Читать книгу The Outback Engagement - Margaret Way - Страница 6

DARCY walked quietly across the Persian rug towards the still figure in the massive canopied bed. The bed was a monstrosity really, elaborately carved and wide enough to sleep a half a dozen but her father was very attached to it. It had once been the property of a McIvor Scottish ancestor. Her father’s eyes were closed, his face the dreadful grey that spoke of severe physical trauma. A fuzz of mottled grey and marmalade coloured hair showed at the neck of his pyjamas lending a peculiar vulnerability. The once powerful hands that could handle anything from the wildest brumby and the biggest bullock to every kind of station machinery rested like fleshless talons on the folded top sheet.

Splendid health had accompanied Jock McIvor all the days of his life now he was a wraith of his former self. Almost overnight, the flesh had dropped off his impressive frame. His nurse, Wilma Ainsworth, an angular white-clad figure, competent but not particularly motherly or compassionate had been and gone taking with her the tray that held the medicines and syringes to bring temporary relief to her suffering patient.

Big Jock McIvor had not recovered from his first heart attack as everyone had expected. Jock McIvor was dying. Of that there could be no doubt. As she leaned over his prone figure Darcy hardly dared draw breath for fear of waking him out of his drug induced slumber. She withdrew to the wide verandah that enclosed the homestead on three sides. Like everyone experiencing a crisis she desperately wanted to change things. To turn back the clock. To insist on her father having regular medical checkups, knowing he had never been ready to listen to her anyway. Jock McIvor was a law unto himself. It was a strategy that in the end hadn’t worked in his favour.

Darcy stared out over the extensive homestead grounds with their magnificent date palms and diverse array of desert plants. The palms had been planted well over a century before by a Afghan camel driver her great great grandfather Campbell McIvor had befriended. Midafternoon the grounds were shrouded in the quivering white fire of a heat haze. It caused a legion of parrots in their glorious colours to descend on the lagoon at the foot of the homestead for a drink. Otherwise the home compound bore a strangely deserted air. Jock McIvor was no longer in charge and it was manifestly obvious. She had been neglecting her duties while she attended her father after that first frightening heart attack. In these last stages despite his agitated protests she’d been forced to call in a full time nurse.

Curt had flown over from Sunrise to urge her to do it. Curt Berenger was another one who was a law unto himself especially since the death of his own father in a helicopter mustering accident leaving Curt master of Sunrise Downs and the entire Berenger chain. Though she found numerous ways of telling him how interfering he was, the truth was Curt followed his family’s tradition of looking after his friends and neighbours in time of need. Not that he was an admirer of Jock McIvor. Their relationship was as strained as it could be with her in the middle. Curt saw her father as a tyrant who’d had far too much influence shaping her life. Part of her recognised that. Her father was very controlling but the things Curt said cut her to the quick. Things do when there’s a basis in truth.

Now Jock McIvor was dying and she was about to be abandoned again. What a long terrible struggle she’d had with that first abandonment. A double whammy. Mother and sister. She could never put the wrenching psychic separation, the painful moods of loneliness and not being loved behind her. She still saw their tearful faces in her dreams. She had loved Courtney with all her heart assuming they were going to be the closest, dearest friends forever. Her mother had always promised her a baby sister. Everything should have been perfect but in the end the dream had been shattered. Childhood innocence had been replaced by painful moods of sadness and loneliness. How had she lived through her adolescence with no mother present? By becoming what her father wanted. She had lived off the dollops of affection he handed out like the desert flora survives on rare showers.

Anxiety was having the effect of a steel band tightening around her head. Fit as she was, many long sleepless nights had exhausted her. Nurse Ainsworth always urged her to go to bed saying she would wake her if she saw the need, but Darcy was not happy with that. This was her father. He was all she had. Didn’t the woman realize that? She had to be there at her father’s side. She sensed she would know the exact moment when all life would leave him.

What then?

What will my life become? She sought to push back all thoughts of freedom as a betrayal but it continued to hover on the periphery of her mind. She had never known real freedom. By fair means or foul—she became agitated when she thought about it—her father had tenaciously kept her tied to his side. After his marriage break up he had made it a purpose in life. She could understand it in a way. He was a proud man who had suffered bitter losses. Worse, he had been publicly humiliated. Now he was waiting to die and the atmosphere was charged with powerful emotions.

She couldn’t run Murraree by herself. It was a big job, not an Outback adventure. Her father had been King of the Castle. The Boss. Jock McIvor always made the decisions. As efficient as he had trained her to be, essentially she carried out orders. What would happen to Murraree with her father gone? She knew the men liked and respected her. Some of them had watched her grow up. She knew how to handle herself, but she wasn’t a hard, tough man in a hard, tough man’s country.

