Trial By Marriage

He laughed. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve had that fact rammed down my throat with monotonous, mad- dening consistency today—I mean the lack of dress- makers, hairdressers, beauticians, manicurists, boutiques—and the like. My sister does not believe she can live without them these days,’ he added with less than humour.

‘Well, I should have thought that would have been obvious to you before today,’ Sarah said candidly.

‘True,’ he agreed drily. ‘What was not so obvious was that she would take it into her head at this highly inconvenient time to decide she was a much maligned wife and to come running home to me.’

Sarah shrugged as if it was none of her business, which it wasn’t, and said curtly, ‘If you’ve come to check out the schoolhouse, it’s all locked up and you’re about three hours late.’

‘It seems I need to apologise again,’ he replied pleasantly, ‘which I do. I got caught up in other things and away from a phone.’

‘Oh.’ Sarah gazed at him and discovered what it felt like to have the wind taken out of your sails. ‘Well…’ she paused, then reached for her boots ‘… I suppose I could unlock it—uh—my casserole! If you wouldn’t mind waiting while I take it out of the oven—.’

‘No, don’t do that—is that what’s creating such a delicious aroma?—and don’t bother to struggle into your boots again,’ he said politely. ‘I really only came to explain that I’d been held up; we can do our tour another time. But there is something you could do for me,’ he said, his gaze wandering around the colourful room and coming to rest on the open wine bottle on the counter that divided the living-area from the kitchen. ‘You could offer me a drink.’

Sarah blinked then took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. ‘You… want to sit down and have a drink with me?’ she said cautiously as she put her glasses back on.

‘Why not?’ he queried. ‘It sounds like an essen- tially civilised thing to do. I also like Bach.’

‘Very well,’ Sarah said with a little tilt of her chin, because although there was no outward manifestation of it she knew perfectly well that he was laughing at her and would succeed in making her feel churlish and petty if she expressed any further reluctance- damn him! she thought darkly. ‘I was having a glass of wine; it’s nothing outstanding but it’s all there is—.’

‘So you better just drink it and behave yourself, Mr Wyatt,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll do my best, ma’am.’ And he had the gall to sit himself down in an armchair and offer her a bland, innocent expression.

She went to get another glass with all the com- posure she could muster, and took her casserole out anyway because it was ready. But finally there was nothing left to do but sit down opposite him after handing him his glass, and rack her brains for some- thing to say.

He said it for her. ‘Were you born to this kind of life, Miss Sutherland?’

Surprise caused her to lift an eyebrow. ‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘You seem to be extremely competent at it.’

‘I like it,’ Sarah said slowly. ‘For one thing,’ she went on with a little spark of irony in her blue eyes, ‘as you so rightly surmised, I’m… well, I love teaching—’

‘You could teach just as well in a city.’

‘But I couldn’t have my own school.’

‘I see,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But there must be other things you like about the place?’

‘Oh, there are. They’re just a bit hard to put into words,’ she said non-committally and sipped her wine.

His lips twisted. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that was often a problem for you.’ And he waited.

Sarah frowned then said with some asperity, ‘Why do I get the feeling this is lapsing into the kind of discussion we had this morning?’

‘It could be,’ he drawled, ‘that, while I’m trying to draw you out in a very friendly sort of manner, you are resisting strongly. Very strongly for the rather small person you are, in fact. But of course I should have realised that smallness in stature and smallness of spirit are two very different things; indeed, I should have realised it from the moment you offered to punch me in the mouth.’

Sarah stared at him steadily for a long moment but no blinding revelations came her way. He looked only minimally less vital than he had in the morning—as if he was enjoying the opportunity to relax—and he looked absolutely no less wildly attractive for being able to rest his broad shoulders lazily back in her arm chair, stretch his long legs out and return her steady regard with just the suspicion of a wickedly amused little glint in his dark eyes. She said at last, ‘Perhaps I don’t forgive and forget that easily.’

‘Ah. Well, may I say that you look much less like a born and bred school-marm than you did this morning?’ His gaze rested on her loose hair that had a tendency to be full and wayward when unconfined and show off the golden glints in its brownness more, as well as highlight her delicate bone-structure, then his gaze drifted to her hands, which were slim and elegant, and her narrow, also elegant feet in plain white socks—which she immediately tried to tuck out of sight. ‘Yes,’ he mused, ‘not so prim and proper or fighting mad. Have you ever thought of wearing contact lenses? Your eyes are a rather lovely blue.’

