Inherited: Twins
‘All I want is the chance to get used to it,’ said Prue with another sigh.
To Nat’s relief, they were approaching the turn-off onto the sealed road, where the track was marked by an old tractor tyre on which ‘Cowen Creek’ had been painted. He changed gear, wishing that it were as easy to disengage a conversation.
‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,’ he said as he looked up and down the long, straight, empty stretch of road before pulling out. ‘By the end of the season you’ll be carrying on like you were born here, and who’s to say Ross won’t change his mind? You just need to give him time.’
‘But I haven’t got time,’ Prue protested. ‘That’s just it. I’ve got to go home in three weeks.’
He shot her a look of surprise. ‘Has your visa run out already?’
‘No, my sister’s getting married.’ Prue’s tone didn’t suggest she found it much cause for celebration. ‘Originally they were going to have an autumn wedding, but then Cleo decided it would be much nicer for everyone if they had it in summer instead, so I’ve got to cut short my trip. I promised I’d be there, and I can’t let her down.’
She stared disconsolately out of the window, imagining London with its grey streets and its grey buildings and its grey clouds. Here the sky was an intense, glaring blue and the air was diamond-bright and the heat shimmered over the red earth and wavered along the vast, distant horizon. And somewhere out there Ross was riding his horse, sitting easily in the saddle, smiling that smile of his…
‘I wish I could stay,’ she sighed. ‘It’s not just because of Ross. I love it here. I suppose I always had a pretty romantic idea of the outback, and I didn’t really know what to expect. When I heard about the job at Cowen Creek I was half afraid that I would be disappointed, but the moment I arrived I fell in love with the place.
‘It was like coming home,’ she said slowly, the grey eyes dreamy and unfocused as she remembered how she had felt. ‘It was as if I’d always known the light and the stillness and the silence. I love the birds and the trees along the creeks, and the way the screen door bangs.’
She glanced at Nat, half-defiant, half shame-faced. ‘That’s why it bothers me so much that I don’t belong, why I wish so much that I could. Does that sound stupid?’
‘No, it doesn’t sound stupid.’ He turned his head and smiled at her, a warm smile that illuminated his quiet face and left Prue oddly startled, even breathless, at the transformation.
‘It doesn’t sound stupid at all,’ he said again. ‘That’s the way I feel about the outback, too.’
‘Really?’
Slewing round as far as she could in her seat-belt, Prue studied Nat with new interest. She had never taken much notice of him before, beyond registering his air of unhurried calm, but now she looked at him properly and was surprised at what she saw.
It wasn’t that he was handsome, at least not in the way Ross was handsome. His hair was an indeterminate shade of brown, his eyes were brown—in fact, everything about him seemed to be brown. Brown skin, brown watch, strong brown hands on the wheel. He was even wearing a brown shirt.
But still, there was something about him. It was more to do with his air of quiet self-assurance than any particular arrangement of his features, Prue decided. If he wasn’t so understated, he might even be quite attractive. His colouring might not be very obvious, but there was nothing indeterminate about that lean jaw, or the angles of his face, or the cool, firm mouth that had smiled with such astonishing effect.
Prue’s eyes rested on it speculatively. It was a pity Nat didn’t smile more often, she thought, remembering how white his teeth were, the way his eyes had crinkled at the corners and the creases had deepened in his cheeks, and for some reason a tiny, almost imperceptible tingle tiptoed down her spine and made her shiver.
Puzzled by her silence, Nat looked across to check that she was all right and their eyes met for a brief instant. There was nothing in his expression to suggest that he was aware of how closely she had been studying him, but Prue felt a blush steal up her cheeks and she jerked her gaze away.
‘You’re lucky,’ she muttered, averting her face and conscious of a quite inexplicable feeling of shyness. ‘You belong here. You don’t have to go to London and wonder if you’ll ever see the outback again.’
Nat didn’t answer immediately. A road train was bearing down on them, and he lifted a hand to acknowledge the driver’s wave as it thundered past with four long trailers.
‘You’ll just have to come back after the wedding,’ he said when it had gone, able to put his foot down on the accelerator at last. ‘The Grangers will still be here, and I’m sure they’d give you another job.’
‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that.’ Prue had recovered from her momentary confusion. ‘It took me ages to save the money for this trip, and I’ve spent it all now. If I wanted to buy another ticket, I’d have to start all over again.’
‘Couldn’t you do that?’
‘I could, but by the time I’d got enough money together I’d probably be too old to get a work permit—and even if I wasn’t, they would have had to have found a new cook for Cowen Creek.’
What was the betting that the next cook would be young, and pretty, and completely at home in the outback? Just the type to convince Ross that it was time to settle down, in fact. Desperation clutched at Prue’s heart as she imagined coming back to find that Ross had given up waiting for her to get used to the bush and married someone much more suitable instead.
‘So what you need,’ said Nat, following his own train of thought, ‘is a short-term job that will pay you enough to cover your fare back to Australia?’
Prue nodded. ‘Except I’ll probably need at least two jobs in order to save anything. I could get some office work during the day and waitress in the evenings, and if I stay with my parents I won’t have to pay London rents, which would make a difference. It’ll be all right if it’s not for too long,’ she tried to convince herself.
It would still take months before she could get back to Australia, she calculated in despair, and she sighed. ‘Perhaps I could rob a bank or something!’
‘What about a job that paid your flight back to Australia instead?’
‘I can’t see there being many of those advertised in the jobs pages,’ said Prue glumly. ‘Robbing a bank would be easier than finding a job like that. I might as well think about sprouting wings and flying back myself!’
‘You shouldn’t be so negative,’ said Nat. ‘Do you know anything about babies?’
Prue was momentarily thrown by the sudden change of subject. ‘Babies?’ she echoed uncertainly. ‘As in very small people, dirty nappies and sleepless nights?’
Nat grimaced. ‘It sounds as if you do know about them,’ he said in a dry voice.
‘I spent a lot of time with my elder sister’s children when they were tiny. I’ve always loved babies,’ she told him. ‘They’re a lot of work, but they’re so gorgeous and…’
She broke off, belatedly realising why he might be asking and sat bolt upright to turn to him, her face suddenly alight with excitement. ‘You don’t know anyone who wants a nanny, do you?’
‘Yes,’ said Nat, nodding and the corner of his mouth lifted in a slight smile. ‘I do.’
CHAPTER TWO
PRUE’S grey eyes widened. ‘You’ve got children?’
There was no reason why he shouldn’t, of course, but she couldn’t help feeling surprised. He seemed so self-contained that it was hard to imagine him with a wife amid the cheerful chaos of family life.
What would Nat’s wife be like? Prue wondered. Probably as cool and sensible as he was himself. Certainly not the kind of woman who would forget to put fuel in the car, or cry, or pour out her heart to a virtual stranger, she decided, and felt unaccountably depressed.
‘I’m going to have two.’ Nat’s smile was a little twisted as he thought about how much his life was going to change.
‘Going to…?’
Glancing sideways, Nat caught her puzzled expression. ‘They’re not mine,’ he explained. ‘I’m talking about my brother’s children, William and Daisy. They’re twins, just eight months old and I’m their guardian now.’ He paused. ‘Ed and his wife were killed in a car accident in England a couple of months ago.’
Shocked, Prue pressed her hand to her mouth. ‘How terrible,’ she said, conscious of how inadequate her words sounded.
‘I thought you might have heard about the accident,’ said Nat after a moment. ‘The Grangers knew Ed and Laura pretty well. They bought a property just to the east of Cowen Creek last year, and they’d help each other out on big musters sometimes.’
Prue shook her head. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said. She had been too wrapped up in Ross to take any interest in the Grangers’ neighbours she realised, ashamed. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she went on, biting her lip. ‘What were they doing in England?’
‘Laura was English, like you. Ed met her when he was over in London, but they married out here. Laura loved the outback, too, and she was quite happy to live here but she felt guilty about her parents. They’re quite elderly, and couldn’t manage the trip out to Australia, so they hadn’t been at the wedding. When the twins were born, she knew they would be longing to see their grandchildren and Ed promised that he would take her and the babies to London for a visit instead.
