Dream Time (historical): Book I (28 page)

§ CHAPTER TWENTY §

The Dark Night of the Soul
. That was what Sin had called her grieving. Sin and his dark Irish view of life.

“Every soul goes through the experience. It can last a day or years, but eventually light returns. When it does, one has been tested. One is stronger.”

“And those who aren’t?” she challenged, angry. Angry with life and everyone who had someone to love and love them in return.

“They exist, they survive, but they don’t thrive. You see them
every day, with the emptiness behind their eyes.”

It had been Sin who, in searching the creek banks along with the others, had found Francis’s bloated and blackened body lodged in the fork of a tree two days after the flood. Robert’s body had been found the following day, entangled in underbrush where the water had receded.

It had been Sin who had taken her in his arms in the privacy of her office and simply held her, not saying anything.

She had been hollow-eyed, cold, rigid. His hand had stroked her back slowly, as if they had all day and there weren’t fifty people waiting outside to hear some kind of an announcement from her. Celeste had kept the people at bay.

Gradually, Amaris’s blood had started flowing, and she had been able to take control once more—at least outwardly.

The tragic aftermath of the flood was a turning point in her life. She tried to focus not on her loss but on what was left for her.

No more did she have to defer to Francis. No more did she spend time rectifying mistakes made out of his hardheaded judgments. No more did she have to maintain her silence. Over that next year, she worked harder than ever. Hard enough to make Dream Time one of the most successful sheep stations in the area despite the hardships plaguing Australia.

If she was making a name for herself as a shrewd and formidable woman of the Never-Never, Nan Livingston had far outdistanced her, going on to become Australia’s wealthiest woman. That was the gist of the occasional gossip that reached the bush from Sydney.

Amaris knew the woman was astute enough to maintain the illusion of Tom as New South Wales Trader’s figurehead. However, a faded seven-month-old copy of the
Australian Herald
that Amaris had received in one of her stores’ packages indicated not everyone bought that charade. One being the
Herald
’s owner, Miles Randolph. Randolph, also premier of New South Wales, attacked Nan, rather than her husband, in print for New South Wales Trader's supposedly unpatriotic policies.

Sometimes, mostly in the deep of night, when Amaris couldn’t sleep, when the loneliness threatened to bu
rn a hole through her heart and the ache choke off her breath, she would wonder wildly whether Nan Livingston had indeed sold her soul in exchange for the power to rule Australia and the power to deal death blows to those who stood in her way.

Losing Francis and Robert had been a death blow to Amaris’s soul.

Occasionally, she and Sin and Celeste met for dinner or some celebration or maybe just to discuss business trends. Sin had certainly done well by diversifying his investments and was easily the most respected man in the outback.

Amaris looked forward to these times when the three of them got together. These were the times she could relax with friends—and that was all she let herself consider Sin: a friend.

Finally, she thought, she had made herself immune to the powerful attraction he held over her, had always held over her.

She never let herself think for one moment about the needs of her woman’s body clamoring to be met, the yearnings that tortured her soul.

She never let herself think about Sin’s own intimate needs. If his soul hungered, she never knew. Whether in the presence of others or dangerously alone, she and Sin treated one another with respect for the other’s business acumen and with the deep affection that might exist between brother and sister.

The years seemed to fly by. Then, at the age of
thirty-two, Celeste announced that she was with child once more.

There was no doubt as to the veracity of her statement. She had regained all of her beauty, that look of a Durer Madonna and that soft roundness that made any man in the outback look twice with appreciation.

The serpent Jealousy coiled around Amaris’s heart again. Celeste had Sin. Celeste knew the thrill of being fulfilled as a woman. Celeste knew Sin’s passion—all of which Amaris would never know.

As Celeste drew near the last month of her term, Amaris made arrangements to leave the station in Baluway’s capable hands. After packing some clothes, she went to stay at Never-Never. By now there was a score of women living on the station, including Mrs. Delaney, their Scottish housekeeper. Any of them could have acted as midwives and assisted Celeste in birthing her baby, but Celeste wanted only Amaris.

As a precaution, Celeste had taken to bed that last fortnight. The afternoon of Amaris’s arrival, Celeste held her hand. The most beautiful smile Amaris had ever seen gently curved Celeste’s mouth. “We’re all three together again, Amaris. All these years and all the tragedies we’ve suffered, and we’re still together. What a blessing the Lord has given us.”

“You sound like my father now,” Amaris teased tenderly.

“I want you to know that if I have a daughter, she will be named after you.” Celeste’s eyes were full of loving compassion. “If I bear a son, his name will be Robert.”

