Trial By Marriage

‘Oh?’

‘My sister’s children. She’ll be living here with me for the time being. She and her husband have split up. They’re six and seven. Would you care to be in- troduced now or would you like time to calm down and wrest your thoughts from the frustrations of ag- gressively, unpleasantly macho men?’

Sarah’s lips parted and her eyes sparked danger- ously behind her glasses but as she opened her mouth to speak the door flew open and four people entered the study.

‘Well, that takes care of that,’ Cliff Wyatt mur- mured. ‘Miss Sutherland, may I introduce you to my sister Amy, my niece and nephew, Sally and Ben, and Wendy Wilson? Amy, this is… Sarah, I believe, Sutherland, the schoolteacher.’

The next few minutes were confused but Sarah was conscious of several overriding impressions—that Amy Weston and Wendy Wilson, who was apparently her best friend, were both glossy, beautifully groomed and clothed girls who couldn’t have looked more out of place on a cattle station if they’d tried in their de- signer gear, with their long, painted nails, flimsy sandals and expertly applied make-up. They were also striking contrasts, with Amy being a delicate honey- blonde, about five feet two, while Wendy was dark, taller with a stunning figure and beautiful yet curi- ously worldly green eyes.

Sally and Ben were both fair and blue-eyed like their mother, but, whereas Sally hung back shyly, Ben caused Sarah to smile inwardly as she recognised all the signs of an energetic, dare-devil, naughty-as-they- come little boy.

And once the rather confused greetings had taken place Amy said, ‘Well, thank heavens there’s a school, but honestly, Cliff, this place is unbelievable! The house is archaic and there are workmen everywhere, and it’s so…’ She gestured helplessly. ‘It’s… We might as well be stuck out beyond the black stump! I didn’t realise it was this far away, and this bush,’ she said intensely.

‘But I warned you, Amy,’ Cliff Wyatt said im- patiently. ‘Although the house will be finished shortly and there are all sorts of mod cons going in. Besides which you have a housekeeper so you won’t really have to lift a finger, little though you’re capable of it,’ he said drily, and added, ‘Tell me this, would you rather have stayed, perhaps languished is a better word, alone in Brisbane since you tell me you have no intention of going back to Coorilla?’

Amy disregarded the insults entirely and looked wistful. ‘At least I could go shopping in Brisbane. And I’ve just met the housekeeper, Cliff,’ she added with more spirit. ‘She… well, I’m lost for words!’

Wendy Wilson stirred. ‘She’s probably got a heart of gold underneath that mountainous frame and peculiar—er—manner,’ she suggested in a husky, oddly sexy voice.

‘She has,’ Sarah said.

All eyes switched to her and it interested Sarah to note that it was Wendy, not Amy, who drawled, ‘You could probably help us out a bit, Miss Sutherland. As you see we rather feel like fish out of water at the moment. Would you mind… helping us to find our feet among the locals a bit?’

‘Not at all,’ Sarah said although she knew that most of the locals would view both girls with the utmost suspicion, possibly for a good long time. She also started to feel annoyed again because the other girl was assessing her quite openly and contriving to make her feel aware that she was neither groomed nor glossy as well as very much an employee.

‘Then that’s settled,’ Cliff Wyatt said firmly. ‘Take ‘em away if you wouldn’t mind, Miss Sutherland; I have enough to do as it is. Oh, I’d like to check the schoolhouse out, though, and all the facilities you’re so proud of… uh, say around four this afternoon? I’ll meet you there.’ And he turned away and picked up the phone.

‘Cliff can be impossible at times,’ Amy said disconsolately.

They were in the huge homestead kitchen where Sarah had led them. Edgeleigh homestead was a rather lovely if dilapidated example of Queensland colonial architecture, with spacious, high-ceilinged rooms, deep verandas running around it and a steep green roof. Because she’d become friends with the previous owners, Sarah knew the house well and she was re- lieved to see that the mod cons Cliff Wyatt had men- tioned applied only to bathrooms and the kitchen and that the rest of the house was being restored to its former glory, with fresh paint and repairs being made in character with the style of the period.

‘Cliff is in the position of being able to do as he likes,’ Wendy Wilson said a shade drily. ‘And you have to admit you’d have been miserable on your own in Brisbane, darling.’

‘I suppose so.’ Tears sparkled momentarily on Amy’s lashes then she sniffed resolutely. ‘Are you sure you can only stay for a week, though, Wendy? This place—’ she looked around ‘—well, I’ve got the feeling it’s going to defeat me.’

‘I like it!’ Ben pronounced.

Wendy looked around thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps I can squeeze in another week. Well, Miss Sutherland, the housekeeper who gave Amy such a fright appears to have gone walkabout.’

‘Do call me Sarah,’ Sarah murmured. ‘Mrs Tibbs will have gone to collect the milk; she always does at this time. Would you like to come and see the schoolhouse?’