‘That was in April,’ Nat went on. ‘It’s a busy time of year, but Ed knew how much it would mean to Laura, so he asked me to keep an eye on things while he was gone. He said they would only be a month.’
The careful lack of expression in his voice made Prue’s heart twist with pity, and she cringed as she remembered how she had whinged on about her own problems which were so pathetic in comparison to his.
‘What happened?’ she asked awkwardly.
‘They’d been in London three weeks when Laura’s parents offered to look after the twins for a day so that she and Ed could have some time to themselves. It was the first time they’d left William and Daisy. Apparently it was a nice day, and they decided to drive out to the country…’
He trailed off, and Prue found herself imagining Ed and Laura kissing the babies goodbye, waving cheerfully as they got into the car and drove off, looking forward to a day together alone away from the city’s noise and grime. Not knowing that they would never be coming back.
‘They were in a head-on collision with a van,’ Nat finished. ‘The police told us that they would have both been killed instantly.’
‘But the babies weren’t with them?’
‘No, they were with Laura’s parents so they’re fine.’ As fine as they could be when their world had been torn apart, Nat amended grimly to himself.
He was very grateful to Prue for not offering false comfort or asking him how he had felt, what he was still feeling. He didn’t want to talk about that.
‘Where are they now?’ asked Prue, almost as if she understood intuitively that he was happier sticking to the practicalities of the situation he had to deal with now.
‘They’re still with Laura’s parents in London,’ he said. ‘I went over as soon as I heard. Ed and Laura wanted William and Daisy to grow up as Australians, and they knew that her parents would be in no position to look after them, so they’d made a will appointing me as guardian. I don’t think they thought for a minute that anything would ever happen to them, that I would ever need to take responsibility for their children.’
‘But now that’s what you’ve got to do?’
‘Yes.’ His glance flickered over to Prue. She had turned slightly in her seat to face him as far as she could in the confines of her seatbelt, her expression warm and sympathetic. ‘There was no way I could bring William and Daisy back with me after the funeral,’ he told her, and he found himself hoping that she would understand and approve of what he had done. ‘I arranged for a nanny to look after them with the Ashcrofts—Laura’s parents—until I could sort things out here and make sure that I would be able to care for them properly, but I think it’s important for me to go and get them as soon as possible.’
Prue nodded understandingly. ‘The longer you leave them, the more attached they will become to the nanny and the harder it will be to take them away.’
‘Exactly.’ Nat looked at her gratefully. ‘The trouble is, I’m going to need help. I don’t know anything about babies. I’m not sure I would be able to cope with one baby on a plane, let alone two. That’s where you come in,’ he said. ‘I think we may be able to help each other. You want to come back to Australia; I want someone to help me look after William and Daisy. I’ll buy you a return ticket if you’ll fly back with me and the twins,’ he finished.
For a moment, Prue could only stare at him, unable to believe that he could sound so casual. ‘That’s…incredibly generous,’ she stammered, not entirely convinced that he knew what a generous offer it was.
‘Not if you think about how much I need you,’ said Nat with a wry glance. ‘I can put a mob of cattle through the yards, and do all those things that you said you wanted to be able to do earlier, but I don’t know where to begin with a baby! If you come, you’re going to have to teach me how to feed them and change them and bath them and do all the other things they need. Could you do that?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose so, but—’
‘It’s not just a question of the flight either. Eve, the nanny who’s looking after William and Daisy at the moment, thinks that it would be upsetting for them to be suddenly taken away from everything that’s familiar. They won’t remember Australia now. She suggested that I spend a few weeks getting to know them before bringing them back, and it would make sense for you to come along too.’
‘I can see that,’ said Prue, nodding. ‘They would need to get used to being with us.’
‘And then there’s the Ashcrofts,’ said Nat. ‘They were too distressed to talk much when I was there for the funeral, but they’ll probably want to see who’s going to be bringing their grandchildren up.’
‘How do they feel about you taking William and Daisy away?’ Prue tried to imagine her own parents in a similar situation. ‘Don’t they mind?’ she asked curiously.
