Wedding at Blue River Read online

  WEDDING AT BLUE RIVER

  Dorothy Quentin

  Steve Forrest’s vivid descriptions of the Australian outback gave Jane Lesley a yen to see Blue River. Plus the fact that she’d fallen in love with him.

  His proposal of marriage carried her over the step of leaving Devon. Not until the plane carrying her and her sister, Lisa, neared Darwin airport, did doubts creep into her mind...

  CHAPTER ONE

  OLD Mr. Benson went to bed early, as usual, leaving Jane alone with the young Australian in the oak-beamed sitting-room of Lilac Cottage. Though it was only just after nine o’clock the Dartmoor village of Melcoombe, nestling in a fold of the rocky hills, was quiet. On this frosty October night everyone was indoors, gathered round their crackling log fires; talking, probably, about the splendid pony harvest yielded this year by the three-day round-up of the October Drift.

  ‘I’ll bring your hot drink up in about ten minutes, Mr. Benson,” Jane smiled at the old man affectionately. He had been her last visitor of the season for three years now and on his first visit her mother had been alive. He seemed more like a family friend than a visitor to the little guesthouse.

  “Thank you, my dear.” He held the Australian’s hand for a moment. “I expect this mil be our goodbye, Mr. Forrest. So I’ll wish you a safe and happy journey home.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Benson. But I’ll not be home for two or three weeks yet—I’m flying to the Argentine first. Want to have a look at their beef cattle and see if they can teach an Aussie any new tricks.”

  The bright blue eyes in his tanned face crinkled at the corners. Mr. Benson laughed gently. “I don’t imagine they can teach you much, young man! It has been a pleasure to hear your stories of the Outback—made me feel quite young again,” he shook his whitemaned head wonderingly. “When I visited Queensland many, many years ago we really were cut off from civilisation. No electricity, no hydro-electric irrigation schemes in those days! And of course, no correspondence schools or Flying Doctor Service. It must have changed life for the Outback stations a great deal.”

  “My goodness, it has!” Steve said affably enough, allowing the old man to continue holding his hand; but Jane sensed the growing impatience in Steve to be alone with her. All day she had firmly refused to allow her mind to dwell on his coming departure before daylight tomorrow. It seemed incredible that Steve had only spent two weeks at Lilac Cottage, she felt that they knew each other very well indeed.

  Her practical mind, used to wrestling with the day-to-day problems of earning a living for herself and her crippled sister Lisa, shied away from the implication. In fifteen hours Steve would be catching the noon flight from Heathrow to Buenos Aires. In a few days—before he went home to Blue River, probably—he would be immersed in the absorbing interests of his stock-raising friends in the Argentine. And she’d always heard that the cities of South America were sophisticated and gay ... Steve, with his startling good looks and his easy charm of manner—and the wealth of a prosperous cattle station behind him—would probably have a wonderful time for the final fortnight of his vacation. The Argentine, Jane thought ruefully, would be more his cup of tea than Melcoombe-on-the-Moor.

  The wonderful thing, the thing she would treasure for ever, was the magical enjoyment they had shared during his stay in the tiny village that was little more than a hamlet of whitewashed stone and thatched cottages grouped around the twelfth-century church, a picture-postcard village with its curiosity shop and Olde Tea Shoppe to catch the summer tourists, surrounded by the scattered Moor farms. Jane loved it because she had been born and bred here; her father had been the village doctor; but after the holiday season ended with the October Drift and the saleable ponies had been culled from the herds that ran wild on the Moor for the rest of the year, there was little to attract visitors.

  Winter closed down on the Moor early on these uplands, and if Lisa wanted to continue her treatment at the Falmouth clinic until the spring—as her last letter had hinted—Jane was facing a long, lonely winter at Lilac Cottage. Mr. Benson would be gone in another week. The pixies and the postcards and the pottery mugs in the curiosity shop would be dusted and stacked away for the winter, and there would be no more coachloads of holiday-makers descending with cheerful noise and exclamations and cameras on Melcoombe, like visitors from outer space. There were no buses in winter, either, and when she wanted to go in to Tavistock she would have to cadge a lift. The Lesleys had not owned a car since Lisa had crashed their father’s old Morris in the accident that had killed her mother and left Lisa herself a wheel-chair cripple.

