By Marriage Divided. Lindsay Armstrong

      Contents

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE property was called Lidcombe Peace, two hundred acres on the Razorback Range only about an hour’s drive south of Sydney city towards the Southern Highlands.

      The house, built on a hilltop with stunning views, had been designed with wide, stone-flagged verandas at ground level all around, cream walls and a shingled roof. On this perfect blue and gold summer day, it drowsed stylishly in the sunlight.

      The girl standing on the veranda waiting for him was also stylish and looked to Angus Keir as if she belonged to this beautifully established and prestigious property, which, of course, she did—or had. For she was, he guessed, Domenica Harris, whose parents had built the present house although the property had been in the family for a lot longer.

      Daughter of noted academic and historian, Walter Harris, and his well-connected wife Barbara, Domenica had had a privileged upbringing and been to all the right schools, his research of the family had turned up. And the only reason she was waiting for Angus Keir, who had clawed his way from beyond the black stump so to speak, to hand over the keys of the property to him, was because on her father’s recent death the Harris family fortunes had been discovered to be in turmoil, necessitating the sale of Lidcombe Peace.

      So he had fully expected to be greeted by a daughter nursing a sense of grievance, not by a girl as serene-looking and lovely as this, he thought wryly as he got out of his car and approached the veranda; lovelier, indeed, than just about any girl he’d seen.

      She was tall and dark-haired with pale, smooth skin, a beautifully defined jaw line with just the hint of a dimple in her chin. She also had deep blue eyes with impossibly long lashes and her thick hair was parted one side and ran in a river of rough silk to below her shoulders.

      She carried a straw hat and a manila folder in her hand and wore a three-quarter length, button-through dress in some soft camellia-pink fabric. But the softness of what he didn’t know was voile highlighted instead of hid a near-perfect figure and sensationally long, thoroughbred legs. Her flat kid shoes matched the dress exactly.

      And for a moment Angus Keir found himself meditating upon the shape of her breasts and the satiny softness of that smooth skin in secret places upon her delectable body.

      Then she walked towards him and held out her hand. ‘Mr Keir? I’m Domenica Harris. How do you do? I was going to send my solicitor to perform this little rite, then I thought I ought to do it myself. Welcome to Lidcombe Peace and may you spend many happy years here!’

      Angus Keir narrowed his eyes slightly. All this had been said in a cultured, musical voice and he’d expected no less. But there’d been no trace of grievance or even regret, and he wondered why the lack of it, in some mysterious way, niggled him.

      ‘How do you do, Miss Harris?’ he responded and shook her hand, finding her clasp firm, brief and businesslike. ‘It’s very kind of you to take the trouble. I hope this is not too painful for you.’

      Domenica Harris studied him thoughtfully. Via a real estate agent, she and this man had conducted something close to a war over the exchange of Lidcombe Peace. And it had only been the fact that she’d had to sell some part of the family estate, and sell it quickly or see her mother face bankruptcy, that had finally induced her to accept his offer, which was a lot less than what she’d been asking, although still not an insignificant sum.

      Accordingly, she’d tagged this Angus Keir in her mind as a tough customer, and pictured him as a lot older. But he was in his mid-thirties at the most, she judged, tall, with thick dark hair cut short and wearing an expertly tailored light grey suit with a midnight-blue shirt and navy tie. He also possessed the kind of stature that would make him stand out in a crowd, that broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped kind of man who moved with a sort of powerful ease.

      But perhaps the most stunning feature about him was a pair of smoky-grey eyes set in a narrow, clever face. Eyes that missed nothing, she suspected, and not the least her own figure.

      She said coolly, at last, ‘I guess I’m a realist, Mr Keir. Something had to go and this property was an expensive kind of holiday home we can no longer afford. My father, who inherited it from his mother, was the one who really loved it but he’s no longer with us.’

      ‘I wondered about the name?’ Angus Keir murmured.

      Domenica smiled. ‘My grandmother was a Lidcombe and her favourite rose was the Peace rose.’ She waved a hand towards the rose bushes planted all around the veranda with bees humming through them. ‘They’re all Peace. We always maintained her preference in roses although this house was built after her death.’

      ‘They’re lovely,’ he commented. ‘I shall endeavour to do the same. So you won’t miss being able to spend your holidays here or having a retreat so close to the city?’

      Domenica inserted a brass key into the heavy wooden double front door and swung it open. ‘A bit,’ she confessed, ‘but I’m actually so busy at the moment, holidays are not on the agenda.’ She smiled ruefully.

      ‘As in?’ Angus queried.

      She glanced at him, then preceded him into the foyer. ‘I design children’s clothes. I have my own label and it’s finally taken off! I have more orders than I know what to do with and I’m thinking of branching out into women’s sportswear.’

      Angus Keir discovered that he was surprised. A lovely social-butterfly type was what he’d assumed she was and it occurred to him that perhaps he should have instigated some more research into Domenica herself as well as her famous family.

      He said as he stepped over the threshold, ‘Forgive me, but I did wonder why I was dealing with you rather than your mother, Miss Harris, in whose name this property is, or was, registered?’

      Domenica laid her hat down on a lovely mahogany drum table with a leather inlaid top. ‘Both my mother and my sister