A tinge of colour stole into Sarah’s cheeks but she forced herself to say coolly, ‘Flattery will get you no- where, Mr Wyatt. I adjusted to not being a raving beauty years ago.’

‘There’s that old saying about beauty being in the eye of the beholder,’ he murmured thoughtfully. ‘It seems rather—inexplicable to me that your domes- ticity alone hasn’t made some man want to take you for his wife.’

The colour in her cheeks increased. ‘If that’s trying to draw me out in a very friendly manner,’ she said curtly, ‘I’d hate to think how you’d do it when you’re feeling hostile.’

He shrugged and looked at her with a faint, genuine frown. ‘I don’t know why but you strike me as some- thing of an enigma, Miss Sutherland.’

‘No, I’m not, I’m perfectly normal!’ she was goaded into saying. ‘However I may look to you, for example,’ she went on scathingly, ‘I would rather die than be married for my domesticity.’

‘So you believe in love, grand passions—and all that kind of thing?’

‘Yes…’ Sarah stopped and bit her lip.

‘Has it ever happened for you?’

‘No… look, why are we talking about it?’ she said with a mixture of confusion and irritation. ‘It’s got nothing whatsoever to do with you!’

‘All the same, it relieves my mind,’ he said sweetly, and drained his glass. ‘I don’t suppose…’ he paused and glanced at her assessingly’… it would cross your mind to offer me some of that tantalising casserole?’

‘It would not. Why don’t you go home? I’m sure Mrs Tibbs has something just as tantalising.’

‘Ah, home and Mrs Tibbs,’ he mused. ‘Amy was in tears the last time I looked in, so was Sally in sym- pathy—a habit of little girls, one wonders? Be that as it may, Wendy and Mrs Tibbs were circling each other like wary tigresses and Ben had allowed the bathtub to overflow. Not an essentially peaceful place, home, at the moment.’

‘My heart bleeds for you.’

He laughed and his dark eyes were so amused that it did something quite strange to Sarah, she dis- covered; it made her feel oddly breathless for one thing. He also said, ‘You’re certainly a worthy op- ponent, Miss Sutherland—OK, I’ll consider myself banished. Goodnight.’ And he got up with all the easy grace he was capable of. ‘Uh—I thought of having a barbecue tomorrow night, for everyone on the property. Care to come?’

‘I… thank you very much,’ Sarah said stiffly.

‘Good girl,’ he responded lightly. ‘You wouldn’t do me another favour, would you?’

Sarah rose too and looked at him warily.

He smiled faintly. The room wasn’t large and they were standing quite close together so she had to look up at him from her height of five feet three, and was unaccountably struck by the memory of him saying that, if he couldn’t pick her up with one hand, he certainly could with two, and by the little tremor that the thought of it sent through her body.

‘What?’ she said tersely as all this occurred to her.

‘Oh, nothing desperate or dangerous,’ he said gravely, his eyes taking in the wary, troubled expression in hers. ‘Not even anything mildly or wildly immoral.’

She could have shot herself as she blushed vividly this time.

‘No,’ he went on. ‘I just wondered if you would be so good as to…liaise, I guess is the right word, be- tween Amy and Mrs Tibbs and whoever else needs to be liaised with to make this barbecue a success. I would like to think it might be instrumental in helping us all to get to know each other better and, conse- quently, working together better.’

‘All right,’ Sarah said.

‘Thanks. Goodnight, Miss Sutherland,’ he said formally, but what lurked in his eyes was that wicked amusement again and, to her horror, Sarah dis- covered she had absolutely no answer for it other than to turn away with a muttered goodnight herself.

It was while she was eating her dinner that she dis- covered to her further horror that she felt unsettled and lonely. But why you should be feeling like this after encountering a man who is quite shamelessly taking advantage of the effect he probably has on every woman he comes in contact with is a mystery! she thought angrily. And he is doing that. Why else would he say the things he has, express any kind of interest in me? No, it’s got to be… a game. And even if I did sort of fuel it this morning, I had cause!

‘So,’ she murmured militantly, ‘don’t think you’re going to get the better of me, Mr Cliff Wyatt!’

CHAPTER TWO

‘THIS is very kind of you, Sarah,’ Wendy Wilson said.

‘Not at all,’ Sarah replied as she sat at the home- stead kitchen table drinking some of Mrs Tibbs’ ex- cellent coffee the next morning. ‘Mr Wyatt asked me to help out if I could.’

