say? That he too craved the comforting normality of family? Family was something that he’d only glimpsed and most of the time it seemed as if that life never existed at all. A sheen of moisture covered Claire’s fine features. He wondered at how different his life would have been if he’d been boss of Wangallon. ‘You’re wearing my comb.’
Claire glanced at him, her eyelashes fluttering as she looked away.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ Luke asked, slipping a supportive arm around her slim waist as she stumbled.
‘I will be fine once I reach the shade of the house.’ She felt her breath constrict and with renewed energy shook his arm free of her. It was the heat, Claire decided, berating the tightly laced whalebone corset that nipped in her waist and cupped her breasts. ‘I know your father is not what people suppose him to be.’ They reached the gateway and the gravel path leading through Wangallon’s garden to the homestead. ‘You know what he once did?’ Claire began tentatively. ‘The stealing of sheep, cattle, perhaps –’ she hesitated – ‘worse?’ She looked at him directly, searching for the truth.
‘Do you really want to know?’
Claire looked towards the house as if someone may hear them. ‘Yes.’
‘I expect he did what any man did fifty years ago to carve himself a place in this world.’ Except, Luke thought, he did it better and more ruthlessly.
Claire lifted her skirts to climb the stairs leading to the verandah. Luke was his father’s son and whatever she expected to discover she would not hear from this man. There was no one moment that led to her revelation that Hamish Gordon was not as he seemed. It was more an awakening to the attitudes they received when first they ventured out into society as man and wife. It fell to Claire to cultivate female companionship and, by extension, introductions to those members of society she believed her husband should be mixing with. It was a painstaking, lonely process, filled with small slights, whispered innuendoes and strangely missing invitations. Their ostracism coincided with a number of stillborn children, leaving her in such a state of melancholy that she’d condemned herself to being both childless and virtually friendless. Yet her perseverance eventually paid off some years later when a season in Sydney saw their Centennial Park terrace positively flooded with invitations. Suddenly they were in vogue.
It was a well known Sydney matron who whispered sweetly behind the sanctity of her fan at a ball one evening:
Your husband is most charming, Mrs Gordon. I must compliment you on subduing the brigand of New South Wales.
It was such a short statement, yet that one word carried so much potency that Claire would never forget it. And so she had made Hamish promise that however he accrued his fortune, henceforth she wished to hold her head high in public. Indeed they both did the following year when, at the introduction of the doyenne of society, Mrs Oscar Crawford, they were invited to Government House. To Claire’s mind the Gordons’ rise in society had taken far too long; however, having been taken under the rather ample arm of Mrs Crawford, their place would not be rescinded. Yet it came too late to be enjoyed for any length of time. Hamish had drifted apart from her. Although they played at their relationship, only in appearance were they successful. In truth she was like a cat scrabbling with an inanimate toy.
‘Things have been good for the family, Luke. I don’t want anything to jeopardise everything I’ve worked for.’
Luke slipped their horses reins about the smooth railing and, tying a loose knot, joined Claire in one of the wicker chairs ‘You think Hamish has something on his mind apart from the purchase of Crawford Corner?’
‘Crawford Corner?’
At Claire’s repetition of the property name Luke faltered. ‘You didn’t know?’
‘No,’ she replied, smoothing her skirt over her clammy knees. She undid the row of buttons on the jacket of her riding habit, would have escaped to the coolness of her room had she not realised how desperately alone she felt. She’d done her best at being his wife. Rarely had she earned his scorn, except perhaps in the matter of child-bearing. What was it about his man she’d entrusted her love to?
Luke poured her a glass of water from the pitcher on the table, replacing the doily over the top of it to keep the flies out. ‘He has always been changeable in character. You know this.