The English Bride

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“Which brings me to why you have designs on me.”

His effrontery took her breath away. “You can haul yourself out when the going gets tough. Because I’m only following my own instincts. You do have a certain emotional pull and physically you’re extraordinarily attractive.”

He gave a mock bow, surprisingly elegant. “Thank you, Francesca. That makes my heart swell.”

“As long as it’s not your head,” she retorted crisply.

“My head has the high ground at the moment,” he drawled. “But I’ve enjoyed tonight. Brod and Rebecca are such good company and you are you.”

It was so disconcerting, the swings from sarcastic to sizzling emotion. An acknowledgment, perhaps, that their connection was powerful, though he was going to fight it all the way.

“That’s good I’ve done something right,” Francesca said in response, trying to keep her tone light, but she was utterly confounded when tears came into her eyes. Being with him made her more sensitive, more womanly with a much bigger capacity for being hurt. For all the calmness of her voice, Grant was instantly alerted. He glanced up swiftly, catching her the moment before she blinked furiously.

“Francesca!” Heart drumming with dismay and desire he reached for her, pulling her into his arms. “What is it? Have I hurt you? I’m a brute. I’m sorry.” He could see the pulse beating in her creamy throat answering the pulses that were beating in him. “I’m trying to see what’s best for both of us. Surely you can understand that?”

“Of course.” Her voice was a husky whisper. She dashed her hand across her eyes. Just like a little girl. Grace under fire.

An immense wave of passion tied to a deep sense of protectiveness broke across him, causing him to mould her into him more tightly, achingly aware of the feel of her delicate breasts against the wall of his chest. He was on the verge of losing it. It was terrible. But good. Better than good. Ravishing.

She attempted to speak but he was seized by the urgent need to kiss her, to take the crushed strawberry sweetness of her mouth, to find her tongue, to move it back and forth against his in the age-old mating ritual. This incredible delight in a woman was something new to him. Something well beyond his former sexual experiences. He wanted her. Needed her like a man needs water.

There was tremendous passion in his kiss, a touch of fierceness that thrilled her because she knew she meant more to him than he dared acknowledge. His hand held her nape, cupped it, holding her head to him. She was almost lying back in his arms, allowing him to take his intense pleasure, and something deep, deep inside her started to melt. She was almost fainting under the tumult of sensation, her own ardent response. She had never known such intimacy, never before revelled in it, knowing it could be a cause of much unhappiness but she was too needy or too stupid to care.

What bright spirit impelled towards delight was ever known to figure out the cost?

They broke apart, both of them momentarily disorientated as though they had been beamed down from another world. Grant, for his part, was profoundly conscious his moods, attitudes and thoughts about this woman were vacillating wildly like a geiger counter exposed to radiation. She set his blood on fire, which greatly complicated their relationship. How could one think calmly, rationally when he was continually longing to make love to her? She might even see his masculine drive as excessive, a kind of male sexual aggression. She was so small, so light limbed, so fragile in his arms, the perfume of her, of her very skin, a potent trigger to desire.

By contrast she seemed shaken, deprived of speech, unusually pale.

“I’m sorry, Francesca.” Remorse was in his voice. “I never meant to be rough with you. I got carried away. Forgive me. It’s as you say, I lack the courtly touch.”

She could have and perhaps should have told him how she felt, how she welcomed his advances with all her heart, but the tide of emotion was too dangerously high. She stood away, putting a trembling hand to her hair, realising a few long, silky strands had worked their way loose. “You didn’t hurt me, Grant,” she managed to say. “Appearances can be deceptive. I’m a lot tougher than I look.”

His low laugh was spontaneous. “You could have fooled me.” He watched her trying to fix her hair, wanting to pull it free of its braided coils. What fascination long, beautiful hair had for a man. He could even imagine himself brushing it. God he had to be mad! He forced a grin, the smile not going with the look in his eyes. “I suppose we’d better take the coffee out. It’ll be getting cold.” He reached around and set the glass plunger on the tray. “I’ll carry it out. You relax. Get the colour back in your cheeks.” A tall order when he had reduced her to a breathless quivering receptacle of sensation, naked in her clothes.