Nat thought about it. ‘I think they know they can’t manage the twins on their own,’ he said at length. ‘Losing Laura was a terrible blow for them—she was their only child—and it’s hard enough for them to cope as it is, without the worry of bringing up children. That doesn’t mean they’re not concerned, of course,’ he added, noting with one part of his mind a plane’s wing glinting in the sun as it turned. The airport was just ahead, which meant that it wasn’t far to Mathison, and he wanted Prue to understand the situation before they got there.
‘They’ve never been to Australia, and the outback sounds a very strange place to them. They were worried about the fact that William and Daisy will be isolated, and that as a bachelor I wouldn’t be able to look after them properly, but they were all right when I told them that I was engaged, and that the twins would grow up in a family. I said that the next time I came I’d bring my fiancée with me so that they could meet her too.’
There was a pause. ‘I didn’t know you were engaged,’ said Prue after a moment, and wondered why her voice sounded so hollow all of a sudden.
Or why she was even surprised.
There was no reason why Nat shouldn’t be engaged, just as there had been no reason why he shouldn’t have a wife and children. It was just that, having established that he wasn’t married, she had somehow assumed that he never would be. And if he had a fiancée, why did he need her to help him with William and Daisy?
‘I was then,’ said Nat, answering one of her unspoken questions as she stole a puzzled look at him. His voice had no inflexion whatsoever and it was impossible to tell how he felt about the fact that his engagement apparently belonged to the past.
‘I’m not any more,’ he added when Prue continued to look blank.
In one way, it made it easier for Nat that she knew nothing about Kathryn, but a perverse part of him couldn’t help wishing that she hadn’t made it quite so obvious that she had never taken the slightest interest in him. He was surprised that she had even known his name.
‘You obviously didn’t know that either,’ he commented dryly.
‘No.’ Prue shook her head. ‘The Grangers don’t go in much for gossip,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added, and then realised that she sounded as if she regretted not knowing about the break-up of his engagement. ‘I mean, I’m sorry about your engagement.’
‘Don’t be,’ said Nat. They were driving past the airport now, where he had said goodbye to Kathryn before she’d got on the plane back to Perth. He remembered the softness of her kiss, the swing of her hair as she’d turned, the unmistakable relief in the way she’d walked away.
‘It was a mutual decision,’ he told Prue. ‘Kathryn and I have known each other a long time. She’s got a good job in Perth, and we’d deliberately decided on a long engagement so that she could concentrate on a big project she’s working on at the moment. When I got back from London I realised that it wasn’t fair to ask her to give everything up to look after two small children, so we talked about it and agreed to…postpone…the idea of marriage for the time being. It’s better this way for both of us.’
He didn’t sound bitter, but Prue had the impression that he was picking his words carefully, editing as he went along. He could say what he liked about it being a mutual decision, but he was obviously still besotted by her, she decided, unsure why she felt slightly peeved at the idea. Why else would make excuses for her?
She found herself disliking the unknown Kathryn intensely, and feeling obscurely cross with Nat at the same time. He ought to mind that his fiancée had chosen her job over him.
‘It’s not really better for you, though, is it?’ she said, more sharply than she had intended. ‘How are you going to look after the twins on your own?’
If Nat was surprised at her tone, he didn’t show it. ‘I’ll have to hire a nanny,’ he said. ‘I asked Eve if she would think about coming out to Australia with William and Daisy, even if only for the first few weeks, but I’ve just had a letter from her saying that she’s getting married and doesn’t want to leave England.’
Prue couldn’t imagine anyone turning down the chance to travel to Australia, marriage or no marriage. Ahead, the heat beat down on the road, creating a wavering mirage that blurred the horizon between the crushing blue sky and the sparse scrub that stretched off as far as the eye could see and beyond. It was like being in a different dimension altogether—so much space and so much light that Prue would sometimes feel dizzy and disembodied.
How could anyone not want to be here? Prue shook her head pityingly.
She brought her attention back to Nat, who was talking about the arrangements he would have to make. ‘I’ve contacted a couple of agencies here to see if anyone would be prepared to travel to London with me and help bring William and Daisy back. Ideally, it would be someone who wanted to stay at Mack River on a permanent basis, but they haven’t come up with anyone yet. That’s why I thought of you,’ he said, glancing at Prue. ‘When you said how much you wanted to come back to Australia, it seemed you could be just the person I need. I know you wouldn’t want to stay permanently, but it might take me some time to find someone suitable. You could stay at Mack River while you looked for another job in the area, if that’s what you want. You’d only be gone about a month. The Grangers might even keep your job open for you.’
