They traveled toward the Blue Mountains, the barrier along the Great Dividing Range. Evaporating oil from the forest of eucalypts caused a thick, distant haze and the play of light on the haze gave the mountains their color and their name. For years the dark and rugged terrain had held back the settlers with its dead-end valleys and steep sandstone cliffs. It had taken intrepid explorers to follow the mountain ridges, not the valleys, and discover the rich grassland beyond.
The Cobb & Co. coach rattled over the mountain roads, making surprisingly good speed. Watching from the window, Lydia held her breath as the ground seemed to drop away from them into deep, rocky gullies. Where trees grew they were most always the fragrant eucalypts. The spreading crowns of coolabahs and snow gums, the giant mountain ash, and river red gums, shaded the road in some places. Scrubby brushwood littered it in others.
Nathan tried to gauge Lydia’s reaction to what she saw. Could she see the beauty in the land or was it too foreign to her? Looking from the great height of the ridges, the country below often looked brown and barren, yet when the coach approached one could see there were meadows and streams, grass and water enough to support sheep and cattle and fertile enough to support crops.
“Will we soon be at Ballaburn?” she asked. Some of the other passengers laughed. Lydia looked to Nathan quickly, wondering what she had said.
“We’ve been crossing Ballaburn land this last half hour,” he told her.
“Did you ever tell me how beautiful it would be?”
Had he? No, he had told her about the bleakness, the unforgiving nature of the land when one didn’t know how to work with it, how to irrigate it, how to find water in the barren outback and food in the bush. “I wanted you to make up your own mind.”
The main houseat Ballaburn sat on a gentle rolling hill, surrounded by green-and-gold terraced grassland. A stream of blue water, a clear meandering tributary of the Macquarie River, mirrored sunlight and the eucalypt forests in the foothills framed the stone manor.
Ballaburn was thousands of acres of land. Ballaburn was the livestock, the shearing sheds, the windmills and bores for water, the paddocks, the dams and fences, and the stables. It was a changing station for Cobb & Co. coaches and a place for passengers to take refreshment. It was the stockmen who worked in the far reaches of the station, protecting the property from bushrangers and the vagaries of nature. But first and foremost, the house was Ballaburn.
Mad Irish had not designed or built the house himself. It had first belonged to the Shaws. In the gold strike of 1851 they lost it when their freed convict labor fled to mines near Bathurst and south to Melbourne. Bushrangers who viewed them as easy targets ravaged their livestock and parts of the property were lost to diggers in search of gold and squatters who demanded a share of the wealth. Quincy Shaw sold his property to Mad Irish that year and packed up his wife and five unmarried daughters and returned to England.
Ballaburn’s style was in the tradition of great English homes, though on a much smaller scale. It had two floors, a sweeping veranda on the second, and a terrace on the first. The entrance was flanked by white columns and led up to by a circular stone drive. The windows were large and rectangular, set deeply in the stone with broad sills and no shutters. Smoke curled from three of the four chimneys and a brightly colored fairy wren, his tail cocked, strutted across the edge of the sloping slate roof.
Crossing the stream on a sturdy narrow bridge, the coach slowed as it approached the house, stopping sharply in front of the terrace. From somewhere in the house there was a great cry as Nathan jumped out of the carriage. He held out his hand to Lydia and helped her down while their trunks and valises were being lowered to the ground. The other passengers alighted, milling around and stretching their legs while the coach and driver moved off to the stable to exchange worn horses for fresh ones.
Ballaburn’s door was flung open and out came an apple-cheeked woman with a cupid’s mouth and two chins. She stood just under five feet, had deep-set blue eyes, dimpled hands, and fine silver-blond hair that curled away from the coil at the nape of her neck. She did not look like she commanded an army, but Lydia swore she saw several men straighten to attention when they saw her, Nathan among them. Then again, perhaps it was the duster she wielded with such authority that made them jump.
“Refreshments will be out directly,” she announced. “I’ve got shandy for you and biscuits if you’ve a mind to have some.”
Lydia knew from her stay at Petty’s that shandy was a mixture of lemonade and light ale. She nearly blanched at the thought of drinking it again.
Molly Adams saw Lydia’s look and shook her head. “Not for you, ma’am. I’ve got fresh tea brewing if your husband would take it in his head to bring you inside now.” Molly turned on her heel and marched back into the house.
Lydia glanced at Nathan for an explanation. “Is she always so…so—”
He shook his head. “Only when she’s furious.” He took Lydia’s arm and crossed the terrace into the house, stopping just at the door to let a serving girl pass with a pitcher of shandy and glasses. “Don’t pay it any heed. I don’t. Didn’t you hear her shout when the carriage stopped? It has something to do with our wedding, I’m sure, and the fact that she wasn’t at it.”
“Tea’s in here,” Molly said, wiping her hands on her apron. She opened the second door leading from the wide entrance hall and gave a quick jerk toward it with her thumb. “Just brewed a cuppa for Mad Irish. He’s waiting for you, same as he has been since he got your letter from San Francisco, same as he has been since theAvonleiarrived, same as he—”
A stentorian voice boomed from the parlor. “That’s enough, Molly. Show them in.”
She winced. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she whispered, shaking the duster at Nathan. Molly smiled suddenly. “Ah, but it’s good to have you back, Nath.” She pushed open the door a little wider and ushered Nathan and Lydia into the parlor.
Mad Irish was a robust man in his fifty-eighth year. At first glance he was not a handsome man, but there was something about him that commanded a second look and then a third, and finally caused one to revise the first opinion. There was a certain ruggedness to his features that was attractive to women and forbidding to men. His dark blue eyes were set wide and he sported a thick iron gray mustache that covered part of his upper lip. He had a square, tight jaw and a chin that jutted forward. Broad-shouldered and thickly muscled, with a ruddy outdoor complexion, Mad Irish gave the impression of power and strength.
He was sitting in a large wing chair turned halfway between the open door and the fireplace, a wool lap blanket covering his legs. He did not rise upon their entrance, but held out his hand to Nathan instead.
Nathan accepted the near bruising handshake from his employer without comment. He took a step backward from the chair and motioned Lydia to come to his side. He put an arm around her waist when she did so.
“This is she, then,” Irish said, not waiting for introductions to be performed.
Lydia felt herself being assessed by eyes that were very much like her own and found herself keeping back the hand she would have extended in any other circumstance. She held herself proudly, refusing to be intimidated by such an obviously rude man. It was difficult to believe Nathan had been taught anything in the way of good manners from Mad Irish. Her host’s silence went on so long that she came close to telling him just that.
“She has the look of her mother about her,” Irish said, turning to Nathan. “Haughty.”
“I was inclined to believe that was your influence, Irish.”
There was a slight furrow between Lydia’s eyebrows as she looked to her husband. “Nathan? I don’t understand.” But she did. Or she was beginning to. She was coming to wakefulness faster and faster, aware suddenly of things she had not known before. The numbness in her mind was fading and the pain was hot, sharp, and intense.
Irish frowned. “You haven’t told her?”
