“Not in so many words,” Lydia answered, looking at her folded hands in her lap. “But it was always clear. I don’t blame her. It stands to reason that she should regret my very existence.”
“Because I raped Madeline.”
Lydia winced but said softly, “Because of that.”
“I see.” Irish looked at his daughter, regarded the bowed head, the slope of her shoulders that spoke of her weariness, the full line of her lower lip that quivered in spite of her best attempts at controlling it. She seemed vulnerable to him in a way that she had not before and he realized he might never have a better chance to be heard. “I loved Madeline Hart,” he told her. “I was thirty-eight when I threw my luck in with some other convicts and went to San Francisco. I had gold fever like the rest of them, dreams of a rich strike that would buy me back the dignity of my birthright. The bloody Brits had taken everything from me and this was my chance to turn the world right again.
“I panned the streams, worked the hills, and never found so much as a fingernail’s worth of gold. I did find Madeline, though. She was a flame-haired witch at eighteen, all flashing green eyes and a smile that turned this old man’s heart over. I should have known better, I suppose. I had a score of years on her, had seen and done things she couldn’t even imagine. Perhaps that was part of the attraction I held for her. I don’t know.”
He eased back slightly in his chair, looking older than his years now as a lightning flash of pain shot down his spine and disappeared in the part of his body that could not feel anymore. “Madeline and I were only together—intimate—three times.” He saw Lydia’s deep flush and went on. “On none of those occasions was it rape. You could have been conceived at any time because I did nothing to protect your mother. I wanted her to have my child and I wanted her to be my wife. Whatever you might choose to disbelieve, Lydia, know that I wanted you.”
Lydia had raised her face. She was looking at him now, listening.
“Your grandfather, Madeline’s father, surprised your mother and me in the hardware store he owned hours after he had closed it for the night. Madeline was naturally embarrassed and frightened and she said the first thing that came to her mind. She accused me of breaking into the store and raping her. I didn’t even try to deny it. Madeline was too hysterical to reason with and her father had a shotgun leveled at my belly.”
“So you ran,” Lydia said.
“Your mother told you that much, I see.”
She nodded.
“Too right I ran, and kept on running. I was a Sydney Duck, despised by every proper Yank, and I could feel the noose tightening around my neck. But I didn’t leave California. I waited Madeline out, giving her time to think about her situation and realize she didn’t have to lie to her father. After six weeks I met her in secret and proposed.” Irish shook his head as though still incredulous about events more than twenty years in the past. “She refused me, Lydia. More to the point, she laughed at me. Her father was already a wealthy man; his store went from bust to boom with the discovery of gold. Pickaxes at forty dollars. Canvas tents at a hundred. What could I possibly offer her? Nothing, she said, so she turned me down.
“I waited another two weeks and went back to her, hoping I could make her reconsider. She knew she was pregnant then—withmychild—and she hated me for that. There was no chance of making her listen to anything I had to say. I tried to tell her about the conversation I overheard in one of the pubs, about the land west of the Blue Mountains being a lot like the land where gold had been discovered in California. A drunken Duck named Hargraves made the boast within earshot. He swore he’d find gold back in Australia if Frisco wouldn’t give any of it up.
“I’ll be rich, I told her. Richer than she could imagine. And I’d have a fine home and land enough to support a dozen children.”
“She didn’t believe you,” Lydia said.
“No,” he said, sighing. “Madeline didn’t believeinme. She didn’t love me—probably couldn’t love me, or anyone else for that matter. She clung resolutely to her rape story, no matter that it was bound to force me out of the country. Days before I sailed I heard she had plans to marry Samuel Chadwick. I knew him by reputation, not by acquaintance, and I knew he had come across one of the richest strikes in California. I remember thinking I wanted to kill him for his good fortune.”
“Papa is a fine man, Irish,” Lydia said. “He deserved more happiness than my mother ever gave him.”
“So Nathan tells me. He says my escape was most fortuitous.”
Lydia’s smile was soft with regret. “She’s still my mother. I won’t sit here and say word after word against her. She can’t help being the kind of person she is any more than you can help being who you are.”
“What sort of person am I?” he asked.
“Cross and hard and resentful. Still angry at her, I think. A manipulator. Hurtful and mean-spirited.”
Irish sucked in his breath at her hard appraisal. “Don’t forget boorish.”
“And boorish,” she said. “But there are people here at Ballaburn who think you walk on water. Molly says you’re generous. Tess says you’re kind. Jack says you’re fair, and I’ve never heard Nathan, for all that you’ve used him for your own needs, say a word against you.” Lydia pushed aside the stacks of books in front of her and moved closer to Irish’s chair. She sat up on her knees, placing her hands on his lap, and because he couldn’t feel them there, she took his hands in hers. “Which leads me to believe that you’re either exacting your revenge on Madeline through me, or you’re so frightened I may not like you that you don’t know how to act.” She looked at him earnestly with eyes that were as a deeply blue as his own. “Which is it, Irish?”
He blinked hard, forcing back the veil of tears that blurred his vision. “Scared to death, I’m afraid.”
Lydia raised his hands to her lips and kissed the thick knuckles. “That’s all right, then. There’s no shame in being scared.”
Nathan hada rough scrub of beard on his jaw and above his upper lip when he returned to the house. His hair needed cutting, especially at his nape where the dark strands brushed his collar. A well-worn hat, broken in over years of time, fit the shape of his head exactly and had protected his complexion from the hardening edge of the elements. His clothes smelled of the bush and the meadow, of eucalypt oil and sheep dung, of campfires and cattle. He caught his reflection in the clear smooth water of Balbilla Creek as he crossed the bridge and wondered what Lydia would think when she saw him now.
It was certain his appearance would do nothing to improve her opinion.
Raising the brim of his hat with the back of his hand, Nathan reined in his mount and sat staring at the house, as if something on the face of it might hint at what he could expect. How had she fared these last days? Was she even there? he wondered, or had Irish managed to drive her away? He couldn’t imagine Lydia spending all her time in her room, but what would she have done? She must have sickened of her embroidery by now and Molly and Tess had most things in the house well in hand.
Where was Lydia’s place at Ballaburn as the daughter of the owner and wife of the heir?
Nathan stabled his horse, brushing the animal down himself to delay going to the house that much longer. Eight days in the bush and not a single one of them passing without missing Lydia. He would find himself turning, wanting to point out the koala in the gum tree or the roo springing powerfully on his hind legs through the scrub, and there was no one there to be delighted or confounded. She wasn’t there to share his shelter in the rain or the warmth of his fire in the inky cloudless evenings. He missed her questions, missed her making him think about things he took for granted.
