Читать книгу Outback Man Seeks Wife - Margaret Way - Страница 9

‘YOU CAN’T MISS HIM,’ said a languid female voice from behind her. ‘He’s with the other guys making their way to the starting line. Dark blue shirt, yellow Number 6 on his back.’

Carrie McNevin turned her blond head. ‘Your cousin, right?’

‘Well second cousin!’

Carrie felt rather than saw the look of arrogant dismissal on Natasha Cunningham’s face. ‘I’ve barely spoken to him since he arrived.’

‘Well you’ve made contact at least,’ Carrie felt very sorry for the young man who had been treated so badly by his family. She couldn’t remember Natasha’s cousin herself. Or she thought she couldn’t. There was some tiny spark of memory there. But she’d been little more than a toddler when he and his parents had disappeared from their part of the world like a puff of smoke.

‘It was purely by accident I assure you,’ Natasha retorted, with familiar derision.

There was a moment’s respite from this edgy conversation while both young women followed the progress of the entries in the Jimboorie Cup, the main event in Jimboorie’s annual two-day bush picnic races. The amateur jockeys, all fine horsemen, expertly brought their mounts under control. The horses, groomed to perfection, looked wonderful Carrie thought, the familiar excitement surging through her veins. She loved these special days when the closely knit but far flung Outback community came together from distances of hundreds of miles to relax and enjoy themselves. Many winged their way aboard their private planes. Others came overland in trucks, buses or their big dusty 4WD’s sporting the ubiquitous bull bars. Outsiders joined in as well. City slickers out for the legendary good time to be had in the bush, inveterate race goers and gamblers who came from all over the country to mostly lose their money and salesmen of all kinds mixing with vast-spread station owners and graziers.

Picnic race days were a gloriously unique part of Outback Australia. The Jimboorie races weren’t as famous as the Alice Springs or the Birdsville races with the towering blood-red sand-hills of the Simpson Desert sitting just outside of town. Jimboorie lay further to the north-east, more towards the plains country at the centre of the giant state of Queensland with the surrounding stations running sheep, cattle or both.

It was early spring or what passed for spring; September so as to take advantage of the best weather of the year. Today’s temperature was 27 degrees C. It was brilliantly fine—no humidity to speak of—but hotter around the bush course, which was located a couple of miles outside the small township of Jimboorie. It boasted three pubs—what could be sadder than an Outback town with no pub, worse no beer—all full up with visiting guests; a one man police station; a couple of government buildings; a small bush hospital manned by a doctor and two well qualified nurses; a chemist who sold all sorts of things outside of pharmaceuticals; a single room school; a post office that fitted neatly into a corner of the craft shop; a couple of shoe and clothing stores; a huge barn that sold just about everything like a city hyper-dome; the office of the well respected Jimboorie Bulletin, which appeared monthly and had a wide circulation. The branch office of the Commonwealth Bank had long since been closed down to everyone’s disgust, but the town continued to boast a remarkably good Chinese restaurant and a bakehouse famous for the quality of its bread and its mouthwatering steak pies.

This afternoon the entire township of less than three thousand—a near boom town in the Outback—was in attendance, including the latest inhabitants, the publicans, Vince and Katie Dougherty’s six-month-old identical twins, duly cooed over.

The horses, all with thoroughbred blood, were the pride of the competing stations; proud heads bowed, glossy necks arched, tails swishing in nervous anticipation. This was a special day for them, too. They were giving every indication they were ready to race their hearts out. All in all, though it was hidden beneath lots of laughter, back-slapping and the deeply entrenched mateship of the bush, rivalry was as keen as English mustard.

The Jimboorie Cup had been sponsored in the early days of settlement by the pioneering Cunningham family, a pastoral dynasty whose origins, like most others in colonial Australia, lay in the British Isles. William Cunningham second son of an English upper middle class rural family arrived in Australia in the early 1800s, going on to make his fortune in the southern colonies rearing and selling thousands of ‘pure’ Merino sheep. It wasn’t until the mid-1860s that a branch of the family moved from New South Wales into Queensland, squatting on a few hundred thousand acres of rich black plains country, gradually moving from tin shed to wooden shack then into the Outback castles they eventually began to erect for themselves as befitting their social stature and to remind them of ‘Home’.

