The Man From Southern Cross

Margaret Way takes great pleasure in her work and works hard at her pleasure. She enjoys tearing off to the beach with her family at weekends, loves haunting galleries and auctions and is completely given over to French champagne ‘for every possible joyous occasion’. She was born and educated in the river city of Brisbane, Australia, and now lives within sight and sound of beautiful Moreton Bay.

The Man From Southern Cross

by

Margaret Way

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Chapter One

HE LEFT the mustering camp late afternoon, when the still-blazing sun was slipping down the sky in a glory of red, gold and amethyst.

Every bone, every muscle in his body was throbbing with fatigue. It had been a long hard day made doubly frustrating because he and a handful of the men had to fight yet another brushfire at the old “dancing grounds.”

The aboriginals claimed, perhaps with perfect truth, that the grounds were sacred and the brushfires, which had gone on for as long as anyone could remember, were the work of Jumboona, one of the more mischievous of the ancient gods. Sometimes when he was tired, like now, he accepted that possibility with a laconic shrug. Unless the fires were lit deliberately—and no one had ever found any evidence of it—there seemed to be no easy explanation. As his father used to say, “Old Jumboona strikes again!” Charlie Eaglehawk, their best tracker, claimed to have seen Jumboona through the flames, but then Charlie specialized in stories that made the hair on the back of one’s neck prickle.

He rode on, allowing the splendor of the sunset to revive him. The muster would resume at dawn the next day, but there was a tension in the men and in the cattle he didn’t much like. The hot winds had a bearing on it. As well, for the aboriginal stockmen, Jandra Crossing was the site of an old ritual killing by one of the dreaded kurdaitcha men, dispensers of justice since the Dreamtime. Stories about the ritual kurdaitcha killings were interwoven with the legends of Southern Cross; so were the stories about Jumboona and his hostile cavortings. Jumboona certainly liked to keep them all busy, he thought now with a sort of rueful humor.

A wallaby jumped out in front of his big stallion, The Brigadier, who executed a high-stepping dance. He reined the horse in, then pushed his akubra farther back on his head, looking up at the sky. It was pearlescent with smoke, the smell of burned bush land hot in his nostrils. Even the birds seemed disturbed, sending up spine-tingling shrieks as they flew home to the billabongs and swamps. The kurdaitcha man’s victims, transgressors of the tribal laws, were said to wander the lignum swamps at night. Many a stockman over the long years had claimed to see their spirits setting up camp near the water. He had never seen anything paranormal himself, and he didn’t expect to. But even his so-called iron nerves had been tested now and again in the hill country, where the extensive network of caves served as immensely old galleries for images of love magic and sorcery.

Southern Cross, the Mountford desert stronghold since the 1860s, was also a mythical place for the Jurra Jurra tribe. So the legends had begun and were allowed to grow. This was his country and he loved it with a passion. No woman could ever hold him in the same way. At thirty, with half a dozen affairs behind him, he had reason to know. He’d come close to marriage once—it was expected that at some stage he would provide the historic Mountford station with an heir—but he’d found himself unable to take the final step. No woman had ever fired his blood.

Dusk saw him riding through the main compound on his way to the huge complex of stables at the rear of the homestead. He dismounted in the circular courtyard, looking around. Where the hell was Manny? Probably whittling away at one of his little wooden sculptures; they were so good, he thought it was about time he encouraged the boy to do something with his skill. He summoned him with a loud whistle and Manny came running, his face split in a wide grin.

“Old Jumboona get yah again, Boss?”

Tired as he was, he couldn’t help returning Manny’s infectious grin. “The worst thing, Manny, is that you seem to enjoy it.”

“No, Boss.” Manny shook his curly head. “You’ll cut ‘im down to size and that’s a fact. I’m beginnin’ to wonder if the old boy ain’t losin’ his powers.”

His laugh rasped in his dry throat. “You should have spent the day with me. And I wouldn’t speak too loudly, either. The old boy might hear you.”

“Wouldn’t bother about the likes o’ me.” Manny took charge of The Brigadier’s saddle. “Saw Miss Annabel a while ago. She was all excited about her friend.”

Her friend! God, he didn’t know whether to laugh or bang his head against the stone wall. He’d clean forgotten about Annabel’s friend. She would be up at the homestead right now.

“Everything okay, Boss?” Manny asked anxiously.

“I just need an ice-cold beer, Manny. And a hot tub. In that order.” He didn’t say the thought of having to make small talk with a strange woman intensified his feelings of tiredness and irritation. He swept off his akubra and ran an impatient hand through his hair, black and shiny as a magpie’s wing. It was too thick and too long at the back and, he supposed, that together with the marks of grime and smoke gave him the appearance of a wild man. Not exactly what Miss Roishin—what kind of name was that?—Grant would expect to see. He laughed out loud remembering how some women’s magazine had voted him one of the sexiest men in the country. Eligible and rich. The rich surely helped; the sexy bit amazed him. He knew he was attractive to women, but he didn’t flatter himself unduly. Most women were very frivolous, he’d found. They had this big ongoing affair with glamour and glitz.

His thoughts inevitably shifted to the wedding. In a few days’ time, Annabel, his stepsister—the elder, by fully five minutes, of identical twins—was to be married in the homestead’s ballroom, with the reception in the Great Hall. The whole thing had gotten a little out of hand as far as he was concerned. And he was footing the bill.

