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When Kate had announced that she would attend Angus’s funeral, her mother had been predictably surprised, almost offended. ‘Darling, no one down there will expect you.’
But Kate was used to her family’s antipathy to their Australian relatives and had learned to ignore it.
Her boyfriend, by contrast, had been disconcertingly eager. ‘Of course you must go. Stayas long as you like and have a holiday.’ Not a word about missing her. Until she’d asked. And then, of course, Derek had told her she’d be missed enormously.
So, despite mild misgivings, Kate had been determined to come. It was very important to make a showing of family solidarity. She’d wanted, more than anything, to demonstrate to this tight-knit Outback community that at least someone among Angus Harrington’s distant family cared, really cared, about his passing.
And she’d wanted the comfort of ritual, of a church service and a kindly minister saying prayers. Without that, she felt as if she couldn’t really say goodbye.
But now… She’d flown all this way, had travelled more than ten thousand tedious miles—in a jet, then a tiny inland plane no bigger than a bird, and then finally in a bouncing bus over narrow and bumpy Outback roads—for nothing.
Nothing.
Fighting her gathering exhaustion and despair, she turned to Noah, her voice rising on a querulous note. ‘I spoke to a woman. I thought she was your housekeeper. I can’t believe she didn’t tell you I was coming.’
A muscle worked in Noah’s jaw. Frowning, he shook his head. ‘You can’t have spoken to Ellen. She’s been in such a state since Angus died, I sent her into town to stay with her sister.’
Kate huffed angrily. ‘Well, I don’t know who it was then. I was on my mobile and the line kept cutting out, but I told her that I was held up at Heathrow. We had terrible snow and high winds all over England, and there were twenty-four-hour delays at every airport.’
Sighing heavily, Noah stood with his hands sunk on his hips, not meeting Kate’s gaze but looking somewhere out beyond, to the faded sky that hung listlessly above the parched brown paddocks.
‘Truly, I’m very sorry, Kate. I didn’t get your message. I—I think you must have spoken to Liane.’
‘Your wife?’
‘My ex-wife. She came back for the funeral.’
‘Ex?’
‘We were divorced just before Christmas.’
Kate struggled to breathe. Not an easy task when a string of explosions was detonating inside her. She felt as if she was tumbling through the air in slow motion. Noah was no longer married and her world had turned upside down.
In the awkward silence Noah said again, ‘I’m really sorry about the funeral, Kate.’
The defeated tone in his voice surprised her. He offered no further explanation. It was almost as if he expected that his former wife would have neglected to pass on an important message. Kate had no choice but to accept that she’d missed the funeral. It was a fait accompli.
But she’d come such a long way.
Noah picked up her suitcase and said in the quiet, laconic drawl of the Australian Outback, ‘You’d better come inside and I’ll brew up a cuppa.’
Kate forced a small smile. ‘I think I could really do with some tea.’
With a gentlemanly sweep of his arm, he motioned for her to enter the house ahead of him. They went down a long passage which, she remembered, cut straight through the middle of the house to the big kitchen at the back.
‘I’ll put your things in this spare room,’ he said, ducking into a bedroom that opened off to the right.
‘Are you the only person here?’
‘At the moment, yes. Ellen will be back soon.’
‘Is it all right for me to stay here tonight?’
‘Sure.’ He shot her a puzzled glance. ‘Don’t look so worried, Kate. No one expects you to jump on the next plane back to England.’
‘I couldn’t face that.’
‘This room’s yours, for as long as you need it.’
‘Thanks.’ She looked about her, amazed by how familiar the little bedroom felt. She was sure she recognised the single bed with old-fashioned brass ends and white candlewick spread.
Faded pink curtains hung over French doors that opened onto a side veranda. A very old, silky oak wardrobe with an oval mirror stood against the far wall. Looking about her, Kate was sure it was the room she’d slept in when she’d been here all those years ago.
Yes… She recognised the photo of her grandfather hanging on the wall. With his shock of white hair, thick white moustache and erect posture, and seated in a cane peacock-chair on the homestead veranda with his faithful dog at his feet, he looked like a throwback to the British Raj.
She remembered the emotional storms she’d weathered during the summer she’d spent here, how she’d hovered on the veranda, hoping to catch sight of Noah. The blissful heights and savage depths of youthful passion and unrequited love. The embarrassment. A shiver rustled through her. She hoped Noah didn’t notice.
With her suitcase stowed, they continued on down the passage to the kitchen.
This room hadn’t changed either, Kate decided as she looked about her at the huge black stove set in a galvanized-iron recess, and the big scrubbed-pine table dominating the room’s centre. A crumpled green-and-white-striped tea towel had been flung carelessly over the back of one of the mismatched chairs, and a clutter of kitchen utensils dangled from hooks above the stove.
On the far wall a row of shutters had been pushed wide open to catch the slightest hint of breeze. Everything was unpretentious and homely, just as she remembered, and she found this strangely unsettling. It was like stepping back in time.