Carrie’s own ancestors—Anglo-Irish—had arrived ten years later in the 1870s with sufficient money to take up a huge run and eventually build a fine house some twenty miles distance from Jimboorie House the reigning queen. In time the Cunninghams and the McNevins and the ones who came after became known as the ‘sheep barons’ making great fortunes off the backs of the Merinos. That was the boom time. It was wonderful while it lasted and it lasted for well over one hundred years. But as everyone knows for every boom there’s a bust. The demand for Australian wool—the best in the world—gradually went into decline as man-made fibres emerged as strong competitors. The smart producers had swiftly switched to sheep meat production to keep afloat while still maintaining the country’s fine wool genetics from the dual purpose Merino. So Australia was still riding on the sheep’s back establishing itself as the world’s premium exporter of lamb.

The once splendid Jimboorie Station with its reputation for producing the finest wool, under the guardianship of the incredibly stubborn and short-sighted Angus Cunningham had continued to focus on a rapidly declining market while his neighbours had the good sense to turn quickly to diversification and sheep meat production thus optimising returns.

Today the Cup was run by a group of station owners, working extremely hard but still living the good life. Carrie’s father, Bruce McNevin, Clerk of the Course, was one. Natasha Cunningham’s father another. Brad Harper, a relative newcomer—twenty years—but a prominent station owner all the same, was the race commentator and had been for a number of years. One of the horses—it was Number 6—Lightning Boy was acting extra frisky, loping in circles, dancing on its black hooves, requiring its rider to keep a good grip on the reins.

‘He’s an absolute nothing, a nobody,’ Natasha Cunningham continued the contemptuous tirade against her cousin. She came alongside Carrie as she moved nearer the white rails. Flemington—home of the Melbourne Cup—had its famous borders of beautiful roses. Jimboorie’s rails were hedged by thick banks of indestructible agapanthus waving their sunbursts of blue and white flowers.

‘He certainly knows how to handle a horse,’ Carrie murmured dryly.

‘Why not? That’s all he’s ever been, a stockman. His father might have been one of us but his mother was just a common little slut. His father died early, probably from sheer boredom. He and his mother roamed Queensland towns like a couple of deadbeats, I believe. I doubt he’s had much of an education. Mother’s dead, too. Drink, drugs, probably both. The family never spoke one word to her. No one attended their wedding. Shotgun, Mother said.’

She would, Carrie thought, a clear picture of the acid tongued Julia Cunningham in her mind. Carrie thoroughly disliked the pretentious Julia and her even more snobbish daughter. Now she knew a moment of satisfaction. ‘Well, your great uncle, Angus, remembered your cousin at the end. He left him Jimboorie.’

Natasha burst into bitter laughter. ‘And what a prize that is! The homestead is just about ready to implode.’

‘I’ve always loved it,’ Carrie said with more than a touch of nostalgia. ‘When I was little I thought it was a palace.’

‘How stupid can you get!’ Natasha gave a bark of laughter. ‘Though I agree it would have been wonderful in the old days when the Cunninghams were the leading pioneering family. So of course we’re still important. My grandfather would have seen to Jimboorie’s upkeep. He would have switched to feeding the domestic market like Dad. But that old fool Angus never did a thing about it. Just left the station and the Cunningham ancestral home fall down around his ears. Went to pieces after his wife died and his daughter married and moved away. Angus should never have inherited in the first place. Neither should James. Or Clay as he calls himself these days. No ‘little Jimmy’ anymore. James Claybourne Cunningham. Claybourne, would you believe, was his mother’s maiden name. A bit fancy for the likes of her.’

‘It’s a nice tribute to his mother,’ Carrie said quietly. ‘He can’t have any fond memories of your side of the family.’ What an understatement!

‘Nor we for him! But the feud was on long before that. My grandad and great-uncle Angus hated one another. The whole Outback knows that.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Carrie said, long acquainted with the tortured saga of the Cunninghams. She angled her wide brimmed cream hat so that it came further down over her eyes. The sun was blazing at three o’clock in the afternoon. A shimmering heat haze hovered over the track. ‘Look, they’re about to start.’