Prue sat up straighter, fired up by the mere possibility. ‘I could ask them,’ she agreed excitedly. ‘They’ll need to replace me while I’m away, but maybe they’ll get someone who doesn’t want to stay.’
‘More than likely,’ said Nat. ‘There’s always a high turnover of staff during the dry season. It’s too hot, or too isolated, or too boring, or too much like hard work.
‘There aren’t many people like you,’ he told Prue with a slight smile, and she found herself wishing that he’d smile the way he had smiled before.
It wouldn’t take much, just a deepening of the creases on either side of his mouth, just a parting of the lips, just a crinkling of his eyes. She remembered how startled she had been, the way her heart had jolted, that odd sensation of suddenly finding herself face to face with a stranger.
For some reason, Prue’s cheeks were tingling, and when she put up a hand to feel her skin she realised that she was actually blushing! Embarrassed, without knowing why, she dragged her eyes away from Nat’s mouth, which had lifted into something that was almost—but not quite—a proper smile, and forced her mind back to what they had been talking about.
For a terrible moment her mind was blank, before memory kicked in. Going back to Cowen Creek…how could she possibly have forgotten?
Giving herself a mental shake, Prue let herself picture the situation. If she went back, Ross would know that she was serious about wanting to live in the outback. He would realise that she meant what she said, and wasn’t just amusing herself for a few months, the way the girls who saw a stint on a cattle station as part of travelling around Australia did.
Nat’s offer would mean that she would only be gone for a month or so. Surely even Ross couldn’t forget her in that time? He might even miss her. The thought flickered into life, grew stronger. Didn’t they say that absence made the heart grow fonder?
Prue slid a sideways glance at Nat from under her lashes. He was a bit older, of course, and not in Ross’s league when it came to looks, but he wasn’t unattractive. What would Ross think when he found out that she was going to spend a month with Nat? Might he even be jealous? Prue wondered hopefully.
Remembering how miserable she had been less than an hour ago, Prue smiled to herself. ‘I’m beginning to think that forgetting to check the fuel today was the best thing that ever happened to me,’ she said slowly.
‘Does that mean you’ll take the job?’
‘I’d love it,’ said Prue honestly, ‘but…well, I don’t have that much experience of babies. Wouldn’t you rather have someone more qualified?’ She grimaced, thinking of the catalogue of stupid mistakes she had made just since she had been at Cowen Creek, let alone the rest of her life. ‘Someone more efficient?’
Nat took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at her, with her unruly curls and her wide, tilting mouth and the nose that was just a little too big. ‘I’d rather have someone like you,’ he said.
He didn’t know how to explain that there was a warmth about her that was much more appealing than efficiency. He might not be able to imagine her keeping an immaculately tidy house, but he could picture her holding a baby in her arms, offering unlimited tenderness and security and love.
A little too vividly, in fact.
Nat frowned and concentrated on his driving once more. ‘You’re a nice girl,’ he said gruffly. ‘The Grangers like you. You love the outback and you want to come back. Those are all good enough reasons as far as I’m concerned. And then, you need to go to London just when I do…’
‘You could almost say that we’re meant for each other!’ Prue finished for him cheerfully.
A tiny pause.
We’re meant for each other. Her words echoed in the silence between them, and she suddenly realised how easily Nat might have misinterpreted them.
‘I mean…job-wise,’ she added uncomfortably.
Nat flashed her an enigmatic look. ‘What else?’ he said in a dry voice.
Nobody could say that Mathison was a pretty town, but Prue loved the old hotel, with its wide, wooden verandahs, the great iron water-tanks beside every house, and the pokey general store which had a weird and wonderful selection of goods and an eccentric taste in displays. Prue perked up as they drove along the wide street. She had hated the thought that she might never see it again, of returning to soulless supermarkets where everything was wrapped in layers of plastic.