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‘Yeah,’ he agreed. Gingerly, he reached out one finger and touched the tiny hand that lay curled on Claire’s shoulder and then he touched Claire’s tear-stained cheek. ‘Were you imagining she’s yours?’
As Adam asked the question he looked so troubled, Claire’s tears erupted into proper, loud sobs.
‘My sweet girl,’ he whispered as his big arms came around her and the baby. ‘Hey, there. Don’t cry. You mustn’t cry. You’ll upset the baby.’
But in spite of her determination to be strong, she couldn’t stop crying. She leant her head against Adam’s chest and sobbed her heart out, sobbed for all those long, empty months she’d waited for a baby. Sobbed for her recent disappointment and all the unbearable months still to come.
And she felt her husband’s strong arms holding her close and his lips pressed against her forehead, but, to her horror, she knew that this time his loving embrace couldn’t bring her the comfort she needed.
There was only one person who could ease her terrible pain—and it was this little baby in her arms.
CHAPTER THREE
AS THEIR taxi sped through the dark streets, taking Adam and Claire through Sydney’s suburbs and back to their hotel, they sat silently and stiffly apart on the back seat. Claire stole anxious glances Adam’s way and once, when they were passing beneath a street light, their eyes met and she saw pain and stark worry in his.
An answering stab of anguish twisted in her chest. How could she ever live down her shame? She’d asked her brother if she could buy his baby!
How had she ever imagined that Maria and Jim would be relieved and pleased with her offer? What a fruit cake she was! Why hadn’t she seen that they would find her offer shocking, even insulting?
She’d totally lost it!
The impulse to ask for Rosa hadn’t been rationally thought out. It had seized her with frightening speed and, once it had taken hold, she’d reacted quickly, not giving herself time for second thoughts.
For a brief, shining moment it had seemed like a brilliant solution to everyone’s problems.
Her brother and his wife were really struggling to support their family. Maria looked very tired and strained. Their house was bursting at the seams. And it wasn’t as if they wouldn’t be able to see Rosa whenever they wanted to.
But how quickly that shining idea had dimmed. Now it could go on record as the blackest plan ever hatched.
The taxi swung sharply around a corner and Claire shoved a fist against her mouth to hold back a sob. She didn’t want to cry again. She was so sick of crying.
What a mess she’d made of things! And she’d hurt Adam, too. She could tell by the grim set of his mouth that he was still very upset.
Leaning back against the seat, she closed her eyes, but tears insisted on seeping from beneath her lids as she remembered the look on his face when he’d realised what she’d done.
‘You’re not in this alone,’ he’d reminded her and she’d felt a horrible pang of guilt.
Rushing headlong into making the offer without even consulting Adam was yet another example of how thoughtless she’d been this evening.
She had apologised later, after they’d made their uncomfortable farewells to Jim and Maria and were walking back down the uneven garden path to the waiting taxi, but she had the horrible feeling that her apology had been too little, too late.
For the first time in her marriage, she felt as if a tiny but irreparable rift had broken the tightly woven fabric of their bond.
Claire swiped at her damp eyes with the backs of her hands. She would feel better if she thought it were possible for Jim or Maria to understand what had made her behave that way. But there was no way they could imagine what it was like to be trying for a baby for years and years…and years.
Not even Adam really understood how she felt. He hadn’t experienced the deadening, inner desolation she suffered when, month after tedious month, she was forced to accept that her womb was empty again…
She wanted him to understand. She needed him to, but she feared it was asking too much of her husband. This problem of infertility just wasn’t the same for a man as it was for a woman.
No one labelled a man barren.
Just thinking about that brought a wave of self-pity sweeping over her and she was still feeling sorry for herself when their taxi glided up the impressive column-lined drive to their hotel’s entrance.
Adam paid the driver, but, instead of slipping her arm companionably through his as she usually did, Claire marched stiffly in front of him through the automatic sliding glass doors and across the polished marble foyer.
In the lift they stood staring blankly ahead in brittle, uncomfortable silence.
As soon as the door of their room swung shut behind them, she turned to her husband, bracing herself for his attack. ‘I know you’re very angry,’ she countered quickly. ‘I’m sorry I made such a dreadful scene. I didn’t stop to think how much my offer would hurt Jim and Maria. You must be so ashamed of me.’
Adam sighed as he dropped his wallet and a set of keys onto the little table at his side of the bed. ‘I’m not ashamed of you, Claire.’
‘But you’re upset.’
‘I’m disappointed that you rushed in and offered Maria and Jim that money without talking it over first.’
Emotion constricted Claire’s throat. She should have known Adam would be decent about this when he had every right to be angry, to lecture her. Illogical as it was, the fact that he was exercising so much self-control made her feel worse.
She forced her eyes wide open to hold tears at bay. She was determined not to cry, but it was so hard. She wondered if she’d sprung a leak.
‘I didn’t have time to talk it over with you,’ she tried to explain, conscious that it was a rather weak excuse. ‘The idea only hit me tonight and—and I couldn’t help myself, Adam. I felt I had to act straight away.’