‘Oh goody!’ Natasha mocked the excitement in Carrie’s voice. ‘My money’s on Scott.’ She glanced sideways, her blue eyes filled with overt malice.

‘So’s mine,’ Carrie answered calmly, visibly moving Scott’s two carat diamond solitaire around on her finger. Natasha had always had her eye on Scott. It was in the nature of things Natasha Cunningham would always get what she wanted. But Scott had fallen for Carrie, very much upsetting the Cunninghams, and marking Carrie as a target for Natasha’s vicious tongue. Something that had to be lived with.

Three races had already been run that afternoon. The crowd was in fine form calling for the day’s big event to begin. There was a bit of larrikinism quickly clamped down on by Jimboorie’s resident policeman. The huge white marquees acting as ‘bars’ had been doing a roaring trade. Scott, on the strapping Sassafras, a rich red chestnut with a white blaze and white socks, was the bookies’ favourite, as well as the crowd’s. He was up against two fine riders, members of his own polo team. No one had had any prior knowledge of the riding skills of the latest arrival to their far flung bush community. Well they knew now, Carrie thought. They only had to watch the way he handled his handsome horse. It had an excellent conformation; a generous chest that would have good heart room. The crowd knew who the rider was of course. Everyone knew his sad history. And there was more! All the girls for hundreds of miles around were agog with excitement having heard the rumour, which naturally spread like a bushfire, Clay Cunningham, a bachelor, was looking for a wife. That rivetting piece of information had come from Jimboorie’s leading publican, the one and only Vince Dougherty. Vince gained it, he claimed, over a cold beer or two. Not that Clay Cunningham was the only bush bachelor looking for a wife. In the harsh and lonely conditions of the Outback—very much a man’s world—eligible women were a fairly scarce commodity and thus highly prized. As far as Carrie could see all the pretty girls had swarmed here, some already joking about making the newcomer a good wife. Perhaps Clay Cunningham had been unwise to mention it. There was a good chance he’d get mobbed as proceedings got more boisterous.

He certainly cut a fine figure on horseback though Carrie didn’t expect Natasha to concede that. The black gelding looked in tip-top condition. It had drawn almost as many admiring eyes as its rider. A fine rider herself—Carrie had won many ladies’ races and cross country events—she loved to see good horsemanship. She hadn’t competed in the Ladies’ Race run earlier that day, which she most likely would have won. She was to present the Jimboorie Cup to the winning rider. Her mother, Alicia, President of the Ladies Committee and a woman of powerful persuasion, had insisted she look as fresh as a daisy and as glamorous as possible. A journalist and a photographer from a popular women’s magazine had been invited to cover the two-day event with a gala dance to be held that night in Jimboorie’s splendid new Community Hall of which they were all very proud.

A few minutes before 3:00 p.m. the chattering, laughing crowd abruptly hushed. They were waiting now for the starter, mounted on a distinguished old grey mare everyone knew as Daisy, to drop his white flag…Carrie began to count the seconds….

‘They’re off!’ she shouted in her excitement, making a spontaneous little spring off the ground. A great cheer rose all around her, lofting into the cloudless cobalt sky. The field, ten runners in all, literally leapt from their standing start. The horses as was usual were bunched up at first. Then the riders began battling for good positions, two quickly becoming trapped on the rails. The field sorted itself out and the horses began to pound along, hooves eating up a track that was predictably hard and fast.

When the time came for the riders to negotiate the turn in what was essentially a wild bush track, half of the field started to fall back. In many ways it was more like a Wild West gallop than the kind of sophisticated flat race one would see at a city track. The front runners had begun to fight it out, showing their true grit. Scott, his polo team mates and Jack Butler, who was Carrie’s father’s overseer on Victory Downs. Clay Cunningham’s black gelding was less than a length behind Jack and going well. Carrie watched him lean forward to hiss some instruction into his horse’s ear.

