Home To Eden

“The element of chance,” Drake drawled. “Now that Nicole is safely delivered, I’ll be on my way.”

“Why rush off? Long time no see.” Joel’s tone was bright, but Nicole clearly saw the venom. Like his father, Joel had a giant chip on his shoulder.

“Things to do. Always things to do,” Drake declined in an easy, casual voice.

“If what I hear is true, you’re negotiating to buy out Vince Morrow.”

Drake shrugged. “First rule of business, Joel. Don’t give out advance information.”

“You never change, do you.” A definite sneer. “Always the big man. The big action hero. Or that’s how everyone seems to view you. Not me.”

“That seems certain,” Drake responded. “I think I’ll go before this gets nasty.”

“Only fooling. Just testing,” Joel said, and suddenly grinned. “Fact is, Drake, I’ve always admired you. You always were someone. Even as a kid. A kid destined to go places, according to my dear grandpa. ’Course, you had a head start, being your dad’s heir.”

“I think I’ll skip the compliments, too,” Drake said, secure in his ability to handle difficult customers like Joel Holt. He turned his head to Nicole, who was looking on in dismay, no doubt waiting for the right moment to intervene.

“Thank you so much for the flight, Drake,” she said quickly. “You saved me a heap of trouble.”

“My pleasure.” He looked at her steadily, making up his mind. “I’ve done a lot of changes on Kooltar. Maybe you’d like to see it sometime?”

“My God, is that an invitation?” Joel cut in, his tone high and derisory.

“The invitation is extended only to Nicole.” Something flickered in Drake’s eyes, signaling he wasn’t going to take much more.

“And I accept it.” Nicole threw Joel a quelling look, which he promptly mimicked.

“Don’t tell me you two have made up,” Joel said incredulously.

“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.

It wasn’t welcome. It certainly wasn’t joy as in, Darling Nicole’s home! It was even possible he wasn’t happy to see her at all. Uncle Alan had always played his cards close to the vest. No one ever knew what he was thinking, and he didn’t even seem to have a past. Her mother had always said it was impossible to say what lay behind that bland exterior. Alan Holt escaped into his own world, but because of his fortuitous marriage lived exceedingly well.

Now around sixty Alan was still a handsome man, very elegant in his bearing. His full head of hair, once as blond as Joel’s, was an eye-catching platinum. Did he enhance it? She wouldn’t be in the least surprised, though Alan would keep them all in ignorance. His eyes behind his trendy rimless glasses were a frosty gray-green. “Fanatic’s eyes,” Heath Cavanagh once called them. Nicole thought that ridiculous. She’d never seen Uncle Alan get worked up about anything. Except after the tragedy, when he had sealed himself off in his own private tomb. Inside the extended Cavanagh family, some of them admittedly terrible snobs, no one could understand why Sigrid had married him. He wasn’t “solid, one of us.” He’d been an actor touring with an English repertory company when Sigrid, quite out of character, fell madly in love with him and married him before she’d had time to think about it; a quick private ceremony without benefit of family. Something she was never to live down. At least the marriage had lasted, though her grandfather had once remarked wryly, Alan would be terrified at the idea of going back to earning his own living.

Now he came down the steps holding his arms out to Nicole as though she was the nicest thing he’d seen in years. Pure theater. “Nicole, dearest girl!” An actor’s good carrying voice, plummy accent, real? Religiously acquired? Who knew? That was privileged information.

“Uncle Alan! How wonderful to see you again.” Hypocrisy was everything in polite society. Much as he had tried to win over her affections, Nicole had always found it difficult to get close to this man. Her grandmother, rather like Drake, was fond of saying, “One could live with Alan for fifty years and never know him.”

As always he was impeccably groomed, a light jacket over his moleskins, smart open-neck yellow-and-white checked shirt. Pleasant whiff of cologne. A dandy. Useless around Eden. He didn’t need to be busy. In the early days Siggy had been afraid that her sister’s beauty would turn Alan’s head. Of course, no such thing happened. David McClelland had been the center of her mother’s life then, only there’d been no future for either of them.

They talked for a few moments about her long, exhausting journey getting there. “One would have to try covering the distances to know!” Amazement was expressed that Drake McClelland had elected to fly her home. How was he?

“As splendid as ever!” Nicole couldn’t help saying, even though she knew Joel would take umbrage.

