sure Uluru and the Olgas are your only distractions.” Liane’s stare was very direct.
It was an unequivocal warning.
“What are you saying?”
“You know what I’m saying,” Liane answered bluntly. “You’re not that dumb.”
Genevieve gave a faint laugh. “I’m not dumb at all.”
“No, just dull.”
Genevieve didn’t respond to the jibe. “So why are you worried?” She decided to have a crack at Liane. It wasn’t as though she was in any danger of becoming Liane’s next best friend.
“Worried?” Liane sounded furiously affronted.
Genevieve pressed on regardless. “You have no need to be. I promise I won’t lose sight of why I’m here.”
It was as well Trevelyan was coming back. She’d had about enough of Liane, who would have her work cut out, constantly warning off any young woman she perceived to be a threat.
Even a dull ghostwriter who just happened to be hiding in plain sight.
CHAPTER THREE
GENEVIEVE had never seen anything like the remote splendour of Djangala. The sun blazed down on innumerable lagoons, creeks, swamps, and billabongs, the water throwing back reflections of thousands of small suns and glittery pinpoints of diamond-like light. Anyone would have been thrilled by it all. She was conscious of nature and its power as she had never been in the city. Nature was sublime—whether it worked for you or catastrophically against you.
All the waterways were bordered by verdant trees and vegetation in striking contrast to the rust-red of the plains that stretched away to the horizons. Desert oaks dotted the vast empty terrain, and acacias more abundant than gums in arid areas, with large areas of mulga woodlands that abounded with what seemed like thousands and thousands of small yellow wildflowers.
A hundred or more emu—Australia’s endemic flightless bird—disturbed by the descending aircraft, were streaking across the landscape at a rate of knots. She knew when threatened they could reach speeds of up to sixty miles per hour. It was fascinating to watch their flight. The kangaroos had to be taking their midday siesta. She could only spot ten or so, in a loosely knit group. Some were standing upright like a man, balancing on powerfully muscular hind legs and long tail, others were attending meticulously to their grooming,licking their forearms. It was an endearing sight to see the two wild animals that held the nation’s coat of arms aloft in their natural habitat.
The great Djangala herd, like that of its neighbouring station, Kuna Kura Downs, was strung out across the open plains. Large sections were being driven towards waterholes to drink.
There couldn’t have been a better way to appreciate the awe-inspiring landscape than from the air. From her wonderful vantage point she could look down on Djangala’s homestead, surrounded at a distance by numerous satellite buildings. It was a far bigger enterprise than Kuna Kura. She was struck by the thought that, had things gone to plan, two Outback dynasties might have been united in marriage.
And aren’t you glad it didn’t happen?
Safely on the ground, they were met by a Jeep manned by a laconic individual called Jeff, who was waiting to drive them up to the house. The way he straightened immediately out of his slouch told Genevieve the boss was held in very high regard indeed. She supposed out here Trevelyan was king of all he surveyed. Yet for all his commanding manner and self-assurance she hadn’t detected any arrogance. Derryl, who hadn’t inherited the reins, was the arrogant one.
The long driveway was an allee of long-established palms with waving mop-heads. Genevieve sat forward as they approached the main compound, with its eight-foot-high enclosing wall that offered protection against the dust storms that periodically swept in from the desert. The towering sand hills had been an amazing sight from the air, running as they did in parallel lines, like the giant waves of the ocean. The sand even gave the illusion of being composed of silk.
An extremely vigorous climber with glossy heart-shaped leaves and great sprays of white tubular flowers fell in thick latticework over the wall. The creeper conveyed an astonishing air of exotic lushness in the semi-desert. As they neared the impressive gold-tipped black wrought-iron gate, flanked by huge date palms, it suddenly parted in the middle, and each half slowly pulled back to the side as Jeff operated the controls.
They were inside the Trevelyan desert fortress at last!
It was a fantasy land of its kind, Genevieve thought. So isolated. If one wanted to leave one couldn’t simply jump in a car and drive off in a big hurry. By air was really the only way out. In the past, tourists not sufficiently respectful of the dangers of this desert heartland had come to grief—some dying, others mercifully saved by land or aerial surveillance.
Genevieve looked about her with intense concentration, storing up everything for the future. That was what made her a writer. She had studied various photographs of Djangala Station in large coffee table books featuring many of the country’s finest properties. The photographs didn’t do the homestead justice. Nor could the photographs convey how utterly bizarre it was to come upon such a mansion set in the middle of nowhere. But then she remembered the homestead had had as much importance to early settlers as the castle to an English lord. A homestead was any rural dwelling, but Djangala was the homestead of the “landed aristocracy”—the great pioneering families who, regardless of where they settled to make their fortunes, built houses of long-term permanence to proclaim their success.
Djangala wasn’t the traditional kind of Georgian house “gentleman squatters” in Tasmania, New South Wales, and Victoria had built in memory of the Old Country, the place of their birth. Djangala homestead, a twenty-room mansion, had a decidedly Spanish look. How intriguing! Maybe Richard Trevelyan, who had built it, had taken the Grand Tour of Europe and retained an image of the sort of house he wanted to build? Whatever its architecture, the mansion, constructed of finely cut sandstone, had a wonderfully romantic appeal. A two-storey central section with an arched colonnade was flanked on either side by tall rectangular wings. The upper floor, probably bedrooms, was decorated with little curved balconies that overlooked the landscaped grounds. Four chimneys sat atop the terracotta-tiled roof. She knew from past trips to the Red Centre that desert sands cooled down amazingly at night.
This definitely was not a humble abode. Genevieve wondered if Catherine had found her first sight of Djangala homestead as thrilling as she did. Had Catherine felt the same buzz of excitement? Only what had started for Catherine as a welcome invitation to visit a historic station had ended in a terrifying experience and death. Life could be destroyed in a second. Accident or not? That was what she was here to determine. She could almost see Catherine out of the corner of her eye. Catherine of the long blonde hair and radiant blue eyes. Catherine, forever young.
Her thoughts sobered. Many things weren’t as they seemed. No one really knew what had happened. Catherine had been alone at the time.
Or had she?
Had the policeman in charge of the investigation checked out alibis, or were the Trevelyans too highly esteemed to have to account for themselves?
Trevelyan, standing a little distance off, was struck by the demeanour of the young woman Hester had chosen to ghostwrite the family history. At the moment she appeared caught in a reverie he thought oddly melancholic, as though she was trying to silence