‘I don’t want to start school today!’ Ben declared.

‘Oh, there’s no chance of that,’ Sarah replied. ‘It’s Saturday.’

Several hours later Sarah sat on the front steps of her very basic wooden cottage that adjoined the school- house and watched the Land Rover, with Wendy Wilson at the wheel, drive away. She’d not only given Wendy, Amy and co. a tour of the schoolhouse but had borrowed one of the property vehicles so that she could introduce them to the wives and show them the mustering yards, the horse paddocks, the machinery shed and so on. Whether it had been a success, whether she had accomplished what Cliff Wyatt had expected her to was debatable.

There were ten men employed permanently on Edgeleigh, four of them with wives who between them provided her twelve regular pupils, and there was Mrs Tibbs, an institution on the property. She was a huge, formidable woman who could rope a calf single- handedly yet had the lightest hand for making pastry and, although no one called her anything but Mrs Tibbs, the whereabouts of Mr Tibbs remained a mystery. They’d finally run her to ground at the cottage of Jean Lawson, wife of the station foreman, and Sarah had attempted to establish some sort of bridge between the newcomers and the two old hands, but although Jean Lawson had tried her hardest Mrs Tibbs had remained inscrutable and unforth- coming—although she had, Sarah had noticed, al- lowed her gaze to rest on the children, particularly Sally, several times. Mrs Tibbs had a very soft spot for children.

Well, I can’t do any more, Sarah thought, and shook her head ruefully. As a matter of fact he’s jolly lucky I did as much after what he said to me, let alone Ms Wendy Wilson’s patronising ways…

And she fell to thinking about her new employer. He would be in his middle thirties, she judged, and immediately thought bitterly, Why didn’t I make some comment about him not being married, which he ob- viously isn’t? In fact I’ve been told he isn’t by everyone who got into such a flutter when he bought the place!

She grimaced then propped her chin on her hands and let her mind roam backwards. As soon as it was known that Edgeleigh had changed hands much speculation had taken place. Once it had become known that the wealthy Wyatt family had bought it, the speculation had become tinged with reverence. Sarah herself had had no knowledge of them but then she was not even a Queenslander, let alone an expert on the great pastoral families of the state. But she’d swiftly become apprised of the fact that they owned other stations—Coorilla had been mentioned often in the context of being a showplace and the Wyatts’ home base—and it had been said that if anyone could turn Edgeleigh’s fortunes around Cliff Wyatt was the one.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ she murmured drily to herself; ‘but that doesn’t mean to say he’s anything but a thoroughly unpleasant macho type of man.’ Then she sighed and looked around. Edgeleigh had been her home for the past year; situated in western Queensland, it spanned thousands of acres and ran thousands of head of cattle. It was intensely hot in summer and could be brisk and chilly in winter, with cold nights. It was not the most beautiful place on earth unless you appreciated the often dry and arid countryside and to do that you needed a fairly subtle eye for colour. The greens weren’t lush and brilliant and sandy brown predominated but there were shades of it that were sometimes closer to ochre, sometimes blindingly pale, and shades of blue to the sky that could be breathtaking. There was always an unlimited feeling of space. And in spring there was the unbe- lievable glory of the wild flowers that bloomed and cloaked the earth in blues and yellows, purples and pinks…

But it wasn’t only the colours and space Sarah had become addicted to, it was the freedom of having her own school, she had to acknowledge, and she caught her breath suddenly, knowing it would be an awful wrench to leave.

At twenty-six, she had no steady relationship with a man, it was true, but she rarely felt it as a lack in her life. For one thing she had reason to be somewhat cynical about what went on between men and women; for another she was passionate about teaching and knowledge—for yet another she was heavily into cre- ative arts such as papier mûché, rug-making, de- coupage et cetera, she was a fine seamstress, a creative cook, she loved growing things and grew her own herbs and anything else she could get to grow in pots, and she was the one who always got landed with any sick or stray wildlife such as orphaned baby kanga- roos or koalas, and birds with broken wings.

Consequently her cottage was a riot of colour from her artistic and potted gardening endeavours—indeed they spilled over into the schoolhouse next door—and more often than not there was an inquisitive lame joey about the place, and she rarely had a free moment.

Yes, very hard to leave, she mused with a sigh, and thought of “her” school. Although the permanent number of pupils was twelve currently, she had a wandering population that sometimes doubled the ranks, of children and even occasionally adults from the mostly aboriginal pool of stockmen and ringers who came and went like the seasons. She never turned anyone away even when she knew they’d be here today gone tomorrow, and it was amazing how many of those children turned up again and again. But for her twelve permanents, she was more than just the teacher; she was the confidante of their parents, often the babysitter, sometimes the relief nurse, the adviser who knew a bit about the big cities some of them had never seen, and lots more.

