Red Dirt Duchess Read online

  Charlie glanced at the initials at the bottom of the page: JHH 1994. It could be either Jeremy or Jonathan. But the staid and serious Jeremy with his love of Hartley Hall could not have written this. She continued to read:

  The next generation numbers but two. The heir may best be described as a genial chap who does tend to go on a bit. The second son is merely a troublesome but necessary safeguard against the possibility of this venerable old name’s extinction. Which is a huge joke. He is, however, immensely good-looking.

  Charlie laughed, imagining a teenaged Jon writing it. Even at that age – maybe fourteen or fifteen – he’d had a talent for writing. The book was old so it looked as though he’d tried to copy the style of the time. But despite the obvious humour, there was something dark and disturbing there that went beyond the natural and fleeting loathing teenagers often felt for their parents. There was something broken in that relationship that perhaps time hadn’t healed.

  She folded the page carefully and slipped it thoughtfully back inside the book.

  ‘The library’s along here.’ Jon had hoped to have Charlie to himself for a few moments but when he opened the door, he found his sister-in-law sitting huddled in one of the deep armchairs by the fire. In a house with fifty rooms he couldn’t find an empty one.

  He tried to back out and close the door quietly but Sarah glanced up. There was nothing for it but to draw Charlie into the room and introduce her. They crossed to the fireplace, past the library tables piled with books, and the ceiling-height shelves crammed with the collections of several lifetimes.

  ‘Sarah, this is Charlie. She’s staying the weekend. Charlie, Sarah is Germs’ wife.’

  A short silence followed. Maybe Sarah was annoyed that she hadn’t been introduced as Lady Bendale. But when Charlie’s warm smile faltered a little, Jon reached out and drew her to his side.

  She’d changed into a different outfit. But Jon hoped it wasn’t because she was embarrassed by her jeans and pullover. A tight black wraparound top skimmed her torso, revealing the curves that had been hidden by the loose jumper she’d worn earlier. The skirt was long, a vivid deep orange, layered and embroidered with ethnic-looking patterns. It was more boho than county, making up an arty, haphazard ensemble that had the look of just being tossed together.

  Sarah’s cool green eyes roamed over Charlie, taking in every detail. The women in his family seemed unable to greet another woman without sizing her up, pigeonholing her before she’d even opened her mouth. It was starting to get on his nerves. Would the woman his mother deemed suitable as his wife be like this?

  ‘Hello,’ Sarah said carelessly. Her foot, encased in a stylish leather boot, tapped against the fire fender in a continuous, annoying rhythm that spoke of boredom and discontent. No book sat open on her lap and the doors on the television remained closed.

  Sarah’s fine blonde hair was pulled back from her face, and without the softness it gave, her features were revealed to be a little sharp. Her fine-knit cream henley shirt was tucked into camel-coloured trousers with a thin leather belt. She was the full aristocratic-bride package. No wonder Diana loved her.

  ‘Please.’ Sarah waved at the sofa opposite.

  He was about to say they’d only come in looking for a book when Charlie smiled and sat down, holding her hands out to a fire far smaller than the size of the fireplace warranted. ‘Thanks. Gosh, it’s cold.’

  ‘It’s always cold at Hartley,’ Sarah replied. A long silence descended while Jon picked up the poker and tried to prod some life into the smouldering logs.

  ‘How long have you and Jeremy been married?’ Charlie asked conversationally. Jon stilled, a sickly prescience wash over him. He should have brought her up to speed but there was nothing to be done now. And nothing could change the facts.

  ‘Four years.’

  He didn’t want to turn, to watch the inevitable play out. He bent down to pick up another log and toss it on the fire.

  ‘That’s lovely,’ Charlie replied.

  ‘Is it?’ Sarah sighed heavily. ‘Don’t mind me. Yes, it is lovely. Wonderful really.’

  ‘Are you planning any children?’

  Jon closed his eyes. He hadn’t anticipated this encounter. What women talked about between themselves was a mystery. That it could go straight from hello to baby hadn’t even occurred to him.

