Master of the Outback Read online

  She felt more secure now. She had proof. “Did everyone know Hester was in love with Catherine?”

  He loomed over her, one of his hands executing a chopping, dismissive gesture. “Nonsense!”

  “Ask her. She’ll tell you.” Genevieve clung to her belief. “It’s not so unusual, is it? These out-of-the-mould love stories have been happening since the beginning of time.”

  “God, I can’t wear this,” he groaned. “Genevieve, you’re just embellishing a good story.”

  “I’m not going to write it, Bret,” she hastened to reassure him. “Nothing will go into the book if both of you consider it taboo.”

  “Here we go again! Taboo!” he exploded. “I think you’ve fallen victim to your own imagination. It is, after all, exceptionally vivid.”

  “It goes a lot deeper than that, Bret,” she said, desperate for his help. “My grandmother had in her possession a letter from Catherine, saying she and your grandfather Geraint had fallen in love, but everyone thought he would marry Patricia. Patricia who became your grandmother after Catherine was killed.”

  His handsome mouth was set in a hard line. “Killed? For God’s sake, Genevieve, what are you saying?”

  She could see he was furious, horrified—both. “That’s all I know.” Though he was standing very still, she felt thoroughly intimidated. She loved this man. But if she’d had any hope with him she was fast losing it. “I wasn’t told the story directly. It was by sheer chance I overheard a conversation between my grandparents years ago. My grandmother was extremely upset, weeping bitterly. All these years later I think it wrong to leave Catherine’s death as a tragic accident. Someone must have been with her. Someone, moreover, who wanted to get rid of her.”

  He was appalled. Frustrated. He wanted to shake some sense into her. But most of all he wanted to pick her up in his arms, lay her down on the sandy floor of the cave, make far from gentle love to her. “That’s your version, is it, Michelle Laurent, bestselling writer of psychological thrillers? My family knows the true version even if your family don’t.”

  Her breath was coming in gasps. “How about you ask Hester? She’s an old woman, yet she’s still consumed by guilt, grief—who knows? There wasn’t just an eternal triangle going on—Geraint, Patricia, Catherine. Hester came into it as well.”

  He moved with superb ease, backing her up against a smooth rock wall. “So you want me to look into it before someone pushes you off a cliff?”

  Her green eyes searched his. “I trust you, Bret. You have power. Maybe that person was none of them but someone else?” Out of nowhere, she was rocked by doubt.

  “Ah, Genevieve!” Trevelyan made a groaning sound deep in his throat. “This all sounds mad to me.”

  “But the story was hushed up, wasn’t it?” she persisted. “In all the documents, photographs, information. Hester didn’t mention one word about Catherine. It all came to a head when I saw the photograph. She wanted it kept hidden, but it was stuck to another photograph. You must have noticed the possessive way Hester’s hand was clamped on Catherine’s arm. Patricia, after all, was Catherine’s friend, not Hester’s. Did your father never speak of it?”

  Outside the wind had dropped. The great torrents of rain were easing back. A blast of fresh fragrant air swept into the cave, but it couldn’t cool the heated atmosphere within.

  Trevelyan stood very still. “Not one word.”

  “Odd, don’t you think?”

  “Not at all odd.” His tone was curt. “You didn’t know my father. He was a fine man, but a hard man. A real authoritarian. Anyone would tell you that. He was extremely tough on us all after our mother left.”

  “Maybe she found him too tough as well?”

  Something smouldered in his dark eyes. “Let it go, Genevieve,” he warned. “And don’t stare at me with those great green eyes. My father didn’t confide in any of his children. Certainly not to discuss an old tragedy. He would have considered it of no account.”

  “Even when it involved his mother and father? Catherine was Patricia’s friend.”

  Provoked, he snatched hold of her shoulders. “A friend who betrayed Patricia behind her back?”

  “They weren’t engaged.” She flew to Catherine’s defence.

  “They would have been. Look, I don’t want to hear about this again, Genevieve. What good will it do, raking up the past?”

  She held his dark gaze, unmoved. “Catherine won’t let it rest.”

  His dynamic features were drawn so taut it threw into high relief his strongly modelled bone structure. “Please, I don’t need any of the paranormal stuff. Catherine Lytton is dead. All three of them are dead. My grandparents and your Catherine. You’re working yourself up for nothing.”

  “I want to know.”

  He did shake her then. “When it will stay a secret for all eternity? All of them are gone, Genevieve. You want someone to pay? Is that it?”

  She had a sensation of swaying. He gathered her up against his chest. “I’m sure they have paid, Bret.” She looked up at him. “Guilt is torture. I just want to know—don’t you see? Catherine deserves it.”

  His stare held ironic reproof. “You’re obviously one of those people who can’t leave things alone.”

  “I must be,” she whispered. “You talked about fate, Bret. Fate brought me here.”

  He had to listen to that. “So fate decided to seek you out?”

  “Choose what you want to believe.”