CHAPTER TWO

FRANCESCA woke with a start knowing before she even looked at the clock she had slept in. She had set the alarm for five in the morning, now it was six-ten.

“Damn!” This was too awful. She wanted to go with Grant. Francesca flung herself out of bed, glancing through the open French doors that gave onto the verandah. Sun-up four-thirty. The sky was now a bright blue, the air redolent with the wonderful smell of heat. She had even missed the morning symphony of birds, the combined voices so powerful, so swelling they regularly woke her at dawn. Sometimes the kookaburras started up their unique cackling din in predawn and she was awake to hear them, lying in bed enjoying their laughter. But she had slept deeply, exhausted by the chaos of emotion that was in her.

Still she planned to go with Grant and he’d agreed, if somewhat reluctantly. Grant had told them all before retiring he intended to wait an hour for a message to be relayed in from Bunnerong. All stations operated from dawn. Perhaps his pilot had already called in or Bunnerong had notified Kimbara of his arrival? That was the way they did it in the bush.

Hastily she splashed her face with cold water to wake herself up, cleaned her teeth and dressed in the clothes she had laid out the night before to save time. Cotton shirt, cotton jeans, sneakers. She put the brush through her hair, caught up a scarf to tie it back and rushed out into the silent hallway, padding along it until she reached the central staircase. She was almost at the bottom, when Brod came through the front door, surprise on his handsome face. “Fran? We thought we’d better let you sleep in.”

Dismay hit her and she sent him a sparkling glance. “You don’t mean to tell me Grant has gone without me?” Her emotions were so close to the surface she felt betrayed.

“I think he intends to go without you,” Brod admitted wryly. “He has the firm idea you’re not really up to it. Bunnerong has called in, as expected. Curly still hasn’t arrived. Grant has delayed taking off for as long as he can. He’s down at the airstrip refuelling.”

“So he hasn’t taken off yet?” Hope flashed in her eyes.

“No.” Brod heaved a sigh, beginning to think Grant was right not to take her. This was his little cousin from England. He valued her highly but she wasn’t used to confronting potentially dangerous situations. With no makeup and her long hair floating all around her, her cheeks pink with indignation she looked little more than a child.

“Get me down there,” she said, racing towards him and taking him firmly by the arm. Literally a fire head.

Brod resisted momentarily, even though his expression was affectionate and understanding. “Fran, think about this. There’s a possibility the pilot has come to some harm. That could be very distressing for you. Believe me, I know.”

She looked up at him with her flower-blue eyes. “I won’t screw up, Brod, I promise. I want to be of help. I completed a first-aid course.”

Brod gave a sigh and ran his hand through his raven hair. “I don’t want to be alarmist but out here accidents aren’t something that happen to other people, Fran. We don’t read about it in the newspapers or see it on television. They happen to us. All the time. Curly might be beyond first-aid. Think of that. No matter how game you are, how much you want to help, you’ve led a protected life.”

“Most people do. But I’m ready to learn, Brod.” Francesca caught his stare and held it. “Stop treating me like a pampered little girl. I’ve had my tough times as well. Now, get in and drive.” She ran to the waiting Jeep ahead of him, almost dancing in her desire to get down to the airstrip. “Grant promised he’d take me,” she called over her shoulder. “I know it mightn’t be good but I’m not going to cave in. I’m half Kinross.”

She was, too, he thought with some admiration. Used as a buffer between warring parents. “It sounds to me like you have something to prove, love,” Brod said as he started the engine.

“Yes, I have.” The great thing about her cousins, Brod and Ally, was they wanted to listen.

“To Grant?” He looked at her with his all-seeing eyes, encouraging her.

