Required: Three Outback Brides: Cattle Rancher, Convenient Wife / In the Heart of the Outback... / Single Dad, Outback Wife

No problem at all but she had to remind him. ‘There’s a bit more to marriage than sex, Rory.’

He nearly said what was flooding his mind. I love you. But the last thing he wanted was to frighten her off. ‘Do you think I don’t know that? We really like each other, though, don’t we? Not that I’m about to knock great sex. Marriage would be very sad without it. But we have a lot in common. All the things we talked about last night. Our love of the land. Don’t let any bad experience you may have had with your husband warp you.’

She felt a frisson of shock. She had never said a word to him about Mark. What then had he assumed? ‘So much depends on our mutual love of the land, doesn’t it?’ she said, ignoring the reference to Mark.

‘I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was a crucial factor.’ He didn’t drop his gaze. ‘I couldn’t consider marrying a woman—no matter how much I wanted her—if I knew she might go off and leave me when the going got rough. Worse, leave our kids. You were being entirely truthful when you said the land is where you belong?’

‘Of course! How could you doubt me?’ She shook her head vigorously. ‘I have my own dreaming.’

‘Well then, it’s a brilliant idea,’ he said as though that clinched it.

‘More like explosive!’ Allegra knew she ought to be filled with doubts but incredibly she wasn’t. She felt more like a woman who had been blind all her life then finally opened her eyes. In fact, she had never felt so good. ‘You’ve got to give me a little time to think,’ she said, paying a moment’s homage to caution. Impossible to think when he was holding her hand and making love to her with his eyes. ‘This is scary. Or it darn well ought to be. I didn’t do too brilliantly the last time.’

‘And you won’t let me hear the problem. He didn’t abuse you, did he?’ Rory couldn’t abide the thought. ‘I’d go find him and horse whip him if he did.’

‘And wind up inside a jail? I wouldn’t like that. Mark isn’t a violent man. In many respects he’s the perfect gentleman. Everyone thought so anyway. People can act perfectly civilised but one barely has to scratch the surface to discover they’re something quite different underneath. My dad didn’t take to Mark. I knew that although Dad never put his concerns into words.’

‘I’m listening,’ he prompted, feeling an iron determination to protect her.

She bent her head, unsure how much to say. ‘Mark was into a fantasy life. A sexual fantasy life.’

‘One that bothered you?’ he frowned.

‘Once I found out he’d been unfaithful the marriage was as good as over. I hate to talk about it, actually. I forgave him the first time. I thought it was a one-off aberration and I felt badly about calling it quits so early in the marriage. But it wasn’t. Mark continued his brief encounters with married women in our own circle. They made an absolute fool out of me. Opportunity is always present if one is looking for it.’

‘Good God!’ Rory made a deep, growling sound in his throat. ‘He sounds like an oversexed adolescent.’

Allegra’s shrug was cynical. ‘A lot of men of all ages fit that description. Men and woman have affairs. Married or not. I saw a lot of it. One can’t help attraction. The possibility is always there. If one is married the right decision is to consciously turn away from temptation. Some don’t.’

‘You never thought to get even?’ he asked. ‘Sorry, I withdraw that. I know you didn’t.’

‘You’re dead right. I respected my marriage vows. I respected myself. That’s why I had to get out.’ She steadied herself to look into his eyes. ‘I liked the way you checked the minute I said it wasn’t the right time to have sex.’

‘Why of course! You surely didn’t think I would force the issue?’

‘I didn’t, but I was responding an awful lot. In a way it was a crisis and you dealt with it the way it had to be. Mark messed me up for a while. He’s quite a bit older. Nearly ten years. He set out to mould me to his ways but he failed. He actually believed his little affairs were harmless. He swore over and over he loved only me. I was his wife. That put me on a pedestal instead of exposing me to ridicule. He swore he’d get help.’

‘And did he?’ Rory was having difficulty understanding a man like Mark Hamilton.

‘I didn’t wait around to find out,’ Allegra replied flatly. ‘I believed I did at the time, but I didn’t love Mark. He was more a replacement father figure. Had I really loved him I’d have been devastated at the divorce, instead of just plain mad at myself. The state of my home life—the way I grew up—pushed me into trying to find someone safe. Mark had every outward appearance of being safe, except he wasn’t safe at all. I made one hell of a mistake. I can’t possibly make another.’ She was too close to tears to say another word.

He drew her within the haven of his arm.’ Did you tell your stepmother and Chloe about this?’