  “It’s not a question of what I want to believe,” he returned angrily, suddenly realising the amount of pressure he must be putting on her delicate shoulders. Instantly his grip lightened. “Am I free to choose you?” He reached out a hand to unfasten the gold clasp in her hair. “What means the most to you, then? The connection we’ve had from the very beginning? Or are you dead set on juggling random pieces to fit your puzzle? Seems to me it’s more important to you to prove there was more to Catherine Lytton’s death than what was confirmed.”

  She was almost in tears, so powerfully was she aroused. “It won’t let me be, Bret. I didn’t ask for any of this. I know I could be destroying what it is we have. But none of you has forgotten the old story. Hester to this day is downright tormented.”

  He too was unnerved by her intensity. “So you think Hester can solve the mystery? What is it you want her to say? She pushed Catherine over the cliff in a jealous rage? Is that what you want? As far as I’m concerned this whole damned thing is over the top.”

  She shook her head violently. Such a clamour was within her. “I only want the truth.”

  “This is the truth.” His tall, powerful body radiated a high level of sexual tension. “The here and now. Not some old tragic story. Life is chaos. Things just happen. We don’t do the directing. You would never have come here if the opportunity hadn’t fallen into your lap.”

  “Fate, not chaos,” she maintained.

  “Okay, okay.” He was trying to get a grip on his turbulent emotions. “You’re entitled to your opinion. But I find it unacceptable to cast doubts on my people. Hester might be a throwback to an earlier century, but I’m convinced she would never deliberately cause anyone harm.”

  Her breath stabbed. “So this is a witch hunt?”

  “You have to admit what’s going on here is very strange. I’m just an ordinary guy, Genevieve.”

  “Ordinary?” She had to laugh at that. “How can you describe yourself as ordinary? You’re Master of Djangala and God knows what else. Try telling the ordinary man or woman in the street you’re ordinary.”

  He truly believed his nerves would snap. His body was flooded with fierce desire and he had to listen to this. “Stop it, Genevieve, for God’s sake. I really can’t talk about it. Not now.”

  “Please, Bret. Bear with me. In my dream—the
dream about Sondra—Catherine was with her. They were arm-in-arm, like friends.”

  It was inconceivable to take a woman against her will, but her nearness and the accusations she was making were tearing him up. He couldn’t think about anything else but her. He was human. He was a man alone with the woman he fiercely wanted. “Genevieve, I’m finding this unbearable,” he said tautly. “I only want to make love to you.”

  The expression in his eyes shook her to the core. “I want you to make love to me.” It was such a release to just say it.

  “Then stop. I beg you.” Hardly knowing what he was doing, his hunger was so great, he began to kiss her—her temples, her cheeks, her long satiny throat—pressing his mouth against the pulsing blue artery. She was quite extraordinary. He knew that, and he loved her for it. At the same time her “gift” was creating an intolerable space between them. He couldn’t allow it. He intended to have her. He intended marriage. He intended she be the mother of his children. He pressed her beautiful yielding body to him, desperate to possess it.

  “I know I seem strange to you,” she murmured.

  “Strange? God, Genevieve, you have me in thrall.”

  Was there the faintest nuance of sexual hostility in his voice? Adam tempted by Eve? Man forever tempted by woman? “You don’t like it?”

  “I love it,” he groaned. “In some ways.”

  “You’re wary of the things you can’t understand?”

  “You said it.” He tipped up her chin, the better to move his caressing mouth beneath it. Her body had grown languorous with desire. She was half slumped in his arms. He could fell her heartbeat against the palm that cupped her breast. The womanly fragrance of her was a powerful intoxicant.

  “I think someone attacked Catherine,” Genevieve said, unable to stop herself even now. “That’s what she’s trying to tell me.”

  It wrung his heart and aroused a deep ache. He wanted to know every last little thing about her? Well, this was part of her. In some way he thought she was being controlled. He would have to contend with that, even if he didn’t understand it.

  “So you believe that justifies your subterfuge?”

  The air was cracking with instability. What was truly extraordinary was that although they were in some ways in conflict the physical desire they felt for each other carried on unabated. The mind, the reasoning power, had little control over the demands their bodies were making. It was profoundly erotic, this desire to know one another in every possible way.

  Genevieve’s whole body was shaking with pleasure. She had never known herself capable of such intense reactions. “You changed me,” she said.

  He stared into her eyes. “Did I?”

  “You know you did.” In the scintillating warmth inside the cave she began very slowly to unbutton his soft denim shirt with trembling fingers, all the while staring up into his handsome tautened face.

  She could bring such music to her voice, he thought, a man seized by a spell. There had been little joy in his family life. Not since their mother had run off. Derryl was having a job trying to sort himself out. Romayne at least had found her soul mate. The Trevelyans had always had wealth, not happiness. As his father’s heir, he’d had plenty of hard work, plenty of self-denial, big responsibilities. He could throw it all over. He had more than enough money to last him for ever, but to quit was unthinkable. He had a job to do, but he wanted the right woman by his side.

  That woman was Genevieve, hell-bent on unravelling a mystery.

  His shirt was hanging loose, exposing his superb physique. Genevieve put her hands on his body, moving her hand in little caressing semi-circles over his darkly bronzed skin, splaying her fingers, running them down to the waistband of his jeans. His body was marvellous to her, but she knew she could get burned.

