“You must love her for it?”
She ignored the sarcasm. “Gilly told you that?” The fact Gilly liked this guy threw her off-balance. Okay he had charisma. Was that enough to make Gilly confide so much? He’d taken his akubra off, throwing it on the back seat where it appeared to be cuddling up to her straw hat. His hair was a dark mahogany colour with copper highlights put in by the sun. It was thick, straight, well behaved hair. A touch too full and long, but sexy.
“You’d be surprised how much Gilly and I talk.” He confirmed her worst fears.
“No kidding! Like I said, she’s never mentioned you.”
“Well, you have had a great deal on your mind. If it’s any consolation, you did the right thing. If I were a girl I wouldn’t marry Nat Saunders, either. Not in a million years!”
“It sounds more like you know him rather than know of him. Do you?” It wasn’t impossible.
“Kind of.” He grinned.
“More like you’re having me on,” Bronte snapped.
He didn’t deny it.
They were driving through Oriole’s open gates. “Someone’s fixed the hinge, that’s good,” she mumbled to herself. The last time she’d visited Gilly which had to be six or seven months ago, the sagging left side of the gate was propped back with a brick.
“I come in handy sometimes,” he said.
Bronte scarcely heard him. She was staring about her in amazement. “Good grief, a huge clean-up has gone on since I was last here!” The jungle that had threatened to engulf the entire plantation as well as devour the timber homestead had been slashed right back. A good section was actually mown! “Amazing!” She stared out at the grounds which even under jungle were so wildly beautiful they took the breath away.
The gravelled driveway, flanked by an avenue of magnificent poincianas formed a broad highway up to the plantation house. The branches of the great shade trees had grown so massive they interlocked in the middle, forming a long cool tunnel leading up to the house. In a month or so they would burst into glorious flower. An unforgettable sight!
Ancient fig trees on her left. Giants! Festooned with huge staghorns and elkhorns grown as epiphytes, climbing orchids with strongly scented cascading sprays of white and yellow; lacey ferns. One of the rain forest figs she had named Ludwig as a child—after the famous early explorer Ludwig Leichardt—had fourteen foot high buttresses. When she had first come here Gilly had cleaned them out so she could use Ludwig for a cubby house. The greatest miracle of all was she had never been bitten by a snake though she had seen plenty and took good care to tread carefully.
On her right were the magnolias and palms galore. Fan palms with fronds four feet across. There were always shrubs blooming; oleander, frangipani, hibiscus, gardenia, tibouchina, Rain of Gold, the colourful pentas grown en masse, as were the great clumping beds of strelitzias—Bird of Paradise, and the agapanthus. The unbelievably fragrant but poisonous daturas, called the Angel’s Trumpets, were in flower, the enormous white trumpets dangling freely from the branches.
Through the trees she could see the dark emerald waters of the lily pond. A lagoon really, a natural spring. Dozens of glistening cup-like sacred lotus and their pads decorated the glassy surface. A small sturdy bridge had been built across the pond many years ago. Now the latticed sides hung with a delphinium-blue vine, the long trails of flowers dipping down to the water.
The banks of flowering lantana hadn’t been touched. The pink lantana attracted the butterflies, gorgeous specimens, lacewings, birdwings, cruisers, spotted triangles, the glorious iridescent blue Ulysses. They flew around the great sprawling masses of tiny clustered flowers, wings beating in a brilliant kaleidoscope of colour. In the back garden grew every tropical fruit known to man. Mangoes, paw-paws, bananas, loquats, guavas, passionfruit, custard apples, and all the citrus fruits, too, lemons, limes, mandarins, grapefruit, cumquats. There was even a grove of macadamias, the now native Queensland nut transported from Hawaii by an enterprising businessman.
“I love this place,” she breathed. “It’s always been my sanctuary.”
He glanced at her, taking in her dreamy expression. “We all need a sanctuary at certain times. Otherwise we have to get out there into the world.”
Her mood was broken. “Are you implying Gilly didn’t?”
“I was thinking more of you.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Don’t sound so cross,” he answered. “It just struck me in passing you might be harbouring thoughts of turning into a recluse.”
“I prefer to think of it as finding a life of Zen-like purity and simplicity.”
Bronte turned her head away pointedly.
“You’re a bit young for that yet,” he said. “Solitude is great from time to time, but there are hardships associated with living in isolation.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
The driveway opened out into a wide circle that enclosed a very charming three-tiered fountain, the largest bowl supported by four swans. The fountain had been out of action for years, now it was actually playing. “Have we you to thank for the massive clean-up?” She didn’t sound at all grateful and was rather ashamed of the fact. But she intended to stick to her guns.
“I feel better if I can do a good deed now and then,” he said. “I told you, Gilly is my friend. She’s remarkably sprightly but she’s seventy-six years old.”
Was that a dig? “No need to remind me. Did she pay you?”
His green gaze was lancing. “I told you, it was a good deed.”
“You mean it was a big project.” It must have taken weeks, even months.
“So? I could handle it. Are we going to get out? You first. I’ll follow.”
Ordering her around already. In the act of opening the door Bronte turned back sharply. “Are you coming in?”
“Fear not,” he mocked. “It’s only for a short time, I have Gilly’s provisions in the back. Cold stuff in the esky that needs to go into the fridge. I thought I told you?”
“I have a short attention span, I’m afraid,” she announced haughtily, standing out on the drive where her toes suffered another assault from the gravel. She stared up at the house. A green and white timber mansion. Of course it had been built for a large prominent family who had loved entertaining. These days its upkeep was a monstrous burden to Gilly though she’d rather die than admit it. The house was perched a few feet off the ground on capped stumps, a deterrent to the white ants. In her childhood one could scarcely tell where the jungle finished and the homestead started. Today the old colonial was revealed in all its enchantment.
Low set, with verandahs on three sides, twin bow windows flanked the front door. Their position was matched by the hips on the corrugated iron roof. The verandahs were enclosed by particularly fine white wrought-iron lace visible at long last because the rampant creepers that had obscured it for many years had been stripped off. The house had been recently repainted its original glossy white. The iron roof had been restored to a harmonious green matching the shutters on
