yah spirit will heal here, far, far away from what you left behind. You’re gunna be able to display your real colours.”
Olivia, who fancied she had something of a gift, recognised a prophecy when she heard one. “Oh, I hope so!” The strange woman continued to stare directly into her eyes. Just as hypnotists do. Probably she was one. Or a sorceress. Then again she might discover the woman wasn’t real.
“Yah bin like a bird in a cage strugglin’ to escape,” the woman continued, her tone at lullaby pitch. “Beatin’ yah wings and flingin’ yourself against the bars. You have to have the will to escape.”
“Maybe I’ve been frightened to fly alone?” Incredibly Oliva found herself divulging that startling piece of information.
“Escape is within reach.”
The one thing she hadn’t reckoned on was an airport clairvoyant. “I’m waiting for a Mr Clint McAlpine to pick me up,” she confided in another strange burst of friendliness. “I’m to work for him.”
It was the woman’s turn to be astonished. “Clint hired yah?”
“You call him Clint?” Olivia was somewhat taken aback. No one, for instance, outside of family and close friends called her father Oscar. Dear me, no!
“Now, now, love, don’t come over the Pom.” The woman tapped her hand lightly. “We all call him Clint. We love him up here. He’s the best fella in the world. A fittin’ heir for his dad, who’s up there in the Milky Way, the home of the Great Beings and our ancestors. I’m Bessie Malgil, by the way. I shoulda told yah. Everyone knows me around here. I paint.”
“Pictures?” Olivia stared at her with quickening interest.
“Not your kind of pictures, love. We’re talkin’ indigenous art. Now how about you? What’s your name? Lady Somethin', I’ll be bound!”
“Olivia Balfour.” Olivia gave the Good Samaritan her hand. “No title.”
“Don’t need one. Written all over yah. Nice to meet yah, Livvy,” Bessie said, giving Olivia’s elegant long-fingered hand a gentle shake.
Livvy! She had waited all her life to be called Livvy.
“My golly, girl, you’ve taken on a challenge comin’ down here to this part of the world. You look like you belong in one of them fine palaces.”
“No, Bessie, no!” Olivia shook her head, a movement that only increased her dizziness. “I’m just an ordinary person but I am interested in challenges.”
“Not today you ain’t!” Bessie pronounced firmly. “Look, love, let’s get you out of that straitjacket. Not that it ain’t dressy but we need to make a start. You’re overheatin', that’s for sure. Clint’s comin', yah say?”
“Oh, I do hope so.” Olivia rose in a rather wobbly fashion to her feet, while Bessie helped her out of her linen jacket, folding it neatly over the back of the bench.
“If he said he bin here, he’ll bin here,” Bessie stated with the utmost faith. “Blow me down if that’s not ‘im coming now!” Her whole face lit up. “Bin out on a muster by the look of it.” She chuckled. “Last week he was sellin’ two of the Queensland stations in the chain. People are lookin’ for cheaper beef. Global recession an’ all. We can deliver better up here in the Territory. Your worries are over, Livvy. Here he comes.”
Olivia started to her feet again, for once in her life standing awkwardly. McAlpine was coming. From where? What direction? Even as her eyes swept the crowded terminal she became aware of a ripple of pleasure, of recognition and excitement, in the crowd. She even detected a sprinkle of clapping. Something that always happened when royalty was around.
Bessie’s indicating hand came up. “Here he is, love. Right on time.”
Olivia followed her gaze helplessly. McAlpine?
All she could see was a strikingly tall, wild-looking man striding towards them. Some character that embodied the great outdoors, or the hero of a big-budget adventure movie set in the desert sands of Arabia or the jungles of the Amazon, the ones she avoided. This man was dressed in what she took to be the ultimate in bush gear. Khaki shirt, khaki trousers, a surprisingly fancy silver buckle on the leather belt he had slung around his lean waist. Polished high-heeled cowboy boots made him even taller than he already was. A wide-brimmed cream hat, theAustralian slouch hat, was set at a rakish angle on his head. His hair, a dark auburn in colour, was almost long enough to pull into a ponytail, for God’s sake! When had he last visited a hairdresser? Most of his darkly tanned face was covered by thick stubble that, left another few days, could turn into a full beard.
Just the sight of him rendered her fragile. In fact, she felt too shocked to move a muscle.
But the eyes were the eyes she remembered. Glowing and glittering like a full-grown African lion. She had no parallel for this. He hadn’t looked like this in London or at the family wedding in Scotland. Then he had fitted effortlessly into her world. But this was a far cry. Here in his own country he looked like a man who had never been tamed.
While she stared back in a kind of bemused horror, he suddenly put up his hand and swept off his wide-brimmed slouch hat in an extravagant gesture she interpreted as mocking. He looked quite extraordinary! A totally different breed. She could feel a blush further redden her face and neck. This was a dangerous man. Way outside her ken. And to think of it! She had put herself in his power.
Olivia did the only thing she could do.
She fainted.
A lot of things had happened to him in his eventful thirty-eight years, but he had never had a woman collapse in a dead faint into his arms. A beautiful woman no less—tall, elegant, with classic aristocratic features. His mind was suddenly filled with his irritating but surprisingly vivid memories of her. Olivia Balfour, ice princess, had only just arrived and already she was trouble.
“Poor little thing!” Bessie crooned, as he swiftly fielded the young English woman’s tall, too-slender body, lowering her so she lay flat along the empty bench.
“She’d be all of five-eight in her bare feet,” he pointed out drily.
“Yeah, but she looks kinda vunerable, don’t you think?”
“Vulnerable, Bessie,” McAlpine corrected, privately agreeing.
“Whatever!” Bessie shrugged. “I always say vunerable. Why don’t you never tell me before?”
“Never heard you say it, but you’re spot on.”
“'Course I am. Anyway, knew this was gunna happen. Too many clothes. I spotted that right off.” She leaned over to slip off Olivia’s low-heeled, very expensive leather shoes.
“Who wouldn’t?” McAlpine commented drily. He seemed to remember telling the high-and-mighty Ms Olivia Balfour to get off her high horse, pedestal, whatever. She had got under his skin and he hadn’t bothered to hide it. The divorce coming up. That was his excuse. Marigole had been giving him all the flack she could muster.
“Not used to our heat,” Bessie was saying. “How she’s gunna survive outback, boss, I dunno as yet.”
