“Don’t let my relationship with Irish stop you from speaking your mind. He and I have muddled through for years. It was quite something to see him set back on his heels.”
“Still, I was rude.”
“You were baited.” Nathan sat down in the rocker and stretched out his legs, using his heels as a brake to keep from moving. He glanced around the large room and realized some other furniture was in order. Odd, he thought, how it had all seemed adequate before Lydia. Now he wanted a place where he could sit beside her while she embroidered, a desk where she could write, and a small table where they could have a meal alone when Irish was in one of his black moods. “You won a measure of Irish’s respect this evening.”
“I don’t know if I want his respect,” she said honestly. “I’m not certain I like him or care to. He’s not a very kind man.”
“Kind? No, that’s not Irish. He’s not cut from the same cloth as Samuel Chadwick and you’d do well not to compare them. There’s no competition here for your affection. At least Irish doesn’t mean for there to be. He only wants to come to know his daughter.”
Lydia dabbed a tiny slice of lamb in mint jelly, pausing as she lifted it to her mouth. “As to that,” she said. “How do I know he’s Marcus O’Malley? How do I know I’m really his daughter?”
Nathan laughed softly, a half smile on his lips. “He asked a similar question. You only have to look at his eyes to know the truth. They’re your own, Lydia, and you know it.”
She didn’t respond to that but ate in thoughtful silence. “What happened to Irish’s legs?” she asked. “Would he mind if you told me?”
“He probably thinks I already have. You barely reacted when you saw him in his chair at dinner.”
“I was shocked. And you noticed.”
“I was touching you,” he said softly. “I notice when you tremble.”
For a moment Lydia forgot how to swallow. She simply stared at Nathan and felt heat blossom in the pit of her stomach. “Don’t,” she said suddenly, angrily. “Don’t say things like that and don’t look at me that way.”
One of Nathan’s brows arched, his features both amused and mocking. “You wanted to know about Mad Irish’s legs,” he said calmly, as if her outburst had never been.
Lydia began to eat again. “Yes. Has he been in the chair very long?”
“A little more than three years. We’d had a run of bad luck with the bushrangers. They were taking sheep, knocking down fences, and breaking dams. One of Ballaburn’s stockmen was killed defending the property. There was a time when the rangers left Ballaburn alone, in deference I suppose to the fact that Mad Irish was a convict himself. But that changed as he got richer and the size of his holdings grew. In general, there’s quite a bit of sympathy for the bushrangers, but not here at Ballaburn, not when we’ve seen firsthand what they’re capable of doing.
“Brig and Irish and I set out with a plan to stop them. We left a few men to defend the house while everyone else mounted to drive the bushrangers out. Irish and I were riding together near Nillaburra ridge, heading south toward the gully. God, I can even remember what we were talking about when it happened.”
San Francisco, Nathan thought. They had been talking about the wager even then. Irish had had something like it in mind for years. Long before Nathan arrived at Ballaburn, Irish had been tutoring Brigham, preparing him to make the voyage to California and bring back his son or daughter from the rarefied air of Frisco’s social elite. But Irish had hedged his bets, bringing in Nathan at Brig’s request and tutoring him in the same vein. While Nathan proved to be a quick study, Brigham still had years of a jump on him and was prepared to leave Ballaburn long before his friend. Irish, however, was only willing to send them in tandem, and that meant Brigham was forced to wait until Irish decided Nathan was ready.
“I was trying to convince Irish to let Brig leave Ballaburn,” Nathan said, his head tilted to the right as he retrieved old memories. “He wouldn’t hear of it. Wouldn’t consider giving Brig the money for his passage and wouldn’t think of letting me go with Brig then. Brig had been bending his ear in a like vein for weeks with a similar lack of success.” He realized that he was coming perilously close to telling Lydia about the wager and shifted his focus. “I’ve always wondered if we’d been paying more attention to what was around us, whether we could have heard the bushrangers taking up positions along the ridge.”
“Oh, God,” Lydia said softly as her thoughts leapt ahead of Nathan’s story, knowing precisely where it would lead.
“We didn’t have any time to get to our guns as the shots were fired. Our horses reared, scrambled, and lost their footing on the steep hill. Mine was shot out from under me and I slid fifty yards to the gully floor. I had a broken leg and a dislocated shoulder. Irish wasn’t so lucky. He took a bullet in the back.”
“And hasn’t walked since.”
Nathan sat up straighter. He nodded. “We were left for dead. Would have been, too, if it hadn’t been for Brig. When we didn’t return to the house that night he took a few men with him and tracked us down. They found us in the morning and brought us both back on a sledge.”
Brig again, Lydia thought. Did Nathan hate her for what she had done to his best friend? And Irish? What must he think? “Don’t you wonder what’s happened to Brig?” she asked. “You’ve never expressed the least concern.”
“How would you know my concerns? I couldn’t talk to you about him the entire voyage because you didn’t recall his existence. Isn’t your question a trifle hypocritical anyway? You’re the one who shot him.”
“He was trying to—”
Holding up his hand, Nathan stopped her. “You don’t have to defend yourself to me. I didn’t mean to sound accusing. I know Brig.” He wanted to win at all costs, Nathan added silently. “I’ve often thought that if it hadn’t been for your memory loss, you might have shot me as well.”
“I still may.” She blinked widely, covering her hand with her mouth as she realized she had spoken her thoughts aloud.
Nathan leveled her with a hard, chilling glance. “Don’t try it, Lydia. You wouldn’t like the consequences.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“As for Brig,” he said, ignoring her protest. “If he’s recovered, we’ll know it soon enough because he’ll come to Ballaburn. And if he’s dead, well, there’s nothing much I can do about it, is there?”