Noah put the kettle on the stove and lit the gas beneath it. ‘I have to go into town this afternoon for the reading of the will,’ he said.
‘That’s OK. I’ll be fine here.’
‘You should come too.’
She’d given absolutely no thought to legal matters, but she was sure her uncle’s will would be very straightforward. Angus Harrington had been a bachelor, and she’d always understood that he’d planned to leave this property to Noah.
Noah had been born here on Radnor station. His father, Joe Carmody, had been head stockman, but there’d been a tragic accident—a light-plane crash in which both Noah’s parents had been killed. Uncle Angus had taken the boy into his home and, although he had never adopted Noah formally, he’d raised him as his own son.
Kate watched Noah now as he moved with familiar ease about the kitchen, fetching mugs and a brown china teapot and yellow sugarbowl.
He looked as at home in this kitchen as he had when she’d seen him working outdoors, or riding a stockhorse. He belonged here, and she couldn’t imagine him living anywhere else.
As he set the mugs and sugar bowl on the table, she said, ‘I can’t see why I need to go to the solicitor’s.’
‘You’re Angus’s blood relative. You should be there.’
‘My mother might be Uncle Angus’s sister, but she’s spent her entire life ignoring him.’
Noah simply shrugged. The kettle came to the boil and he turned to the stove to attend to it. Kate watched him pour boiling water into the teapot, and she couldn’t help admiring the way he managed to make a simple domesticated task look manly.
‘If you like,’ he said as he set the teapot on a cane table-mat, ‘I’ll give Alan Davidson, the solicitor, a quick call and ask if there’s any need for you to show up. It’ll only take a tick.’
Kate offered a mystified smile. ‘If you insist, but I hope I’m not needed. I’m dreadfully tired.’
‘The tea will refresh you. Do you mind helping yourself?’
‘Not at all,’ she told his departing back.
She poured a mug of tea. It was a strong brew and piping hot. She added milk and sugar, took her mug to the window and sipped hot tea while she looked out at the scattering of farm sheds and the dry, thirsty paddocks.
This property—named Radnor by Kate’s grandfather after his beloved Radnor Hills in England—didn’t look like a prize inheritance now, in the middle of a drought.
But she could remember her uncle’s boast that, when the rains returned, the Channel Country provided some of the best grazing land in Queensland. One good wet season could change the entire district in a matter of weeks.
Mighty river systems with strangely exotic names like Barcoo, Bulloo and Diamantina would bring water from the north, spreading into tributaries, into hundreds of creeks and billabongs, like blood filling arteries, drenching the hungry earth and bringing it back to life.
People who lived here needed faith to ride out the tough times until the good rains returned and thick feed covered the ground once more. Kate’s mother, sequestered in England, had never understood that.
Noah, on the other hand, knew it implicitly.
Kate drank more tea and sighed heavily. She was deathly tired. Jet lag was making her head spin. And she still felt a crushing disappointment at missing the funeral.
Footsteps sounded in the passage and she turned to see Noah coming through the doorway, his grey eyes unreadable, his mouth a straight, inscrutable line. ‘Alan Davidson was most definite. You should attend the reading of the will.’
Kate shook her head in annoyance. Didn’t people around here understand about jet lag? She couldn’t bear the thought of bouncing back down that bumpy road into Jindabilla. ‘I’m too tired,’ she said, and she yawned widely to prove it. ‘I’ll probably fall asleep in the middle of the reading.’
‘Take another mug of tea to your room and rest for an hour.’ Noah spoke quietly, but with an unmistakable air of authority. ‘Feel free to use the bathroom across the passage from your room. But be ready to leave at two-thirty.’
Kate knew she’d been given an order.
CHAPTER TWO
NOAH shifted uncomfortably on the hard wooden chair in the solicitor’s office, and watched a lonely ceiling fan struggle to bring relief to the over-dressed group in the crowded room. Neck ties were a rarity in the summer heat, but he and Alan Davidson had worn them today out of respect for their good friend, Angus.
James Calloway, Liane’s city lawyer, had gone one better and was wearing a spiffy business suit and a striped bow-tie that looked suspiciously like those worn by the old boys’ clubs of Sydney’s private schools. James was, Noah noted, very red in the face.
Old Angus would be chuckling if he could see this mob, suffering on his behalf.
But Noah had little to laugh about. He’d been through one hell of a week—the shock of Angus’s sudden death, the heart-rending task of spreading the sad news, the struggle to focus on arrangements for the funeral and a fitting farewell. And then, everything had been soured by his ex-wife’s unexpected appearance in Jindabilla with her fancy lawyer in tow.
The nerve of Liane—showing up out of the blue and coming to the funeral, as if she didn’t know that old Angus had, in the end, despised her and blamed her for bringing unhappiness to the people he loved.
