The Unconventional Bride

A short, sharp argument ensued on who had the right to eavesdrop when. Then Mrs Bedwell announced that it so happened her nephew worked for Etienne Hurst so she knew quite a lot about him and all of it good. She also added pithily that if Mel hadn’t so resolutely distanced herself from her stepmama, she’d know a lot more about the man herself.

‘He’s made a fortune with his own hands,’ she stated. ‘He’s an excellent employer, a darn good businessman and he’s very highly thought of in the community.’

‘He may be,’ Mel shot back, ‘but he’s also extremely arrogant, and what’s that got to do with me marrying him? There’s no love lost between us, I can assure you!’

‘Love!’ Mrs Bedwell echoed with consummate scorn. ‘I married Jack Bedwell for love and five years later he walked out on me never to be seen again, leaving me with three kids to rear on my own. Love,’ she repeated bitterly; ‘what good did it do me? Here I am not even in my own home and a slave to a family that’s half-mad!’

They were in the kitchen during this exchange, and Mel suddenly changed tack.

‘Sit down, Mrs B,’ she ordered. She poured her a cup of coffee and took it along with some shortbread over to her.

Then she sank on her knees in front of her and said softly, ‘You do know this whole place would fall apart without you, don’t you?’

Mrs Bedwell pursed her lips.

‘You do know,’ Mel continued, ‘that we love you and consider you part of the family and we’d be devastated if you left and went to the Calders up the road who are always trying to pinch you from us?’

Mrs Bedwell’s face softened.

‘And who,’ Mel smiled up at her with a teasing glint in her eyes, ‘is the real authority in this house?’

Mrs Bedwell sighed then smiled herself. ‘You’re a sweetie, Mel. Just promise me one thing—you think seriously about Etienne Hurst. Because I know you well enough to know that losing the boys and Raspberry Hill on top of losing your dad would nearly kill you.’

So Mel thought about it until she could have screamed.

So many pros, she had to marvel. Just take the boys. There was no doubting Justin could be a handful at times, and what no one knew, because she’d chosen not to reveal it, was that he had been responsible for the notorious Raspberry Hill rum-rampage.

He’d got in with a dubious crowd of older boys whom he’d invited to the party with such disastrous results. She was pretty sure the fact that she’d had to front a magistrate had brought home the error of his ways to him. But she couldn’t deny that he might need a strong hand to steer him through his late teens.

Then there was Ewan. Thin and dark, at twelve, he was a chronic asthmatic with little interest in school and whose sole ambition in life was to paint. And Tosh, who had no redeeming chestnut in his hair—it was plain ginger—and if someone up there had set out to create another Just William, they’d succeeded in Tosh.

Her father’s favourite saying about his youngest child had been that he got into more trouble than Flash Gordon.

All the same, she loved them all desperately and couldn’t even begin to think about losing them.

So why do the cons seem to be overwhelming when there are so many pros? she asked herself as she tossed and turned one night.

Don’t be thick, Mel, she answered herself, using Mrs Bedwell’s favourite put-down. This is a marriage of convenience you’re being offered, that’s why it’s sticking in your throat! He may have kissed you and he may look at you as if he’d like to sweep you onto his charger and make off with you whether you like it or not, but his reputation is not consistent with Etienne Hurst suddenly falling in love with a girl like you…

She punched her pillow and tried to get more comfortable. It was well-known in the Gladstone area that for his recreation he’d leased and renovated an abandoned lighthouse keeper’s house on top of a craggy headland and that he spent some of his free time there, fishing and crabbing the waters of a protected lagoon at the base of the headland.

It was rumoured that there was no more fulfilling an experience for a woman than to be bedded by Etienne Hurst in his lighthouse eyrie then treated to a seafood banquet. It appeared to be a fact that there were plenty of willing women but—here lay the rub—mature, sophisticated, glamorous women who were a very far cry from nineteen-year-old Melinda Ethridge, whom, no one could deny, he often treated like an exasperating kid.

So, what did he really want from her? Was it only out of a sense of responsibility towards his sister’s stepchildren that he’d proposed marriage? Surely not. But then, despite sounding and acting like the quintessential Australian, had his French mother instilled old-fashioned notions about arranged marriages in him?