Australia: In Bed with a King: The Cattle King's Mistress

“Everything is running very smoothly at the moment.”

His smile took on an ironic curl. “My mother was extremely vexed I knew nothing to tell her. Tommy, incidentally, gave a glowing report.”

“I’m glad he’s pleased with my management.”

“No question about that,” he assured her, though his eyes seemed to burn with questions.

Miranda could feel herself flushing. Did he think she had Tommy dangling on a string? “I like my work,” she said defensively.

“My mother will be glad to hear it. She likes to check things for herself.”

Was he excusing himself from having anything to do with this command invitation? Letting her know she was still safe from him? Subtly directing her to where she should be right now!

Her gaze shot to Elizabeth King and her cheeks grew hotter at the realisation that the older woman was keenly observing her. Distracted by Nathan, Miranda had ignored her hostess, and was probably being judged wanting in good manners. It was all the more embarrassing, with Nathan actually hinting where her place was.

“Please excuse me,” she gabbled, and made a beeline for Elizabeth King, concentrating fiercely on how to minimise her gaffe.

She was graciously welcomed to the seat beside Elizabeth and remained there, doing her utmost to redeem herself in the older woman’s eyes until dinner was called. Not that she was subjected to a cross examination of business angles. The conversation seemed more directed towards her feelings about King’s Eden, apparently determining how settled or unsettled she was in her new location. Miranda hoped her replies gave satisfaction. It was impossible to stop the dreadful churning in her stomach.

When they moved into the dining room, she was expecting to be placed next to Elizabeth. It was disconcerting—the purpose of her being here thrown out of kilter again—when she and Sam were directed to flank Nathan at the end of the table with Tommy and Jared on either side of their mother.

A balanced table…Tommy’s comment flitted through Miranda’s mind, yet it didn’t feel right to her. The three King brothers and Sam shared a long familiarity. She was the outsider, placed in their midst but not a part of them, and that feeling deepened as dinner progressed and the others talked of people and events she had no knowledge of.

This was a world that was closed to her, she kept thinking, and she would never belong to it. Somehow she would have to stifle the feelings Nathan stirred in her. As it was, being seated so close to him was a nagging torment. Every movement he made, every word he said, burned more brightly on her consciousness than anything else.

When Jared started asking questions about her experience in the hospitality business in the city, compared to the situation she was handling now, she responded eagerly to his interest, welcoming a conversation that took her mind off Nathan. Tommy moved the topic onto tourism, and Sam brought up comments from her parents who were currently touring Argentina.

“What about your family, Miranda?” Nathan suddenly inserted, making her heart leap and her head jerk towards him.

He offered a sympathetic smile. “You’re in the midst of ours. Sam’s been rattling on about hers. I guess it’s made you feel a bit homesick for yours.”

“Not at all,” she denied, confusion whirling through her mind again. Why was he asking? She’d told him she didn’t belong anywhere. Despite the smile, his eyes seemed to be gleaming with purpose.

“Well, no doubt they’ll be coming to visit you,” Jared suggested.

Shaken by Nathan’s unexpected and forceful focus on her, Miranda was slow to respond to his brother.

Sam leapt in. “Have you got any scrumptious bachelor brothers that might drop in?” she asked, picking up the ball she’d been playing against Tommy all night.

“No,” Miranda answered with what she hoped was discouraging brevity.

“Sensational sisters?” Tommy countered.

“I have no family,” she stated bluntly, cornered into revealing that much.

Sam goggled at her. “You were an orphan?”

How could she stop this rolling inquisition? “I wasn’t as a child. I simply have no family now,” she said with emphatic finality.

“You mean they were all wiped out in some terrible accident?”

“Sam,” Nathan cut in tersely, his frown chastising her for avid curiosity, which might lead into painful areas.

“Sorry!” She grimaced an apology. “Guess I’ve drunk too much champagne.” Her eyes appealed to Miranda. “It’s just you’ve been such a mystery, never mentioning anything personal in your past.”

The comment focused even more interest on her and Miranda realised it would linger if it went unanswered, casting an awkward mood for the rest of the evening. Besides, what did it really matter? What point was there in hiding the fact she had no family pedigree whatsoever, nothing at all to recommend her to this company, apart from the business connection?

“There’s no great mystery, Sam,” she said with a casual shrug. “Unlike you and everyone else here, I have no family history going back generations. My mother was an orphan. I was her only child. She wasn’t married and never did marry. I wasn’t told who my father was and my mother died some years ago. So you see, I have very little to talk about.”

An appalled silence followed this little speech. Miranda found it so unnerving, she felt a compelling urge to fill it in with more talk, minimising the great black hole in her life they were probably all envisaging.

“Family is not a factor in my life, but it’s been very enlightening listening to all your news and the long connections between the Connellys and the Kings. It’s very different from what I’ve known myself.”

She tore her gaze from the miserable embarrassment on Sam’s face and steeled herself to look straight at Nathan who’d started this spotlight on her, digging under her skin again. She might as well hammer home the point that she was an unsuitable match for a King, and knew it too well to imagine any personal relationship between them could be viable.

“The framed photographs along your hallway here…such a history must be fascinating to have…to look back on…to feel a part of…”

“Yes,” he agreed, his eyes burning back a relentless challenge. “And most remarkable are the women who chose to follow their men here and make a life with them on this land. Like Sarah, who ran a brothel in Kalgoorlie, before throwing her lot in with Gerard.”

“Sarah? Who wrote the diaries?” Miranda couldn’t believe it.

“Yes. You might find them interesting to read sometime.”

It must be true, Miranda thought dazedly.

“Then there was Dorothy, a governess on one of the cattle stations in The Territory,” he went on. “One of nine children whose family was so poor she was virtually sold into slave labour. One less mouth to feed.”

He paused to let that information sink in, his eyes mocking any sense of grandeur about his family.

“Irene was the wife of a stockman who was thrown from his horse and died of a broken neck. She had nowhere to go. No one to turn to. She stayed here and married Henry King.”

“But that was in the old pioneering days,” Miranda finally found wits enough to protest. “I daresay there weren’t so many women then who would want to cope with such a life.”

“Not so many women now, either,” Nathan snapped back at her.

“I’m sure you’re wrong. The status is very different now.” She swung her gaze pointedly to Elizabeth King whose necklace of pearls was probably worth a fortune. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“It’s true there are many long-established families in the Kimberly, which give them a kind of status rating over relative newcomers,” she said consideringly. “But our population is so small…what is it, Nathan? Thirty thousand people in an area that covers over three hundred thousand square kilometres?”

“And that clustered mostly around the six major towns,” he said in affirmation.

“For the most part, the outback rule still holds,” Elizabeth King went on. “It’s not so much who you are or where you come from, but what you accomplish here that earns respect and status.”

For the most part…Miranda silently noted that reservation.

“In fact,” Tommy chimed in, “there are so many people with checkered pasts in the Kimberly, it’s wiser to accept them at face value than to inquire too closely.”

“The last outpost of civilisation,” Jared said with a grin.