  Sarah’s head snapped up. ‘Who doesn’t plan children when they’re in our position?’

  ‘I suppose most people do,’ Charlie said slowly. ‘Although some people decide it isn’t for them.’

  Sarah stared at her for a long moment, her lower lip trembling. She bit it, trying to keep her emotions in check, then breeding took over. She raised her chin and her eyes cooled. Another moment passed before she stood, her back straight. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ She nodded at Charlie, and gave Jon a pained smile before leaving the room.

  ‘What did I say?’ Charlie had watched her leave the room and now swung around to face him.

  He shrugged. At least the worst was over. ‘Jeremy’s impotent. They can’t have children.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’ Her face fell. ‘I wish I hadn’t asked. I was just trying to make conversation.’

  Jon knew. The room had been cold and Sarah uninterested despite her invitation to sit down. Charlie, being Charlie, had battled on, determined to do her best.

  ‘But they could adopt,’ she offered.

  He dragged a mental hand across his brow. She wasn’t going to let go easily. Of course they could adopt. But Charlie didn’t understand that adoption wasn’t an option. Not in this family. Jon could almost feel the old walls creak and groan at the idea.

  As if reading his mind she pressed, ‘Well, couldn’t they?’

  ‘No. It doesn’t work that way in families like ours.’ His throat was tight as he pushed the words out.

  ‘Really.’ Her eyes got a little cooler. ‘Because you don’t know whose child you’ll get, is that it? You might end up with the offspring of someone your family would consider unsuitable. Is that it?’

  She’d hit the nail on the head. Sort of. He tried to make a noncommittal face.

  ‘So let me get this right. It’s not really the child that’s important. The child has to have your blood.’

  Despite the paltry fire it was getting hot in here; too hot. ‘You seem to have grasped the essence of the problem,’ he said faintly.

  ‘So if she can’t have a baby and adoption is not a possibility, what next?’

  He reached up and grasped the mantel with one hand, as though it might provide support. ‘They’ll have a nice life and in due course the title will fall to, er, the next generation.’

  She sat then, ruminating. ‘So that would be any child you had, right? That’s if you’re not impotent too.’

  His nether regions rose in insulted defence. But how did he know?

  ‘Right.’

  In a nerve-racking game of join-the-dots, she sat thinking, a little pleat between her brows. ‘So you need to have a baby,’ she said finally meeting his eyes.

  ‘There’s a step missing there, of course.’ His mouth had gone dry. ‘I need to get married first.’

  Charlie obviously wasn’t much in the mood for finding a cosy corner, so they drifted back to the sitting room. Today reminded him why he loathed country-house weekends. Shuttling from one cold room to another and always bumping into the same people.

  More tea was called for although he could have used something stronger. Charlie took the chair she’d been sitting in earlier, picked up a magazine and started flicking through it. Diana was flapping around Vera. There was a great deal of fuss about cushions and where her walking stick should be left and whether Bertie needed to go out one more time. No sooner was she settled than she fell asleep, her aristocratic mouth clamped firmly closed. Even asleep one never let down one’s guard.

  Barker started to pour the tea as Jon ambled hopefully towards the drinks table. A cluster of almost empty decanters, more show than su
bstance, sat on a silver tray.

  ‘What do you do in Australia, Charlie?’ Diana asked.

  So the day was about to grind to its inexorable conclusion. Jon picked up a decanter and tipped it a little to the side, trying to work out what was inside. Quite frankly anything would do. He poured a generous amount into a glass and turned back to face the room.

  ‘I run a pub.’

  Barker dropped a cup on its saucer with a clatter and murmured an apology. A small silence ensued.

  ‘A pub?’

  Jon sighed. ‘A public house, mother. A drinking establishment. There is one in the village.’

  ‘I know what a pub is, Jon,’ Diana snapped. She turned to Charlie, her lips pursed, her back rigid with disapproval. ‘I see. You’re a barmaid.’

  Jon sucked in a deep breath and turned just in time to see the level stare that Charlie gave his mother. He didn’t trust the slight smile on her lips. He hadn’t seen that since Bindundilly.

