Lyrebird Hill (17 page)

The road became uneven and potholed. The carriage rattled and strained, and I clung to the brass handrail, my palms alight with cold. We travelled uphill for a way, and our progress slowed until we crested the rise and began to descend.

As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, the two men at the head of the carriage became more clearly visible. I caught a glimpse of Carsten’s profile, and wondered what he’d meant by telling me to pay no mind to Lucien’s appearance.

Intrigued, I studied the manservant.

He was a youth, perhaps of similar age to me, nineteen or twenty, I guessed. He sat tall in his seat, although not as tall as Carsten, and was more slightly built. His long hair was snagged back in a tail, with wild strands escaping over his shoulders. On the few occasions he turned his face to answer a query Carsten put to him, I glimpsed pale features that rivalled Carsten’s striking good looks.

I settled back against the cushions and closed my eyes. Days had passed since the wedding ceremony at Armidale Town Hall; days that Carsten and I had spent travelling. While on the steamer he had necessarily kept his distance; but now that we were approaching home, our period of abstinence would end and my life as a married woman would begin.

Drawing the rug tighter, I tried to doze.

The clop of horses’ hoofs on the road, and the rhythmic swish of the sea, were soothing sounds, interrupted at intervals by the quiet talk of the men. The two voices were distinct. Carsten’s tones were clipped as he enquired after his farm, his questions commanding and formal. The young groomsman spoke with more reserve, and his voice – for which my ears seemed to listen
more acutely – was rougher at the edges than his master’s, a vague accent that I could not identify, which gave his words a pleasant lilt. More intriguing, were his replies. His choice of words held a strange poetry, as if, despite a lack of education, he was in the habit of thinking carefully before he spoke.

Why had Carsten advised me to pay no mind to the young man’s appearance? I squinted at him, but there was too little light to see.

Snuggling under my blanket, I resigned myself to knowing soon enough.

‘My dear?’

I blinked awake. The sun had crested the horizon, and in its pale glow I saw that the carriage had stopped in front of an imposing house. Built of cream-coloured sandstone, with decorative black wrought-iron festooning the ground and first-floor verandahs, it might have sprung from the pages of a sinister fairytale. The black roof was pricked with pointed finials, and the slate tiles gleamed like the scales of a mythical serpent. It seemed large and gloomy in the dawn light, saved only by the rambling garden of exotic plants and trees that surrounded it.

Carsten alighted from the carriage, but rather than offer his arm to me, he strode immediately towards the house, where two women waited. One of the women was tall and dark-haired; her ivory dress made her appear luminous. Her companion was short and heavily built, with a tower of dark hair perched precariously on her head; she wore a black dress with mutton sleeves, overlaid by a stark white apron.

Gripping the carriage rail, I was about to step down when the servant, Lucien Fells, came to my assistance. As he extended his arm for me to take, I glared at my husband, but it seemed rude to decline the young servant’s offer, so I rested my fingers lightly on his forearm. I took the first step without mishap, but
then my legs were taken again by the sea-wobbles and I was airborne.

Lucien grabbed me roughly by the arms, and set me on my feet. He didn’t let me go immediately, and I looked up at him, startled by the unexpected contact, feeling bruised by his fingers.

I’d not been wrong in my earlier observation. He had a striking face, an angel’s face with dark eyes that were stormy grey as the ocean; a regal nose and brows that made me think of eagle’s wings. His wild hair had loosened from its tail and now coiled unrestrained around his shoulders, the colour of burnished copper. His fine bone structure pushed through skin that was pale and, for the most part, flawless. He might have been beautiful, had it not been for the cruel scar that carved along the left side of his face from temple to jaw, disappearing beneath his ear.

My breath escaped too quickly. ‘Oh.’

He released me, and turned his attention to the luggage secured to the rear of the carriage. While he unbuckled it, he kept his back to me, as if unwilling to subject himself further to my scrutiny.

Shakily I trod along the path towards the house and joined my husband and the two women. Their chatter fell quiet as I approached.

Carsten took my arm. ‘Brenna, this is my sister, Adele Whitby.’

The woman in the ivory dress was even more striking close up. She appeared to be in her early thirties, with chestnut hair and eyes rimmed by long lashes, and full lips that might have been brushed with carmine. Her smile was full of warmth.

‘Welcome,’ she said, taking my hand and kissing my cheek. She smelled of roses, but from beneath her floral perfume wafted the treacly bitterness of Minerva Tonic.

Carsten introduced the shorter woman as the housekeeper, Mrs Quinn. She examined me with a frown, then muttered a stiff apology and hurried back to the house, quickly vanishing into the dark interior.

Adele took my arm. ‘Don’t mind Quinn. She’s been caring for Carsten and me since we were babes in arms. Once she warms to you, I promise you’ll be friends for life. Now, my dear, you look tired. I can’t say I blame you after your long trip. Come, let me show you to your room.’

Carsten hurried ahead of us and bounded up the stairs, two at a time as if he couldn’t wait to get away. I heard a door clatter shut, and then the heavy tread of footsteps as he crossed the floor. There was a faint clink of glass, and I guessed he was washing down the journey’s dust with a measure of sweet sherry.

Adele steered me up the stairs. On the first-floor landing, she paused at a small lacquered table and gestured for me to go ahead. When she followed a moment later, her breathing sounded laboured, and as we climbed the rest of the way I heard the rattle of a nasty cough. Carsten had mentioned she was poorly, and I wondered at the nature of her illness.

