September Moon

  September Moon

  Candice Proctor

  PROLOGUE

  Port Adelaide, South Australia

  It was like an ache, Amanda Davenport decided, this need she had, this yearning to be back in England. Home, where she belonged.

  She did not belong here. Even on a night such as this, when the sky above hung black and empty, and thick clouds obscured the unfamiliar southern stars, she still felt the wild, disturbing alienness of this place.

  Tightening her hands around the smooth railing of the wrought-iron balustrade that wrapped the hotel's upper veranda, she gazed out over the port's dark, empty streets. At night, she couldn't see the unfamiliar colonial buildings with their peculiar blue-black stone walls and their deep verandas designed to keep out the hot Australian sun. She couldn't see the drooping leaves of the gray-green eucalyptus trees, or the dry, brooding hills in the distance.

  Yet she had no need to see this place to know its strangeness. It was there, in the wattle and eucalypt-scented breeze, in the eerie cry of the kookaburra, in the indefinable aura of primitive mystery that hung in the air like an unseen presence.

  A shiver coursed through her, causing her to hug her mantelet against the winter chill. The sound of a strangling cough from inside the room brought her head around and she slipped quickly inside, folding her wrap over a wooden chair back as she crossed to the bed where her employer, Mrs. Blake, lay dying. Taking a glass of water from the bedside table, Amanda eased one arm beneath the older woman's shoulder. "Here. Drink this," Amanda said, raising the glass to Mrs. Blake's lips.

  "I don't need more water. My lungs feel as if I'm drowning already." But the older woman drank anyway, her breath coming in short, wheezing gasps. After a few sips, she sank back against the pillows, her eyes closing.

  Looking at her, it seemed to Amanda as if in the last twenty-four hours Frances Blake had shrunk in upon herself. Her cheeks had hollowed, her eyes sunk into gray, parchmentlike folds of skin. She was not an old woman—fifty, perhaps fifty-five. A life spent accompanying her botanist husband on his expeditions around the world had toughened her body and her outlook. But she had not been strong enough to survive the shock of seeing her husband murdered by the same thief who had left her virtually penniless. The doctor talked about tourniquets and foxglove, and said that with rest and proper treatment she might survive. Amanda doubted it.

  In another day, a week at the most, Frances Blake would probably die. But by that time, the ship that was to have carried Amanda and her employers back to England would have sailed. And there was no money to buy a new passage.

  She sank onto the seat of the wooden chair, her gaze pulled against her will to the glazed veranda doors. Beyond their wavy glass panes she could see only darkness. Yet somewhere out there the Prince Edward lay at anchor, ready to catch the morning tide.

  "It will be dawn soon." Mrs. Blake's raspy voice grated oddly in the still night air, echoing Amanda's own thoughts. "You must go."

  Amanda turned to meet the other woman's pale gray eyes and shook her head. "I won't leave you here alone." No one should have to die alone so far from home, she thought, but she didn't say it.

  Frances Blake's hand moved restlessly against the coverlet. "Jasper and I should have arranged things better," she said. "I am leaving you in an awkward situation."

  "I'll get back to England somehow. Don't worry about me." Amanda leaned forward to take the other woman's hand.

  It felt alarmingly weightless and clammy, the thready pulse surging in slow throbs that sometimes missed a beat.

  A peculiar smile twisted Mrs. Blake's bloodless lips. "I have worried about you for some time now, my dear. Even before we left England."

  The casual term of endearment surprised Amanda even more than the peculiar words, for her relationship with the Blakes had always been one of respect rather than affection. "Don't worry about me," Amanda said again. But Frances Blake's eyes had already closed, and in a moment Amanda heard the older woman's breath ease into the slow, even rhythms of sleep. Sighing, Amanda sank back in her chair and closed her own eyes.

  Several hours later she was aroused by the piercingly sweet call of a magpie that lured her once again to the veranda. She slipped through the French doors, her heart slamming up against her ribs as she saw the brightening of the eastern sky. It was almost dawn.