“You can’t cure yourself of being a woman, Darcy,” Curt had told her, a kind of pity in his eyes. “Don’t you realize you define yourself in relation to your father? It’s high time you started being your own person, your own woman.”

Curt refused to allow her to avoid issues. Just one of the reasons their arguments were legion. Fighting was a protection against feeling. A way of protecting herself against the pain of a dream that had never come true. Sometimes she didn’t know if she loved Curt or hated him. He made her so angry, upset, mad, excited. Wide swings of mood from turmoil to elation. It was like being on a swing, soaring skywards then falling back to earth. Too often she submerged her tempestuous feelings in defying him. It made it that much easier for her to keep control. That was her lot in life. Keeping control.

Now she had to watch her father make his exit from life. It was an eerie experience, rather like a nightmare from which she would surely wake up. Jock McIvor’s heart attack at fifty six had not only rocked her to her core, it had rocked the entire Outback. Jock McIvor was in his way a legend. Millionaire cattle man, lady killer, sportsman (only a year before he had still been enjoying his favourite game of polo), raconteur, owner of an historic cattle station with its rambling old homestead that had in its heyday, to be strictly honest, her grandfather’s day, hosted many a visiting dignitary and V.I.P. Her father was a true bush identity though Darcy was painfully aware some people described him as a ruthless bastard. Still Jock McIvor was known the length and breadth of Outback Queensland and into the Northern Territory.

Unbelievably only six months before he had been a marvellous looking man, still outrageously handsome with flashing blue eyes, wonderful white teeth and a leonine mane that had slowly turned tawny from its once copper glory. Darcy had many fond memories of sitting around the camp fire listening to her father recount his stories to a fascinated audience who hung on his every word. On the down side it had to be said her father had been a hard-drinking, hard-living womaniser. There was no getting away from it. He was a big man with big appetites. It had been a problem. It once caused a crisis when photos surfaced of Jock and a well-known station wife caught in a public display of affection for want of a better word. The wronged husband had threatened a shotgun solution. Jock who had a lawless streak in him had only laughed when his daughter had been saddened and deeply embarrassed.

Yes, Jock McIvor had generally been acknowledged to be larger than life. Darcy had thought him invincible.

“When no man is!” Curt again. The entire Outback community knew Darcy and Curt had a powerful attachment both sought to play down. People argued there didn’t seem to be any rational explanation for why they were not together. Except maybe Jock McIvor’s running interference. They all knew Jock wasn’t a man to share.

A small sound from the bedroom tore Darcy from her troubled reverie. Her father was stirring, a whistling moan on his breath.

“Dad!” For once she didn’t bother with the “Jock” her father preferred her to call him. In the stress of the moment she didn’t care. She was a woman. Damn it! Emotional.

By the time she reached the bed her father’s eyes were opening slowly, painfully, as though it cost him a great effort. “Darcy.” His brow puckered. “Here as usual?”

Something about the way he said it took her aback. “Where else would I be?” She touched his hand tenderly willing herself not to cry. Her father hated tears so much sometimes she thought she had almost lost the ability to cry. She had been brought up to be brave, ignoring her sensitive female side as she tried to turn herself into the heir her father had always wanted yet somehow for all his dalliances had failed to produce.

“I’m finished, girl.” It was said flatly, without acceptance. More a hard digust that in former days would have been rage.

She was helpless to deny it. “Dad, I love you so much.”

“That’s the way you are. Loyal.” He fixed his sunken eyes on a life size portrait across the room. It had been painted not long before the inexorable break-up of the family. Two young girls about twelve and ten in immaculate riding gear, white silk shirts and fitted jodhpurs leaned towards a ravishingly pretty, blonde woman who was seated on a burgundy leather couch, similarly attired.

Dress for the portrait had been decided upon by Jock. Marian McIvor hadn’t cared for horses or riding. Courtney had followed suit. Courtney, an adorable miniature version of her mother had her arm around her mother’s waist. Darcy was perched like some long legged brolga on the arm of the couch, long straight dark hair falling over one shoulder, slanting aquamarine eyes staring gravely out at the viewer.

It had always seemed to her her colouring looked startlingly out of place beside Jock’s benchmark of beauty, the enchanting gold and blue of her mother and sister. From family photographs she knew she resembled her long dead paternal grandmother who had been famous for her stoic resilience and everyday heroisms in a vast lonely harsh environment. She even bore her grandmother’s maiden name, D’Arcy.

“You were always the serious one.” Her father gave a muffled groan, the marks of suffering all over him. “Look at you there. Poker faced. Beside your mother and sister you look damned nearly plain. But you were always as smart as a tack and you’ve been good. So good. I haven’t appreciated you enough. You were the one I could always trust.”