  ‘Oh, I’m so much more than that.’

  Was that a small, suggestive wink she’d given his mother? Jon closed his eyes and said a prayer, although he wasn’t sure for whom. All he knew was that there was a tension that had been strained to breaking point today. It was about to snap.

  ‘I clean the toilets and make the beds as well.’ Charlie gave Diana a cheesy smile, letting her vowels broaden a little.

  ‘Really,’ Diana said faintly.

  ‘Charlie owns the Bindundilly Hotel, mother. She’s a businesswoman.’

  Diana accepted tea from Barker, picked up the spoon and stirred it quietly, three times clockwise, just as she always did before placing the spoon back on the saucer. ‘And is business good in this Bindundilly place?’

  Charlie stirred her own tea a little less quietly, then looked at the spoon as she removed it from the cup.

  Please don’t.

  She placed it neatly on the saucer. ‘Very good, thank you. Mind you, I’m the only business in town so it’s hard to assess just how good that is.’

  His mother seemed to have run out of conversation. Possibly she was angrily fantasising about castrating Jon, although that would be rather counter-productive in the circumstances.

  Charlie paused and cocked her head to one side, thinking. ‘Come to think of it, there is no town. There’s just the pub and nothing but desert in every direction for four hundred kilometres.’

  ‘Indeed.’ His mother was staring at Charlie, her eyes wide with horror, perhaps trying to imagine such a life.

  ‘But as long as the truckies keep stopping, I’ll be right,’ Charlie finished cheerfully, as though she’d just completed a complicated balance sheet and realised everything would be fine for the next year.

  ‘Truckies,’ Diana echoed, her gaze locking on Jon. He took a deep swallow from his glass. He didn’t know what of, but it sure felt good.

  Vera woke with a light snort. ‘Truckie? What’s a truckie?’

  Jon squeezed his eyes shut. This was priceless; in some ways the best fun he’d had in years.

  ‘Never mind, dear,’ said Diana.

  ‘It’s a lorry driver, Vera.’ Jon said. ‘You know, massive great lorries driven by men with strong, hairy muscled arms. Some women find it quite —’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Diana cut in. She really looked quite pale, no doubt imagining the countless lorry drivers that had passed through Bindundilly, and hopefully not through Charlie.

  She turned to Jon with a regretful smile that didn’t fool him. ‘Vera’s terribly tired, darling, and I’m afraid there’s not much for dinner this evening. I expect we’ll just boil some eggs or something.’

  He could take a hint. He drained his glass and set it back on the tray. ‘That’s all right. I’ll take Charlie down to the Three Crowns.’

  His mother rose to her feet and gave him a pointed look. ‘Excellent. I should think she’ll feel right at home.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Light spilled from the windows of the Three Crowns as Jon pulled up in front, inserting the MG between a Rover and a tiny Ford. The pub’s whitewashed cob walls, black Tudor-style half-timbering and tidy thatched roof made it look more Miss Marple than Wolf Creek. In the scary stakes the English were wimps.

  Charlie was eager, her hand reaching for the doorhandle as soon as they’d stopped, as though she’d find inside this simple village pub the welcome that had been so lacking at Hartley Hall. It shamed him that his family was so distant, so focused on their own needs and wants.

  He locked the car and guided Charlie across the car park, holding the door open as they entered the pub.

  ‘Wow, this is cool.’ She shrugged off her coat and hung it on a hook, ignoring the hand he put out to help.

  Really? It looked like any country pub, anywhere in Britain. Dark oak beams ran along a low ceiling that, together with the open fire at one end, gave the room an intimate, cosy appeal. It was the warmest he’d been all day. A group of men stood by the bar, talking in low voices.

  ‘I’ll get some drinks. There’s a table over there.’ Jon nodded at a dark varnished table in a quiet corner, the perfect place for them to talk.

  ‘I’d rather sit at the bar,’ she said, and without waiting for his reply, ambled up and pulled out a stool close to the group of men. She slid onto the seat, hooking her heels over the rung.

  He wedged in on her other side. ‘Would you like red or white?’