She was still causing trouble. Noah couldn’t forgive her for neglecting to pass on Kate Brodie’s message. It was beyond embarrassing that Angus’s niece had travelled all the way from England and had missed everything. The minister could easily have held the funeral off for another day or two.
But it was just as sickening to discover that Liane was here now for the reading of the will. What the hell did she think she was up to? She’d cleaned him out during the divorce. What more could she want? The question made Noah’s jaw clench so tightly his teeth threatened to crack.
Alan Davidson shuffled the papers on his desk and looked tentatively around at the gathering. He gave a quiet nod to Noah, and a poor attempt at a friendly smile to Kate, who was sitting stiffly to one side near the window, as if she wanted to separate herself from the rest of them. And who, thought Noah, could blame her?
He let his gaze rest on her—an extremely pleasant distraction. She was dressed simply in a cream blouse and a brown linen skirt. Sunlight, streaming through the wooden slats of the blinds, shot fiery lights into her whisky-coloured hair and added a pink glow to her delicate English complexion. Her eyes were the softest shade of green.
Back at the homestead, she’d looked washed out, a pale shadow of the lively, flirtatious girl who’d come here for a holiday. But, given her long journey and jet lag, that wasn’t surprising.
Now, sitting in the golden beams of afternoon light, with her autumn hair and her brown skirt, she looked tranquil and undeniably eye-catching. Like a sexy version of a Rembrandt painting.
Alan Davidson opened the folder in front of him, snapping Noah roughly back to the business at hand. Noah’s fingers reached for the knot of his tie, and he longed to loosen it to relieve the sudden strangling sensation that clawed at his throat.
He had no reason to be nervous, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Watching Noah’s restlessness, Kate wished she was anywhere but here. It wasn’t just jet lag making her so ill at ease. She could have cut the tension in the room with a knife. In spite of his suntan, Noah looked pale, and he kept shifting in his chair. Now he was sitting ramrod straight, with his jaw clenched and his hands fisted on his knees, his knuckles white.
Her heart went out to him. She knew he’d loved her uncle as deeply as any son could, and he was still grappling with his grief. But at least he would walk out of this office today as the new owner of Radnor cattle station. Uncle Angus had told her mother years ago not to expect anything from him because it would all go to Noah. So why did Noah look so worried now?
Did he sense, as she did, that something wasn’t right? Alan Davidson, the balding, middle-aged solicitor, shouldn’t have been worried, but he looked almost as uneasy as Noah. He kept adjusting his glasses and opening his document folder, then closing it again.
The cocky man in the city suit—who’d been introduced as James Calloway, Liane’s lawyer from Sydney—was on edge in a different way. He had an air of contained expectation, and he kept sending Liane sneaky sideways winks, almost as if he knew something the others didn’t. Kate disliked his smugness and the way he kept inspecting his super-clean fingernails.
The only person in the room who looked relaxed was Noah’s former wife. Liane had speedily found the most comfortable chair in the room, and she sat now with an easy elegance that displayed her long legs and expensive dress to their best advantage.
She was exceptionally pretty—very fair and very slim with bright-blue eyes fringed by long, dark lashes. Model-perfect looks, Kate decided, with that particular air of feminine awareness that brought men to their knees. Poor Noah. He must have loved her desperately. Maybe he still did?
As Kate watched, Liane leaned towards her lawyer and rested her perfectly manicured hand on his knee. Was James Calloway her lover now, or did Liane like to tease?
At last, the solicitor made a throat-clearing sound to break the silence.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said quietly, ‘Thank you for coming here today.’ He placed his square hands on the folder in front of him. ‘I have in my possession two wills for Angus Harrington. One that was made many years ago, and another that was drawn up three months ago.’
He looked at them over the top of his glasses. No one spoke or moved, but Kate felt a new ripple of disquiet spread through the room, as if a stone had been dropped into a pond, disrupting its smooth surface.
‘I’ll cut to the chase and provide a summary.’ Alan Davidson lifted a sheet from the papers in front of him. ‘The property of Radnor, its buildings, stock, vehicles and equipment, were Angus Harrington’s only assets.’
As he spoke, the solicitor let his gaze shift from person to person in the room. ‘There were some cash reserves, but those funds have been depleted by the long drought. There won’t be much left in the bank by the time the final debts and mortgages are settled.’
He paused, looked down at the papers, then directed his attention to Noah. ‘Noah, Angus left you a half-share of Radnor, its assets and its debts.’
A half-share?
Kate saw the flare of shock in Noah’s eyes.
She was shocked too. And confused. What did this mean?
The solicitor turned quickly to Kate. ‘Ms Brodie.’
Her hand flew to her throat and her heart began to thump mercilessly.
‘It was your uncle’s wish that you should inherit the other half of his estate.’
‘No,’ she whispered.
Alan Davidson frowned.
‘No.’ Kate shook her head. ‘There must be a mistake.’
‘Of course it’s a mistake!’ cried Liane. ‘That can’t possibly be right.’