  “Where are we going with this, Genevieve?” Trevelyan spoke with hard urgency. “Talk to me. Look at me. You can’t do this to me and then think you can call a halt.”

  Flames were fanning out through her body. “Why are you letting an old story come between us? You weren’t part of it. What have you to fear?”

  He caught her roving hands, holding them fast. “The only thing I fear is you. Crazy isn’t it? For me to fear a slip of a woman.”

  “Would it matter if I said I loved you?”

  He took such a deep breath his chest heaved. “Do you?” There was pain in every part of his body. And she was the cause of it.

  “For the first time in my life,” she murmured.

  He forced her fiery head up. “Are you trying to melt my hard heart?”

  “I am,” she whispered, her green gaze intent on him. “You’re here. I’m here. We’re together. I want you to make love to me.”

  Her voice, though soft as a whisper, seemed to echo eerily through the cave. It was as if those very words had been uttered by a young woman a long time ago.

  “You don’t fear being compromised? I have no protection. I didn’t bring you here to have sex. It’s as I’ve told you, Genevieve. I have a responsibility towards you.”

  “I know.” Only she stepped right into his arms, putting her mouth to his naked chest, unashamed. Overwhelmed by the moment she locked her arms around his lean waist. Her hair slid forward, muffling her words. “It’s a safe time for me. I have never, ever asked a man to make love to me.”

  “Not the man you were engaged to?” His gaze burned over her.

  She looked up at him with those large almond-shaped green eyes. “It was always a case of the other way around. I couldn’t have been in love with him. This proves it, doesn’t it? I never felt remotely what I feel for you. I was a different person then. I might have lived in another galaxy.”

  “Well, you’re in my world now,” he said, with rough emphasis. “This could go very wrong as well as very right, Genevieve.”

  The hectic flush in her cheeks had suffused her whole body. “I don’t care.” She had stopped thinking. She was totally focused on getting what she so wanted.

  “Strangely enough, neither do I.”

  Desire was roaring through him like a storm. He wanted above anything to be inside her. One day in the not distant future she would give birth to their child. Their first child, hopefully. He wanted a daughter who looked just like her mother. He had thought from time to time he might be condemned to a hard existence, full of responsibility and a certain isolation. His beautiful Genevieve had changed all that.

  His joy was immense.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE western sky was aflame before Trevelyan found his way down from the escarpment where Catherine Lytton had fallen all those years ago. Boughs whipped around him as he made his descent from the eroded plateau to where he had parked the Jeep, nosed into the shade of some acacias. He had to see what he could do for Genevieve—the woman he loved. He had to put her mind at rest.

  Their coming together in the rock cave had been pure magic. Love was magic. Sacred in some way. The memory of those glorious stolen hours remained. Nothing had ever felt like that—the tremendous build-up of need that was agony, and then the tremendous release.

  She had taken him deep into her body, and into the chambers of her heart. He had to do something for her now. He would speak to Hester. Try to get her to remember. Until he did, he and Genevieve were in a sort of limbo.

  He had found it incredible to hear Catherine had written to her cousin of a love bond that had grown between his grandfather and her. Could it be true? Hester would surely know.

  Something had broken Hester. Back from England on holiday long ago, she had never returned to take up her promising career.

  Hester and her brother, Geraint, had been very close. It was true she had adored him. But what of Catherine of the long blonde hair and radiant blue eyes? Had Hester fallen in love with Patricia’s frie
nd, hardly realising what was happening to her? To love another woman… She would have known that would never have been accepted within the family.

  But Genevieve’s instincts were what directed her. Instincts and dreams. She wanted to shine a light on the past. He felt compelled to help.

  Hester had heard his loud rap on her door. “It’s me, Hester,” Trevelyan called. “May I come in?”

  Hester padded to the door, clutching her chest. She had always known this day would come. She couldn’t go on enduring the pain. The memory of Catherine’s last day on earth came back to her. Catherine had been totally innocent of her feelings for her. But, oh, the ache of loneliness, of wanting to take Catherine in her arms, tell her how much she meant to her.

  She’d had little affection in her life from her mother. Her father and her brother had loved her and been proud of her. Hester had always thought her mother felt only relief when she had gone away to further her studies in London. She had no idea where all the warmth had gone.

  Catherine, her beauty and the sunniness of her nature had swept all before her. Catherine had been a beautiful person. A child of light.

  To Hester’s shock, Bret was accompanied by Genevieve. “What is she doing here?” Her eyes shifted almost frantically from one to the other.

  “Forgive me, Ms Trevelyan, but Bret wanted me here,” Genevieve intervened. She hadn’t wanted to come, but Bret had insisted. She had started it, after all, but she had no wish to see this fierce, rather terrible old lady disintegrate under questioning.

  As it was, Hester fell back in apparent shock. “What is this?”

  “Something that can’t wait any longer, Hester.” Bret moved past her into the room, with Genevieve a faltering pace behind. “The last thing we want is to distress you, but the subject of Catherine Lytton—you remember her?—has come up.”