‘Did he indeed?’ For some reason Wendy’s green eyes rested on Sarah with, if she wasn’t imagining it, Sarah thought, a tinge of hostility in them.

Although it was ten o’clock, Amy appeared not to have risen yet and it was Mrs Tibbs who had given the children breakfast and made them some play dough to occupy themselves with. ‘Amy,’ Wendy went on to say, ‘was so upset last night, we decided to let her sleep in this morning. I gather you’ve been ap- prised of her break-up with her husband?’

‘Yes. I’m very sorry,’ Sarah said quietly.

‘And I don’t suppose she’ll want to be too bothered with this barbecue so I’ll be deputising for her. If you could tell me what needs to be done Sarah, I’ll get working.’

‘All right.’ Sarah hid any surprise she might have felt; there was actually little because it hadn’t been hard to see from the barest acquaintance that Wendy was a much more determined and capable person than her best friend. She also looked far less exotic this morning in a pair of well-cut brown corduroy trousers, polished brown moccasins and a lightweight green jumper. Her lovely dark hair was also tied back and her nails, Sarah particularly noticed, had been filed to neat, shorter ovals and the fire-engine-red polish replaced by a colourless one. ‘If we give Jim Lawson a buzz, he can organise a couple of men to dig the barbecue pits, get the coals going and set up the spits. I—’

But Wendy immediately walked over to the phone on the wall, consulted the list of numbers stuck beside it and proceeded to call up the Lawsons.

Sarah couldn’t help raising an eyebrow, secretly, she hoped, but discovered Mrs Tibbs looking her way with a similar expression of ‘you don’t say!’ in her eyes. She then turned back to her sink.

It took ten minutes for Wendy and Jim Lawson to make the arrangements for the pits. Wendy particu- larly wanted to know where they would be dug, and why they would be dug in such a spot. Jim had ob- viously suggested the usual place—the square in front of the machinery shed which had some grass, a couple of huge old peppercorn trees and some permanent tables and benches, and which was the general gath- ering place, even the hub or the heart of the property—whereas Wendy had thought the home- stead back garden more appropriate. But she finally conceded and it was arranged that they should be able to start eating at five o’clock. She came back to the kitchen table and said, ‘Well, I gather the practice is to spit-roast the meat—Mrs Tibbs, would you be so kind as to select the meat from the cold room? Two men will be up to collect it. That leaves the salads, I guess,’ she added.

Mrs Tibbs snorted. ‘Salads! We’re not feeding a party of namby-pamby fancy people on this station, miss. Salads, my word!’ And she crossed her arms that were like sides of meat themselves in a gesture of outrage.

‘My mistake,’ Wendy murmured. ‘What do we eat on this here station?’

Sarah intervened hastily as Mrs Tibbs opened her mouth. ‘Rice is very popular. We generally have a few pots of curry or goulash, Jean Lawson makes a par- ticularly fine potato casserole and Mrs Tibbs does a tasty dish of ground maize meal that she serves with gravy.’

‘Very well,’ Wendy said with just the faintest ex- pression of distaste at the mention of maize meal. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind ringing the Lawsons back, Sarah, and asking Jean to do her potatoes? Is it anyone’s special prerogative to make the curry or goulash?’

‘I make the goulash or the curry, whichever I decide on,’ Mrs Tibbs pronounced, arms still akimbo.

‘Then I’ve had a wonderful idea,’ Wendy said in- geniously. ‘I make a really mean curry, Mrs Tibbs, so why don’t you do the goulash?’

‘You mean you want to make curry here in my kitchen?’

‘Yes, but I tell you what—if you don’t think it’s up to your curry, Mrs Tibbs, I’ll feed it to the pigs or whatever you’ve got here as an equivalent.’

‘Is that like a bet, miss?’ Mrs Tibbs enquired expressionlessly.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re on!’

‘Good. Now rice—’

‘I’ll do the rice,’ Sarah said as she struggled not to laugh.

‘Excellent.’ Wendy looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘What does everyone drink?’

‘Beer,’ both Sarah and Mrs Tibbs replied, although Mrs Tibbs added,

‘And you don’t want to go suggesting spirits or gut- rotting wine, miss. Many a fight has started that way!’

Wendy grimaced but said nothing further on the subject. ‘How many people will there be, do you think?’