“Who else?” she flashed him her smile.

Brod nodded, his expression wry. “He’s a helluva guy, Fran, a genuinely exciting personality. He’ll go far, but he’s very stubborn. Once he makes up his mind you won’t change it. Princess that you are you won’t wind him around your little finger so be warned. Grant has very strong views. A quick pride. Strength and energy to burn. But he has lots to learn like the rest of us. We know he’s deeply attracted to you but you could get hurt. Rebecca and I don’t want to see that because we care about you too much.”

Francesca’s delicately arching brows drew together. “I know and I love you for it but I have to take my own chances in life, Brod. Make all my own mistakes. That’s as it should be. My friendship with Grant has gone a step further. Everyone is aware of it. We’re more involved and as a consequence we’re coming increasingly into conflict.”

“You know what they say. Life isn’t meant to be easy. I can see it happening, Fran.” Brod accelerated away from the compound. “Grant has never felt a woman’s power. He’s had casual affairs but they never burned him. What happens when you go back to Sydney? Have you thought of that?”

“Of course I have!” Francesca exclaimed, trying to push the thought away. “I don’t want this time with you and Rebecca to end. I’m longing to see Ally when she gets home. Rafe, too, though I know he has reservations about my friendship with his ‘little brother.’”

Brod chose his words carefully, knowing what she said was quite true. “Responsibility is Rafe’s middle name, Fran. He damned near had to father Grant when their parents were killed. In his shock and grief Grant went more than a little wild. He was always getting into trouble, always trying to bring some daredevil prank off. That tragedy has shaped him. Put fear in him. Showed him about loss. It might well be to remember it. Grant mightn’t let a woman get too close to him. His grief at the loss of his parents was enormous. He was very close to his mother as the youngest.

“They were wonderful people, the Camerons. They took pity on Ally and me and our chaotic home life. They as good as fostered us. Rafe is as close to me as a brother. Come to that I always thought of Grant as a younger brother. To love is to lose. Grant learned that early.”

When they arrived at the airstrip Grant was close to taking off. He saw them coming and jumped down again onto the tarmac. There was Francesca looking like someone who should be scattering rose petals at a wedding, Titian hair flying all around her lovely head. He tried to keep a sudden anger down, wondering why he was feeling so angry at all. He didn’t want her hurt. That was it. He didn’t want her exposed to danger. In short he didn’t want her to come.

She was running towards him, crying out in reproach. “You surely weren’t going to leave without me?”

He nodded more curtly than he intended. “I don’t have a real good feeling about this, Francesca. It might be better if you stay home.”

“But you promised me last night.” Her churning emotions sounded in her voice.

“You agree with me don’t you, Brod?” Grant shot his friend a near imploring glance.

Brod considered a while. “I figure she’ll come to no harm with you, Grant. She may see something she’s not prepared for but knowing her I’d say she is adult enough to handle it. There may not be much wrong at all. A choke in the fuel pipe, or running too low on petrol to reach the scheduled landing.”

“Which places him fair and square in a difficult and potentially dangerous situation,” Grant said, feeling the pressure. “The sun is generating a lot of heat.” Both men knew a lost man could dehydrate and die within forty-eight hours in the excessively dry atmosphere.

“We’re all praying, Grant,” Brod said.

“I know.” There was tremendous mateship in the bush. Grant turned to see Francesca tying her hair back with a blue scarf for all the world as if she was donning a nurse’s cap. She looked achingly young. Adolescent. No make-up. She didn’t need it. No lipstick, her soft, cushiony mouth had its own natural colour. What was he to do with this magical creature? But she was game.

A few minutes later they were airborne, heading in the direction of Curly’s flight path. Grant pointed to various landmarks along the way, their flight level low enough for Francesca to marvel at the primeval beauty of the timeless land.