  She gazed out over the harbor. In the dim light she could just make out the dark spires of the ship's masts outlined against a bank of low gray clouds. In her imagination she could hear the rattle and creak of the anchor chain being hauled in, hear the snap of canvas as the sails filled with the salt-tinged wind. Feel the motion of the ship as it heaved with the swelling tide and set sail for England.

  Tears burned her chest and clogged her throat. Swallowing hard, she turned away blindly and went inside.

  Ten hours later, early in the afternoon of the third of July 1864, Frances Blake died, leaving Amanda alone and friendless in a strange, hostile land.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Amanda stood on the footpath, one hand anchoring her sensible hat against the tug of a chilling wind as she gazed up at the impressive bluestone facade of the house before her. She had no need to consult the clipped newspaper advertisement she had come to answer. She had read and reread those two sentences so many times, they seemed burned into her brain.

  English gentlewoman required to act as governess. Interested parties may present their credentials to Mrs. Henrietta Radwith, 23 East Terrace, Adelaide, this Wednesday afternoon between the hours of two and four.

  Amanda had never worked as a governess, but she was better educated than most men, and she was certainly an authentic English gentlewoman. She could only hope that might be enough.

  It had been four weeks since the Prince Edward had sailed for home, and she had yet to find a new situation. Lately, simply staying alive was becoming more of a concern to her than getting back to England. She had taken to skipping dinner every other day in an attempt to conserve her dwindling resources. But time was running out.

  Unconsciously pressing the fingers of one white-gloved hand to her hollow midriff, Amanda mounted the shallow stone steps and tapped a polite tattoo with the brass door knocker.

  "Miss Amanda Davenport," she said to the lanky, craggy- faced manservant who answered. "I have come to—"

  Her voice trailed off as the man jerked his head toward the

  depths of the house, inviting her to enter. "Take a seat. Mrs. Radwith'll see ya in the library when it's yer turn."

  Amanda stepped inside a vast, marble-floored hall at least sixty feet long and ten feet wide, and felt her hopes plummet down to the pointed toes of her high-topped shoes. A miscellaneous assortment of tapestry and brocade-covered chairs, settees, and miners couches had been shoved against the paneled walls between the fluted pilasters, decorative plaster- work arches, and handsome cedar doors that marched the length of the hall. And every seat but one was already occupied by an aspiring respondent to Mrs. Radwith's advertisement.

  "Thank you," murmured Amanda. Perching on the edge of the hard wooden bench near the front door, she folded her cold-numbed hands over her bag in her lap and steadfastly resisted the urge to twist her fingers together in nervous agitation. English gentlewomen did not betray their emotions.

  And so she sat, cold, nervous, but unmoving as, one by one, the other women were escorted to the paneled library door at the far end of the hall near the grand cedar staircase, then shown out again. One hour stretched into two until, finally, Amanda was the only woman left.

  "Next."

  She rose and followed the strange butler to a large, well- proportioned room of green velvet and darkly paneled, book- lined walls. A fire snapped and flared on the wide hearth, filling the roo
m with welcome warmth. She found it an effort to shift her attention from those lovely flames to the handsome, dark-haired woman enthroned behind the massive mahogany desk.

  The woman was expensively dressed in a gown of lilac alpaca trimmed with black velvet braid. In age, she might have been anywhere in her late thirties or early forties. She made no effort to rise but simply stared at Amanda over the top of gold wire-framed spectacles she wore pushed down to the end of her nose.

  It had been more than five years since the death of Amanda's father had forced her to seek employment, yet she still resented these interviews, still hated being scrutinized like a rental horse in a cheap livery stable. She had to force herself to stand demurely and endure the rude scrutiny.

  "How old are you?" demanded the woman.

  Amanda's chin jerked up. "Twenty-seven." And how old are you, she thought with an irreverent ripple of private amusement.