Amaris swallowed. “You know, Celeste, you are
right. I am extremely blessed. I have you and Sin as friends. One can ask no more."

Except for the release of the ache rending her heart whenever Sin was near.

Later that evening, she observed him from Celeste’s bedroom window as he rode into the yard. A true Irishman, he rode magnificently, seeming a part of the horse.

She watched him approach in that arrogant wholly male stride. She tried to remind herself that she was thirty-seven. Too old to be thinking suggestive thoughts.

She heard him climb the steps, his spurs clinking. When he entered the bedroom, his presence filled it. His glance took her in, her lavender-sprigged morning gown in contrast to her usual masculine attire. He removed his bush hat and dropped a kiss on Celeste’s cheek. In a protective gesture, his big fingers grazed her mounded stomach. “’Tis feeling all right you are?”

Celeste’s smile was like dawn’s soft light. “Wonderful. I’ve never felt so wonderful in all my life.”

Detachment. Amaris strove for total detachment. She watched two people she didn’t know. She felt nothing. She was merely an observer.

Sin turned to her. His face was sun-browned and dusty. His expression was as detached as hers. “Thank you for coming, Amaris. Your presence means a lot to us.”

Us. The word was full of significance and substance. Of belonging. Oh, to be cherished like that. To be loved like that.

Reverting to the most mundane subject of which she could think, she asked, “Have you heard
about the camel train? The stores should be due to arrive any day now.”

“The bush drum hasn’t brought any word,” he said, just as matter-of-factly. “Has Baluway heard anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“I hope the supplier provides something close to the baby crib I described,” Celeste said. “Last time I ordered crockery, white dinner plates with blue edging, we received plates painted with pink roses.” The talk turned quite naturally to the stations with Sin recommending that she consider establishing a string of stations in areas of high rainfall as guard against a drought like the last tragic one years before. “The rainfall has been even for so long that we’re due for a change.”

At last, shadows deepened, and Sin lit a lamp. Mrs. Delaney brought up dinner for the three of them. “Why, Mrs. Delaney,” Sin teased, “you’ve outdone yeself. A cobbler, no less.”

Her apple-dumpling cheeks were flushed with pleasure. “For a special occasion.” She liked Amaris’s no-nonsense approach to work, the same as hers.

The casual, relaxing conversation continued through dinner and the brandy afterward. Watching and listening to Sin, Amaris wondered how long she could remain at Never-Never in such close proximity to him.

Of course, the nights would be the worst. Knowing he was so close. Only a room away ... but holding Celeste.

“It’s here, it’s here!” The aborigines came running from the creek. Everyone stopped work. The rail-thin
bespectacled old governess dismissed the station schoolroom. The house staff hurried out to watch with the station workers as the supply train approached.

Slowly, silently, the great packing cases creaking as they swayed, the long string of camels came padding into the station compound. They looked haughty and slightly disdainful. Their great packs, weighing slightly more than five hundred pounds, were unlashed.

At once, all the hands began opening cases and carrying goods to storerooms. Even such things as foodstuffs were a thrill when they came only twice a year. Amaris helped Sin inventory the arriving cases: three tons of flour, twenty bags of sugar, fifteen saddles, and, among the other packing cases—a baby crib.

When Sin carried it upstairs to Celeste, her face lit with joy. “The supplier couldn’t have picked a more perfect crib.”

Amaris watched her hands, the soft color of porcelain, stroke the smooth wood, painted white with light blue morning glories stenciled around the scrolled edges. In admiration of the touching scene, Amaris forgot her envy.

Later that evening, just before dinner, when she wandered out onto the veranda to watch the children playing in the lingering sunlight, Sin joined her. Handing her a glass of brandy, he sat down opposite her. “Sometimes, when I watch the children, I find meself silently praying that they will never know hunger or harm. I tell meself that their lives don’t have to be the way their parents’ lives were as children.”

“Like yours?” she asked softly. There was an intimacy to the evening’s quiet, to their solitude.

“Me life wasn’t that bad. Aye, we went hungry sometimes. And there were the British to fear. But I was loved. And I was educated. As you were loved and educated. Despite having been given away as an infant. That left its scar, didn’t it?”

The compassion in his eyes was nearly her undoing. Her fingers curled around the chair’s arms. Her voice was low, strangled. “I always wondered what was wrong with me. Was I such an unlovable, unlovely baby? Other convict women kept their babies. Why was I not worth keeping?”

“You are beautiful—and worth keeping. You deserve love. Speaking of which, ’tis been too long for you to stay in mourning.”