‘Oh dear!’ Carrie watched with a perverse mix of dismay and delight as the gelding stormed up alongside Jack’s gutsy chestnut, then overtook him. Jack, who would have been thrilled to be among the frontliners, was battling away for all he was worth. At this rate Clay Cunningham was a sure thing, Carrie considered, unless Scott could get some extra speed from his mount. Scott was savagely competitive but the newcomer was giving every indication he’d be hard to beat. One thing was certain. Clay Cunningham was a crack rider.

Natasha, too, had drawn in her breath sharply. The possibility Scott could be beaten hadn’t occurred to either woman. Golden Boy Harper, as he was popularly known, was captain of their winning polo team and thus had a special place in Jimboorie society.

‘Your cousin looks like winning,’ Carrie warned her, shaking her own head. ‘Damn it, now, Scott! Make your move.’ Carrie wasn’t sure Scott was riding the right race. Though she would never say it, she didn’t actually consider Scott had the innate ability to get the best out of a horse. He didn’t know much about coaxing for one thing.

Natasha belted the air furiously with her fist. ‘This shouldn’t be happening.’

‘Well it is!’ Carrie was preparing herself for the worst.

She saw Scott produce his whip, giving his horse a sharp crack, but Clay Cunningham was using touch and judgment rather than resorting to force. It paid off. The big black gelding had already closed the gap coming at full stride down the track.

‘Damn it!’ Natasha shrieked, looking ready to burst with disappointment.

Carrie, on the other hand, was feeling almost guilty. She was getting goose bumps just watching Clay Cunningham ride with such authority that Scott’s efforts nearly fell into insignificance. That feeling in itself was difficult to come to grips with. The fast paced highly competitive gelding, like its rider, looked like it had plenty left in reserve.

Carrie held her breath, still feeling that upsurge of contrasting emotions. Admiration and apprehension were there aplenty. Sharp disappointment that Scott, her fiancé, wasn’t going to win. Elation at how fast the big gelding was travelling—that was the horse lover in her she told herself. That animal had a lot of class. So did its rider. There was a man determined to win. After the way Jimboorie had treated him, Carrie couldn’t begrudge him the victory. She liked a fighter.

Two minutes more, just as she expected, Lightning Boy flew past the post with almost two full lengths in hand.

What a buzz!

‘Oh, well done!’ Carrie cried, putting her hands together. For a moment she forgot she was standing beside Natasha, the inveterate informer. ‘I wonder if he plays polo?’ What an asset he would be!

‘Of course he doesn’t play polo,’ Natasha snapped. ‘He’s a pauper. Paupers don’t get to play polo. Where’s your loyalty anyway?’ she demanded fiercely. ‘Scott’s your fiancé and you’re applauding an outsider.’

‘Insider,’ Carrie corrected, looking as cool as a cucumber. ‘He’s already moved into Jimboorie.’

‘For now.’ Natasha made no effort to hide her outrage and anger. ‘Just see if people deal with him. My father has a great amount of influence.’

Carrie frowned. ‘What are you saying? Your family is readying to make life even more difficult for him?’

‘You bet we are!’ Natasha’s blue eyes were hard. ‘He’d be mad to stay around here. Old Angus only left him Jimboorie to spite us.’

‘Be that as it may, your cousin must intend to stick around if he’s looking for a wife,’ Carrie said, really pleased that after a moment of stunned silence the crowd erupted into loud, appreciative applause and even louder whistles. They were willing to give the newcomer a fair go even if Natasha’s vengeful family weren’t. ‘Well there you are!’ she said brightly. ‘No one rated his chances yet your cousin came out the clear winner.’

‘We’ll see what Scott has to say,’ Natasha snorted with indignation, visibly jangling with nerves. ‘For all we know there could have been interference near the fence.’

‘There wasn’t.’ Carrie dismissed that charge very firmly. ‘I know Scotty doesn’t like to lose, but he’ll take it well enough.’ Some hope, she thought inwardly. Her fiancé had a considerable antipathy to losing. At anything.

‘I’ll be sure to tell him how delighted you were with my cousin’s performance,’ Natasha called quite nastily as she walked away.

