Home To Eden

“We’re simply being civilized,” Drake said. “We’re neighbors. Our families were once close. Nothing can be accomplished when people are divided. I’ll give you time to settle in, Nicole, before I ring you to set a time.”

“Thanks again, Drake.” Given Joel’s aggressive attitude, she was on tenterhooks waiting for Drake to go.

“Be seeing you.” He sketched a brief salute, then strode to the Beech Baron. He didn’t so much as glance back.

“God, would you look at him!” Joel muttered, tanned skin stretched taut across his cheekbones. “Arrogant son of a bitch. Always did have that contemptuous air. Magnet for the women, though. A real stud. He’s as good as engaged to Karen Stirling.”

“Really? He never said.” Nicole felt a betraying hot flush.

“What does it matter to you?” Joel asked, eyeing her closely. “For years now the two of you can’t even look at each other without a fight starting. You launched right into an argument the last time you were here.”

“You really saw it like that?”

“Are you telling me it wasn’t like that?” Joel’s gray-green eyes locked onto hers.

“I’m telling you I’m tired of the fighting. I’m tired of the hostility. As Drake said, our two families were close once. We still share a common bond. We love the land. I’m hoping with a little goodwill on both sides we can narrow the chasm that’s divided us.”

Joel guffawed. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this! Are you hiding something from me, Nikki?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s high time we buried the hatchet. Granddad’s gone. So’s Drake’s father. The result of a single tragedy. It’s so damn sad.”

With a callused hand, Joel grasped her face and turned it to him. “You’d be the biggest fool in the world to trust Drake McClelland,” he warned. “He’s a devious bastard. He wants Eden.”

“Well, he can’t have it.” Nicole considered her cousin squarely. “Let go of my face, Joel. You’re getting much too aggressive. I want to go up to the house. I’m like they say in the song, I’m tired and I want to go home. I’ve done an awful lot of traveling. I’m not a good traveler.”

“Sure, Nikki. I’m sorry. But I’ve been through a bad time, too.”

“How exactly?” Nicole asked him quietly.

“I miss you so much when you go away. This coming and going is torture.”

She exhaled. “That sounds so…oppressive. You don’t depend on me for your happiness, Joel. If you do, there’s something wrong.”

He lifted his palms, dropped them again. “Is it wrong to miss you when you go away? God, Nikki, we grew up together. Under the same roof. Doesn’t my missing you make sense?”

Unsure of herself, Nicole expressed regret. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

“But you’re home now.” Joel smiled, leaning forward to impulsively kiss her on the forehead. “I’m just so grateful.”

CHAPTER FOUR

SHE COULD SMELL the scents of her country. Feel its intense dry heat, bask in the radiant light so different from the light of the northern hemisphere.

Eden homestead faced her across a great down-sweep of lawn, the broad stream of the Minareechi at its feet, meandering away to either side. Black swans sailed across its dark green glassy surface as they always had. There was a small island in the middle of the river, ringed by great clumps of white arum lilies, heavily funereal. A life-size white marble statue of a goddess stood on a marble plinth at its center, the base almost obscured by a purple mass of water iris. It should have been a romantic spot. In better days it had been. Her mother had loved it. Now the place bore a faintly haunted air.

Joel pulled up at the base of the semicircular flight of stone steps that led to the front entrance of the homestead. Eden was a departure from other historic homesteads. A large country house in the grand style, it showed more than a little of French influence with its great mansard roof and round viewing tower in the west wing. The first chatelaine of Eden, Adrienne, had been French. No expense had been spared to please her, uprooted as she was from a land of immense beauty and culture to a vast, arid, primitive wilderness, scarcely explored. Nevertheless, Adrienne had not only survived but flourished, bearing six living children. The French connection persisted. One of her great-aunts had married a distant French cousin and still lived in a beautiful house outside of Paris, Nicole’s base when in Europe. A Cavanagh relative had brought a French bride home from the Great War.

