Irish swore because he could not get out of his buggy and shake her and make her stop what she was doing. “What did I say?” he demanded.
“Nothing. You didn’t mean anything by it.” She hooked the basket on her arm and folded the blanket.
“Stop right there,” he growled. He tapped her wrist with the end of the buggy whip, in no way that would hurt her but thatwouldget her attention. “Stop. That’s better. Now tell me what I’ve said that has you so riled.”
“You must not remember my mother very well, because you’d never mistake me for being beautiful. I don’t like those sort of comparisons. People, men especially, mean to be kind by it, but it doesn’t endear me to them and never has. They always want something in return for their pretty, empty compliments. Mother was right about that.”
Irish retracted the buggy whip. “I thought you had already concluded for yourself that kindness is not among my short list of virtues. Also, I can’t think of one thing that I want from you that a pretty, empty compliment would get. And finally, I remember your mother quite well and she was younger than you are now when I knew her. If you would but take all those points into consideration, you’d realize I said nothing more than I believed to be the truth.” He let that sink in for several moments, then he said, “Hitch up my buggy, will you, Lydia. It’s time we were heading back.”
That eveningafter dinner Lydia sat with Irish in his study. He was cataloguing his books, the collection of which was an indication of his wealth as much as the size of his holdings. When Irish asked if she would help, she heard herself accepting in a voice that was almost painfully eager.
“When do you think Nathan will be back?” she asked. Dusty volumes surrounded her on the floor. She picked one up, blew loose dust from the top edge and spine, and began to shine the leather binding with an oiled cloth.
“It’s hard to say. I think he probably means to stay out a week.”
She sighed. Three more days.
“You miss him?” Irish asked shrewdly.
Lydia didn’t look up, but her dusting became a little more hurried. “He left without anything being settled between us.”
“Settled?” Irish frowned. “What isn’t settled?”
“Whether I’m to stay or go, for one thing. The conditions of our marriage for another. An annulment may be possible. At least it’s something we have to consider.”
“Annulment?” Irish set down his pen and peered down at Lydia from over his desk. “There will be no annulment.”
“That’s not your decision, Irish,” she said calmly. “Nathan and I will discuss it.”
Irish wheeled around the desk and rolled himself right up to the circle of books surrounding Lydia. “You should know about the wager, then,” he said evenly. “If it’s an annulment you’re thinking of asking Nathan for, you need to know what it will cost him to give it to you.”
When it was put before her that way Lydia wasn’t certain she wanted to hear. Some part of her knew she would regret it, and still she faced Irish with clear, open eyes and said, “I’m listening.”
“The wager involves three of us: Nathan, Brig, and myself. The prize is Ballaburn itself, divided equally among Nathan and Brig and my child if he was a boy, but going almost totally to the husband of my daughter if my child was a girl. If you had been a boy, Lydia, you would have had to settle here for one year to inherit your third of my holdings. That includes shares in my gold mines northwest of here and the properties I own in Sydney.
“I didn’t have much faith that a daughter, on the other hand, would elect to come here, much less agree to stay—especially not a daughter who had been raised by Madeline. Therefore, in the event my child was a girl—which you certainly are—I told Nathan and Brig the only way they could have the land was to bring you to Ballaburn as a wife. Since Nathan was the one who succeeded, he must now keep you here a year if he’s to take over the land. I would prefer you stayed at Ballaburn, but Nathan pointed out that our agreement only said you should stay in the country a year. That could mean Sydney or Melbourne or some humpy in the outback. A humpy’s a shack, by the way, and I don’t suggest you live in one.”
Irish’s hands folded over the curved arms of his chair. “Have I been clear enough, Lydia? There’s no part of this wager that makes any allowance for an annulment. Nathan can only take the property through marriage. Where you live is negotiable. Marriage is not.”
Lydia set down the book she had been holding like a shield. She regarded Irish steadily. “So you’re saying that Nathan won’t agree to an annulment.”
“He won’t. He wants Ballaburn more than anything. You’d have to have known the deprivation and torture Nathan’s suffered to understand what this place means to him.”
“You used him,” she said quietly. “You knew how hungry he was for something this fine and beautiful and you used him.”
“I make no apologies for it. He knew he was being used. So did Brig. He was a good choice, too, not because he loves Ballaburn particularly, but because he’s greedy.”
“I might have married him.”
“Sure, you might have,” he said, his brogue surfacing. “And if you were more your mother’s daughter and less your father’s, you would have. A pity it would have been, I know that now, but I didn’t know it when I set them up with passage, clothes, and enough money to stake their venture in San Francisco. I even gave Brig the advantage of a month’s head start because he had waited so long for the opportunity to go. Nathan could well have arrived and found the matter settled. Apparently it wasn’t.
“No,” she said. “Nothing was settled. I met them both the same day.”
“And chose between them fairly.”
Lydia’s dark brows arched in question. “Chose? I had no choice. Fair? There was no fairness to me. I don’t know what Nathan told you about what transpired, but our marriage could not have occurred without Brig’s attempt to drug me and Nathan’s lies. That’s the sort of men you sent to find your child, Irish.” Her shoulders slumped tiredly, no anger in her voice, merely a certain sense of hopelessness and rejection. “To treat me with so little regard, you must have regretted my conception more than my mother.”
Irish frowned deeply, marking his high forehead with ridges. “Madeline told you that? That she regretted your conception?”