‘I bet you will,’ Carrie muttered aloud. Since she and Scott had become engaged, two months previously, Natasha always gave Carrie the impression she’d like to tear her eyes out.

A tricky situation was now coming up. It was her job, graciously handed over to her by her mother, to present the Cup. Not to Scott, as just about everyone had confidently expected, but to the new owner of historic Jimboorie Station. The Cunningham ancestral home was falling down around his ears and the once premier cattle and sheep station these days was little more than a ruin said to be laden with debt. In all likelihood the new owner would at some stage sell up and move on. But for now, she had to find her way to the mounting yard for the presentation and lots of photographs. Come to that, she would have to take some herself. For two years now since she had returned home from university she had worked a couple of days a week for Paddy Kennedy, the founder and long time editor of the Jimboorie Bulletin. Once a senior editor with the Sydney Morning Herald, chronic life-threatening asthma sent him out to the pure dry air of the Outback where it was thought he had a better chance of controlling his condition.

That was twenty years ago. The monthly Jimboorie Bulletin wasn’t any old rag featuring local gossip and kitty-up-the-tree stories. It was a professional newspaper, covering issues important to the Outback: the fragile environment, political matters, social matters, health matters, aboriginal matters, national sporting news, leavened by a page reporting on social events from all over the Outback. The rest of the time Carrie was kept busy with her various duties on the family station she loved, as well as running the home office, a job she had taken over from her mother.

Her work for the Bulletin stimulated her intellectually and she loved Paddy. He was the wisest, kindest man she knew whereas her father—although he had always been good to her in a material fashion—was not a man a daughter could get close to. A son maybe, but her parents had not been blessed with a son. She was an only child, one who was sensitive enough to have long become aware of her father’s pain and bitter disappointment he had no male heir. He had already told her, although she would be well provided for, Victory Downs was to go to her cousin, Alex, the son of her father’s younger brother. Uncle Andrew wasn’t a pastoralist at all, though he had been raised in a pastoral family. He had a thriving law practice in Melbourne and was, in fact, the family solicitor.

Alex was still at university, uncertain what he wanted to be, although he knew Victory Downs would pass to him. Carrie’s mother had fought aggressively for her daughter’s rights but her father couldn’t be moved. For once in her married life her mother had lost the fight.

‘You know how men are!’ Alicia had railed. ‘They think women can’t run anything. It’s immensely unfair. How can your father think young Alex would be a better manager than you?’

‘That’s not the only reason, Mum,’ Carrie had replied, thinking it terrible to be robbed of one’s inheritance. ‘Dad doesn’t want the station to pass out of the family. Sons have to be the inheritors. Sons carry the family name. Dad doesn’t care at all for the idea anyone other than a McNevin should inherit Victory Downs. He seems to be naturally suspicious of women as well. Why is that? Uncle Andy isn’t a bit like that.’

‘Your father just doesn’t know how to relax,’ was Alicia’s stock explanation, always turning swiftly to another topic.

It had been strange growing up knowing she was seriously undervalued by her father but Carrie was reluctant to criticise him. He was a good father in his way. Certainly she and her mother lacked for nothing, though there was no question of squandering money like Julia Cunningham, who spent as much time in the big cities of Sydney and Melbourne as she did in her Outback home.

People in the swirling crowd waved to her happily—she waved back. Most of the young women her age were wearing smart casual dress, while she was decked out as if she were attending a garden party at Government House in Sydney. Alicia’s idea. Carrie’s hat was lovely really, the wide dipping brim trimmed with silk flowers. She wore a sunshine-yellow printed silk dress sent to her from her mother’s favourite Sydney designer. Studded high heeled yellow sandals were on her feet. Her long honey-blond hair was drawn back into a sophisticated knot to accommodate the picture hat her mother had insisted on her wearing.

‘I want you to look really, really good!’ Alicia, a classic beauty in her mid-forties and looking nothing like it, fussed over her. ‘Which means you have to wear this hat. It will protect your lovely skin for one thing as well as adding the necessary glamour. Never forget it’s doubly essential to look after one’s skin in our part of the world. You know how careful I am even though we have an enviable tawny tint.’