Beneath them was lightly timbered cattle country, with sections of Kimbara’s mighty herd. Silver glinted off the interlocking system of watercourses that gave the Channel Country its name. Arrows of green in the rust-red plains. Monolithic rocks of vivid orange stone thrust up from the desert floor, thickly embroidered with the burnt gold of the spinifex. The aerial view was fantastic.

Kimbara stockmen quenching their thirst with billy tea waved from the shade of the red river gums along a crescent-shaped billabong. This was vast territory. Francesca could well see how a man could be lost forever.

While Grant spoke to Bob Carlton on Opal, Francesca looked away to a distant oasis of waterholes supporting a lot of greenery in the otherwise stark desert landscape. The sky was a brilliant cloudless enamelled blue and the heat was beginning to affect her.

This wasn’t the super aeroplane, the great jet she was used to on her long hauls from London to Sydney. This was a single rotor helicopter she knew little about except it could fly straight up or straight down, forwards, backwards, hover in one spot, or turn completely around. It could do jobs no other vehicle of any kind could do like land in a small clearing or on a flat roof. In many ways, a helicopter was pretty much like a magic carpet and Grant was known as a brilliant pilot. That gave her a great deal of confidence.

A lot of time passed and they saw nothing to indicate closer inspection. Francesca’s eyes were moving constantly, trying not to concentrate on the extraordinary surrealistic beauty of the great wilderness, but on spotting a yellow helicopter. Huge flocks of budgerigar, the phenomenon of the outback often passed beneath them, the sunlight striking a rich emerald from their wings. She could see wild camels moving across the red sand beneath them and looking east a great outcrop of huge seemingly perfect round boulders for all the world like an ancient god’s marbles.

They were now within the boundaries of Bunnerong with several large lagoons coming up. Fifteen minutes on, Grant pointed downwards then proceeded to tilt the rotary wings in that direction.

They both spotted the company helicopter at the same time. It had come to rest on a small claypan that was probably baked so hard it was like cement and virtually waterproof. Dead trees supporting colonies of white corellas like a million flowers ringed the shallow depression. A short distance off was one of the loveliest of all desert plants the casuarina, a mature desert oak with its foliage spreading out to form a graceful canopy. Beneath the oak Francesca could plainly see the body of a prone man, his face covered by the broad brim of his hat. He didn’t rise at the sound of the helicopter. He didn’t lift the hat away from his face. He didn’t wave. He kept on lying there like a man dead.

Dear God! Francesca felt a moment of sheer terror. She had never seen death before.

In a very short time they were down on the fairly light landing pad, Grant on the radio again to let Bob Carlton back on Opal know he’d found Curly grounded, the helicopter apparently safe. More news would follow.

Outside the helicopter Francesca looked to Grant for instructions.

“Stay here,” he ordered, just as she knew he would. “And take this and put it on.” He handed her his akubra knowing it was much too big but it would have to do. “You go nowhere without a hat. Nowhere. And you the redhead!”

She took the reprimand meekly because she knew she deserved it. If she hadn’t slept in she would have brought one of her wide-brimmed akubras. “Do what I say now,” Grant further cautioned. “Stay put until I see what’s going on.”

It seemed sensible to obey. The birds outraged by the descent of the helicopter into their peaceful territory were wheeling in the sky, screeching a deafening protest before flying off.

She looked at Grant’s broad back as he moved off, sharply aware he felt deeply responsible for this pilot. The moment he called back to her, “He’s alive!” was to stay bright in Francesca’s memory. She ran without thinking towards them, even though he stood up abruptly, holding up his hand.

She hadn’t seen the blood. It had dried very dark, almost dyeing the pilot’s shirt.

“What’s happened. What is it?” she asked in considerable alarm.

“I don’t know. It looks like something has attacked him.” Grant strode off to the helicopter, returning with a rifle just in case. Wild boars. Bound to be plenty about. Dingo attack. He didn’t think so. Then what? God forbid the attack was human. “Poor old fella! Poor Curly!” he found himself saying.