Now Eden faced her with its proud tradition of service to its country. Her grandfather had been knighted for his services to the pastoral industry, as had his father before him. No such honor for Heath Cavanagh even if the queen’s honor system hadn’t been disbanded in favor of Australian honors. Drake McClelland would have been in line for that.

The great columns that formed the arcaded loggia were smothered not in the ubiquitous bougainvillea, but the starry white flowers of jasmine. The perfume was a potent blast from the past. Jasmine and its terrible associations. The day of the funeral… She tried to block its cloying scent, deciding then and there to have the whole lot pulled down and replaced with one of the gorgeous African clerodendrums.

“Welcome home,” Joel declared, his hands on her shoulders possessively. “Let’s go up. They’ll all be waiting for you. Gran is nearly sick with excitement.”

“I’m excited myself. I can’t wait to see her.” Neither of them mentioned Heath. Nicole looked around at her luggage.

“Barrett can take care of it.”

“Who’s Barrett?” she asked halfway up the stairs.

“The Barretts,” Joel told her carelessly. “Mother hired them fairly recently.”

“So what does Mrs. Barrett do? Help Dot?”

“Dot? Mum pensioned her off.”

Nicole’s first reaction was outrage. “Without speaking to me?” She heard the heat, the bewilderment, in her voice. “Dot’s been with us forever.” In fact, Dot had been born on Eden to a couple in service to the family. They’d lost Dot for a few years when she was married to an itinerant stockman who regularly beat her up and tried to sell her off to his friends. Afterward she’d returned to Eden penniless, defeated, permanently scarred, to ask for her job back. It was given to her gladly.

“Dot looked after us as kids, Joel,” she reminded him. “She was our nanny. She was wonderfully kind and patient. Did she want to go?”

“Don’t ask me.” Joel shrugged the whole matter off. “I don’t interfere in the domestic arrangements. She was getting on, you know. Hell, seventy or thereabouts.”

“All the more reason to keep her. I thought you were fond of her.”

“Nikki, the only person I’ve ever cared about is you.” Joel gave her a strangely mirthless smile. “I thought you knew that. Don’t worry about Dot. Mum would have looked after her.”

“I should hope so,” Nicole muttered, thinking this wasn’t the end of it. Siggy had no business sending Dot on her way. Even if Dot had wanted to go, Siggy should have told her. Eden was hers, not Siggy’s, wasn’t it?

“Please don’t be cross, Nikki,” Joel begged with a quick glance at her face. “I just want you to be happy.”

“Who’s happy? Are you?” she asked briskly. “Occasional flashes of it are all we can expect.”

“I need you to be happy,” Joel said, putting much emphasis on you.

Once they were inside the huge entrance hall, the symbolic center of the house with its great chandelier, magnificent seventeenth-century tapestry and elaborate metalwork on the central staircase, a man and woman suddenly made their appearance. The woman was tall, rail thin, with short dark hair and deep-set eyes; the man was noticeably shorter. Neither of them looked particularly pleasant.

Joel introduced them briefly as Mr. and Mrs. Barrett. Dislike at first sight? Nicole wondered. It wasn’t until she moved closer that she registered that the blankness of their expressions was actually shock. They looked the way people did when they saw a ghost.

Ah. It was her mother’s portrait in the drawing room. Of course. She could have posed for it herself.

“Right, Robie, you can collect the luggage and take it up to Miss Cavanagh’s room,” Joel ordered sharply, irritated by the pair’s demeanor. “Where’s my mother?”

Mrs. Barrett was the first to recover. “Mrs. Holt will be here directly, sir. She asked to be told the minute you arrived. Lady Cavanagh is resting. I’ll let her know you’re here, Miss Cavanagh.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Barrett. I’ll see to that myself,” Nicole was quick to answer.

Mrs. Barrett inclined her head respectfully, now a model of deference. “Mr. Holt is in his study.”

In fact, Alan was coming down the central staircase that very minute. Nicole looked up quickly, caught his expression before he had time to change it.