She excused herself to go to her room. Tidy herself up before she went in to see her grandmother. She didn’t have a room exactly. She had almost an entire wing. Clear the furniture, and Joel and his friends could have a polo match in her bedroom. Siggy had arranged it all in a vain bid to keep her at home. A leading decorator had been flown from Sydney to take charge of extensive refurbishments. The upshot was a suite of rooms that wouldn’t have looked amiss at Versailles. All the rooms in Eden were huge by modern standards, with lofty richly decorated ceilings. When the decorator had seen the scope of his commission, he had gone crazy with joy, muttering excitedly to his sidekick about how much it would all cost. Normally very thrifty for a rich woman, Siggy had given the decorator and his team carte blanche.

It didn’t add up to a decorating triumph. The designer had gone right over the top, creating lavish spaces only Marie Antoinette could have handled. Nicole would have to make a few changes even if Siggy didn’t like anyone to challenge her judgment. A lot had changed since she’d grown up and Granddad had died and left her Eden. Shifts in authority. Power. Roles.

Dinner was always at eight. She knew they would all meet downstairs in the library at half-past seven for drinks. Inside the well-appointed bathroom, with far too many mirrors—she wasn’t that keen on an aerial view of her bottom—she took a quick shower to freshen up. Someone, probably the dour Mrs. Barrett, had laid out soaps, body lotions, creams, potions, a series of marvelously ornate bottles containing products for the bath. That was okay. Every woman liked a bit of pampering. In a mirrored cupboard she found a variety of over-the-counter painkillers of different strengths, tubes of antiseptic cream, bandages—in case she decided to slit her wrists? Everyone had heard her story, knew she’d seen a psychiatrist for years. She remembered the time when even Siggy, the hardest-headed of all, had major concerns she might turn into, if not a nutter, a complete neurotic.

Satin-bound monogrammed pink towels had been set out, along with a pink toweling robe. She slipped into it, tying the belt, then opened her suitcases and put her clothes away. She spent several minutes deciding what to wear. Finally she dressed in a simple, white linen top and matching skirt, embellished with a fancy belt. She took two regular headache tablets, and only the thought of seeing her much-loved grandmother and not-so-much-loved aunt kept her from collapsing in a heap on the bed. Her hair had more life than she did in the summer heat. She brushed it back severely, twisting the curling masses into a heavy loop.

Her grandmother Louise and Aunt Siggy were waiting for her in her grandmother’s sitting room, which adjoined the master-bedroom suite.

“My darling girl!”

The woman she loved most in all the world. “Gran.” She flew to her, sending her aunt a sideways warm greeting. Her grandmother remained seated in her armchair, a sure sign of aching bones, graceful and amazingly youthful-looking for a woman approaching seventy. She was beautifully groomed from head to toe—Nicole had never seen her any other way—but frailer than the last time Nicole had seen her.

“I’ve been praying and praying you’d come home.” Louise Cavanagh held her granddaughter’s face between her hands. “If only for a little while, Nikki. Just seeing you gives me so much joy and strength.”

Nicole blinked back smiling tears. “I think of you every day, Gran. I dream of you when I sleep.”

“I love you so much, my darling.”

They were cheek to cheek. Hair touching. One a rich deep red, the other snow-white. When each drew back, their eyes glittered with tears.

The three women kept off the subject of Heath Cavanagh until all other questions had been raised and answered. Louise and Sigrid had long since heard about the Bradshaws—both from time to time had spoken on the phone to Carol, thanking her and her husband for looking out for Nicole. They were very grateful. They wanted to know all about her painting, her recent TV appearance, her continuing success. They wanted to know more about New Yorkers. And had Nicole met anyone—a man—she really liked? They knew of Carol’s efforts, Nicole’s few aborted relationships, the difficulty she had sustaining them. Most of all they wanted to know how she and Drake McClelland had got on. Just imagine, what were the chances of the two of them running into each other at Brisbane airport?

At one time her grandparents had lived for a happy union between the two families, planned a beautiful big wedding to be held on Eden. Their beloved daughter, Corrinne Louise to David Michael McClelland. It was to have been perfect. Only, scarcely a month before the wedding, Corrinne shocked and enraged both families by eloping with the devilishly handsome, hard-drinking, compulsive gambler Heath Cavanagh, a distant cousin. He not only stole Corrinne away. He stole the grand plan both families had laid down when Corrinne and David were little more than babies. Deprived them of the union of two pastoral dynasties. David was pitied. For a time he suffered severe withdrawal—there was a rumor, never substantiated, he had once attempted suicide—but the love of his family and the dynamic support of his older brother, Drake’s father, saved his sanity.

Until he became involved with Corrinne again. The moth to the flame. Heath Cavanagh as a husband wasn’t long in favor. David, her first and last lover, returned. After that it was only a question of time before tragedy overtook them. There was no way, given that particular triangle, they could escape their brutal destiny.

“So where is Heath?” Nicole asked finally, knowing there was no putting it off.

