Secrets Of The Outback. Margaret Way
Steve thought, loosening his tie. Too many. Too long. Some of them had to be tongue-in-cheek. Especially the archbishop’s. He had to have some knowledge of Copeland’s true nature. The Sir Julius that Steve knew, his boss, owner of Mingaree Station, and a string of other pastoral properties adding up to some five million hectares, was a bastard in anyone’s language, and you’d better believe it.
Forgive me, Lord. Steve momentarily bent his head, ashamed of his irreverence. Not that the good Lord wouldn’t agree after He’d talked to the man, however briefly. Julius Copeland had been intimidating beyond belief, so rough of tongue he made the crudest station hand blush. A complete contrast to his partner of the old days, Sir Stafford Connellan. Steve had had the greatest respect for Sir Stafford, knighted, like Copeland for service to his country. The big difference was that Sir Stafford had been a great man, a bred-in-the-bone gentleman. A real thoroughbred, now sadly deceased. Sir Stafford’s son, Earle, had succeeded his father in the firm. Steve could just see where Earle Connellan sat, his lean handsome face solemn, with his dark-haired wife, Rebecca and their only child, a son of around thirteen, Keefe. The boy was the image of his father which was to say strikingly handsome, but there was more to it. Like his father and grandfather before him, he had that aura of integrity and high intelligence. That special look of breeding. Industrial giant though he’d been, Sir Julius had never had that. No doubt, in time the boy Keefe would become a force in the firm. The Connellans were still major shareholders, despite Sir Julius’s best efforts to outwit them after Sir Stafford’s death. No sense of decency there.
The Connellans, too, were possessed of great wealth, but they’d always had virtually the opposite approach to it. Earle Connellan stood head and shoulders above the likes of Travis, whom Steve detested for a number of reasons. Earle was a great guy, a man you could talk with, no side to him for all his privileged background. Travis, though, was an arrogant son of a bitch. Pretty much thought himself a god. As did his old man. Not that Steve and Thea had to suffer Travis much these days. At one time, Travis had flown into the station regularly in his Beech Baron, but not for ages now. Come to that, Steve hadn’t visited the city in years. Today he was part of a contingent of cattlemen who’d traveled a thousand miles and more to attend the great man’s funeral. Damn near mandatory. It was easy to tell who the cattlemen were. Though suitably dark-suited, all of them to a man balanced their trademark akubras on their knees. As did Steve. He’d nodded to most of them as they made their bowlegged way in. Horsemen. And it showed.
Landowners were up front, as befitting the guys who owned the whole caboodle. Employees were at the back. Steve didn’t mind. He wasn’t part of this world of wealth and privilege. He didn’t want to be. Steve considered himself blessed. He had a job he enjoyed. Plenty of back-breaking work, of course, but he was well-paid and he had security of tenure if only because he knew his job and had a good business head. He had the sweetest wife, too, his loyal Thea. She had given him such happiness since the moment he put his ring on her pretty finger. Above all, he had Jewel. God, he adored that child! She was his life. Six going on seven. The most adorable, the spunkiest, smartest, most affectionate daughter a father could want. Hair of spun gold. In total contrast, her delicate winged eyebrows were many shades darker than her hair, almost black. She had blue eyes of such radiance that he had bypassed the name she’d been christened, Eugenia after Thea’s mother, to settle on the only name possible when one looked into those sparkling eyes—Jewel. Jewel Bishop. Nowadays no one on the station called her anything else. His little Jewel. His sweetheart. His treasure. He couldn’t wait to get back to his “girls.” He already knew what he was going to bring them as gifts. Every trip away, even a trip like this, Steve bought his girls surprises. He loved the moment they opened them, the way their eyes lit up with love for him. His girls. His life.
The service droned on to the point that he actually considered getting up and stretching his legs. About time things got moving. He couldn’t bear being trussed up in this city gear. And the heat! Some guy choked up and had to be led off. Must’ve been an act. Still, this was no place for such an unChristian thought, Steve decided. He lowered his curly dark head to his hymn book, joining a choir of uniformed kids from one of the posh schools. Probably Sir Julius’s alma mater. He tried to visualize Julius Copeland as a small boy. Couldn’t. He’d always figured Sir Julius had sprung into this world fully grown—and had believed the old boy could never die. Now Sir Julius’s final destination was waiting. Steve didn’t know exactly where that would be, but he wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Sir Julius was going straight to hell.
TEN MINUTES LATER, Steve got his first good view of Lady Copeland as she made her dignified way down the aisle. No one to support her. She probably felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She didn’t look from side to side. She didn’t look at anyone. Steve had to keep reminding himself of her age. She was Travis’s mother, which had to put her well into her fifties, but behind the short black veil she wore over her face—he thought only royalty did that—she looked as youthful as her daughter-in-law.
Steve found the opportunity to study her again outside. He was tempted to go up and say hello to her. Explain he was overseer of one of the Copeland cattle stations. Of course he didn’t. He hung around watching the VIPs go, instead. Her elegant beringed hand came up to push back the short veil. Now, for the first time, Steve saw her face exposed to the brilliant sunlight.
Lord God! He gulped as a terrible malevolent humming started up in his head. The clarity of shock and the pain almost felled him. In one soul-destroying moment of revelation, Steve knew his whole life had been stolen from him. He reeled with the impact. Slammed into something hard. A stone pillar. He knew beyond any doubt that he could never be happy again.
The face of this woman, Davina Copeland, was the same magical face as his own daughter’s. The resemblance was startling. Here was the mould for the face of the child who had given him all the joy in the world. His daughter, Jewel. There was the hair, dressed differently, of course—maybe the woman’s owed a little these days to artifice—but it was the same thick, gleaming gold. There were the distinctive winged black brows, the heavily fringed blue eyes that shone like jewels.
Now all those hazy questions he’d sealed away in his mind broke out of the vault. He turned in blind anguish, his feelings of betrayal so powerful that they were beyond words. He looked for and found Travis Copeland. The destroyer was standing by himself. Without hesitation Steve moved in. He would have liked to shout “Adulterer!” but his throat closed up. Travis was sweating and shaking, just standing there staring at him. Knowing what was coming.
Before anyone could stop him, Steve Bishop, superbly fit, launched himself at the man who had dishonored his wife, ruined his life. He grabbed him powerfully by the shoulder, then—as mourners turned, both aghast and agog—punched Travis so hard in the face that he was knocked clear off his feet. Copeland’s patrician nose was most assuredly broken. Steve had felt the crunch, but without any satisfaction.
A woman in a chic black suit began to wail. Not the widow. Not the wife. Perhaps they realized this sort of display was bound to happen sooner or later. While Travis Copeland sprawled on the stone steps, his nose gushing blood, police descended on Steve Bishop. They overpowered him swiftly although he offered no resistance. He rocked back and forth on his feet, his face ashen, not a shadow of regret in his eyes. Steve Bishop was in an altered state from which he would never give himself time to recover.
It was impossible to hide things. In the end they always came out.
CHAPTER ONE
The present
MONDAY MORNING. Traffic was heavier than normal. Jewel swung a U-turn, not exactly sure if it was legal, and took a different route, only to find some of the lights were out on Station Road, which put her farther behind. Another couple of delays would precipitate a minor crisis. She would be late for her Monday morning “chat”—a quaint tradition—with her boss, Blair Skinner, a man she found extremely abrasive. Few in the prestigious law firm of Barton Skinner Beaumont didn’t, but they all wanted to hang on to a career. Instead they made jokes about him behind his back.
A vacant parking space in the small basement of her office building almost caught her unaware. She drove into it nearly dizzy with relief. The only real