Sometimes the things her father said Darcy found horribly wounding. Anything but vain, she knew she was far from plain but her father had never wanted to accept her attractiveness or femininity. Perhaps as Curt continually pointed out her father saw great danger in allowing her to realise her womanly potential.

Father and daughter continued to stare at the portrait, one feeling a sense of attachment, the other, God knows what! “Why have you always kept the portrait in your room?” Darcy felt driven to ask. Her father’s harsh views were entrenched in her consciousness. Jock had always claimed he despised Darcy’s mother for leaving him, yet he opened his eyes on her first thing in the morning and closed his eyes on her at night.

“It’s the way it’s got to be!” A grim smile lifted the corner of Jock McIvor’s mouth. “I keep it, Darcy, to remind me what Marian did to me. She sucked all the love from my system. She should never have left me. It was cruel and it was wrong.”

“You didn’t try hard enough to get her back, Dad. You let them go.” The words were torn from Darcy like a bandage from a wound.

“It was your mother’s duty to return to me.” The gaunt face worked, the talons on the white sheet tensed. “When she refused I was finished with her. No woman makes a fool of Jock McIvor. A wife should follow her husband everywhere. She knew what she was getting into when she married me, what she had to accept. She was a bad wife.” His expression was at once bitter and bereft.

“Why didn’t she want to take me?” Darcy’s plaintive eyes were fixed upon her mother’s painted face. How many million times had she asked herself the question?

Her father shot her a peculiar glance. One she missed. “She wanted Courtney, the pretty one made in her own image. That was the deal. You were the changeling with your dark hair and those slanty eyes. Your mother and your sister subjected us to a massive betrayal, girl. Then she had the hide to punish me with an outrageous divorce settlement when she was the one to move out. Remarried, the faithless bitch. You know she wanted you to go to the wedding?”

For a minute Darcy looked at him blankly. “Oh…Dad, you’ve never mentioned this before.” The admission devastated her. She was left with the sick hollow feeling there might be many things her father had never told her when she had given him all her loyalty and trust.

“For God’s sake, be your age!” he said, anger seething behind his eyes. “There are lots of things I never told you. Because you didn’t need to know. The two of us had to cast your mother and sister aside to survive. Your mother was the enemy. We had to resist her with all our strength. Fact is, Courtney still remains my child. Your mother destroyed our relationship but now I’m dying I’ve had to confront certain issues. Because you’ve been the one to stay with me doesn’t mean I’m going to leave you Murraree, girl. It would take more than a woman to run it.”

Darcy took a deep breath, feeling like she had been plunged headfirst into a powerful disbelief. “What are you saying? Murraree is my home. My heritage. I know you’ve always wanted a son but haven’t I demonstrated my love for the land? I’ve worked long and hard. I carry my weight. If I can’t handle the station all on my own, there’s always a good overseer.” The idea of losing her birthright was absolutely intolerable.

“Overseer!” Jock McIvor rallied to spit out the word. “Damn it all, girl. When I’m gone men will try to take advantage of you. Don’t you realise that? How are you supposed to protect yourself? They’ll be after you like vultures, not for you, but the station.”

Darcy studied her father with the shutters all but fallen from her eyes. “I’m confident I can manage my own life, Dad. Murraree might be a top station but I haven’t been short of marriage proposals these past years. For me alone. You were supposed to live forever.”

“Never got one out of Berenger.” There was deliberate cruelty in the taunt.

Darcy came perilously close to cutting her father down. But it could have the profound and damaging effect of snuffing the life out of him. All too often he’d been wrong. Then again it was typical of him to try to catch her out, to goad her into revealing what he was too fearful to face.

“Curt and I would never have worked,” she said, holding in the anger she had controlled for years. Outwardly calm, inwardly she was dealing with the old desolation. It was essential she keep a lock on her tongue. She had survived. Her father was dying.

Jock spluttered cruelly. “What the hell do you take me for, girl? You’ve been hooked on Berenger since you were a kid. Any other woman would have taken him into her bed. I counted on you to resist him.” He treated her to a searching stare.

“Don’t let’s get into this, Dad,” she said deciding he hadn’t earned the right to her most private thoughts. “It causes too much upset and you can’t be upset.” Always the placator she feared the onset of another bad turn. “Besides.” She gave him what he needed to hear. “I gave my heart to you. You’re all I’ve had.” She said it with an enigmatic smile, finally forced to consider all the loving had been on her side.

“Exactly.” Jock McIvor nodded, convinced her wholehearted devotion was his due. “As for me, I have no son to take over from me.” His breathing hissed with impotent rage. “Just girls. Can you believe it? With my incredible strength. My virility. The women I’ve had! I want you to get Berenger over here,” he announced with a sudden vigour.

