Outback Bachelor / The Cattleman's Adopted Family: Outback Bachelor / The Cattleman's Adopted Family

Jack’s head shot up. “Oh, darling girl, I’m sorry. I’m just plain selfish,” he apologised. “All I’ve thought of is my own pain, my own loss. You’ll have to forgive me. The worst of the pain—the most brutal, heart-wrenching grief—has eased. A man couldn’t continue to live with it. But I can never forget. I loved my Cathy with all my heart. She died giving me the best and most beautiful daughter in the whole wide world.”

Skye’s eyes filled with tears. She rose from her chair to put her arms around her father’s shoulders, kissing his weathered cheek. “All right, Dad, we won’t talk now. Finish your meal. There’s coconut ice cream with lime and ginger syrup for later. Maybe when we have our coffee you’ll feel able to answer just a few of my questions.”

Jack had his work cut out, giving his daughter a smile. When all was said and done there was a great deal about his beautiful Cathy he didn’t know. Cathy had been such a private person not even he had been able to intrude.

Skye returned to her chair feeling a prickling of unease. If her mother had been a member of Lady McGovern’s family in England—maybe extended family—what relationship did she herself bear to the McGovern family? According to legend, her mother was the daughter or niece of a friend of Lady McGovern’s. No one knew exactly, it was all terribly vague. Deliberately vague. But why?

She was soon to discover her father knew amazingly little about his beautiful young wife’s background…

“I married Cathy because I loved her, not because of any background,” he said, resting back in his armchair. “She was like an angel from Heaven, bringing glory into my life. I couldn’t believe it when she consented to marry me.”

Skye had no difficulty accepting that. Wasn’t her own situation with Keefe a reversal of the situation that had existed between her father and mother; the social divide which would have been far greater in their day? Then there was the issue regarding her mother’s exact connection to the McGoverns. “But how did the relationship grow, Dad?” she asked, covering her bewilderment. “You were a stockman at the time. She was a guest of Lady McGovern. How could it be? Where did you meet? How often? How long did it take you to fall in love?” She knew from her father’s expression that the whole topic was causing him distress, but she felt driven to continue.

“Me?” Jack’s eyebrows shot up. “Why, the instant I laid eyes on her! And she knew. I must have given myself away that very day. She was so beautiful, so fresh and sweet. Nothing stuck-up about her. She was someone who spoke to everyone on the station. Everyone loved her. That love has been passed on to you. When I was out of it with grief, there was always someone keeping an eye on you. Lady McGovern placed you in Lena’s care.”

“And wonderful she was to me too!” Skye was still in contact with Lena, who now lived with a family in Alice Springs.

Jack nodded. “True blue was Lena. I tried once to get her to talk—fill me in about Cathy and her connection to the family—but Lena wouldn’t open up. Still, I think Lena knew a lot.”

“About what, specifically?” Maybe she could get more information out of Lena than her father if she tried?

“Oh, an amazing amount of stuff,” Jack said, looking like he wanted to terminate the whole conversation. “I guess we should have had this discussion years ago, but in all truth, love, I never did know a lot. Cathy wouldn’t talk about her past. She’d started a new life. With me. Whatever she wanted I went along with. So in a way I’m accountable for her death.”

“No, Dad, no!” Skye protested strongly. “You have to stop all that. It was a tragedy.”

“Yes, a tragedy,” Jack groaned. “She died in my arms. My little Cathy. Do you suppose it could have been because you arrived early?”

This was way beyond Skye. There had never been any mention that she had been a premature baby. All her life she had enjoyed excellent health. Unease struck harder.

“Who attended the birth? Who was the doctor, the midwife, whatever?”

Jack’s face was showing strain. “Tom Morris. A good bloke, a good doctor. He’s dead now, Tom.”

“Who called him?”

Jack looked stunned. “Why, Lady McGovern got him here fast. He was flown in. I remember him saying practically right off he had concerns.”

“Why didn’t she go to hospital?”

“She didn’t want to,” Jack said broken-heartedly. “She was adamant about it. She was happy to be on Djinjara. She loved it here. She loved being with me. ‘You’re my minder, Jack,’ she used to say with a laugh. I minded her. Yes, I did. Until the end. I don’t know what her reasons were for leaving her own people. All I know is she found sanctuary with Lady McGovern. Lady McGovern used to talk to Cathy like she was her own child. Of course she wasn’t. But I wouldn’t be surprised to hear there was some blood connection.”

