The Landowner's Secret Read online

  ‘Good Lord, what am I reported to have done now? Overstayed my welcome at the pub and swum naked in the Murrumbidgee? Debauched one of the more upstanding members of the Ladies’ Auxiliary?’

  With that Robert earned himself a quelling glance.

  ‘You know what I’m referring to.’

  ‘Yes, I do. And I assume you’re here to once again warn me of inflated rumours that will be the end of our business venture. It’s Stanford you’re causing trouble for, too. All for what?’

  The man’s lips thinned, and—if possible—he managed to look more like a stern father than a moment before.

  Damn.

  Wright, whose smoking had begun the moment they’d left the confines of the house—presently giving Robert nightmarish visions of stray embers sparking a bushfire—took another draw on his pipe, staring off into space while he exhaled slowly. The smoke curled about his whiskers and then trailed off into the bright afternoon.

  ‘When I first saw the girl on your property, she was more than capable of walking, of getting herself around. Why did you keep her here?’

  And why does it matter to you?

  ‘Apart from the obvious danger? Is that not reason enough? I’m not leaving a girl alone in the bush while there are bushrangers around.’ Robert lifted a boot to the fence, matching the older man’s position. He fixed his attention on a wayward sheep in the shade not too far off, steeling his temper into something manageable.

  ‘You don’t care about this, Tom. Not really. What is it you’re trying to get at here?’

  Wright took another puff, and Robert suffered the frustration of being made to wait. A kernel of anxiety had formed in his belly, but he’d be damned if he would let the other man know that.

  ‘I have to make a commitment soon,’ Wright began. ‘I have to think of my own business, my family, you know? And I have to make a decision where the best place is for me to invest.’

  He glanced at Robert.

  ‘I’ve requests from beyond here, you know. There’s talk that the land up in the Highlands is more favourable for what you’re intending to try here with those wines. I’ve plenty of reasons to proceed nearer to Moss Vale or New Sheffield …’

  Investments the man had not been investigating until the very recent past. Robert knew it with absolute certainty.

  ‘And what would it take to make you keep your backing with us?’

  But he already knew. Damn the bastard, what had he ever been thinking taking a verbal commitment from this particular man as a true one? He should’ve chained the fellow to his office desk weeks ago and kept him there, a starved and unhappy hostage, until he’d legal documentation of their agreement.

  Robert muttered something unpleasant and gripped the railing. The harshness of the climate was getting the best of the wood. Gloveless as he was then, he was likely to pull away splintered, but in that moment better the fence than Tom Wright’s neck.

  ‘You are going to deny us the funding and the support because I helped a sick girl? Have you run mad?’

  ‘I wonder, that’s all. And I have my own reputation to be concerned about.’ A sharp sideways look preceded his next words. ‘There’s my family to consider, too.’

  Yes, the man’s damn family and the pampered jewel at the centre—his daughter—around which the entirety of the world seemed to revolve. She was the real cause of all this bluster and fuss and fabricated scandal. Of course she was.

  Wright drew on his pipe and then exhaled, and another trail of smoke swirled up between them. It was as practised a mannerism as most of his others, and as much a part of the man’s act as the expensive imported fabrics he dressed his family in, and the obnoxiously expensive barouche in which he’d travelled to Endmoor that day. It was a perfectly impractical thing on the poor roads in the area, and especially so with so few people about to appreciate its high price.

  Robert and John were both twenty-eight, had worked hard and held better positions in society than most. But to these older men like Wright, they were still boys to only be taken seriously if they had the right connections—and money. They were to be toyed with for amusement now, it seemed, and there wasn’t a bloody thing Robert could think to do about it.

  He’d the education, the inheritance, and the years of practice behind him to make his attempt at growing rich green vines instead of wheat worthwhile, if only he could gain the attention of the bigwigs in Sydney and Melbourne and other parts of the colonies to listen to him. That was where the old guard of the region came into it, and that was precisely why he couldn’t afford to antagonise the likes of Tom Wright.

  Robert was a landowner, and like all other men in his situation he was rich in some ways and poor as a church mouse in others. Just as it was back in England, where his father had taken back over the reins of the Farrer lands some years earlier, they owned vast swathes of property, but only profited from it if it was managed well.

  The Farrers were far and away the most British—and therefore, in the eyes of many, the most impressive—people in the district, and yet they’d not made their money through the gold rushes. Unlike the Wrights and the Stanfords, they had not come to the tablelands to build themselves a fancy town house and live off investments.

  It was precisely why Robert was now in such a bind. He wanted, more than anything he’d ever wanted before, to branch out on his own. Sheep were reliable and Australia had long ago won the battle with Germany to become known internationally for their wool, but sheep were sheep were sheep.

  What the Germans found success in was wine, and that was where Robert’s—and John’s—passion lay. John, raised well thanks to his father’s wealth, was more than ready to branch out on his own, but was still cultivating the funds and connections that only came with age and experience, just as Robert was. The Farrer name had something of a pull locally, but it was not enough.

  ‘What is it you expect me to do to earn your backing and get that signature I need?’ he ground out.