‘But rushing in like that without talking to me. It’s as if I just don’t count. It’s sure as hell not the way I want to become a father.’
‘Oh, Adam.’ Claire’s voice broke on a sob. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘But I’m afraid our—our problem—this whole infertility deal—is so much harder for me than you.’
Adam undid the top buttons on his shirt. ‘What makes you so sure about that?’
In a gesture she realised was overly grand, Claire flung her hands out to her sides. ‘It doesn’t dominate a man’s thinking the way it does a woman’s and society doesn’t have the same expectations for men to produce babies.’
The slight movement of his mouth might have been an attempt at a smile. ‘I always understood that men played an admittedly small but vital part in the quest for babies. I thought you’d noticed.’
Claire groaned. Trust Adam to remind her how much she enjoyed his lovemaking. The most upsetting thing about this whole business was that their sex life could be so powerful and beautiful and yet…so fruitless.
‘Of course you play a role.’ Any other time she would have been able to turn this moment into a friendly joke. A joke that would lead to laughter and love.
Not tonight. Tonight she’d lost sight of her sense of humour. ‘You have to admit that where pregnancy is concerned, ultimately, it’s a woman’s responsibility to come up with the goods.’
Adam walked towards her then. He came around the foot of the bed and reached for her and drew her towards him. ‘Sweetheart,’ he murmured sadly. ‘We’ve been over this before. You know you mustn’t blame yourself.’
With his arms around her, he caressed the side of her head with his jaw. In the past, Claire had always loved the way he did that. She loved the way they fitted together as if they’d been custom-built for each other. She loved the feel of him, especially in the evening when his chin was just a little raspy with the beginnings of stubble.
She wanted to enjoy it again. She wanted to relent and to melt against him, to absorb her husband’s love. But tonight she was too tense and too full of self-recrimination to yield to his touch. Even though she hated herself for doing it, she remained standing stiffly in his arms.
‘We’ve discussed this over and over,’ he said.
‘But, Adam,’ she answered in a hollow, toneless voice that echoed exactly how she felt, ‘if I can’t have a baby, my whole life feels meaningless. What on earth is the use of being a woman if I can’t fulfil the main reason I was put on this earth?’
He let her go then and stepped back a little and a kind of resigned bleakness crept back into his eyes. ‘I think you’re being melodramatic, Claire. We’re still young and you shouldn’t give up hope.’
‘It’s too hard to keep hoping.’
‘Then look around you. There are many, many women who never have a baby and who live fulfilled, useful lives.’
‘But I’m not one of them!’
‘How can you—how can you be so certain?’
Claire sighed.
‘Adam, in my head I know you’re right. But my emotions tell me something else. Deep down I’m sure I’m meant to have a baby of my own.’
‘Oh, Claire—’
The tears welled and spilled. ‘I know I’m meant to be a mother, otherwise I wouldn’t feel this awful, aching, ongoing emptiness. That’s what made me do what I did tonight. I held Rosa and—and I—I lost it.’
‘I know, Claire. I know.’ Gently he kissed the top of her head and his fingers stroked the back of her neck.
But he couldn’t offer her any solution apart from his love. It should have been enough. She knew that. But tonight…why, oh, why wasn’t it enough tonight?
They prepared for bed and, when they slipped between the sheets, Adam didn’t try to seduce her. He kissed her and held her, massaged her tense shoulders and murmured soothing talk, but eventually he drifted away into sleep.
And Claire lay in the dark, tossing and turning, swamped with guilt. She kept seeing Maria’s stricken face and hearing her final words… ‘If you ever have a baby, you will understand. It’s too much to ask a mother to give her baby away. You’re asking the impossible. I’d rather starve than lose one of my little ones.’
If you ever have a baby…Those words echoed over and over in her head and they left her with the same desolate hollowness she’d felt this evening when she’d held Rosa. But now there was the bitter aftertaste of shame as well.
‘I’ve decided to start another garden. We need something more on the western side,’ Claire announced on the first morning after they arrived home at Nardoo.
They were lingering over a late breakfast. Nancy and Joe Fiddler, their elderly caretakers, had insisted that they indulge in one last day of a slower routine before they launched back into full-scale station work.
Adam pushed his empty breakfast plate aside so he could sort through the huge pile of mail that had come while they’d been away. Now he looked up at her and smiled. ‘Another garden? Sounds like a good idea.’
He knew that announcing a totally new project out of the blue was Claire’s way of telling him she didn’t want any more discussion about what had happened at Jim’s.
Ever since the evening at her brother’s, she’d looked vulnerable and uncertain. She’d spent the time in an agony of self-recrimination, going over and over how badly she’d behaved.
Now they were home, he could still see a haunting shadow dimming the loveliness in her eyes, but he hoped she would be able to put the whole regrettable incident behind her.
Claire always worried so much about what her family thought of her. Half the time he wondered why she bothered. Over the years, he’d had to hide his dismay when they hadn’t been more concerned and supportive about her problems.
