At the Cattleman's Command

He’d stepped into his father’s shoes five years ago. At that time Cresswell Lodge, on Queensland’s Darling Downs, had been the main family enterprise. An historic thoroughbred stud pioneered by one of his ancestors, its beautiful old homestead was still a showpiece.

The stud sold yearlings all over the world and, in consequence, the Hocking family rubbed shoulders with the élite of the thoroughbred world: sheikhs, royalty and self-made billionaires from all continents.

Not only had he continued that tradition but he’d also branched out. He’d put his love of flying, brought with him from the air force, to good use, for example, and turned a small crop-spraying business into a private airline. Most of his customers were pastoralists, graziers or mining and exploration companies, but he’d recently opened a deluxe charter wing for anyone who wanted to get from A to B in style and privacy. It was going well. So were his other non-thoroughbred enterprises.

Not that his mother, Harriet, approved entirely. She gave the impression that anything tainted with commercial overtones, which encompassed just about everything that didn’t have to do with horses, was beneath her. She lived and breathed horses. She had been a champion dressage rider in her day with an Olympic medal to her credit.

That was how Cresswell had acquired Rupert Leeton. The son of a friend of a friend of Tom’s mother, he’d come ‘down under’ to further his Olympic equestrian aspirations by taking tutelage from Harriet Hocking—and he’d never left.

A frequent source of irritation for Tom was the way his mother, and his sister come to that, simply refused to recognise that Cresswell Stud was a highly commercial enterprise, even if it did rely on horses. It was his father’s judgement in mares and stallions, and now his own, that kept an awful lot of dollars rolling in, without which they wouldn’t be able to scour virtually the whole world for horses.

Vanessa was also horse-mad. She was a showjumper, with extremely expensive tastes in all areas but little appreciation of how it was all funded. Both Harriet and Vanessa were passionate about Cresswell…but did Rupert, he often wondered, understand this trait in his future bride?

And there was Clare, his paternal aunt. He was very fond of Clare, despite her sometimes daffy ways, but even she had a very expensive hobby. She collected paintings and antique porcelain.

They all, with the possible exception of Lord Weaver, had very decided ideas.

He got up and went over to the mantelpiece. There was a framed photo of himself on it staring out over a vast, untamed landscape. He studied it for a long moment. It epitomised the call of the wild he’d had to resist for the last five years, which he’d spent nurturing the Hocking empire and his mother, aunt and sister. Then he turned away and dragged his thoughts back to his sister’s wedding.

‘Here’s hoping you have a solid constitution, Chas Bartlett, wedding consultant,’ he said to himself. ‘What you really need to be is a battering ram in a velvet glove.’

Charity Bartlett, nicknamed Chas from childhood, did not tend to make the people who knew her think of her in ‘solid’ or ‘battering ram’ terms, even within a velvet glove.

She was twenty-six, with deep blue eyes, pale skin and a mass of rich brown shoulder-length hair with a slight kink in it. She was five feet four, leggy and slender, with narrow hands and feet.

One did discover, if you got to know her, that she was warm and friendly, extremely active and energetic. She was a good lateral thinker but she had trouble telling her left hand from her right without the large round gold watch on a sturdy leather band, which she always wore, and possessed a poor sense of direction.

None of this interfered with her sheer artistry in putting together that ‘one perfect day’. She credited her parents’ genes for this. Her father, a cordon bleu chef, owned and ran a gourmet delicatessen and extremely ‘in’ café. Her mother, Hope, the head buyer for a chain of fashion stores, travelled overseas twice a year and was au fait with all the latest fashions. Her mother, Chas’s grandmother, Faith, had owned an antique shop and taken interior-design commissions. For as long as she could remember, Chas had been exposed to wonderful food, elegant clothes and lovely homes.

Since her father and grandmother could also be classified as highly excitable people, it was her mother who must have passed on to Chas some practical genes. It was these genes, added to her innate sense of style, that had enabled Chas to build up a wedding-consultancy business and make a go of it.

She’d called her consultancy The Perfect Day and ran it from her apartment in Brisbane. Thanks to the Richmond-Dailey wedding in Toowoomba, eighty miles west of Brisbane, Chas’s reputation had spread, she discovered as she took a call from one Birdie Tait, on behalf of someone called Thomas Hocking.

‘May I speak to Chas Bartlett?’ Birdie said down the line.

‘Speaking,’ Chas replied.