‘Uh… ten, twenty-three, twenty-seven—about thirty-two; there are a couple of ringers in the camp but fourteen of those will be kids,’ Sarah said.

‘What a thought,’ Wendy murmured.

‘It’s all right. I usually take care of the kids. We play games and so on until the food is ready. If we’re eating at five we generally collect an hour or so earlier—’ Sarah stopped as Amy trailed into the kitchen in a beautiful silk housecoat but sporting a pale, woebegone expression.

‘I suppose it’s too much to hope this barbecue is off?’ she said petulantly.

At four o’clock that afternoon Sarah was at the bar- becue area, as were most of the other employees, but there was no sign of the homestead party as yet. And she detected a certain amount of tension that was not normally present as smoke drifted through the air and the roasting carcasses were turned slowly on their spits.

It was a beautiful afternoon as the sun started to sink, with a few streaks of cloud in a sky tinged with apricot, and most of the men, cattlemen born and bred, discarded their tall hats which normally ap- peared glued to their heads. Most of them also wore boots with heels and silver-studded belts and, looking around, you couldn’t doubt this was cowboy country, Queensland style, because, although Edgeleigh now possessed a helicopter with the word ‘WYATT’ painted on its side, a lot of the men had been born and bred to a saddle as well and the night paddocks with their complement of horses were not far away.

For a couple of minutes Sarah stopped what she was doing—arranging dishes on one of the wooden tables—and looked around a little dreamily. It was romantic to be stuck out so far away from anywhere, with these people with their slower but not necessarily less wise speech, their far-seeing eyes, their simple ways.

Then she noticed two Land Rovers approaching from the homestead, and everyone sat up.

It was Cliff Wyatt who contrived to break the ice in a masterly exhibition that Sarah could only ap- plaud secretly and wonder how he’d done it. But the fact remained that in ten minutes or so he had everyone drinking and talking, he had Amy placed between Jean and Cindy Lawson and he himself with a beer in hand, and was surrounded by the men.

‘Not bad,’ Mrs Tibbs remarked, plonking a pot down next to Sarah’s rice. ‘Him I could get along with. Her—that’s another matter,’ she added darkly.

‘Amy?’

‘Not She won’t stay long—the other one, with the green eyes like a cat.’

‘Well, she’s definitely not staying long,’ Sarah of- fered, and had Mrs Tibbs look at her with severe con- tempt. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she queried with a smile curving her lips. ‘Wasn’t her curry any good?’

‘Her curry is bloody good,’ Mrs Tibbs said. ‘That doesn’t mean I have to like her.’

‘I still don’t see how it’s going to be a problem,’ Sarah said with a faint frown.

‘Then I’ll spell it out for you even though you’re the teacher round here—she plans to be Mrs Cliff Wyatt one day, you mark my words.’

Sarah’s lips parted and her eyes widened. ‘Oh…’ she said very slowly.

‘Yep, makes sense, doesn’t it? Well, maybe not to the likes of you, right off, leastwise, being a bit naive on these subjects—’

‘I am not!’ Sarah protested.

‘Course you are,’ Mrs Tibbs replied indulgently. ‘Hasn’t the veterinarian been making eyes at you for months—but have you noticed? Seems to me not.’

Sarah swallowed in an unusually flustered way as she thought of Tim Markwell, whom she liked, but not in that way. ‘He hasn’t!’

‘Who hasn’t?’ Wendy Wilson asked as she de- livered another pot to the table from the Land Rover. ‘My curry,’ she added gently. ‘Mrs Tibbs has allowed me to present it. Sarah, you can do either of two things for me—help Amy out a bit or help Sally and Ben out by starting to organise the kids.’

Sarah controlled an urge to tell Wendy Wilson to go to hell and said stiffly, ‘Right, I’ll do the kids.’

Whereas Mrs Tibbs said to the world at large, ‘What did I tell you?’

It was a successful barbecue. Almost from the first Ben joined in the games with vigour and initiative and even Sally released Sarah’s hand eventually and con- sented to be part of things. And when the meal was served Sarah had them all sitting in a ring so that they ate in a fairly orderly manner but with much en- joyment and it was only when they’d all finished that she released them to run wild a bit in the firelit darkness to play an energetic game of Cowboys and Indians. And Wendy contrived to hold court with the wives and older daughters in an exhibition almost as masterly as Cliff Wyatt’s that all the same irritated Sarah for reasons that weren’t that easy to identify. At least, she did acknowledge honestly to herself, the other girl rubbed her up the wrong way, so whatever she did would probably be irritating, however well she did it.