“He keeps to his room mostly,” Sigrid said. “As I told you he’s very ill.”

“Shouldn’t he be in hospital with the proper care?”

“It may come to that, but for now he desperately wants to stay here. He’s come home to die.”

“This isn’t his home,” Nicole said flatly.

“My darling, he is your father.” Louise spoke in a near whisper. “He may have done lots of things to cause the family shame, but he’s one of us. Our blood.”

“Do you really believe that, Gran?”

“I certainly do,” Sigrid suddenly barked. “Corrinne chose him. She had David, but she couldn’t keep herself in line. She was a man-eater, and she looked like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. You’re not a cold person, Nicole. Just the opposite, but you’re so bitter about your father. He suffered, too, you know.”

“What a lie.” Nicole’s blue-green eyes flashed.

“You were too young to see it,” Sigrid said, her throat flushed with emotion. “Too much in shock. That man suffered.”

“That monster! I’ve never spoken of it, but he used to slap me.”

“I know nothing of this!” Louise said in amazement.

“I didn’t want to start anything. Upset you or Granddad. He tried to throw a scare into me. It didn’t work.”

“I’m not surprised,” Sigrid said in a derisive voice. “You were just so…”

“What?”

“Spunky, I suppose. Cheeky. Too precocious.”

“She was adorable,” Louise protested, never one to find fault in her even when she deserved it, Nicole knew.

“That man didn’t love me. He didn’t want me around.”

Sigrid snorted, loud as a horse. “That’s not true, even if no one really rated beside Corrinne.”

“I don’t understand how you can defend him, Siggy—when it suits you, that is,” Nicole said.

This time Sigrid inhaled forcefully. “Because I feel sorry for him.”

“Well, I hate him. I mean, I really hate him. I could have had my mother—”

“You can’t get off it, can you? You’ve got some incredible block.”

“Block, be damned!” Nicole saw red.

“My dears, please stop.” Louise held a lavishly be-jeweled hand to her head.

“I’m so sorry, Gran.” Nicole broke off immediately. She and Siggy had always gone at it.

“There has to be hope for us,” Louise said. “If Drake has asked you over to Kooltar, surely we can see that as a thawing, can’t we?”

“Gracious me, who’d want to call on Callista?” Sigrid hooted. “You surely don’t think you’re going to fall into her outstretched arms, Mother. She bloody hates us, the cold bitch. She blames us all for the loss of her brother. She worshiped at his feet. Everyone knows that. If I’d have been her mother, I’d have sent her packing.”

“To where?” Nicole asked. “That’s hardly fair. She was the daughter of the house.”

“They should have sent her to one of her relatives in Sydney or Melbourne,” Siggy said sternly. “Opened up her life. Station living is too isolated. We’re too much in one another’s pockets. Callista was positively fixated on her brother. A byproduct of a lonely life. I tell you, if he hadn’t been her brother, she’d have tried to bag him. She was too close. A bit kinky, I’d say.”

“Like Joel is too close to me?” Nicole shocked her by saying.

Sigrid, on the voluptuous side when young, now bone thin, let out a swearword that made her mother wince. “That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard. It’s not at all the same. Tell her, Mother.”

Louise sighed deeply, flapping her right hand helplessly. “I’m not sure if Nicole isn’t right.”

A worse swearword escaped Sigrid. “You’ve only just come home, Nicole, and you’re already stirring things up.”

“I’m trying to understand what’s going on in my life, Siggy,” Nicole responded hotly. “I don’t want to upset you, especially when you let fly like a station hand. This may not be the time to ask, either, but why did you get rid of Dot?”

“Why talk about bloody Dot?” Sigrid made a gesture as though she was swatting a fly. “It was time she retired. She wanted to live on the coast.”

“I never, ever heard her express that desire.” Nicole lifted her eyebrows.

“It seems she did, darling,” Louise intervened gently.

“She said that to you, Gran?” Nicole was amazed. “She said nothing to me and I was here in June. Why so sudden?”

“I don’t know, darling, but she seemed quite happy to leave. I was most surprised. I thought Dot was a fixture on Eden.”

“If you give me her address, Siggy, I’d like to contact her.” Nicole turned to her aunt.

Sigrid nodded stiffly. “I’m sure I’ve got it somewhere. If you don’t trust me, Nicole, to make decisions…”

“Of course I trust you, Siggy.” Nicole felt free to lie. “You should have told me, all the same. Dot was devoted to Joel and me when we were children. How much severance did you give her?”

“Certainly not a blank check.” Sigrid pulled a long face. “But enough to keep her comfortably for the rest of her life. That’s if she’s careful.”