  She turned her head, her cool blue gaze piercing him. ‘Beer. I’m definitely in a beer frame of mind.’

  The way she said it, her body slumped forward and her arms crossed on the bar, made him pause. He’d instantly have assumed she was contemplating a bender if she’d been a man.

  The barman nodded at Jon in recognition, then turned to Charlie. ‘Bitter, love?’

  The look she slid Jon punched straight to the gut. She turned back and smiled at the barman. ‘How did you guess?’

  He laughed, raising his hand towards the rows of glasses hanging in an overhead rack. ‘Pint or half?’

  ‘Oh, I think a pint should do it.’

  ‘Sir?’ The barman raised an eyebrow in Jon’s direction.

  ‘The same.’ He hooked his wallet out of his pocket and dropped some notes on the bar.

  ‘Do I detect an Australian accent, or is that wishful thinking?’ Two beers were passed across the counter as Jon’s money was taken without the barman even looking at him.

  The barman was flirting with her? Right in front of him? Jon gritted his teeth. But why wouldn’t he? She was beautiful, with her rich brown hair rippling to her shoulders and her cheeks flushed from the warmth after the short, cold drive from Hartley Hall. She was hell-bent on enjoying herself and desire coursed through Jon, tempered by quiet desperation. She was slipping away, and it was all his fault.

  She raised herself from the stool and leaned across the counter, her hand extended. ‘Yes, I’m Charlie. I believe I’m supposed to say “how do you do”.’ The perfect imitation of Diana’s voice made Jon cringe.

  ‘Alan’s the name, and you can forget that crap here. Nice to meet you.’

  She took a sip of the beer, pursed her lips and ran the liquid around her mouth then swallowed.

  ‘How does it taste to have a real beer, then?’ Alan asked.

  ‘Mate, if I served this I’d be run out of town.’ She took another mouthful. ‘But you know, that’s over there, and right now it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. I’d say this beer is just about perfect.’

  ‘You’re a publican?’ Alan’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘Sure am.’

  ‘Charlie’s got a pub in outback Australia,’ Jon added, and realised he was bragging. This spirited, outgoing, down-to-earth woman made him proud to be at her side. He propped an arm on the bar and took a sip of his own beer, happy to watch her in full flight. Her eyes sparkled as she traded friendly insults with Alan about the relative merits of British and Australian beer until they decided to call a truce.

  Before s
he’d finished her glass, the group of men beside her had joined in the conversation. Jon wanted to interject, to tell them about the Cessna. About the boar’s head and the jars of deadly snakes and spiders. About the dongas and the RFDS and the legion of brawny men he had no doubt would kill to protect this woman.

  It was hard to believe that not four weeks earlier he’d walked into Bindundilly and loathed it. He’d carried with him all the troubles of his life in England: the pressing obligation to his family and the added complication with Caro. He’d borne the weight of a lifetime’s secrets like a cloak he couldn’t shrug off.

  None of it had gone away, of course, but somehow everything seemed better when Charlie was there. It was as though some of that down-to-earth attitude had rubbed off on him so that he could see those problems for what they were.

  Fixable.

  Cheered, he turned and found her watching him, her expression guarded. After a few moments she slid off the stool, nodded towards the quiet corner and said, ‘Let’s eat.’

  Charlie couldn’t put it off much longer. There was only so much beer you could drink, and hunger and curiosity won out. Sitting at the bar had only been a stopgap, a straw she’d grasped to avoid discussing Jon’s revelation while her mind turned the information over to see how she felt about it.

  ‘About today. I’m sorry it was such a balls-up.’ Jon held the chair out for her, his hands firm as she sat down and felt them on the chair back. How she’d like to lean back, her head resting against his body. But he removed his hands and took his own seat.

  Balls-up was one way of putting it. It certainly went down as one of the more unusual days in her life, but on the other hand it had been illuminating.

  If they’d never come to Hartley Hall, how long might it have taken Charlie to discover the obligation he had to his family? How long before she’d prise it from him in London? How many times would they have made love, how deeply would she have fallen? How much pain would she have lived with in the coming years?