  Stop being sorry for yourself! Jane said silently. In the eighteen months since her mother’s death she had got into the habit of talking to herself, silently; scolding and encouraging herself as the occasion demanded. Now, while Steve patiently answered the old man’s afterthought-questions about his being the owner of a mixed sheep and cattle station, she reminded herself that with the last of the visitors gone, Melcoombe began a life of its own; there was the church, still the centre of the village life as it had been in medieval times; the W.I., the whist-drives, the little tea and dinner parties, the visits to farms when the weather permitted, and the rare but much-enjoyed expeditions to Torquay or Plymouth. There was plenty to do, she thought valiantly; the worst thing was that she still missed her mother so terribly. That was something she had to hide even from Lisa. Especially from Lisa, because the specialists said that the continuing paralysis of her legs was due to shock and guilt at having caused her mother’s death by reckless driving rather than by the physical injury to the nerves.

  There was no doubt that Lisa had been driving much too fast through the narrow, winding lane leading down to the Cornish fishing village of Menassy, where the film company employing her were making a television serial. It was to be a long serial and Lisa would be on location for most of that spring and summer. Poor Lisa, Jane thought compassionately, as she had so many times during the past eighteen months.

  Lisa, at eighteen, newly graduated from her drama school, had been brimming over with life and her short-lived triumph in her first good part. Her speciality was dancing, and she was to play the part of the dance-crazy daughter of the owner of a Cornish fishing boat ... she had wanted her mother and Jane to go down to Menassy with her, to stay at one of the cottages in the cove, to witness the beginning of the filming. Lisa had inherited her mother’s fair beauty and love of music and dancing, and Mrs. Lesley had always tended to spoil her younger daughter. But both of them could not leave Lilac Cottage just before their first guests were due to arrive for Easter, so only Mrs. Lesley had gone—promising to be back within the week.

  There had been a heavy shower, making the road greasy, and the car had skidded into the stone wall concealed beneath the bank of ferns and wild flowers. A farm labourer working in a field above the lane had witnessed the accident, and had run down to render help; he managed to get Lisa out, but Mrs. Lesley had died instantly.

  ‘T’poor little maid didn’t know where she was tew,” the man said in his evidence at the inquest, “’tes treacherous, after rain, that Honeydew Lane. Us have had a lot of accidents there, since foreigners started cumin tew Menassy for their holidays, and ’tes likely now they’ll broaden the road. But t’maid were driving too fast and when she braked fer t’corner, t’car went into a skid.”

  Jane was glad that Lisa had not been in the coroner’s court to hear his honest, sad testimony. Lisa was still in hospital, suffering from shock, refusing to believe that her mother was dead; that her own career as an actress and dancer was over before it had properly begun. Later, when she was stronger and had accepted the truth about the accident, she had lost the use of her legs. Orthopaedic specialists, nerve specialists, psychia
trists had all examined and treated the girl without success. She had been in and out of hospitals ever since. When the National Health authorities said they could do no more for her and sent her home, Lisa had lived at Lilac Cottage like a wan little ghost of her previous self; accepting Jane’s constant care and the sympathy of all the Melcoombe people as her right, but terribly bored and depressed by her confinement to her light, folding wheel-chair; she had never liked the country life and she missed the busyness of the theatre and film studios in London.

  Jane, herself shocked and horrified by the tragedy, had done her best to cheer her up; but before long Lisa had suggested specialist treatment in a private clinic that was supposed to work miracles for unusual cases like hers. Jane had agreed at once. There was, after all, the insurance money, and if it could give Lisa back her health and career it would be well spent.

  That money had gone long ago, fruitlessly; the Falmouth clinic was the third that Lisa had tried. Jane agreed to it because the winter down there in Cornwall was much milder than the heights of Dartmoor, and by now Lisa had quite a lot of friends in the town. Her recent letters had sounded much more cheerful.

  Jane knew she would have to say “Yes” to Lisa’s question about her remaining at the clinic through the winter, though the fees would absorb all her modest profits from her summer guests. Lisa was always on to her to sell Lilac Cottage and move somewhere where it was warmer and there was a bit more life... but, apart from loving her home, Jane knew that Lilac Cottage was their only security. The time would come when money for the private clinics was exhausted, and then the sisters would be glad of their small comfortable home that belonged to them free of debt, even if it was situated in a lonely moorland village.

