When Nathan wokein the morning he found the space in the bed beside him was cold. It was a cruel way to greet the day, he thought, turning over sleepily. Lydia should have been there next to him. Her fragrance was still in the pillow. He smiled, burying his face against it. Memories of her middle-of-the-night loving assailed him. God, how sweet she had been, how giving. Her hands gliding over him…the caress of her mouth...
The pillow muffled Nathan’s groan. He shook his head, laughed at himself for such torturous thoughts, and sat up. Tossing the pillow behind him, he threw his legs over the side and stretched his arms wide. Naked, he padded to the washstand and poured fresh water into the basin. He washed quickly, shaved, and dressed, eager to join Lydia at the breakfast table. He would tease her about letting him sleep so long, but he would make certain neither Irish nor Molly heard him.
He would whisper it in her ear and they would have to wonder at the cause of the beautiful peach blush. It would be a secret, his and Lydia’s alone.
He was still smiling when he entered the dining room. Lydia wasn’t there. Irish was. Nathan felt an immediate pang of disappointment. Nodding briefly at Irish, he filled his plate at the sideboard and sat down.
“Lydia’s already eaten breakfast?” he asked.
Irish’s reply was short, his humor black. “Apparently.”
Nathan’s brows lifted a little. “Are you in pain this morning?”
“Why the bloody hell should you care?”
“All right, Irish,” Nathan said. He put down his fork and leaned back in his chair. “Suppose you tell me right now what’s going on. I’m sure I don’t have any idea.”
“Oh, no? Perhaps this will help.” Irish reached in his vest pocket and pulled out Lydia’s opal wedding ring. It lay in the flat of his calloused palm, smooth and iridescent and delicate, in startling contrast to the hand that held it. “I found it in my strongbox this morning. There was a note with it, addressed to you. I read it.”
Nathan imagined he could feel the color draining from his face. His stomach knotted. There was nothing in his experience that hurt as badly as what he felt now. He’d been beaten and starved and exhausted and flogged and he would have accepted any of those things, or all four, in order to take away the white-hot tangle of pain inside him. He reached for the ring, surprised that his hand didn’t tremble when he felt as if he were shaking all over.
Irish snatched his hand back, concealing the ring in a tight fist. “It’s mine,” he said coldly. “She left it in exchange for the money she took out of the box and the horse she took from the stable.”
“May I see her note? You said it was meant for me.”
Putting the ring back in his pocket, Irish pulled out a square of paper that had been neatly folded in half. He flicked it at Nathan. “How the hell did you manage it?” he demanded angrily. “One evening back from the bush and you undo everything I’ve worked for these past twenty years, everything I shared with my daughter this past week. She would have stayed at Ballaburn if it wasn’t for you!”
Nathan felt as if he had been struck, then struck again. His chair scraped noisily against the floor as he pushed away from the table. Clutching the note in his hand he stood and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him as he left.
Without having any direction in mind, Nathan turned his back on the house and walked. And kept on walking. The morning was briskly cool and he wasn’t wearing a coat, but he hardly noticed the chill, he was that numb.
He stopped when he reached the crest of Wallaroo Hill. He sat in a sliver of sunlight beneath a red gum tree. The house at Ballaburn was far below him, a gemstone set on a bed of emerald velvet. As far as he could see was the land that was promised him, the broad fields and meadows, the blackberry thickets, the ice-blue water and endless sky. All his. Nathan laughed and the taste and sound of it was bitter.
He stared at Lydia’s note for a long time before he unfolded it and smoothed it over his drawn-up knee. In spite of that precaution, the words blurred. He read:
I did indeed understand the import of your words last evening. You see, Nathan, I do not think I am suited to a marriage such as I suggested. You proved that to me and then I proved it to myself. Knowing your feelings, knowing my own, and sharing a conviction, I hope, that divorce is out of the question, it is apparent that leaving Ballaburn presents itself as the only satisfactory answer.
I wish you would not follow me, for I have no intention of fleeing the country. Irish has explained the whole of the wager to me and I mean to stay a full year from the date of our legal marriage.
I go first to Bathurst, for I understand the way is well marked and not far, and should not present a problem to a woman traveling alone. I will take a coach directly to Sydney. When I am settled I will write for my belongings as I could only travel with a few things.
I do not undertake this leaving without much thought. My decision was not made impulsively or without some knowledge of the consequences. I ask you to consider this when you entertain the notion of forcing my return, especially if it is your pride that demands that action. I have to appreciate the depth of your feeling for Ballaburn and why you would accept all the conditions of the wager to own her. Irish has been unfair to both of us, but perhaps more so to you. He used your desire for the land and your great respect and affection for him and turned them against you. I pray you will not let him threaten you with losing Ballaburn. You’ve won it; it’s yours. I will do my part to see that you keep it.
I trust you will see that I have done the proper thing. It would serve no purpose for me to remain. If it matters at all to you, I do not despise you, as I wish I might, and I permit myself to believe that you no longer think of me only as a means to an end.
Lydia.
Nathan’s shoulders heaved once. He caught his breath on a dry, aching sob and tears burned his eyes but would not fall. Refolding the note, he slipped it into his shirt pocket, leaned back on his elbows, and squinted as he raised his face to the sky. A kookaburra’s raucous laughter mocked him.
His head moved slowly from side to side in denial and overwhelming futility. Lydia gone. It seemed he had been dreading it forever, so long in fact that beneath the layers of pain there was a sense of guilty relief that it had finally happened.
He sat up, shivered, and hugged his knees to his chest. How deliberate had he been, he wondered, in driving her away from Ballaburn before she suspected the truth? What had he done to make the very thing he feared happen as if it were determined by fate? And then, what hadn’t he done?
“I love you, Liddy,” he murmured to the sky.
Father Colgan peeredat Lydia over the wire rims of his spectacles. His hands were folded on top of his neatly ordered desk and he was leaning forward in his chair. The expression in his green eyes was one of grave concern and he listened patiently, without interruption, as Lydia explained her situation.
“So you see,” she said, “I thought you might be able to help me, if not directly, then by pointing me to someone who can give me a proper position.” The dust of travel was still on her clothes. Lydia tried not to fidget with the wrinkles in her gown but she found herself nervously smoothing the fabric in her lap. It was clear that Father Colgan was interested in her problem and he wouldn’t turn her away cold, but it was just as patently obvious that he was shocked by her defection from Ballaburn. “I’ve promised Nathan I will stay in Sydney for one year and I intend to keep my word. There’s a matter of a living to be earned, though.”