“You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t, love.” Jack shook his head. “And I wouldn’t dare ask the old lady.”

So her father had lived with his own demons. High time for her to face up to her own. Lady McGovern would know the truth. Probably she was the only one living who did. But she had the dismal notion Lady McGovern wasn’t about to help anyone out. Bizarre as it sounded, even Broderick McGovern might never have known a great deal about Cathy. He would have been married by then with a wife and children.

Time to visit her mother’s grave. Then time to go back to her city life. Back to the life she had forged for herself. She had to confront the fact the same aura of unease regarding her background surrounded Keefe as it did her. Maybe the crucial bits that were missing explained why neither of them seemed able to move forward. Only Lady McGovern knew exactly what had happened all those years ago…

She took one of the horses to the McGovern graveyard, tethering the mare in the shade of the massive desert oaks. A huge wrought-iron fence enclosed the whole area, the iron railings topped by spikes. The gates were closed, but unlocked. She opened one side and walked through, shutting it with a soft clang behind her. This was the McGovern graveyard, scrupulously tended, with generations of McGoverns buried here. Everywhere there were markers and plaques, tall urns, a few statues. A classical-style white marble statue of a weeping maiden marked the grave of the wife of the McGovern founding father.

What was her mother doing, lying here among the McGoverns? She had asked Lady McGovern once when she had been about twelve and had failed to get any answer whatever. Just a stern silence. She had never asked again. Broderick McGovern’s grave as yet had no headstone. No one had expected him to die so prematurely, leaving his son at barely thirty to take up the reins.

She had brought flowers with her. Not from the home gardens, though she could have asked and been given as many armfuls as she wanted. Instead, she had broken off several branches of pink and white bauhinia, arranging them in a sheaf. Oddly, although the cemetery wasn’t a cheerful place, it wasn’t depressing either. Surrounded by such incredible empty vastness, in the distance the ancient temples of the sandhills glowing an orange-red flame, it wasn’t difficult to get one’s own life into perspective.

Her mother’s grave was marked by a child-sized white marble angel with outspread wings. The inscription read:

Catherine Margaret McCory, 1964-1986.

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there

Silently she mouthed several more lines of the famous bereavement poem. She knew them by heart. All around her the silence was absolute except for the soft tranquil swish of the desert breeze. For an instant she fancied the breeze very sweetly kissed her cheek. Perhaps it was a greeting from her mother? Why not? It was hard to believe one simply ceased. There was mind, spirit. Only the body was consigned to the ground.

Cathy could well be in the thousand winds that blew, the swift uplifting rush of birds, the soft stars that shone at night. Though the stars that shone in their billions over Djinjara were ten times more brilliant than city-soft.

“Where are you, Cathy?” Without being aware of it Skye spoke aloud. “Who are you?” She desperately needed reassurances. Tears for what might have been pooled in her eyes. She bent to place the bauhinia branches, weighed down by exquisite blossom, on the white stone. There were so many mysteries in life. She couldn’t seem to get to the bottom of the mystery of her own family. Had her mother lived she could have bombarded her with questions and got answers. She had always been a questioning child. Now it seemed her mother’s short life had been defined by her death.

She paid her respects at Broderick McGovern’s resting place then made her way slowly along the gravelled path to the tall gates. Along the way she passed a brilliant bank of honeysuckle that adorned one side of the fence, pausing to draw in the haunting perfume. Life might be many things, she thought, but in the end it all came down to one thing. Great or small, the body returned to dust. She chose to believe the soul roamed freely…

Just as she reached the gate, a station Jeep pulled up so hard it raised a great swirl of red dust and fallen dry leaves. Deliberate, Skye thought. Rachelle was at the wheel. Resolutely Skye turned to face her. She could hardly remount and gallop away. Unpleasant and abrupt as Rachelle was, this was Djinjara. Rachelle was a McGovern. She had to be accorded respect.

Rachelle was out of the vehicle with the speed of a rocket being fired. She was dressed in a cream silk shirt and jodhpurs, riding boots on her feet when it was well known Rachelle didn’t particularly enjoy riding, though she was competent, as expected of a McGovern.

“What are you doing here?” Rachelle whipped off her big black designer sunglasses.