Darcy shook her head in utter confusion. “You want Curt?” Considering the role her father had played in breaking them up this came as a revelation.

“Oh I know we’ve always had our differences,” he grunted, catching sight of her shocked expression. “I know he hasn’t any regard for me—glimpses of his old man there—but I’ve never known a Berenger not to show integrity. Despite all this infernal suffering and pain Doc Robertson tells me I have a little time to go. I want to discuss something with Berenger. Barely thirty and he’s building a name for himself,” he said grudgingly.

“He’s got a name, Dad,” Darcy bluntly corrected. “He was born with it. Berenger. A proud name. It’s on the record. A name he lives up to. What can you possibly discuss with Curt of all people you can’t discuss with me?”

“Important business, that’s what!” There was a momentary flash in McIvor’s eyes. “I know you’ve got a good head on your shoulders but I need to speak to a man, that man being Curt Berenger.”

Darcy’s saddened eyes looked steadily into her father’s. “Do you love me, Dad?” Please God let him say it just once. “You’ve never told me. You’ve said a few times you were proud of me, especially when I won that big endurance race, but love has never been mentioned.”

Incredibly a tear trickled from Jock McIvor’s eyes. “My fault, Darcy girl. I sometimes think I’ve never known what real love is. Apart from my mother. I’m convinced I loved her. Named you after her, didn’t I? I was passionately in love with Marian for a while or at least I thought I was. She was so pretty and amenable. It’s possible I loved you girls, I don’t know. Maybe loving isn’t in my nature. Fidelity either. Now that was beyond me. All I know is I care about you, Darcy. You’ll be a remarkable woman in later life. By and large you’re pretty remarkable now. Your interests will be well protected. You don’t have to worry your head about that.”

“You’re changing your will?” Shock upon shock ground her down.

“Just let’s say I’m moving away from the original. I’m on the brink of meeting my Maker. Curiously I’ve rarely given Him a second thought but now I have a pressing need to straighten things out.”

Attonement it seemed was a powerful factor when it came time to die. “You want to include Courtney? I understand that.” Courtney who had gone with her mother. Courtney who had abandoned her only sister among other things. Did Courtney deserve to be rewarded? Darcy began to wonder what she had done with her life.

“You’re too understanding for your own good,” her father gave a rasping cough. “But you’ve got guts and you got them from me. Get Berenger over here. I’m not that dumb I don’t know he’ll still do what you ask.”

After a long sleepless night battling fresh demons, Darcy drove down to the airstrip midmorning to pick up Curt and deliver him to the homestead. She realized he was putting himself out for her. Curt was a very busy man with many calls on his time and attention. She counted her blessings he remained her friend.

In front of her and to either side, the vast ancient plains spread out as far as the eye could see. Horizon to horizon. The indomitable land under whose influence she had fallen, glowed molten red. She knew without the protection of her sunglasses the fiery sands, ridged like old washboards, would have been blinding to the naked eye. Studded here and there were white boled ghost gums, the pretty little minareechies with their light green leaves and feathery acacias with swarms of little birds, finches and red throats hopping around the branches. Clumps of spinifex, like giant pincushions glinted gold as wheat. Mile after mile of them. A never ending supply of stockfood.

Spinifex and sand. Space, freedom, a million acres to roam. Why wouldn’t she love her desert home? In times of severe drought it was like taking a walk on Mars, but all that was forgotten when the heartland blazed into the Garden of Eden after the rains. Today the mirage was working its cruel magic. The desert phenomenon had bedevilled many a past explorer and lost traveller luring them towards what they believed was pure fresh water. Water that shone like a polished mirror. This was the land of mirage. It gave the illusion there was no horizon. Land and sky merged into one.

As she gazed across some of the most starkly beautiful and forbidding land on the planet the speck in the cloudless blue sky swiftly transformed itself into a light aircraft. Darcy swept it with the binoculars that hung around her neck. The Berenger twin-engined Beech Baron. He was right on time.

A few minutes later she watched in admiration as Curt made a perfect touch-down in a brisk cross wind. He taxied up to Murraree’s silver hangar, made his after checks then disembarked covering the short distance between them in long loping strides.

One hell of a man was Curt Berenger. Darcy watched his progress with the tense, foolish, feverish, fascination she could never kill off. He was at once daunting and dazzling. Aware of his own power but rarely pressing it. He didn’t have to of course. Today, like all other days, she put herself on guard.

“Hi!” He bestowed his beautiful white smile on her. Next best, his dark timbred voice. It had a very attractive edge to it. Sexy was what women called it.

“Hello yourself!” She gave him a light ironic salute. Both of them had perfected the art of taking the mickey out of the other.