  The wayward sheep roused itself out of its stupor and dawdled off in the direction of the others as Wright’s smoking bout drew to a close, with a lone last half-baked curl of smoke drifting away, leaving only the scent of the tobacco behind.

  ‘To gain my backing? Tell me, Mister Farrer, what would a gentleman usually do when a girl has been brought into his care and compromised?’

  Cold realisation washed over him as the goal of the man’s scheming became all too clear. There was that crowning jewel in need of protecting, and what better way to do it than this?

  Anger—no—fury reared up so fast it was almost impossible to control. This was utter ridiculousness, but then he hadn’t brought a rational man out with him that afternoon.

  Wright didn’t think Robert would do it. He thought he could tidily remove himself from a deal with the Farrer family by making outlandish threats. Robert was being tricked out of the deal, not into it. A social climber such as Tom Wright wouldn’t be capable of conceiving of someone doing what Robert, in that moment, resolved to do.

  Grimly, determinedly, he pushed away from the fence, effectively ending the conversation on his own terms.

  ‘I thought you had another property to call on before the end of the day.’

  ‘That I do.’

  They parted ways at the carriage drive, and Robert didn’t bother seeing the man off on his way, instead taking a few minutes to himself in his office.

  He knew why there’d been no communication from the Germans in Bethanien in South Australia, nor even from Adelaide, where communication was not difficult these days. There was nothing wrong with the telegraph or the post; Robert had been receiving regular correspondence from all over New South Wales and beyond.

  Frustration and a deep-seated anger boiled up inside him as his mind framed an image of chess pieces falling neatly into place.

  Checkmate, Tom Wright. The man moved fast.

  Robert wasn’t aware of how much time passed as he sat there at his desk, staring at the figures in fron
t of him until they blurred, and then giving up and looking off into space.

  He thought of Endmoor, and the legacy his parents had left in his young hands when Australia had become too much, too harsh for them and they’d returned to Cumberland.

  He thought of his sister, who was his charge, his friend, his confidante all in one, and how that she would one day soon make a match. He hoped for a good one.

  He thought of John Stanford, and the hard work the other man had put into their shared dream of turning the tablelands into a producer of good rieslings. It had been proven to work; Australian wines were already beating their more favoured French and German counterparts in blind tastings in international competition, even if the prizes were being revoked the moment the judges discovered the provenance. Nobody yet seemed able to believe colonials could produce something so crisp. In time, Robert was certain they could achieve that, too.

  As long as he had the backing to bring …

  And then he thought of exactly what he was being pressured to do in order to achieve those dreams—not just his own, but those of all he felt responsible for.

  The sunbeams lengthened across the room, and still he sat idle, his dreams of the view beyond the windows filled not with Merinos but German vines precariously close to fading. Somewhere close by Hutton was barking with excitement at something. It was probably Miss Ryan, who’d taken a liking to the dog as surely as she took a liking to almost everything and everyone.

  Somewhere further off a cacophony of birds announced the change in the day. The days were growing shorter as winter approached, and soon there’d be no light at all by the evening meal. That last thought triggered him into action, and he pushed back and got to his feet.

  He came to a solid decision between the veranda and the path that veered west from the house, and had made up his mind absolutely before he even passed his mother’s roses. The girl in his thoughts had worked a miracle of sorts after taking the suggestion of gardening to heart, coaxing things out of the soil that he’d have thought were unachievable on the cusp of winter.

  It wasn’t hard to find her out on the drive, as she was laughing in delight at the dog’s antics. She turned when she heard his approach, quickly and shyly rearranging her skirts, her hair, into something a tad more presentable.

  No matter what he wanted, Robert couldn’t help but make her uneasiness grow as he took a chance to study her, this girl who’d exploded into his life—and stayed. Perhaps once he’d found her nondescript in that way one tended to be when they hadn’t the funds to emerge from the drudgery of poverty, but since the day he’d been led to her boot he’d seen flashes of something else.

  She amused him, to be honest, entertained him. It wasn’t what he’d have thought he’d want, but there it was—a man could be surprised. And, in another borrowed gown from his sister’s wardrobe, she had a dignified prettiness about her, the Cambridge blue of the fabric a complement to her colouring and frequently cheeky smile.

  He wondered what she thought of him, if anything. In social standing he outmatched her a thousand times over, but did she see anything beyond his authority and his vast property?

  He supposed he was about to find out.

  Finally, resolved to it, he extended his hand to her, and waited with as much patience as he could muster for her to tentatively slip her fingers into his palm.

  ‘Walk with me again,’ he coaxed, and after giving Hutton a final pat she fell into step.

  Chapter 8

  He took her in the opposite direction to the last time, again in the gig. The sun bathed the yellowed grass of the paddocks in light, and currawongs called to each other across the valley.

  As the horse clopped along, he told her of things she hardly understood, and yet he didn’t speak to her as if she were stupid. He talked about his plans to make wine, which seemed mighty extravagant to Alice, except he told it as though he already had it all planned.

  ‘It’d be easier than shippin’ it here from France,’ she eventually conceded.