She nodded. ‘But not all that much. They thought the world of Mark. In their eyes if anyone was to blame for the breakdown of our marriage it was me. Val has been compelled to find fault with me since I was a kid. I couldn’t do a thing right. She used to make up stories for Chloe to believe and Chloe did. I used to be devastated. Not anymore. Over the years, Val has brainwashed my sister. Chloe would be a much better person away from her mother. In her heart Chloe knows it. Anyway there’s nothing I can do there. It’s all too late. There’s a lot of deep resentment. Not love.’

‘Was there any happiness in your marriage?’ he asked.

‘I can remember some good times,’ she said. ‘At the beginning.’

‘Then let me make up for all you’ve missed.’ His hand slid to her nape, cradling her head. He allowed himself the sheer bliss of kissing her again, only breaking it by force of will. ‘You’ll have to be really, really patient for the rest.’ Mockery sparkled in his eyes.

‘I guess I have to be okay with that.’ Her voice was soft. He had taken her breath. Sunlight was filtering through the trees, warming them in its streams of golden light.

‘I suppose we could live together first like couples do these days?’ He put forward the idea as a way of giving her an option. ‘Does that appeal to you? A trial run? We could take it in stages if that would make you feel easier in your mind. You can have all the time you want to get used to me. The same goes for me.’ He gave a sardonic ripple of laughter. ‘Although I’ll never get used to you if I live a hundred years.’ She had stopped him in his tracks when he had first laid eyes on her. She was even more beautiful to him now.

‘You’ll make some woman a terrific husband, Rory Compton,’ she told him, thus stating her clear preference.

‘Then that woman better be you! ‘

CHAPTER SEVEN

VALERIE’S face was a study. She jumped to her feet, moving towards Allegra as though she would like to slap her. ‘How long now is it since your divorce and you’re planning to remarry?’ Her voice rang so loudly it bounced off the walls. ‘Even knowing you the way I do, I can scarcely believe it.’

Chloe sat trembling, on the verge of tears. ‘What did you do when we were away?’ she demanded to know, her voice sounding thick in a clogged throat.

‘Do?’ Allegra repeated. She fell back from the kitchen table, as ever feeling outnumbered. ‘I hardly think it’s got a damned thing to do with you, Chloe. You should be thrilled I managed to get extra for Naroom, instead of questioning me like this. I haven’t heard a word about the better offer.’

‘Did you sleep with him?’ Valerie threw out an arm so precipitously she knocked over a glass on the sink. It smashed on the terracotta tiles but all three women ignored it.

Allegra sat there wondering why after all these years, she was still stunned by their reactions. ‘That’s absolutely none of your business.’

A dark look crossed Valerie’s face and her jaw set hard. ‘I bet you did. ‘You take no notice of the conventions. Mark was too much the gentleman to say a word against you.’

‘Mark was no gentleman,’ Allegra said, sick to death of the way they defended him. ‘A gentleman is a man of decency.’

‘And Mark wasn’t?’ Chloe’s pretty mouth twisted bitterly.

Her tone struck Allegra as odd. So odd, she thought suddenly of those old photographs. ‘You didn’t by any chance sleep with him?’ Allegra’s voice was so tight it was devoid of expression.

Chloe flushed a deep scarlet, then swiftly turned her head away, the very picture of guilt, colour flooding her face.

‘What a criminal thing to say. Apologise now.’ Valerie was breathing hard, her eyes fixed on Allegra and not her daughter. ‘You’re beautiful to look at, but you’re not beautiful inside. That’s the paradox with women like you. Apologise to your sister.’

Allegra ignored her, studying her half sister with contemptuous eyes. ‘Did you, Chloe? I always had a sneaking suspicion you did.’.

‘Are you quite m-mad!’ Valerie stuttered, looking like she thought Allegra beyond the pail.

‘You, Val, are a fool.’ Allegra spoke without looking at the woman. ‘So am I for that matter. You did didn’t you, Chloe. You did it as much to spite me as surrendering to Mark’s charms.’

Valerie, openly incredulous, shook her head, but Chloe, unable to disguise her guilt but without a glimmer of remorse, put her face down into her hands and promptly burst into floods of tears as her only way out.

‘Found out at long last!’ Allegra said quietly, feeling sick to the stomach. ‘What a hypocrite you are, Chloe. Always playing the role of Goody Two-shoes while you betrayed me in my own house.’

Chloe adopted a victim’s expression. ‘He wanted me. He waited for me.’ She lifted her tearstained face to steal a look at her mother.

‘The bastard!’ Valerie erupted predictably. Nevertheless she took Chloe’s shoulder in a hard grip. ‘Sit up straight. You’re always slouching about. You slept with your sister’s husband?.’ She gave her daughter a look of the utmost reproach.

‘Like I wanted to? He was after me. Anyway, what does it matter?’ Chloe moaned. ‘I was nothing to him. The only one who was ever important to Mark was Allegra.’