At close range he was even more stunning. Emphatically the cattle baron, a powerful and influential community leader, a target for women. She could never forget. They threw themselves at him. Worshipped at his booted feet. Around Curt Berenger adulation was the order of the day. His classic features were hard planed, damn nearly godlike. He had a firm but full lipped mouth, crystal clear green eyes that positively scintillated in his darkly tanned face. They stared at each other as they always did, way beyond the comfort zone.

She broke first, as ever, tossing her head which meant: Not me, Curt. Never again.

“Thanks so much for coming,” she said briskly, conscious she was breathing him in.

He started to walk with her to the jeep, adjusting his broad brimmed akubra over his eyes. “Given the brutal fact your dad and I have never got on—and we both know why—this is downright weird.”

Forbidden topic. “I agree but he trusts you.”

“Does he really?” Curt treated her to a sarcastic stare.

“It’s something to do with a new will,” she explained.

“Wha-a-t!” Curt did a double take.

“You heard me.” Tall as she was she had to tilt her head to look up at him. Something she found very satisfying.

“Hell, Darcy.” He registered his disgust. “Even now he’s playing with your emotions. What prompted this I wonder? And why me? It’s not making a lot of sense.” He didn’t wait to be invited, he slid behind the wheel of the jeep.

“People see things in a different way when they’re dying.” Darcy settled herself in the passenger side without comment. She was long used to Curt’s ways. “Whatever our history, underneath he respects you as a Berenger.”

“Does he, the old…so and so,” Curt swallowed on what he really wanted to call Jock McIvor. “Does he mean to include Courtney?” He put the jeep into gear, heading for the long unsealed track that led to the main compound.

“She is his daughter.” Darcy clamped her hands together. It was an automatic response to Curt’s closeness.

“She’s fairly well ignored that up-to-date. I wonder what he’s up to? For all his periodic bursts of charm your father is an unpredictable and ruthless man.” People’s view of Darcy was that she was a saint for putting up with her notoriously difficult father let alone loving him. But such was the parental bond. McIvor represented all Darcy knew since her mother had opted out at an age when Darcy had desperately needed her.

“I don’t really know what’s going on in his head,” Darcy said, pursing her lips in thought. “I don’t think I’ve ever known. As for Courtney, maybe she felt she’d be as unwanted here as I’d be unwanted there. My mother obviously decided she wanted nothing more to do with us.” She didn’t dare mention to Curt her father’s stunning confession her mother had wanted her to attend her second wedding. That would only give him more ammunition. Maybe there were more secrets in store for her? After all, didn’t she have her own?

“Probably it was all so painful she had to break the connection just to survive,” Curt looked into her eyes briefly. “Your mother needed love and admiration like the rest of us. She didn’t get it from your dear father. The thing that has always surprised me was your father didn’t let her have custody of both of you if only because of his lifestyle. He could have had you for the holidays. A compassionate man wouldn’t force such a traumatic separation. Children generally stay with their mother.”

“You seem to be forgetting. My mother didn’t want me. At least Dad did.” Darcy kept the pain and anger out of her voice. She was done with self-pity.

“That’s the line your father sold you. He drummed it into you from Day One. You were twelve years old. The unimaginable had happened. Your father was so desperate to hold onto you he shifted all the blame onto your mother. My mother insists to this day your mother adored you. You know that.”

“Strange way of showing it,” Darcy answered crisply. “Kath is just being Kath offering comfort.”

“Not only that,” Curt insisted. “Mum’s very fond of you of course, but she’s always been convinced your father had something on your mother he used as leverage. Or it was plain spite. You know what’s he like. She couldn’t have both of you. Come on, Darcy, your mother was a gentle, loving person. It must have been horrible for her. She wasn’t suited to station life but she tried for a long time. Your father was a big intimidating man. He made his wife suffer.”

“You mean with the affairs?” Darcy stared out at the sun scorched landscape, deriving comfort from its rugged grandeur. How she had hated it when her father had occasionally brought his girlfriends home. Though in all fairness most had tried to be kind to her.

“It must have been a tremendous threat to her self-esteem thus to the marriage.”

“He must have needed something she couldn’t give him,” Darcy sighed. “Sex was a very important part of Dad’s life. He couldn’t live without it.”

“Unlike you,” he said in a bone dry voice.

“Well, you could never lead a celibate life,” she retorted, turning her head away.

“What the hell are you talking about?” He picked up on that quickly. “I don’t know what fool image of me you’ve got in your head, but it’s certainly not based on reality. I am not your father, Darcy. How can you think that for a minute?”

She dug her nails into her palms. “Whenever you take your trips to the big cities I’m sure you don’t move around alone.” She had the proof. She had never spoken it aloud.