  Besides, Jane’s common sense told her that selling the cottage would not be easy. Very few people wanted to come and live at Melcoombe unless they were farmers, buying a farm and land. People who wanted a holiday cottage on the Moor would not pay enough for Jane and Lisa to buy another house elsewhere; and young local people who wanted it as a permanent home would not be able to get a mortgage on it because it was. four hundred years old.

  Steve, despairing of getting the old man off to bed any other way, had walked with him to the foot of the polished oak staircase, still answering Mr. Benson’s questions. Jane smiled to herself. Steve talked so casually of the near-million-acre station of the Blue River ... of the thousands of ewes and many more head of beef and dairy cattle it could pasture, of the stockmen’s uncounted horses numbering several hundred. She knew that Australia was a vast country, but for one young man to be farming enough land to make an English county was fabulous, dreamlike. The astronomical figures of acreage and stock were unreal to a girl used to the small mixed farms of England. The Blue River homestead, as Steve described it, sounded like a colonial mansion in a Hollywood film. No more real than Steve himself and just as improbably delightful...

  Jane felt Steve’s hands gentle on her shoulders as she stood over the Rayburn, watching the milk she had put on to heat for Mr. Benson’s drink.

  She started; Steve had crossed the stone floor of the kitchen with the lithe, noiseless stride that always surprised her in such a tall man. The touch of his hands on her shoulders made her shiver suddenly, though the Rayburn was glowing warmly. She couldn’t turn round because her eyes were full of unshed tears; the effort to hold them back made her eyes smart. Staring down at the milk in the saucepan made her think of the early breakfast she would be getting for Steve before he set off for London in his cream Jaguar. It would be his last meal in Lilac Cottage and Jane suddenly wanted to howl like a dog, knowing that the long lonely winter stretched before her—a prospect made drearier than-usual because during the past two weeks the young Australian had made the sunnier, vaster life of his homeland come vividly alive for her ... in fact she felt she knew the Blue River station. The rambling, comfortable timber homestead with its wide verandas built by Steve’s grandfather well up on the hillside because in the wet the lowlands by the river were flooded; the house surrounded by tall gums and wattle for shade, the flowering shrubs in the garden making a bright pageant of colour all the year round.

  The wattle, the flowering gums, the scarlet banners of the waratah and the rich yellow of the banksia, the sweet-smelling freesias, the English roses, the gorgeous rich colours of the massed cinerarias ... all the flowers that would be out when Steve returned home were vivid in Jane’s mind.

  The men’s quarters were out of sight round the hillside, and still farther round were the stock pens and shearing sheds and dipping vats, at the head of the track that led to the nearest town, Oonga, seventy miles away.

  From the windows of the house one looked down the grassy hillside—Steve said it would still be green because the river was wide and deep and provided irrigation for the land unless there was a prolonged drought, when they had to depend on the artesian wells—towards the winding river, with its willows and massed native bush on the banks.

  “It’s called Blue River because it reflects the sky—it really is blue most of the time,” Steve had grinned endearingly. That day they had been riding over the moor and a fog had blotted out the grim outlines of the prison building ahead of them, blotted out everything except the outcrops of small rocks among the springy, wet heather beneath their horses’ hooves. “We don’t get this stuff at home even in the wet—the rainy season. Usually there’s very little cloud. A man could get lost in this—I’m glad I’ve got you for a tracker, Jane!”

  She laughed, glad too because at last there was something she could show this sun-loving young Australian with his laughing eyes and lazy drawl. She knew her way about the Moor in any weather as unerringly as his Aborigine trackers knew their way through the bush or the deserts of his homeland. And even if she made a mistake, the horses from Barton Manor would find their way home all right, as Jane told him prosaically.

  “Too right. Animals have a built-in radar, I guess.”

  Steve rode well, with the long Australian stirrup used by men accustomed to spending all day in the saddle. Jane was intensely grateful to Anne and Roger Marshall, her friends at Barton Manor. They had sent Steve to her in the first place, and they lent them riding horses whenever they wanted to explore the Moor, even though the Manor was sold and most of the animals had been sold too. The Barton Manor stock sale, widely advertised, was one of the reasons Steve Forrest had come to Melcoombe; that and the October Drift, which he had found a quaint and amusing experience after the businesslike, large-scale roundups on his own territory.