Francesca went to the unconscious man and fell to her knees. “He needs attention quite urgently. Whatever’s done this to him?” Very gingerly she began to unbutton the pilot’s blood-soaked shirt and as she did so he started to moan, beginning to come around.

“Here, let me take a look,” Grant said urgently, gazing down at the fallen man with perplexity. “He landed the chopper quite okay. He must have become ill. Maybe he’s had a heart attack. But those wounds!” Grant looked closer as Francesca working deftly peeled the shirt away. “God!” Grant exclaimed, “It’s like claw marks. Feral cats.”

“Could they do so much damage?” Francesca asked dubiously, used to the adorable home variety.

“They could slash you to pieces,” Grant said grimly. “So many introduced animals do terrible damage to native wildlife and habitats. The camels, brumbies, foxes, wild pigs, rabbits, you name them. I’ve seen a man gutted by a wild boar. Feral cats aren’t like your domestic tabbies. They’re ferocious. More like miniature lions.”

“They must be if they’ve done this.” Francesca turned her head briefly. “Why don’t you get the kit from the chopper,” she urged. “I’m okay here. These wounds need to be cleaned. A lot of them seem to be fairly superficial although he’s bled a great deal. Others are deep.”

“They could start bleeding again,” Grant warned, looking at her closely. In the shade of the casuarina she had discarded his hat, which in any case had fallen down over her eyes. She had gone very pale but her hands were rock steady.

“I’ll be very careful,” she said. “Blood is horrible but I won’t faint if that’s what’s bothering you.” In fact she was willing herself to remain in control. “Hello there,” she said in gentle amazement as Curly opened his eyes. “Lie there quietly,” she bid him swiftly, fearful his wounds would reopen. “You’re fine. Fine.”

Curly’s alarmingly grey face took on the faintest colour. “Have I died and gone to heaven?” His voice was little more than a rusty croak.

Grant moved so he was in Curly’s sights. “Hi there, Curly. I’m not paying you to rest easy under a tree.”

This time Curly tried a smile. “Hi, boss. I wondered when you’d get here.”

“Don’t try to speak, Curly. Save your strength,” Grant urged, perturbed his man looked terrible. He’d get onto the flying doctor right away. Curly could be airlifted to Bunnerong, which had its own airstrip. The Royal Flying Doctor’s Cessna could land there.

“Bloody cats, would you believe it,” Curly groaned. “Bloody feral cats, savage little bastards. A whole pack of them came at me out of nowhere while I was off balance being as sick as a dog. Never had such a thing happen to me before. Must have scared them somehow. Reckon I passed a kidney stone I was in so much pain. The radio is out. Needs an expert. I had to land. Just made it before I passed out. Agony I tell ya! Hell wouldn’t be too strong a word for it. Now I open my eyes to an angel with eyes like the sky and hair like the sunset.”

“Don’t talk, Curly.” Francesca smiled, knowing it was taking too much out of him. “You’ve had a very bad experience. I’ll try not to hurt you but those scratches need attention.”

Curly gave the ghost of a cheeky grin. “Whatever you do to me, I’ll love it.”

Come to think of it she could pass for a celestial creature, Grant thought as he walked back to the helicopter to put through his calls. She could be counted on, too, to keep her head in an emergency as well. He had to admit he was impressed with her quiet efficiency.

A day later Curly was sleeping peacefully in hospital minus his gall bladder, lamenting the fact the “angel” who had tended his lacerations so tenderly had been replaced by a burly male nurse.

The following week saw the return of Fee and David Westbury, arms full of presents, looking wonderfully rested and increasingly affectionate after a fortnight on a small exclusive Great Barrier Reef island. Both wore becoming golden tans, Fee telling all and sundry she wasn’t in the least afraid of the sun, it was “absolutely” essential. Of course Fee was blessed with a good olive skin, well hydrated, well cared for and she’d spent nearly all of her adult life in misty England.