“Why because sometimes I get my picture in the paper?” he challenged.

Oh yes, she thought. You get your picture taken. “Let’s move off the subject,” she said. “I’m sorry I started it. Just say you’re very macho. Our way of life promotes it.”

“For goodness’ sake, Darcy!” Curt grunted. “I swear I don’t know what you’re on about some times. I suppose you can’t help it given the life you’ve led. I admit men are in control out here, if that’s what you call macho. Men determine the industry. As for your father, sex for him must have been like his drinking. An appetite. Maybe a form of recreation. Think about it. Was anyone really special to him? I know this is one hell of an explosive issue between us, but you’re forever locked into making excuses for your dad. It’s become second nature. I can’t believe he has ever really loved anyone in his entire life.”

It was a claim she desperately wanted to deny, but it was probably true. Darcy lifted her eyes to a squadron of budgerigars that flew in emerald and gold formation alongside the speeding vehicle. It was one of the great sights of her homeland. “Dad said he loved his mother,” she offered quietly.

“Well that’s one person,” Curt’s mouth tilted at the corners with dark humour. “I’m not saying he doesn’t care about you, Darcy. You’re his prize possession. The one that didn’t get away. I understand your allegiance even if it drives me nuts. You’ve only had him to turn to at a crucial time of your life. Every young girl needs her mother.”

“To develop right?” She was aware she had been severely damaged by her mother’s abandonment.

“Absolutely! Your dad even if he’d been a loving dad couldn’t have taken over that role. Darcy, he treated you—mistreated you if you like—like a boy. The son he never had. You give him everything. What does he give to you? Now a new will. What does that mean? Could it put your interests at risk in some way? Your interests must be protected. Maybe his choice of daughter goes back to the fact you’re said to resemble his mother. The mystical bond, perhaps?”

“Go to hell,” she said quietly.

“I’m trying to live my life to make certain I won’t,” he clipped off. “Your father was prepared to let Courtney go. He couldn’t keep your mother against her will but you were the one he wanted. You were the one he needed. Even at twelve you were brave, resourceful, competent, loyal. You loved the land when your mother and sister didn’t. You were fearless. You stood out and Courtney was a babe in arms beside you. She wasn’t a physical child in the sense you were. There was her fear of horses. Your father was to blame for that with his bluster and bullying. Instead of using a gentle hand he seemed to go out of his way to frighten her. They just didn’t come more rambunctious than your old man.”

“Rambunctious?” She gave a bitter little smile. “That’s a good word. He’s not so rambunctious now.”

Curt eyed her purely cut profile, the small straight nose, the delicately determined chin, the swan’s neck. Her lustrous mane of sable hair hung down her back in a thick plait. Her olive skin glowed with good health. No make-up save the usual token touch of lipstick. She was beautiful and ludicrously unaware of it. Inevitable perhaps when her father made a point of ignoring her feminine attractiveness. “I’m sorry, Darcy,” he said gently, and he was, though sometimes he wanted to shake the living daylights out of her. “I know what your father means to you. We’re predisposed to love our parents no matter what. What I don’t know is what he wants with me now? Given he’s done everything in his power to drive a wedge between us it’s damned odd. I don’t want to be put into the position of advising on wills. He has a team of lawyers for that. Maxwell and Maynard. Adam Maynard is a man of integrity with a fine legal brain. Your father has spoken to Adam hasn’t he?”

She pulled a face. “You know Dad never took to Adam any more than Adam took to Dad.”

“Your father isn’t an easy man to like.”

“How unkind.” She bit her lip.

“The unvarnished truth. Lots of people have been taken in by Jock. Women in particular. Some women will always be attracted to dangerous men.”

“You’re pretty dangerous yourself.” Her profound feelings for him spilled over, as on rare occasions they did.

His green eyes sought hers. “Rubbish!” His tone was a mix of disgust and wry humour. “I’m just a pussy cat.”

“A jaguar.” She didn’t smile. “We’ll never see eye to eye, Curt.”

He turned his head. “That wouldn’t stand up to examination. What about the land which we love more than anything else. The land and everything that goes with it. Then there’s our love of horses and horsemanship, of books and music. We share the same sense of humour. We like the same people. Our political leanings are the same, our world view. Apart from that we don’t have a darn thing in common. I agree. There’s quite a gap.”

Jock McIvor had foregone his medication so his mind would be clear. With difficulty he lifted his head as his daughter and Curt Berenger were shown into his bedroom by the incredibly dull and dour Ainsworth woman. Berenger stood inches over the head of his tall daughter, making her look darn near fragile. Funny he had never thought of Darcy as being fragile before. Darcy could handle rough work with the best of them.

“Good of you to come, Curt.” It came out in a hoarse bark.