My room was at the very top of the house, at the end of a narrow hallway. Adele turned the doorknob, and I expected to step into a room that was as cramped and dark as a wardrobe – so I was taken aback to find it large and bright and airy.

An enormous oak armoire took up most of one wall, its carved doors gleaming in the gentle sunlight that peeped through a chink in the curtains. The huge bed was swamped by an exquisite quilt of pale ivory silk, topped by pillows embroidered with daisies, and near the window was a small blackwood desk.

‘I hope you’ll be comfortable here,’ Adele was saying. She went over to the bed, dusting her fingers across the quilt, absently plumping the pillows. A bay window overlooked the back garden and, as I pressed my forehead to the glass, I couldn’t contain a sigh of pleasure.

‘It’s just . . . divine,’ I marvelled. Adele joined me at the window and we stood in silence admiring the vista. The sun was creeping up over the horizon, daubing the treetops with pale light. Down in the garden, brick pathways wound between
the trees and vanished in a tangle of undergrowth. There were black cypress pines, mingling with flowering camellia hedges and wrought-iron archways smothered in jasmine vine, and sunny patches featuring great mounds of glossy-leafed daphne.

I spied a rambling vegetable garden, and on the southern horizon a line of hills slowly turning from purple to blue. To the west, the forest thinned and the land dropped away. Beyond, glittering in the early light like an endless field of blue diamonds, was the sea.

I was itching to rush outside and explore, to capture that breathtaking sunrise with my paintbrush and colours and breathe the salty ocean air. But a clock began to strike; seven ponderous notes rang out, each one vibrating beneath my boots.

‘My brother has been lonely,’ Adele said softly. ‘I have the feeling you will do him the world of good.’

‘I hope so.’ In the room’s dim light, she and I might have been sisters. There was colour in her skin that spoke of a love of outdoors, accentuated by the pale ivory dress. Her lips were deep red, but the effect was achieved, not by tint from a bottle as I first suspected, but by her unconscious habit of biting them.

I liked her, I decided.

Outwardly, she appeared quite perfect. And yet I sensed in her a darkness, a faint shadow of sorrow or perhaps of grief, that mirrored my own.

‘I shall leave you now,’ she said warmly. ‘Quinn will bring some wash water for you. You can change your dress and freshen up. Breakfast is at eight. As you’ve probably come to realise, my brother values punctuality.’ Dimples appeared in her cheeks, and her teeth shone white against the pink fullness of her lips. She leaned towards me and whispered, ‘Whatever you do, my dear, don’t be late.’

Carsten did not show himself at breakfast, nor did he appear for lunch, but it wasn’t until his absence at dinner that I began to suspect he was avoiding me. That night I retired early, exhausted after the long journey, but once in bed I found I couldn’t sleep.

I perched on the edge of my bed, my knees pressed together beneath my nightgown, my heart thudding as I watched the door. Downstairs, the grandfather clock ticked away the minutes; I could feel its mechanical pulse throbbing up through the floorboards and into the soles of my feet.

Finally, I heard footsteps in the hallway outside.

I tried to recall Aunt Ida’s instructions, but all common sense had flown from my head; my thoughts were suddenly jumbled, like bees disturbed from the hive and goaded into a buzzing frenzy.

The door opened. My husband stepped into the room. He was dishevelled, his dark hair raked about, his eyes bloodshot; the sticky smell of port wine wafted off him. He did not glance at me, but walked straight into the room and took his watch from his pocket, placing it with care on the little blackwood desk. Removing his waistcoat, then shirt and shoes, he crossed the room to the bedside and blew out the lamp.

The bed creaked as he climbed in beside me.

‘Lie down,’ he instructed.

I did as he asked and lay in the darkness, wide-eyed. My heart rammed against my ribs, my breath seemed loud in the stillness. A cold, sweaty trembling spread over me.

I had once seen a pair of snakes mating. They had risen onto their tails and twined about one another, hissing softly as they moved in sinewy accord. I’d been transfixed, so absorbed in trying to distinguish one snake from the other that I hadn’t heard my father’s approach. There was a click, then the crack of rifle fire. I lurched in fright, and then stared at what remained of the snakes. Blood and mess, where a moment ago had been a delicate play of love. My father dragged me away by the arm,
scolding me for putting myself in danger and forcing him to waste gunpowder on a reptile.

Carsten rolled onto me and kissed my mouth. It wasn’t the lingering sweetness I had anticipated, but rather a hard meeting of lips that was quickly over. My nostrils filled with the smell of wine and pipe tobacco. Carsten was heavy, and when I expelled his foreign odours from my lungs, the air was slow to draw back in. I was lightheaded, wanting to shove him off me so I could breathe, but I did not dare.

Carsten grunted and buried his face against my neck. Reaching down, he grasped a handful of my nightgown and dragged up the hem to my waist. I felt a shudder of heat as his skin pressed against mine. He forced his knee between my legs, and when he dropped his full weight on me and began to move, I let out a huff of surprise.

I thought about the snakes, and the memory of the gunshot blast that had ended their union, unable to forget the bloodied mess that had become of them.

Carsten went still. The bed creaked as he rolled off me. For a time, he sat on the edge of the mattress, his head in his hands. I lay very still, not understanding. I had grown up on a farm, where rams climbed on ewes, and stallions went over the mares, and shearers’ dogs always seemed to be on heat. Of course, I reasoned that the human act must certainly be far more genteel than the goings on of a farmyard, but as far as I could tell, Carsten’s attempt had not been successful.