  Now, with his hands on her shoulders sending a small unaccustomed shiver of delight through her, Jane was ashamed of her emotion. Steve was so virile and gay, he had made the past two weeks so enjoyable for her—broadening her horizon unbelievably—he wouldn’t want his last hours in Melcoombe spoiled by her ridiculous depression. She thought he would not be very patient with a tearful female—and why on earth should he? She was just his temporary landlady and hostess, even if they had become friends.

  Yet the touch of his hands was tender and nearly her undoing. She swallowed back the tears with an effort and hoped with all her heart he had not noticed that tremor under his hands. Still keeping her back to him, she moved gently from his grasp to pour the hot milk on to the cocoa for Mr. Benson.

  “I’ll take it up for you,” Steve said behind her, and there was a sort of warm laughing tenderness in his voice. “I don’t want the old boy to keep you up there talking for another half-hour!”

  “He’s lonely since his wife died.” Jane made herself sound matter-of-fact. “He lives in a club in London. You’ve made him very happy, Steve—talking about Australia. I think he had quite an adventurous life when he was young.”

  “Good on him, bless his woolly bedsocks. But tonight I want to talk with you,” Steve kissed the back of her neck lightly and reached round her for the cup of cocoa.

  It meant absolutely nothing at all, she told herself resolutely as she began cutting wafer-thin slices of b
read and buttering them for his sandwiches; the filling was generous slices of home-cooked ham. She had learned something in the past fortnight about the Australian appetite for meat. Apparently out there large quantities of meat were eaten at breakfast, lunch, tea and supper...

  Steve’s caress was only his way of thanking her for an enjoyable stay, she told herself; from the moment he had appeared on her doorstep, saying that he had been up to Barton Manor for the livestock sale and the Marshalls had suggested his staying at Lilac Cottage as there was no hotel nearer than Tavistock, he had been easy, assured, friendly and natural in manner. Seeing the Jaguar beside her white picket gate Jane had hesitated.

  “This is only a cottage, not a hotel, Mr. Forrest. We—we haven’t central heating or even electricity—” she had despised herself for her hesitation, for stammering; but this sudden godlike apparition on her doorstep had taken her completely by surprise. At the time she had been cross with Anne and Roger for not ringing her up to warn her, to ask her whether she wanted another paying guest; now, realising that she would probably have said “No”, she was devoutly thankful they had not.

  “No electricity?” he grinned down at her wonderingly, and she had told him quickly that it was being brought to the village next year. Barton Manor, like most of the bigger farms, had its own generator.

  “Shucks, it doesn’t matter a thing!” Steve had looked past her into the beamed hall, at the bare polished oak of the staircase. A copper bowl of autumn foliage stood on an ancient chest in the hall, and the rugs on the stone floor were good even if shabby. “I’m from Queensland, Australia, Miss Lesley. If you can put me up for a week or maybe a bit longer, I’ll be grateful. It’ll be a new and interesting experience for me, living in a house this old. It is old, isn’t it?”

  “Nearly four hundred years old,” Jane had told him dryly, capitulating. That afternoon she had taken him round the village and shown him the church, which was twice the age of Lilac Cottage. Steve had bought some of the lucky pixies and postcards from the souvenir shop against Jane’s advice, even when she whispered that most of the things were made by factories in Birmingham. He had more money than sense, she thought, when the first impact of his charm had worn off a little. When he had told her he wanted the souvenirs and gaudy postcards for the Abo children on his station—the Aboriginal stockmen had large families—she had warmed to his generosity. Like many of the American tourists he spent lavishly during his fortnight in Melcoombe, insisting on paying Jane more than she asked for his board, giving old Miss Prince a handsome donation towards the jumble sale, taking Jane and Mr. Benson down to Torquay and Plymouth for luncheon at a good hotel. In the evenings he stood rounds of drinks to any of the men who came into the tiny snug of the Ring of Bells in Melcoombe—and he had been pleasantly surprised when Jane went with him once or twice.