Indeed they had. Carrie had inherited her mother’s beautiful brown eyes as well. Eyes that presented such a striking contrast to their golden hair. Carrie, christened Caroline Adriana McNevin had no look of her father’s side of the family. She didn’t really mind. Alicia, from a well-to-do Melbourne family and with an Italian Contessa as her maternal grandmother, was a beautiful woman by anyone’s standards.

‘You’re a lucky girl, do you realise that? Scott Harper for a fiancé.’ Alicia fondly pinched her daughter’s cheek. ‘I don’t think the Cunninghams will ever get over it. Julia worked so hard to throw Scott and Natasha together.’

As if you didn’t do the same thing with Scott and me, Mamma, Carrie thought but didn’t have the heart to say. Scott Harper was one of the most eligible bachelors in the country. His father’s property ventures were huge. Even Carrie’s father had been ‘absolutely delighted’ when she and Scott had become engaged. Obviously the best thing a daughter could do—her crowning achievement as it were—was to marry a handsome young man from a wealthy family. To prove it her father seemed to have a lot more time for her in the past few months. Could he be thinking of future heirs, not withstanding the fact he had already made a will in favour of Alex? It wouldn’t be so bad, would it, to pass Victory Downs on to someone like Scott Harper, rich and ambitious?

Sometimes Carrie felt like a pawn.

Clay was agreeably surprised by the number of people who made it their business to congratulate him. Many of the older generation mentioned they remembered his father and added how much Clay resembled him. One sweet-faced elderly lady actually asked after his mother, her smile crumpling when Clay told her gently that his mother had passed on. He hadn’t received any congratulations from the runner-up, the god in their midst, Scott Harper, and didn’t expect any. Leopards didn’t change their spots. Aged ten when his parents uprooted him from the place he so loved and which incredibly was now his, Clay still had vivid memories of Scott Harper, the golden-haired bully boy, two years his senior. Harper had treated him like trash when he’d never had trouble from the other station boys. For some reason Harper had baited him mercilessly about his parents’ marriage whenever they met up. Once Harper had knocked him down in the main street of the town causing a bad concussion for which he’d been hospitalised. His father, wild as hell, had made the long drive in his battered utility to the Harper station to remonstrate with Scott’s father, but he had been turned back at gunpoint by Bradley Harper’s men.

Clay’s taking the Jimboorie Cup from Scott this afternoon was doubly sweet. Soon the surprisingly impressive silver cup would be presented to him by Harper’s fiancé. He had been amazed to hear it was Caroline McNevin, whom he remembered as the prettiest little girl he had ever laid eyes on. How had that exquisite little creature grown up to become engaged to someone like Harper? But then wasn’t it a tradition for pastoral families to intermarry? His father—once considered destined for great things—had proved the odd man out, struck down by love at first sight. Love for a penniless little Irish girl now buried by his side.

There was a stir in the crowd. Clay turned about to see a woman coming towards him. He drew himself up straighter, absolutely thrown by how beautiful Caroline had become. Her whole aura suggested springtime, a world of flowers. Her petite figure absorbed all the sunlight around her.

She seemed to float rather than walk. For a moment an overwhelming emotion swept over him. To combat it, he stood very, very still. He wondered if it were nostalgia; remembrance of some lovely moment when he was a boy. The hillsides around Jimboorie alight with golden wattle, perhaps?

Now they were face-to-face, less than a metre apart, and he like a fool stood transfixed. He was conscious his nerves had tensed and his stomach muscles had tightened into a hard knot. She was tiny compared to him. Even in her high heels she only came up to his heart. She still had that look of shining innocence, only now it was allied to an adult allure all the more potent since both qualities appeared to exist quite naturally side by side.

He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her while she consolidated her hold over him.

Caroline had beautiful large oval eyes, a deep velvety-brown. They were doubly arresting with her golden hair. Her skin, a tawny olive beneath the big picture hat, was flawlessly beautiful. Her features were delicate, perfectly symmetrical. No more than five-three, she nevertheless had a real presence. At least she was running tight circles around him.