To be fair, as a leading “landed” family, their guest list had to be long. The extended Mountford family was spread over three states, with Southern Cross the ancestral home. They all expected to be represented, along with close friends, business friends, the usual socialites, assorted politicians and a fair sprinkling of the legal profession to which the groom, Michael Courtney, belonged. It sometimes seemed to him that half the country had been invited, but Annabel assured him 250 guests was the lowest possible count. Roishin—was it Gallic for rose?—was one of the four bridesmaids. She had been a close friend of the twins at university, yet strangely enough he had never met her. The one time she’d visited the station he’d been on a business trip to Texas, seeing a fellow rancher. The girls, Annabel and Vanessa, spent a lot of time with her in Sydney where she lived and he maintained an apartment as a family pied-à-terre. When he’d had time to listen, he’d learned that her father was a merchant banker, her mother a divorce lawyer. Roishin probably arranged flowers. The twins, “the Mountford heiresses” as they were usually referred to in the press, didn’t work much, either. He, as head of the Mountford clan since the untimely death of his father, worked like a dog and always had.

His stepmother, Sasha, of whom he was very fond, had taken to spending a good deal of her time traveling. In fact, Sasha’s travels had become something of a family joke. His own mother, Charlotte, had walked out on him and his father after a grueling seven years of marital war. His father had applied for custody of their only child, with the considerable weight of the family’s power and influence behind him, and had emerged triumphant, just as everyone had known he would. He had been the heir, the helpless six-year-old victim who’d never been prepared for the emotional devastation. Even now, sometimes, in some deep place inside him, it hurt like hell. He’d had such love for his mother. Enormous love. He’d worshiped her. For years he just couldn’t take in her treachery. She had left them both for a man she hadn’t even bothered to marry.

His father had engineered it so that he rarely saw his mother. On those few occasions, he’d been full of hurt and hostility, very difficult to handle. He hadn’t seen his mother in many years now, though Sasha persisted in trying to shove photographs in the glossies under his nose. She was Lady Vandenberg now, wife of Eric Vandenberg, the industrialist. His mother had tried to make contact with him after his father’s death, but feeling as he did, he couldn’t bring himself to see her. She was the one who had made an art form of rejection.

He decided to enter the house through the front door. It was the quickest route upstairs, where he had the entire west wing to himself. Sasha and the twins shared the east wing. The house was so big they could all rattle around in it without even seeing each other. The Hon. George Clifford Mountford had begun work in the early 1860s on what was to become a thirty-five room mansion. The complex of surrounding buildings included a picturesque old stone church built for the master, his family and servants. No way could it accommodate 250 wedding guests, but the big reception rooms at the homestead could.

He had barely moved across the threshold when the sound of footsteps along the gallery made him look up. A young woman was descending the staircase at a rush.

His first thought was she had strayed out of a painting. Something by John Singer Sargent. Her image stamped itself indelibly on his mind. She was a waking dream, a creature of incredible light and grace. She kept moving…floating…. Colors shimmered. She had long dark hair with a burnish of purple, luminous white skin, large faintly slanted blue or green eyes. He couldn’t be sure. Her full mouth, so fresh and tender, was smiling in some kind of pleasurable anticipation. She was wearing what had to be her bridesmaid’s gown. A sumptuous champagne silk creation with a neckline cut to reveal bare sloping shoulders. The rich material gleamed. The beading and embroidery on the bodice and the full sleeves flickered and flashed in the light from the chandelier. She was tantalizing…tantalizing….

Something like a wave of heat broke over him. It was as though his skin caught fire. Just as he thought no woman could move him, he felt a shock of desire so powerful his fists clenched instinctively until the knuckles showed white. For an instant he was the helpless male again. Bitter and powerless in the face of a woman’s sheer magic. He was no match for her. The thought appalled him, influencing his attitude drastically.

She looked down. Saw him. Became arrested, unsure of her next movement. She’d been hurrying down the staircase, one hand holding up the skirt of her long billowing gown, the other trailing along the banister. Now she stood immobilized.

Adrenaline pumped through him, energizing his tired body and keying up his senses. Experience had taught him to be a very careful man. But here she was! Out of nowhere, a crisis in his life. And more than anything he wanted her away. Back to the city and the hothouse where she belonged. Such women couldn’t bloom in the desert. They only brought heartbreak and trouble.

He saw her make a visible effort to speak. A soft ripple moved her throat. “You must be David. We’ve never met, have we? How do you do? I’m Roishin.”

She had a lovely voice, warmly pitched, self-possessed. Or it would have been except for the faintest tremor. Perhaps his appearance frightened her? The wild hair, the dark stubble of beard, his stained clothes. She pronounced her name Roh-sheen with the accent on the second syllable. Appropriately, it sounded like a name from myth and legend.

Any civilized man would have moved to greet her, but he stood perfectly still, making her come to him. No one had ever called him David except his mother. He’d been Mont to his father, as he was to Sasha and the twins. Mountford to just about everyone else, including family.

She went to give him her slender white hand, but he evinced cool surprise. “Welcome to Southern Cross,” he said, aware his voice sounded curt and formal. “I won’t take your hand. I’m covered in grime and it’s important not to mark your beautiful gown.”

There was a fraught little silence as if she realized he didn’t want to touch her. Her iridescent eyes darkened, glistened as though stung by tears.

I want her, he thought. This is the woman who will change my life.

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