“I wonder you ask, Rachelle,” Skye managed a quiet answer. “My mother is buried here.”

“Highly unusual, I’d say.” There were shadows under Rachelle’s fine dark eyes. She looked faintly ill and nerve-ridden. Yet even in the tranquillity of the graveyard, with her father laid to rest not far away, Rachelle couldn’t rein in her dislike and resentment.

“You should speak to your grandmother some time,” Skye suggested. “She was very fond of my mother. My mother could only have been buried here with her approval.”

“It’s all seriously odd,” Rachelle said, a vein throbbing in her temple. “That’s all I can say. Your mother should be all but forgotten. You didn’t know her. We were only little kids when she died yet we can’t seem to get rid of her. Or you either.”

Skye gave the other woman a saddened look. “Why do you hate me so much, Rachelle?”

Rachelle looked back with huge disbelief. “You don’t know?” she hooted. “You robbed me of my brother for years and years of my life.”

“No.”

“You did.”

“Maybe he saw you weren’t going to be my friend?”

“Please! You could never be numbered among my friends.”

“Where are all your friends, Rachelle?” Skye retorted, suddenly firing up. “You didn’t have any at school. I’m fairly modest by nature but you might recall I did. I was also head girl in my final year.”

“How impressive!” Rachelle sneered. “Who knows why Gran wanted you there in the first place. I guess she had to be fond of your mother. Who was she anyway? Over twenty years have gone by and Gran won’t say a word about her.”

Wasn’t that the truth! “You surely must know if she was a relative? One of Lady McGovern’s relatives in England?” Skye challenged, so desperate for clues she would ask even Rachelle.

Rachelle’s outraged expression rejected that. “I’d have a heart attack if I thought you and I were related,” she snapped off. “Your mother was just some stray Gran befriended. I don’t know from where. Like I care!”

“But you do care.”

It had got to the stage where they all cared. “Nonsense!” Rachelle’s cry was a near shriek. “You’re the bane of my life, Skye McCory.”

“Sounds like you should get a life,” Skye advised, turning away.

“Keefe might have loved you when we were kids,” Rachelle called after her. “But he doesn’t love you now. You’ll never get him. That’s what he told me, I swear. Though I expect that cuts your heart to ribbons. You love him. Don’t think I’m a fool. You’ve always loved him. But nothing will ever happen between you and him. Keefe has his life planned differently. He’s way out of your league.”

Skye had to wait until the initial shock had worn off. “Where did you learn to be such a terrible snob, Rachelle?” she asked quietly enough, though Rachelle’s words had landed like punches.

“It’s called knowing who you are,” Rachelle explained with a lofty tilt of her chin. “I’m a McGovern. You’re Jack McCory our overseer’s kid. He’s a real rough diamond, isn’t he, your dad?”

Skye felt heat burn up her veins. Steady. Steady. She got herself under control. “He could teach you some manners,” she answered with cool disdain. “I can see there’s never going to be a way for us to start over, Rachelle. In a way, I’m sorry about that. I know you’re not good at taking advice, but if I were you I’d jettison the bitterness and save your sanity. Hatred and jealousy hold bad karma.”

“Bad karma?” Rachelle’s laugh held more than a hint of ferocity. “Tell me about it! And what’s this with Rob? He only stayed over thinking he could hang around you. Except Keefe put a sock in it and set him to work. Using Rob as a back-up, are you, dear? Can’t have Keefe. Scott isn’t interested. Maybe Robbie will do?”

Introducing Cousin Robert at this point caught Skye by surprise. She hadn’t laid eyes on Rob since the day of the funeral.

“Well?” Rachelle gave Skye a disgusted look.

“Sorry, I need time to digest that, Rachelle. Rob is nice. I like him. But I have no romantic interest in him whatever.”

“Maybe not but you do need a leg up in the world. A Sullivan would certainly do. But there again too much of a reach.” Rachelle laughed with bitter triumph. “You’re nothing but—”

She broke off hastily as a tall shadow fell. Both young women turned round to see Keefe standing barely a few feet away. How had he moved so silently? Skye marvelled. It didn’t seem possible. But, then, Keefe managed to do some pretty incredible things.

“Is this really the place to have an argument?” he asked tersely, his light eyes blazing from one young woman to the other.

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