coolabri, you say? It’s hard to tell from here.”
“That’s what Nathan said. We were on the hill over there.”
“Well, he’d know from that angle.” He wheeled to the back door and pushed his way out onto the porch. Lydia followed. “Wind’s picking up. That’s not a good sign.” In the distance a flock of magpies took to the air. They soared and swooped and finally chose to settle in the boughs of some snow gums closer to the main house.
“What will the men do?”
“They’ll try to clear a path to stop the fire in places where they can’t beat it out. There’s a stream near Coolabri that might help cut it off, but they can’t get water to the fire. There’s no pump, and running a brigade would be like trying to plug a volcano with sand, one grain at a time. The best they can hope for is containing it.”
“Why are you frowning? Don’t you think they can do it?”
Irish hadn’t been aware that he was frowning at all. He made an effort to control it, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if he were only being thoughtful and not worried. Motioning Lydia to help him back in the house again, he chose his words carefully. “They’ll contain it. It might take them a few days, less if we get some rain, longer if the wind keeps rising. Depends if the fire moves out of the valley.”
“A few days,” she said softly. Lydia was only now beginning to understand the nature of what Nathan and the others were fighting, the urgency that prompted Molly and Tess to send food with the other supplies. “No one explained it to me. I thought…I don’t know what I thought. I’ve never seen a bushfire.”
Irish didn’t tell her about the wall of incandescent flame that ripped through dry sheep country in the summer. Ballaburn only had patches of land like that and Coolabri wasn’t one of them. Lion’s Ridge and Willaroo Valley were more likely to be overtaken by fire, but this was still the wrong time of year. The paddocks were green and the scrub in the bush wasn’t tinder dry. The stringy bark from the gum trees made good kindling, but it probably wouldn’t have ignited spontaneously. There had been no storm in recent days, no lightning that might account for the fire. “Well, you’re not going to see a bushfire now. Nathan left you here as much for your sake as he did mine. How about giving me a push to the study?”
Feeling a little sorry for herself now, Lydia did as she was asked. She had known there was some danger, of course, but Nathan hadn’t tried to convey the full extent of the hazard. Now Irish was doing his best not to convey it, either. “What happens if they can’t contain it? Will it come this way?”
“It’s possible, but not likely. Wind’s wrong for that. It’ll burn itself out eventually. The question is how much good pasture and forest will it take in the meantime? Coolabri is good grazing. Nathan and the men will try to move out the sheep that didn’t trample each other in the first panic.” Irish wheeled himself over to his desk and opened the bottom left-hand drawer. Pretending to leaf through a stack of papers in the drawer, he checked his Remington to make certain it was loaded. It was. He closed the drawer only part way.
“I feel as if I should be doing something,” Lydia said. She went to the windows of the study and drew back the curtains, craning her neck to see. A thin film of smoke shadowed the underside of the lowest lying clouds. It was impossible to see anything else. “Perhaps I’ll make some tea. Would you like some?” The kitchen had a better view.
“A drop of whiskey in it wouldn’t be amiss.”
“All right.”
As soon as she was gone Irish went into the entrance hall and threw the bolt on the front door. He secured windows on the ground floor in his bedroom, the parlor, the dining room, and when he returned to the study he checked those as well. Waiting for Lydia to come back with the tea, he wondered what else he could do. He’d have to send her upstairs on some pretext or other in order to lock the back of the house. Holding down the fort was more apt than Lydia could have known when she said it. How long before Nathan realized it was no ordinary bushfire he was fighting, but one deliberately set? How long before he understood the danger wasn’t only at Coolabri but probably at the very heart of Ballaburn?
Irish wondered if telling Lydia his suspicions would make her safer or only cause her to panic. “Lydia!” he called. “Forget about the bloody tea and come here. I’ll pour us two stiff shots. For what I—” He broke off, driven to silence by Lydia’s presence in the doorway. She was carrying a china tea service on a wooden tray and her grip on the handles was white-knuckled. She was pale, her eyes large and vaguely bruised by the nature of her thoughts. She stared at Irish, unblinking. Behind her and a little off to the side, stood Brigham.
“I let her finish making your tea,” he said pleasantly, giving Lydia a nudge to enter the room. “It was the least I could do.”
Lydia set the tray down. When she attempted to go to Irish’s side behind the desk, Brig stopped her, pulling her back by the waistband of her skirt. Her movement had been enough to permit Irish to see Brig’s gun. “He set the fire,” she said tonelessly.
“I thought as much.” Irish’s hand lay carelessly on the open drawer at his side. The Remington was within his reach.
Brig laughed as though he were genuinely pleased. “How clever you both are. It wouldn’t be any good at all if you were slow to catch on. Nathan’s been a bit of a disappointment today. I’ve already shown Lydia his coat and the bullet hole. She knows the truth. By now the bushfire’s taken care of him and the coat’s being destroyed in your wood stove.” He smiled faintly. “Everything consumed by fire.”
Irish’s upper body snapped to attention. His head jerked up. The sickly pallor that had shaded his complexion was replaced by the first flushes of deep, unforgiving anger.
Brig didn’t respond to the accusation in Irish’s eyes. “Get me the strongbox, Irish. I want to see the wills you drew up. Go on. Get them.”
“Get them yourself. You know where the box is.”
Lydia felt the nose of Brig’s gun stop pressing on the small of her back. He turned it aside long enough to fire a shot in Irish’s direction. The bullet missed Irish entirely because it was intended to and shattered one of the windowpanes behind him instead. Lydia’s knees buckled. She was held upright by Brig until she recovered her balance and her strength. She hated him touching her, hated the fact that he was aware of her fear.
“Show me the wills,” Brig said calmly.
Reluctantly Irish’s hand left the drawer. With Brig using Lydia for cover it was impossible to use the revolver. He wheeled to the bookcase and opened one of the bottom cupboards, withdrawing the strongbox. A key he kept wedged between the arm and seat of his wheelchair opened it. “There’s only one will left,” he said, raising it to show Brig. “I destroyed the other a little while back.”