At present she was even the dressmaker, she thought with a wry little smile as she got up and wandered inside towards an improvised dressmaker’s dummy, drew the protective sheet aside and contemplated the wedding-dress she was making for Cindy Lawson, just eighteen, about to be married to a stockman from a neighbouring station and determined to be married in a dress that would be remembered for years on Edgeleigh. It had everything, this dress, or would have when finished, Sarah thought ruefully. The basic white taffeta was in the process of being embellished with lace, with sequins and pearl beads, with ruffles and frills and bows, and it had underskirts of billowing net. And if I don’t take a stand soon, poor Cindy will be so buried by it all, we won’t even see her, she re- flected. But at least it is all nicely sewn, she thought as she fingered a sleeve absently, and found her mind for some reason of its own returning to Cliff Wyatt— and the uncomfortable feeling she had that he’d all too readily realised his first effect on her. And that a couple of his subsequent obscure remarks had been subtle allusions to it.

Which makes him no more likeable, she thought, then glanced at her watch and decided to spend the next hour until four o’clock making sure the school- house was in tip-top condition.

It was a waste of time. By four-thirty he hadn’t ap- peared, by five-thirty she decided he wasn’t going to appear although she hadn’t hung around the school house all that time, but at six she closed her front door firmly against the rising chill of an autumn dusk. She prepared a chicken casserole using herbs, bacon and mushrooms, indulged herself in a rare treat—a glass of wine to soothe her feeling of being ill-used by an arrogant man—put a compact disc of Bach on to the player to help the wine along, pulled the rubber band out of her hair and ran her fingers through it, and started to sew the last, the very last, she told herself firmly, of the pearl beads on to Cindy Lawson’s wedding-dress while her casserole cooked.

So engrossed did she become in the delicate work that when a knock sounded on her door she called absently to come in, thinking it must be one of her pupils or their parents. So she got the surprise of her life when a light, lazy voice she remembered all too well said with reverence, ‘Hallelujah! Is it possible I’ve done you a grave injustice, Miss Sutherland?’

She swung round from the dressmaker’s dummy convulsively to see Cliff Wyatt standing just inside the front door, his dark gaze riveted upon the wedding-dress. ‘What a—concoction!’ he added wryly, and drew his gaze from it to her, standing in her socks. ‘But you know’ he mused as he took in her loose hair and the lovely pink and gold quilted sleeveless jacket she’d put on for warmth, ‘I could picture you in something… simpler?’

Sarah closed her mouth with a click, bit the cotton thread and put her needle carefully into a pin-cushion before she said arctically, ‘It’s not mine, Mr Wyatt, so neither did you do me an injustice nor are any as- persions you care to cast at my taste in fashion going to do anything other than bounce harmlessly off me.’

‘My apologies,’ he said gravely. ‘So you make wedding-dresses in your spare time?’

‘No, I don’t,’ she said crossly. ‘Well, I am doing this one in my spare time but it’s the first. It’s Cindy Lawson’s. You may have noticed that this part of the world is not densely populated by dressmakers so I… well, offered to help out.’

He laughed. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve had that fact rammed down my throat with monotonous, mad- dening consistency today—I mean the lack of dress- makers, hairdressers, beauticians, manicurists, boutiques—and the like. My sister does not believe she can live without them these days,’ he added with less than humour.

‘Well, I should have thought that would have been obvious to you before today,’ Sarah said candidly.

‘True,’ he agreed drily. ‘What was not so obvious was that she would take it into her head at this highly inconvenient time to decide she was a much maligned wife and to come running home to me.’

Sarah shrugged as if it was none of her business, which it wasn’t, and said curtly, ‘If you’ve come to check out the schoolhouse, it’s all locked up and you’re about three hours late.’

‘It seems I need to apologise again,’ he replied pleasantly, ‘which I do. I got caught up in other things and away from a phone.’

‘Oh.’ Sarah gazed at him and discovered what it felt like to have the wind taken out of your sails. ‘Well…’ she paused, then reached for her boots ‘… I suppose I could unlock it—uh—my casserole! If you wouldn’t mind waiting while I take it out of the oven—.’

‘No, don’t do that—is that what’s creating such a delicious aroma?—and don’t bother to struggle into your boots again,’ he said politely. ‘I really only came to explain that I’d been held up; we can do our tour another time. But there is something you could do for me,’ he said, his gaze wandering around the colourful room and coming to rest on the open wine bottle on the counter that divided the living-area from the kitchen. ‘You could offer me a drink.’

Sarah blinked then took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. ‘You… want to sit down and have a drink with me?’ she said cautiously as she put her glasses back on.

‘Why not?’ he queried. ‘It sounds like an essen- tially civilised thing to do. I also like Bach.’