She felt the heat of her blush coloring her cheeks. “How do I know a man courting me is not just after Dream Time? Regardless, the men are not standing in line at my door. I think I intimidate them.”

“You be needing someone to complement your strength of will.”

“That sounds like condemnation. Am I not woman enough, Sin? Feminine enough?”

From out of the dark came his deep and smooth brogue. “That and more.” He tapped out his pipe. “Mrs. Delaney should be taking dinner up to Celeste. Shall we go on up?”

“Ohh, God!” Celeste gasped. “Oh, God, Amaris,
I hurt.”

“Take a deep breath. It can’t be much longer.” Celeste’s lips stretched in a ghastly parody of a smile. “That’s . . . what you said three hours ago.”

“I know, I know.” She pushed Celeste’s damp hair back from her forehead. Dipping the washcloth in the basin of water once more, she sponged Celeste’s temples and cracked lips. Who would have thought it could take so long to birth a child, more than twenty hours. Something was wrong.

She dropped the washcloth in the basin. “I’m going for fresh water. I’ll be back in only a moment.” Celeste’s hand gripped hers. “Hurry, please.” Amaris watched her friend fight back a scream. “I’ll wait. Breathe deeply. Push, Celeste. Breathe deeply and push.”

Pain racked Celeste’s body so that she shuddered. Eyes closed, one hand knotted into a fist, the other digging into Amaris’s, she bit her bottom lip until it bled.

When the contraction passed, Amaris relinquished Celeste’s hand and hurried from the bedroom. She found Sin sitting in the parlor. A glass was in his hand, the whiskey untouched. His eyes were red. He looked from her back to his glass. “I’m going to lose her, aren’t I?” he asked in a monotone voice.

“Sin, we’re going to have to take the baby.”

He shot up from the settee and hurled the glass against the wall. The sound of the shards tinkling against the floor was evocative of a crystal chandelier chiming in a breeze-filled room. “The only good thing in me life and I am going to lose it! I’m going to lose her!”

“You don’t know that.” She grabbed his arm. “I need your help. You’ve taken a colt before when the mare couldn’t birth it normally. Help me now.”

He whirled on her. “God, do you know what you’re asking of me?”

Her stance was unyielding, her voice harsh. “I’m asking you to save the one good thing in your life.”

With a groan, he tunneled his hands through his hair. “Aye, I’ll do it.”

She went to the sideboard, where Celeste kept the station’s medicine chest. In it was an assortment of bandages, splints, pins, and other necessities, together with a selection of drugs: quinine, castor oil, chlorodyne, and laudanum.

The administration of the laudanum was of a highly experimental nature. How much was safe to give to Celeste?

When she returned to the bedroom, Sin was drying his freshly washed hands. He glanced at her, then turned back to Celeste. “If we’re to save the wee one, me luv, this is necessary. With the laudanum,” he added, stroking her perspiration-drenched hair back from her neck, “you won’t feel any pain.”

Celeste’s hand clasped the back of his. “I’m not afraid. Never, when you’re with me.”

He swallowed hard. “I’m with you always.”

Then he nodded at Amaris, and she moved to the bedside. Smiling with a reassuring falsity, she took Celeste’s fingers and squeezed tenderly. Her friend was far braver than she could ever be.

“You’re here, too,” Celeste murmured. “I’m with the ones I love.”

Those were her last words before Amaris gave her a couple of tablespoons of laudanum until a drugged stupor claimed her conscious thoughts and her lids drifted closed.

Amaris listened for her soft breathing and watched her chest, praying that the imperceptible rise and fall of sleep continued for a while longer. “I think we’ve done everything we can do to prepare her,” she told Sin.

Sweat glistened on his forehead. He stared at her across the span of the bed and his drugged wife. “You know few women survive something like this, not in the outback, not under conditions like this!” It was a cry from the pit of his stomach, a cry of fear.

“No woman survives when the baby is lodged within her belly.”

He closed his eyes and nodded. “So be it.” He reached for the knife he had stropped to a razor-sharp edge and sterilized. In the candlelight, the blade glinted like thirty pieces
of silver.

She steadied herself. She did not let herself think about what she was watching. She merely followed Sin’s instructions, placing her hands at either side of the thin red line and gently separating the tissues after each incision of the razor-sharp blade.

At some point during die arduous process, something went wrong. Amaris didn’t know what, only that hemorrhaging had started.

“No!” Sin cried. His eyes flared. He glanced up at her. She saw the wild animal cornered in their depths. “No!” he screamed.

It was useless. All his frenzied, frantic efforts could not stop the outpouring of blood.

In Amaris’s mind ran Celeste’s last words: “I’m with the ones I love.”