Berenger inclined his handsome head.

As arrogant as his father McIvor thought, but it was the arrogance of achievement.

“Anything I can do to help Darcy, sir,” Curt said formally, moving to the bedside to take the withered hand that was extended to him. Curt recalled how big and powerful that hand had once been.

He was shocked by the deterioration in McIvor’s condition. McIvor looked very close to death. That inevitably stirred feelings of pity. However devious and demanding, Jock McIvor had been a giant of a man. To be reduced to this wasted hulk! It was cruel. Terminal illness was a down-casting fact of life.

“You don’t need to stay, Darcy,” McIvor rasped. “I need to talk to Curt alone.”

“Surely there’s nothing Darcy can’t hear?” Curt questioned, looking briefly over his shoulder towards Darcy. He hoped she’d insist on staying but her father had such a hold on her.

Darcy returned Curt’s challenging green gaze briefly then dipped her head. “I’ll go see about lunch. You’re staying, Curt?”

He nodded. “Don’t go to any trouble. Make it simple.”

“See you later then.” Darcy turned and moved quietly out of the room.

“Don’t like me much do you, Curt?” McIvor rubbed a hand still rough with a lifetime’s callouses against the smooth sheet.

Understatement of the year. “You’ve never done anything to make me like you, Jock. Then I don’t think it has ever mattered to you if you were liked or not.” Curt brought up a chair to the bed.

“Your dad didn’t care for me either. I suspect your parents thought I was responsible for Marian’s running off?”

“Were you?” Curt asked bluntly.

McIvor’s frown was fierce. “She threatened to destroy me if I didn’t let her go.”

“How could she do that?” Curt struggled to understand.

“She knew where the bodies were buried.”

“I didn’t know she played any role in your business affairs?” It was well known McIvor barely recognised women outside their sexual desirability.

“She didn’t play any role,” he huffed. “Didn’t have a brain in her fluffy blonde head. Like all women.”

“That’s not true, Jock,” Curt said. He wasn’t about to start an argument with a desperately ill man. “Women just didn’t get the opportunities. They were kept busy raising children. Anyway your own daughter gives the lie to that. Darcy’s had increasing input into the station affairs. I’d trust her anytime.”

“That’s because I trained her.” McIvor coughed and tried to get his breath back. “But she’s a woman. Women are weak, vulnerable. They’re putty in a man’s hands.”

“No way does that apply to Darcy.” Curt fixed his eyes steadily on McIvor’s. “She knows how to take care of herself.”

“That’s because I’m around.” McIvor, the confirmed chauvinist, was convinced of it. “What about when I’m not? I’ve got a lot to leave, my boy. I’ve looked after my affairs so well. Darcy will sure as hell be a mark as an heiress.”

“Perhaps she will but she can handle it,” Curt returned confidently.

“You sure about that? Life’s a bloody jungle. She’s been protected so far. The two of you have grown up together. I know you’ve got strong feelings for her.”

“Which you did your best to crush,” Curt didn’t hesitate to say. “You’ve been absolutely against Darcy and me but it’s much too late to talk about it now. What were you about to suggest, Jock? We do a complete about face? I marry Darcy to protect the most important thing in the world to you? We all know what that is. Murraree. Only neither Darcy nor I could be bought out.”

“It might turn out that way all the same,” McIvor was moved to predict, his bitter expression betraying he was not entirely coming to terms with it even when he was dying.

“Why don’t you cut to the chase, Jock,” Curt suggested, feeling like getting up and walking away. “What have you really got me here for?”

McIvor gave a dry cough, trying to ignore the pain over which he had no control. “Now, now, remember I’m a sick man. No matter what you say, you make it your business to look out for Darcy.”

Curt admitted as much with an abrupt nod of his head.

“She must be protected.” McIvor gave another harsh cough. He stared past Curt’s mahogany head to the portrait across the room. “I have to settle my life, son. Do you understand that?”

“Of course I do.” Curt was straightforward with his answer. “I understand from Darcy you now wish to consider Courtney?”

McIvor swallowed on a throat that was perpetually parched. “Some women find it the simplest thing to give a man sons. Others can only manage giving a man in my position daughters.”

“Hang on, Jock, are you sure of that?” Curt pressed.

“Don’t listen to rumours, son. They’re not true. I have no son, a curse which even now when I’m dying I can’t adjust to. Your dad was the lucky one.”

“My dad lost his life prematurely.” Curt commented sombrely, still grieving for the father he idolized.

“I know and I’m sorry but he had you. He had an heir to take over the reins.” McIvor’s grey face was thwarted and angry.

“You have Darcy,” Curt answered him. “Tom McLaren is a good manager. Darcy has friends. She’s much admired in the community.”