He remembered the disbelieving, reproachful expression on his mother-in-law’s face when Claire had first tried to explain the difficulties she was having getting pregnant.
‘I don’t understand it,’ Mary Tremaine had exclaimed with a petulant quiver in her voice. ‘The women in our family never have trouble falling pregnant. Maybe you need to take more vitamins. Give some to Adam, too.’
Her younger sister, Sally, had been even less considerate than her mother. She’d simply grinned and winked at him as she’d commented flippantly, ‘You can’t really complain, Claire. Adam is so dishy that at least you can have a scrumptious time trying for a baby.’
And, of course, Jim and Maria had been so busy with their own family.
He noticed that, after initial attempts, Claire tended to avoid talking about her difficulties with her family. If they made enquiries, she invented cover-up lines. ‘Every time I decide it’s time to have a baby, Adam has to go off mustering,’ she’d tell them with a laugh.
He slit another envelope open with his penknife and Claire picked up her teacup. He fancied there was a tinge too much enthusiasm in her voice as she said, ‘I’m so glad it rained while we were away. I was worried that we’d come back to find everything in the garden brown and ugly.’
‘You know Nancy and Joe wouldn’t have let that happen. They’ve lived here for longer than I have and love it as much as we do. The place looks terrific.’
He pushed a pile of letters down the table towards her. ‘These are yours.’
‘I’ll read them later.’ She finished drinking her tea, replaced the cup on its saucer and stood. ‘It was too dark to see everything last night. I want to check on all my babies.’
Jumping to his feet, he walked around the table till he stood beside her. He touched her soft, too pale cheek.
‘Claire, you don’t mind being buried out here in the outback, do you?’
‘Oh, Adam,’ she sighed, dropping her head onto his shoulder and rubbing her nose into his neck. He could smell the clean, sweet fragrance of her hair and the familiar soap they always used at home. ‘Of course I don’t mind. I love it here.’ Then she kissed him and added, ‘Besides, you’re here.’
His heart gave a little tumble when he saw her innocent smile, as if the simple fact of his presence was enough to keep her happy.
‘I worry sometimes that being stuck in the bush makes everything harder for you. You’ve had to adjust to the isolation and you’ve been amazing the way you’ve learned so much about running the property. But you must miss your old friends. And you don’t have children to keep you busy.’
‘I’ve got the garden,’ Claire insisted. ‘And Heather Crowe has been onto me for years about taking part in the Open Garden Scheme. You know, opening our garden up to the public a couple of times each year. Apparently this district is getting quite famous for its gardens.’
‘Would you like that?’
‘I think I would. At least I’m going to give it some serious thought.’ She kissed him again, lingeringly on the mouth. ‘Now, please don’t worry about me. I made a terrible mistake in Sydney, but it doesn’t mean I’m becoming unhinged.’
‘Another kiss like that and you’ll never get to check your garden,’ he told her with a sexy growl. ‘Go, woman.’
Claire crossed the airy breakfast room and went down the hall, pausing to collect her hat from the row of akubras and oilskin coats in the entry-way, and then she stepped out through the heavy, silky oak-framed doorway onto the veranda where huge urns of lilies and wicker baskets full of lush ferns kept the front of the house looking cool and green all year round.
Before her stretched the Nardoo garden.
She was proud of the way she’d preserved the beautiful garden first planted by Adam’s great-grandmother. And she was equally proud of the way she’d extended and developed it, without losing sight of the tone and vision of the original garden with its old-world plants, low stone walls and winding flagged paths.
Even though she’d grown up in Melbourne, from the minute she’d arrived at Nardoo as a young and hopeful bride Claire had loved Adam’s home.
Last evening, as they’d rattled and bumped along the dirt track that led from the main road into their property, they’d both felt a kind of hushed awe as they’d looked around them at the enduring beauty of their own familiar, hazy bush and the soft silvery paddocks that ran down to the river.
Claire had felt the special thrill that only a true sense of belonging and homecoming could bring. She’d leant closer to Adam, slipped her hand along his jeans-clad thigh and rested her head against his shoulder.
And, without taking his eyes off the road, he’d half turned and kissed her forehead and said, ‘Nothing quite like home, is there?’
‘Absolutely nothing,’ she’d agreed and she’d felt a flutter of hope that perhaps her shameful episode in Sydney could be allowed to slip away like a bad dream that faded in the forgiving light of morning.
Now she pulled her wide-brimmed hat down firmly over her blonde curls, walked out onto the expanse of rolling green lawn and turned to look back at the house. It was a gracious, low-set homestead built to house a big family in colonial times, featuring two magnificent bay windows at the front and a bull-nosed, wrap-around veranda.
Last year she’d supervised the house’s repainting and, because she hadn’t wanted it to look too new or bright, she’d chosen a weathered, dusty red for the iron roof and the soft blue-grey-green tone of the surrounding eucalypts for the timber walls.
With its own separate nursery wing built in the late nineteenth century, it was a beautiful, welcoming house crying out for a family to fill it.
But Claire refused to let her mind linger on that dead-end path. She turned her attention to the familiar garden features.
