September Moon - Softcover

Proctor, Candice E.

 
9780449001271: September Moon
Softcover
ISBN 10: 044900127X ISBN 13: 9780449001271
Verlag: Fawcett, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

Nineteenth-century frontier Australia forms the backdrop to an unlikely romance that changes the lives of Patrick O'Reilly, a man who loves his life in the wilderness, and Amanda Davenport, the proper Englishwoman who hopes to earn the money for her passage back to England by taking care of his young children. Original.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Candice Proctor is also the author of Night in Eden and The Bequest. She lives in Adelaide, Australia, with her husband and their two young daughters.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Port Adelaide, South Australia

It was like an ache, Amanda Davenport decided, this need she had, this yearning to be back in England. Home, where she belonged.

She did not belong here. Even on a night such as this, when the sky above hung black and empty, and thick clouds obscured the unfamiliar southern stars, she still felt the wild, disturbing alienness of this place.

Tightening her hands around the smooth railing of the wrought-iron balustrade that wrapped the hotel's upper veranda, she gazed out over the port's dark, empty streets. At night, she couldn't see the unfamiliar colonial buildings with their peculiar blue-black stone walls and their deep verandas designed to keep out the hot Australian sun. She couldn't see the drooping leaves of the gray-green eucalyptus trees, or the dry, brooding hills in the distance.

Yet she had no need to see this place to know its strangeness. It was there, in the wattle and eucalypt-scented breeze, in the eerie cry of the kookaburra, in the indefinable aura of primitive mystery that hung in the air like an unseen presence.

A shiver coursed through her, causing her to hug her mantelet against the winter chill. The sound of a strangling cough from inside the room brought her head around and she slipped quickly inside, folding her wrap over a wooden chair back as she crossed to the bed where her employer, Mrs. Blake, lay dying. Taking a glass of water from the bedside table, Amanda eased one arm beneath the older woman's shoulder. "Here. Drink this," Amanda said, raising the glass to Mrs. Blake's lips.

"I don't need more water. My lungs feel as if I'm drowning already." But the older woman drank anyway, her breath coming in short, wheezing gasps. After a few sips, she sank back against the pillows, her eyes closing.

Looking at her, it seemed to Amanda as if in the last twenty-four hours Frances Blake had shrunk in upon herself. Her cheeks had hollowed, her eyes sunk into gray, parchmentlike folds of skin. She was not an old woman--fifty, perhaps fifty-five. A life spent accompanying her botanist husband on his expeditions around the world had toughened her body and her outlook. But she had not been strong enough to survive the shock of seeing her husband murdered by the same thief who had left her virtually penniless. The doctor talked about tourniquets and foxglove, and said that with rest and proper treatment she might survive. Amanda doubted it.

In another day, a week at the most, Frances Blake would probably die. But by that time, the ship that was to have carried Amanda and her employers back to England would have sailed. And there was no money to buy a new passage.

She sank onto the seat of the wooden chair, her gaze pulled against her will to the glazed veranda doors. Beyond their wavy glass panes she could see only darkness. Yet somewhere out there the Prince Edward lay at anchor, ready to catch the morning tide.

"It will be dawn soon." Mrs. Blake's raspy voice grated oddly in the still night air, echoing Amanda's own thoughts. "You must go."

Amanda turned to meet the other woman's pale gray eyes and shook her head. "I won't leave you here alone." No one should have to die alone so far from home, she thought, but she didn't say it.

Frances Blake's hand moved restlessly against the coverlet. "Jasper and I should have arranged things better," she said. "I am leaving you in an awkward situation."

"I'll get back to England somehow. Don't worry about me." Amanda leaned forward to take the other woman's hand. It felt alarmingly weightless and clammy, the thready pulse surging in slow throbs that sometimes missed a beat.

A peculiar smile twisted Mrs. Blake's bloodless lips. "I have worried about you for some time now, my dear. Even before we left England."

The casual term of endearment surprised Amanda even more than the peculiar words, for her relationship with the Blakes had always been one of respect rather than affection. "Don't worry about me," Amanda said again. But Frances Blake's eyes had already closed, and in a moment Amanda heard the older woman's breath ease into the slow, even rhythms of sleep. Sighing, Amanda sank back in her chair and closed her own eyes.

Several hours later she was aroused by the piercingly sweet call of a magpie that lured her once again to the veranda. She slipped through the French doors, her heart slamming up against her ribs as she saw the brightening of the eastern sky. It was almost dawn.

She gazed out over the harbor. In the dim light she could just make out the dark spires of the ship's masts outlined against a bank of low gray clouds. In her imagination she could hear the rattle and creak of the anchor chain being hauled in, hear the snap of canvas as the sails filled with the salt-tinged wind. Feel the motion of the ship as it heaved with the swelling tide and set sail for England.

Tears burned her chest and clogged her throat. Swallowing hard, she turned away blindly and went inside.

Ten hours later, early in the afternoon of the third of July 1864, Frances Blake died, leaving Amanda alone and friendless in a strange, hostile land.

Amanda stood on the footpath, one hand anchoring her sensible hat against the tug of a chilling wind as she gazed up at the impressive bluestone facade of the house before her. She had no need to consult the clipped newspaper advertisement she had come to answer. She had read and reread those two sentences so many times, they seemed burned into her brain.

English gentlewoman required to act as governess. Interested parties may present their credentials to Mrs. Henrietta Radwith, 23 East Terrace, Adelaide, this Wednesday afternoon between the hours of two and four.

Amanda had never worked as a governess, but she was better educated than most men, and she was certainly an authentic English gentlewoman. She could only hope that might be enough.

It had been four weeks since the Prince Edward had sailed for home, and she had yet to find a new situation. Lately, simply staying alive was becoming more of a concern to her than getting back to England. She had taken to skipping dinner every other day in an attempt to conserve her dwindling resources. But time was running out.

Unconsciously pressing the fingers of one white-gloved hand to her hollow midriff, Amanda mounted the shallow stone steps and tapped a polite tattoo with the brass door knocker.

"Miss Amanda Davenport," she said to the lanky, craggy-faced manservant who answered. "I have come to--"

Her voice trailed off as the man jerked his head toward the depths of the house, inviting her to enter. "Take a seat. Mrs. Radwith'll see ya in the library when it's yer turn."

Amanda stepped inside a vast, marble-floored hall at least sixty feet long and ten feet wide, and felt her hopes plummet down to the pointed toes of her high-topped shoes. A miscellaneous assortment of tapestry and brocade-covered chairs, settees, and miners couches had been shoved against the paneled walls between the fluted pilasters, decorative plasterwork arches, and handsome cedar doors that marched the length of the hall. And every seat but one was already occupied by an aspiring respondent to Mrs. Radwith's advertisement.

"Thank you," murmured Amanda. Perching on the edge of the hard wooden bench near the front door, she folded her cold-numbed hands over her bag in her lap and steadfastly resisted the urge to twist her fingers together in nervous agitation. English gentlewomen did not betray their emotions.

And so she sat, cold, nervous, but unmoving as, one by one, the other women were escorted to the paneled library door at the far end of the hall near the grand...

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Verlag
Fawcett
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
044900127X
ISBN 13 
9780449001271
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
339
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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