But surely why this was so could have nothing to do with Wendy’s ambition to be Mrs Cliff Wyatt— or could it? she asked herself once then shook her head in a gesture of disbelief, but added to herself, I don’t even know if it’s true and not an odd fancy of Mrs Tibbs’! But the irony of that thought made her feel curiously uncomfortable so she resolutely closed her mind to the whole subject.

It was a lot harder to keep her mind closed when she was presented with undeniable verification of Mrs Tibbs’ theory that same evening.

She’d helped Mrs Tibbs clear up after the bar- becue—Amy had taken herself and the children to bed and Wendy and Cliff had disappeared. And after they’d scoured the last pot they had a cup of tea in the big kitchen, then Sarah yawned, said goodnight and let herself out of the back door to make her way home. It was about a quarter of a mile to her cottage and she pulled her jacket around her and rubbed her hands as she descended the back steps and walked around the house. The night was clear, starry and cold and she walked soundlessly on the grass for a few yards until she heard voices and stopped uncertainly. They were coming from above and in front of her, from the veranda, and she immediately recognised Wendy’s voice—not only her voice but what she was saying and the way she was saying it…

‘You must admit I did well tonight, darling.’

‘Very well,’ Cliff Wyatt answered.

‘Surely I deserve a bit more than that for… slaying so many dragons in a manner of speaking?’ Every husky, sexy intonation of Wendy’s voice carried clearly on the cold night air.

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘This,’ she said, and Sarah couldn’t help herself. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see both Wendy and Cliff Wyatt—not in any great detail but their outlines—and she saw Wendy move into his arms and gaze up into his eyes. They stood like that for a long moment then she saw Cliff Wyatt’s dark head lower to the paler glimmer of Wendy’s up- turned face and their lips meet.

That was when she turned and slipped away around the other side of the house.

‘But do you believe in Father Christmas, Miss Sutherland?’ Billy Pascoe said. He was a thin, in- tense, trouble-prone child with awkward dark hair that seemed to grow straight upwards and resisted his mother’s every attempt to tame it.

‘Well, it’s generally only little people who believe in Father Christmas, the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny, Billy, but I must admit that last Christmas I could have sworn I saw someone who looked exactly like Father Christmas getting around Edgeleigh on a horse—.’

‘You always tell us we’re not allowed to swear, miss!’

‘Yes, I do but this is a different kind of swearing and has nothing to do with the saying of rude words—.’

‘Anyway, he’s supposed to be on a reindeer and that was—’

‘Perhaps his reindeer were sick, Billy,’ Sarah inter- posed smoothly. ‘And now, as it’s two minutes to three and nearly time for the bell, you can collect the art books, Billy—Billy,’ she said calmly, and outstared him firmly until he subsided grudgingly and did as he was told. ‘And you, Ben, can put away the paints.’

Ben sprang up and did so obligingly—anything to do with art and painting appealed to Ben—then he said, looking over Sarah’s shoulder. ‘Oh, here’s Uncle Cliff!’

Sarah didn’t turn but reached for the bell and swung it. ‘All right, off you go.’

Cliff Wyatt waited until they’d all tumbled out of the schoolhouse before he said anything. Then he strolled in front of her and remarked, ‘That was a masterpiece of diplomacy, Miss Sutherland. I quite thought he’d got you over the matter of swearing.’

Sarah grimaced. ‘It’s the likes of Billy Pascoe who keep teachers honest. How long were you there?’

He grinned. ‘Not long—you seem to have a large proportion of under-nines in your school.’

‘I have three teenagers actually but there’s an exam coming up so I gave them study leave after lunch. It’s easier for them to work at home sometimes.’

‘Any budding geniuses?’ he queried.

Sarah shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that but Donald Laws on, Cindy’s brother, is very bright and should be able to go on to university—with a bit of luck.’

‘Such as?’

‘His father’s approval,’ she said quietly. ‘Jim is still a bit staggered, I think, to find he has a son who is more interested in the Theory of Relativity than cattle. And, to be honest, I’m getting out of my depth a little. He should be at a proper high school with a science

department but—’ she smiled briefly ‘—I’m sure

they’ll work it out. Have you come for your tour of the facilities? Where would you like to start?’ she added briskly.

He studied her for a moment with a faint frown in his eyes then said, ‘Perhaps not.’