  ‘Cheaper than coming from the Rhineland, too, which is the market I hope to compete with.’ He drew her back to the conversation with that statement, which invited her to ask further questions.

  ‘I think I understand. Mind, I’ve no idea of the meanin’ of half the words you’re sayin’.’

  He grinned.

  ‘Believe me, that’s not uncommon. Forgive me, but I’ve been studying like a schoolboy on this topic and tend to forget not everybody finds it as fascinating as I do.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t find it interestin’. In fact, I keep picturin’ how the town will react. If it’s not wheat here, it’s sheep. You’re not supposed to be different.’

  ‘And it’s deathly boring, is it not? John Stanford is in on this with me, so the town will have to panic and tut at the antics of not one but two of us. The horror!’ he finished with rather a lot of drama in his tone.

  ‘And this worries you?’

  ‘Not at all. At least, it won’t bother me once I find my German expert to come and battle the scorched land with us and teach us how to achieve our miracle.’

  ‘What’s that word you keep usin’?’

  ‘Viticulture? It’s the harvesting of grapes,’ he explained patiently. ‘Just a fancy word for it.’

  ‘And you can make it here? Wine, I mean?’ Alice didn’t mean to sound as doubtful as her tone, but she had grown up in a world of wheat and sheep, and this was beyond anything she’d ever thought to imagine.

  ‘I don’t know for certain,’ her companion said easily. ‘However, I certainly intend to try.’

  Alice considered all of what he’d said, thinking she should say something intelligent about it, but not knowing what. And then something off to the right caught her attention.

  ‘We ought not to be out like this, I reckon. People are watching us, Mister Farrer.’ Alice was mightily aware of the nearness of her companion. She hadn’t any idea how to act normal when pressed so close to someone so powerful. In fact, she felt a fool, trying so hard to appear unmoved by him that she’d become a statue.

  ‘Robert,’ he corrected, as he always did, shifting beside her, seemingly all confidence and ease. ‘What people are watching? I see none.’

  ‘We just passed two in the paddock out there, and they gawked.’

  ‘Surely they were kangaroos, not people.’

  ‘In hats?’

  He didn’t respond to that, only smiled. Alice knew there was something different about him that afternoon, though. Now she dared to give him a closer look she saw his smile was so tense it was almost false, and she suspected his meeting hadn’t gone the way he wanted it to. Mr Stanford had implied as much when he’d taken his leave of them, a farewell that had included an odd glance Alice’s way.

  It was another one of those walks that had so far been conducted while seated in a vehicle, but Alice wasn’t complaining. They’d covered ground in a direction she hadn’t been before, and as awkward as she felt being alone with this man, she was enjoying the journey.

  ‘Didn’t Elizabeth want to come with us?’

  ‘Ah, well. She is familiar enough with my driving skills to know better.’

  They passed expanse of grass after expanse of grass, the view occasionally broken by stubborn old gum trees that grew haphazardly in various directions. The mountains seemed to stay off in the distance no matter how much closer they came to them.

  ‘I think it’s the road,’ she said after some consideration.

  They’d gone mostly in silence on their little journey, long enough that Alice was beginning to get suspicious about the bland look on her companion’s face.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I think it’s the road that’s bumpin’ us around like this, not your drivin’. Look at that big bloody hole there, for Heaven’s sake.’

  Belatedly—very belatedly—she realised her choice of language, but by then it seemed a little late to be gasping and apologising profusely as other young ladi
es would have done. Instead, she gave him an expectant glance, waiting for him to berate her for it.

  He did not, and they continued on, neither of them any worse for wear for her words.

  A moment later, she spotted the flowers. Squinting to bring them into greater focus, suddenly the blues and the purples and the pinks running the length of the road had her sitting straighter.

  ‘Oh stop, Robert! Stop here a moment.’

  ***

  This wasn’t precisely the outing Robert had planned.

  Before he even had a chance to assist her, his companion had clambered down from the gig. It was lucky he’d stopped soon enough, because he rather thought Miss Ryan would have flung herself from a moving vehicle, she was suddenly so full of excitement. If in her haste she stumbled over her new skirts a little, she was oblivious to it, so intent she was on her mission.

  He followed her as she waded into the bushes running along the side of the fence, and watched with baffled amusement as she bent to admire one of the wildflowers growing there before plucking it to hold up for inspection. It must have passed muster, because she dived for another, and then another.

  ‘What’s that you’re picking?’

  ‘Crowea,’ she said without stopping her task. She made a grab at her skirts as though she expected to find an apron there to hold them in, grunted in consternation when she recalled she’d removed it before they set out, and transferred the bunch to her left hand so she could continue plucking with the right.

  ‘I haven’t seen them for so long, I almost thought they’d stopped growin’ around here.’

  Robert reached out and relieved her of her quickly growing burden.

  ‘And you need to pick them here?’

  She looked up at that and after a second’s thought sprang back onto the road and away from the plants.

  ‘Is this someone’s property? Of course it is. There’s a fence.’

  ‘It’s mine, actually,’ he said with a quick smile. ‘Pick as many flowers as you want. I could probably do with an education about what’s growing on my own land.’