  The woman sniffed, her gaze again traveling from the ugly, unfashionable hat Amanda used to hide the flamboyant blaze of her hair, to the simple mantelet that covered her prim and plain brown fustian gown. Mrs. Radwith held out an imperious hand. "Your credentials."

  Amanda passed them over.

  "Pray be seated."

  Amanda took the straight-backed chair facing the desk and once again folded her hands in her lap. The ticking of the heavy bronze clock on the marble mantle counted the passing of the minutes.

  "Given your background," said Mrs. Radwith without looking up as she flipped through the pages, "I would have expected you to seek employment as a private secretary, rather than as a governess."

  "I tried, ma'am. No one in Adelaide appears to be interested in hiring a female secretary."

  "It is an unusual occupation for a female." The pages flipped again. "And exactly what is your experience as a governess?"

  Amanda's fingers tightened around the strap of her bag. "My father was a doctor of divinity at Oxford, so I received an excellent education. I am able to—"

  "I didn't ask about your education. I can see from your references how extensive it is." Mrs. Radwith tossed Amanda's credentials onto the leather desktop and peeled the spectacles off her face to fix Amanda with a steady stare. "I am asking if you have ever actually served as a governess."

  Amanda rose with calm dignity. "Please accept my apologies for wasting your—"

  "Sit down."

  "I beg your pardon?" "I said, sit down."

  Amanda sank to the chair edge.

  "Tell me something, Miss Davenport. Did you by any chance count the number of females waiting in my hall this afternoon?"

  She had, of course. She didn't see any point in denying it. "I believe there were twenty-three."

  "And how many are still waiting?"

  "None. I am the last." Amanda met the woman's brilliant blue stare, and felt a peculiar combination of hope and alarm surge through her. "Why is that?" she asked boldly.

  Mrs. Radwith leaned back in her leather upholstered swivel chair. "First of all, let me explain that the advertisement was placed on behalf of my brother, Mr. Patrick O'Reilly. Mr. O'Reilly owns a large run to the north of here, near the township of Brinkman."

  Amanda's forehead crinkled. "A run?"

  "A pastoral property, named Penyaka. It consists of some one and a half thousand square miles of saltbush and Mitchell grass country, stocked with approximately twenty thousand in ,ul of cattle und one hundred thousand sheep."

  Not the outback, Amanda thought, swallowing a flash of panic. Please not the outback.

  At her silence, Mrs. Radwith raised her eyebrows. "Still interested?"

  Amanda's empty stomach growled, drowning out the clang of warning bells in her brain. "Exactly how far to the north is it?"

  "It's in the Flinders Ranges, on the very fringe of the colony's habitable area. To be frank, it is frighteningly isolated. Living conditions are primitive, one might even say dangerous."

  Her words sent hideous, half-remembered tales of bush- fires and black savages, of floods and snakes and poisonous spiders, chasing one another through Amanda's head. She thought of the endless miles of raw, untamed wilderness they had sailed past on their way to Adelaide, of the drunken, uncouth bushmen she had occasionally seen on the streets of

  Adelaide, and decided that if she were the type, she would probably have shuddered.

  Instead, she asked, "Precisely how much is your brother prepared to pay?" The question was only a formality; Amanda was so desperate, she'd take almost anything.

  "Sixty pounds a year."

  Sixty pounds! It was all Amanda could do to keep from grinning with vulgar delight. Governesses in England had been known to work for fifteen pounds a year. With sixty pounds, she would be able to purchase passage back to England and still have a tidy sum on which to live while she searched for a new situation at home.

  She carefully schooled her features into a serene expression. "And how many children does your brother have?"

  "Three. Two girls and a boy, ranging in age from eleven to six."

  "I believe myself capable of handling their instruction."