‘James Cunningham!’ The vision smiled at him. A smile that damn near broke his heart. What the heck was the matter with him? How could he describe what he felt? Perhaps they had meant something to each other in another life? ‘Welcome back to Jimboorie. I’m Carrie McNevin.’

Belatedly he came back to control. ‘I remember you, Caroline,’ he said, his voice steady, unhurried, yet he was so broadsided by her beauty, he forgot to smile.

‘You can’t!’ A soft flush rose to her cheeks.

‘I do.’ He shrugged his shoulder, thinking beautiful women had unbounded power at their pink fingertips. ‘I remember you as the happy little girl who used to wave to me when you saw me in town.’

‘Really?’ She was enchanted by the idea.

‘Yes, really.’

Her essential sweetness enfolded him. Her voice was clear and gentle, beautifully enunciated. Caroline McNevin, the little princess. Untouchable. Except now by Harper. That made him hot and angry, inducing feelings that hit him with the force of a breaker.

‘Well, it’s my great pleasure, James, or do you prefer to be called Clay?’ She paused, tipping her golden head to one side.

‘Clay will do.’ Only his mother had ever called him James. Now he remembered to smile though his expression remained serious even a little sombre. Why wouldn’t he when he felt appallingly vulnerable in the face of a beautiful creature who barely came up to his heart?

Carrie was aware of the sombreness in him. It added to the impression he gave of quiet power and it had to be admitted, mystery. ‘Then it’s going to be my great pleasure to be able to present you, Clay, with the Jimboorie Cup,’ Carrie continued. ‘We’ll just move back over there,’ she said, turning to lead the way to a small dais where the race committee was grouped, waiting for her and the winner of the Cup to join them. ‘They’ll want to take photos,’ she told him, herself oddly shaken by their meeting. And the feeling wasn’t passing off. Perhaps it was because she’d heard so many stories about the Cunninghams while she was growing up? Or maybe it was because Clay Cunningham had grown into a strikingly attractive man. She felt that attraction brush over her then without her being able to do a thing about it. She felt it sink into her skin. She only hoped she wasn’t showing her strong reactions. Everyone was looking at them.

Natasha might well continue to denounce her cousin, Carrie thought, but the family resemblance was strong. The Cunninghams were a handsome lot, raven haired, with bright blue eyes. Natasha would have been beautiful, but her fine features were marred by inner discontent and her eyes were strangely cold. Clay Cunningham had the Cunningham height and rangy build—only his hair wasn’t black. It was a rich mahogany with a flame of dark auburn as the sun burnished it. His eyes, the burning blue of an Outback sky, were really beautiful, full of depth and sparkle. He looked like a real man. A man women would fall for hook, line and sinker. So why wasn’t he married already, or actively looking for a wife? If indeed the rumour were true. Something she was beginning to doubt. He had to be four, maybe five years older than she, which made him around twenty-eight. He was a different kind of man from Scott. She sensed a depth, a sensitivity—whatever it was—in him that Scott lacked.

It had to be an effect of the light but there seemed to be sparkles in the space between them. Carrie never dreamed a near-stranger could have this effect on her. Her main concern was to conceal it. Up until now she had felt safe. She was going to marry Scott, the man she was in love with—yet Clay Cunningham’s blue gaze had reached forbidden places.

Their hands touched as she handed over the Silver Cup to the accompanying waves of applause. She couldn’t move, even think for a few seconds. She felt a little jolt of electricity through every pore of her skin. He continued to hold her eyes, his own unfaltering. Had her trembling transferred itself to him like a vibration? She hoped not. She wasn’t permitted to feel like this.

Yet sparkles continued to pulsate before her eyes. Perhaps she was mildly sun-struck? She had the unnerving notion that the little frisson of shock—unlike anything she had ever experienced before—was mutual. She even wondered what life might have in store if he decided to remain on Jimboorie? All around her people were laughing and clapping. Some were carrying colourful balloons. The thrill of the race had got to her. That was it! Her course was set. She was a happily engaged woman. She was to marry Scott Harper in December. A Christmas bride.