“Course she is, but she’s a woman. Running a big cattle station is a man’s job. It’s endless back breaking work. You know that. Then she’d have to cope with the men. They behave when I’m around, but there are those that eye her off. I see ’em. If they ever went near her I’d shoot ’em. Darcy is an Outback woman to the core. She loves the land like we do. She’s the eldest, the first born. She’ll get the lion’s share.”

“I should hope so. She deserves it,” Curt looked closely at the dying man. McIvor was so unpredictable.

“Always on her side,” McIvor snorted. “It’s a bizarre relationship you two have. I almost regret now the things I’ve done.”

Curt almost laughed aloud. “I’ve always blamed you, Jock. Make no mistake about that. But to get back to why I’m here. You want to draw up a new document recognizing Courtney? Is that it?”

“Yes.” A shudder shook McIvor’s wasted frame.

“Are you all right? Clearly you’re in a lot of pain.” Curt half stood up.

“Maybe a drink of water.”

Curt poured it, assisting McIvor to drink. “I was thinking of a trust fund,” McIvor managed eventually when he was resting back on the pillows. “I want you to play a part in that. Trustee now your dad’s gone. I would have asked him.”

“Jock! Do you want to give Darcy another reason to resent me?” Curt groaned. “She can handle her own affairs.”

McIvor looked back with genuine scorn. “In my judgment it would be best if a man like you kept a careful eye on things.”

“There are good reliable responsible professionals who could do that.” Curt argued. “Your solicitors Maxwell & Maynard. You should be discussing this all important issue with them. I would have thought time was critical.”

McIvor frowned. “I wanted to talk to you first. No matter what you think of me—what I’ve done—and I admit I took every opportunity to cause trouble—I trust you. Besides you Berengers have more than enough money and property of your own. Maybe things between you and Darcy went sour but I’ll stake my life—what’s left of it—you’ll look out for her.”

Curt’s expression was not encouraging. “Why didn’t you discuss this with Adam Maynard when he was last here?”

McIvor beetled his brows. “He’s not a favourite of mine. He’s not one of us. You’re the man I trust. You’re a cattle man just like me and you’re familiar with the whole situation. Darcy needs you as an adviser, a man who can help her plan for the future. I don’t want to see all us McIvors have worked for go down the drain.”

“That I understand.” Curt nodded his agreement. “But let me get Darcy in here, Jock. You wanted my advice. That’s it. Get her in here. Don’t leave her in the dark. She’s not a child. She’s a responsible adult.”

McIvor pressed back against the pillows. “I can’t handle it,” he barked, looking pathetically ill. “Darcy being Darcy will launch into one of her little tirades. Don’t think she’s not above telling her own father off. I’m not saying she doesn’t have the business acumen to handle the McIvor fortune if it weren’t for the fact she’s a woman. You know as well as I do men stalk women with money.”

Curt knew better than most inheriting a fortune was a heavy responsibility. “So you figure setting up a family trust will protect Darcy and presumably Courtney?”

“Who’s probably a complete ninny like her mother and just as beautiful. There’ll be plenty of men around to exploit her. Mark my words! There’s marriage, divorce. These things happen. Hell, I should know. Some bloody con man could go off with my money. No wonder there are prenuptial agreements. It’s the only way to go.”

Curt forced himself to sound as calm as possible. “So Darcy and Courtney are the main beneficiaries?” He wondered if there weren’t somebody else in the woodwork given McIvor’s numerous liasons.

McIvor cleared his throat several times. “Yes,” he managed hoarsely.

“The trust administers the estate and apportions income to your daughters. You’d have to decide how much.”

“They’ll have enough!” McIvor muttered irritably.

“I think you should line up another couple of trustees,” Curt suggested.

“Okay, okay.” McIvor waved a withered hand. “I’m telling you Curt it’s the only way I’ll die happy. I need a man of impeccable reputation who has more than enough interests of his own to act as the main trustee and executor of my estate. I believe I’ve come up with the right man. You. And if you won’t do it I’ll have to get someone else,” he added with grim determination. “Someone who mightn’t always act in the best interests of the beneficiaries.”

That forced Curt to reconsider. McIvor’s expression told him he meant exactly what he said. “Jock, you’re putting a lot on me. Darcy won’t like this idea.”

“It’s not Darcy’s money!” McIvor glared, his voice suddenly strong. “Murraree belongs to me. If she wants to make trouble she mightn’t be named as a beneficiary at all. Now I’m tired,” he announced gruffly. “Get that dratted Ainsworth woman in here, will you? She’s plain, poor bitch. No woman should be as plain as that and she stinks of disinfectant. I don’t want to hurt Darcy but I won’t tolerate any stubbornness. Explain that to her.”