‘But—is this The Perfect Day wedding consultancy?’

‘Yes, it is, and I am Chas Bartlett, which is a bit confusing, I know. Chas is actually short for Charity.’

‘I see,’ Birdie said slowly.

‘Is that a problem, me not being a man—uh—Ms Tait?’

‘Well, no.’ Birdie sounded a bit confused, however. ‘It’s just that Laura Richmond gave me to understand—the thing is, she only ever mentioned you by name, not by gender, now I come to think of it, so…’ She trailed off.

Chas looked heavenwards. The Richmond-Dailey wedding had been a nightmare to organize, thanks to the bride’s mother, whom Chas had privately nicknamed Attila the Hen. Yet now it sounded as if Laura might have recommended her to someone.

You’re a genius, kid! Chas complimented herself with a grin.

‘Well,’ Birdie said again, ‘would you be interested in organising another wedding on the Darling Downs, Ms Bartlett?’

Ten minutes later Chas put the phone down and studied the notes she’d made.

Cresswell Lodge, the Hocking family, a peer of the realm—no, the son of a peer of the realm, but still a lord. Lord Weaver to be exact.

Chas stopped reading her notes at this point and got up to waltz around her studio. You beauty!

When Birdie Tait put down her phone, she studied it unseeingly for a long moment, then she shrugged.

Tom had found the idea of a man organising Vanessa’s wedding surprising, so he was not likely to take issue with Chas Bartlett being a woman, was he?

She had sounded rather young, though. Still, anyone who’d survived Laura Richmond must be quite tough, so why was she, Birdie, worried?

It came to her. Surviving Laura Richmond and surviving Tom Hocking were two entirely different matters…

Birdie bit her lip. But sounding young didn’t necessarily mean you were young and impressionable in that regard, did it? All the same, for all concerned, it would probably be a good thing if Chas Bartlett wasn’t young, impressionable—and pretty.

She pulled the phone towards her again and rang the stud but all she got was the answering machine. She left a message for Tom, telling him it was all set up for next Saturday and correcting her mistaken information on the wedding consultant’s sex.

Then she tried his mobile but it was unattended so she left a short message saying that Miss Charity Bartlett was arriving on Saturday, and asking him to either call her or check his emails. She then posted him an email message.

More, other than take to carrier pigeons, she thought exasperatedly, I cannot do.

Once she’d started to make money, Chas had invested in a royal-blue Range Rover. She’d had the back seat taken out so there was plenty of space for samples, dress boxes, boxes of invitations and the like.

It was a clear Saturday afternoon as she drove west of Brisbane and via Cunningham’s Gap towards Gladfield, the address of Cresswell Lodge.

The flat-topped vertical striations of the Great Dividing Range stood out rocky, grand and tinged with blue in the clear air. The bellbirds were calling as she drove through the Gap.

On the top of the range, the scenery changed to mostly flat and the temperature dropped a bit. It was early spring so the landscape of vast paddocks was still tending towards dry and old gold or raw and ploughed.

She’d been told to arrive around four and she was running on time. To help with her often non-existent sense of direction, she’d got detailed instructions from Birdie and drawn herself a large-scale map in thick black felt-tip pen.

She turned off the highway as instructed and took a few back roads through the paddocks. She turned right into Cresswell Lane and it ended at the gates of the lodge. Pretty impressive gates too, with horses rampant on each gatepost.

Horses, Chas thought, and—carriages. I haven’t done a horse and carriage wedding yet but this mob might be perfect for it!

She drove on between well-fenced paddocks, past a lovely old barn with a central cupola, then the drive climbed a bit and as she breasted the rise she took a quick, excited breath. Cresswell Lodge homestead was a gem as it spread out below.

Beneath a vast green roof, the walls were of honey-coloured stone. The house was L-shaped with paved verandas. Some of the walls and posts were creeper-hung, and a smooth lawn flowed down to a creek flanked by graceful old willow trees.

Curls of smoke were coming from the chimneys and two dogs were gambolling on the lawn—a large Great Dane and a miniature fox terrier. They stopped gambolling and streaked towards the Range Rover as she pulled to a stop.

A woman in her sixties, all kitted out in riding gear, came round the corner of the house and called the dogs to order as Chas got out of the car. They took no notice of her.

‘Hello! Who are you? Don’t worry about Leroy and Piccanin, they don’t bite.’