  A disconcerting gleam of amusement flashed in Mrs. Radwith's eyes, then disappeared. "I am delighted to hear that, Miss Davenport. I should warn you, however, that the cost of sending you north is so high that if you accept this position, you must undertake to remain for a period of at least one full year. If you leave before the first twelve months are up, you will be required to pay your own way back to Adelaide. And if you leave within the first six months, the cost of sending you up to the Flinders will be deducted from your salary. "

  "And what is the cost?"

  "Ten pounds. One way."

  Amanda bit back a startled exclamation.

  "Which means," Mrs. Radwith continued, "that if you stay less than four months, you will find yourself back in Adelaide with less money than you have now. And before you commit yourself, I think it only fair to tell you that one governess my brother hired left after two weeks. The longest any woman has lasted was six months."

  Amanda smiled. "One might almost suspect you of trying to dissuade me."

  "Perhaps I am. I see no point in sending you to my brother if I am not convinced you will be able to deal with the conditions you will find there."

  Amanda felt her smile slip. She wasn't convinced she was capable of dealing with the conditions, either; she simply didn't see that she had much choice. Still, she felt compelled to ask the obvious question, "Exactly why did the other women leave?"

  For the first time in the course of their interview, Mrs. Radwith looked vaguely uncomfortable. "Doubtless the isolation and harsh environment were partially to blame. Nevertheless, one cannot deny that my brother's children are—how shall I put it?—difficult. It is not easy for a man to run a station and raise three children at the same time."

  "Your brother is a widower?"

  "No."

  "I beg your pardon. From what you said, I assumed the children's mother—"

  "The children's mother is not discussed."

  A pregnant silence descended upon the library while Amanda digested this statement. In the distance she could hear the familiar clip-clop of horses' hooves and the harsh, exotic screoch of a cockatoo.

  "Well?" demanded Mrs. Radwith. "Are you still interested, or not?"

  Amanda tightened her hold on the bag in her lap. "If I could have some time to think about it? Until Friday, perhaps?"

  Mrs. Radwith rose majestically to her feet. "As you like. If the position is still available by then, you will be welcome to have it. I'll call Roberts to show you out." She reached for the velvet bellpull hanging beside the mantel.

  Raw panic gripped Amanda. "Wait."

  Mrs. Radwith turned, one eyebrow lifting haughtily. "I cannot hold the position open for you, if that's what you wish to ask."

  Amanda's heart thudded wildly. She hated to make snap decisions. But in this instance, there was no time to do anything else. And what choice did she have, anyway? She
could commit herself to spending the next year trying to teach three unmanageable children in the wilds of the Australian outback. Or she could starve in a gutter. It was that simple.

  She sucked in a shaky breath, then pushed it out in a long sigh. "I'll do it."

  Patrick O'Reilly lay flat on his back in Mary McCarthy's rumpled bed, the fingers of one hand clenched in her hair as the thick dark mass slid enticingly across his belly.

  "Ah, Mary," he said with a gasp, his head arching back against the pillow, his eyes squeezing shut. "You're good."

  Suddenly, that wonderful moist warmth left him and he felt her weight shift upward. He opened his eyes and lifted his head to look at her. "Why did you stop?"

  She rested her chin on his chest, her fine dark eyes sparkling up at him, and he was struck again by what a handsome woman she was. She was older than he by at least five years. A lifetime spent in the bush had darkened her skin and sharpened her features and etched fine fans around her eyes. But her bone structure was good, and there was strength and character in every line.

  He watched her smile. "I don't see any point in startin' somethin' again when we won't be able to finish it," she said.

  "Hell, woman; you already started it." He ran his hands down her bare back to cup her buttocks as he lifted his hips. "And why won't we be able to finish it?"

  "Oh no you don't." She slid sideways to lie naked beside him. "You seem to be forgettin' that the reason you came into town in the first place was to meet your new governess."

  He grunted, rolling onto his hip so that they lay face-to- face, breast to chest. "I haven't forgotten. But I haven't heard the mail cart come through town yet." He took her mouth in a long, hot, sucking kiss. "Have you?"