And there was Scott staring right at her. Too late she became aware of him. She felt the chill behind his smile. She knew him so well she had no difficulty recognising it. It came towards her like an ice-bearing cloud. He was furious and doing a wonderful job of hiding it. A triumphant looking Natasha was by his side, the two of them striking a near identical pose; one full of an over-bearing self-confidence. Maybe arrogance was a better word. Scott as Bradley Harper’s heir certainly liked to flaunt it. Natasha, as a Cunningham, did too.

Now Scott sauntered towards the dais around which the VIPs of the vast district milled, calling in a taunting voice, ‘You’ll absolutely have to tell us, Jimmy, where you learned how to ride like that? And the name of the guy who loaned you his horse. Or did you steal it?’ He held up defensive hands. ‘Only joking!’

As a joke it was way off, but Clay Cunningham held his ground, quite unmoved. ‘You haven’t changed one little bit, have you, Harper?’ he said with unruffled calm. ‘Lightning Boy was a parting gift from a good friend of mine. A beauty, isn’t he? He could run the race over.’

‘Like to give it another go?’ Scott challenged with an open lick of hostility.

‘Any time—when your horse is less spent.’ Clay Cunningham gently waved the silver cup aloft to another roar of applause.

Bruce McNevin, a concerned observer to all this, fearing a confrontation, moved quickly onto the dais to address the crowd. Even youngsters draped over the railings managed to fall silent. They were used to hearing from Mr. McNevin who was to say a few words then hand over the prize money of $20,000 dollars, well above the reward offered by other bush committees.

Her father was a handsome man, Carrie thought proudly. A man in his prime. He had a full head of dark hair, good regular features, a bony Celtic nose, a strong clean jawline and well defined cheekbones. He was always immaculately if very conservatively dressed. Bruce McNevin was definitely a ‘tweedy’ man.

While her father spoke Carrie stood not altogether happily within the half circle of Scott’s distinctly proprietorial arm. She was acutely aware of the anger and dented pride he was fighting to hold in. Scott wasn’t a good loser. Carrie didn’t know why but it was apparent he had taken an active dislike to Clay Cunningham.

Now Clay Cunningham, cheque in hand, made a response to her father that proved such a mix of modesty, confidence and dry humour that time and again his little speech was punctuated by appreciative bursts of laughter and applause. The crowd was still excited and the winner’s speech couldn’t have been more designed to please. The race goers had come to witness a good race and the Cup winner—a newcomer—had well and truly delivered. Not that anyone could really call him a newcomer. Heavens, he was a Cunningham! Cunningham was a name everyone knew. There was even a chance he might be able to save what was left of that once proud historic station, Jimboorie, though it would take a Herculean effort and a bottomless well of money.

‘Who the hell does he think he is?’ Scott muttered in Carrie’s ear, unable to credit the man ‘little Jimmy’ Cunningham, the urchin, had become. ‘And what’s with the posh voice?’

‘He is a Cunningham, Scott,’ Carrie felt obliged to point out. ‘It’s written all over him. And it may very well be he did get a good education.’

Scott snorted like an angry bull. ‘His father left here without a dime. Everyone knows that. Angus Cunningham might have sheltered them to spite the rest of his family but he couldn’t have paid his nephew anything in the way of wages. Reece Cunningham cut himself off from his own family when he married that little tramp.’

‘You know nothing about her, Scott.’ Carrie pulled away from him as discreetly as she could. ‘My mother says there was no proof whatsoever to any of the cruel stories that were circulated about her by the Cunninghams and the Campbells. Remember Clay’s father was expected to marry Elizabeth Campbell or Campbell-Moore as she is today.’

‘But the fool of a man didn’t,’ Scott retorted, staring down at her with a mixture of hurt and displeasure. ‘Whose side are you on anyway?’

She turned away from the glare in his eyes. ‘The side of fair mindedness, Scott. Now you’ll have to excuse me. Mamma wants me for more photographs.’

‘Go to her by all means.’ Scott bowed slightly. ‘I just hope Cunningham doesn’t plan on showing up tonight.’

His voice was iron hard.