swinging from her ears, glittering in the candlelight.
She was already a little afraid of de Montalvo’s half-smile. Yet by the end of the evening she had felt they spoke the same language. It couldn’t have been a stranger sensation.
Above them a flight of the budgerigar endemic to Outback Australia zoomed overhead, leaving an impressive trail of emerald and sulphur yellow like a V-shaped bolt of silk. De Montalvo studied the indigenous little birds with great interest. “Amazing how they make that formation,” he said, tipping his head back to follow the squadron’s approach into the trees on the far side of the chain of billabongs. “It’s like an aeronautical display. I know Australia has long been known as the Land of the Parrot. Already I see why. Those beautiful parrots in the gardens—the smaller ones—are lorikeets, flashing colour. And the noisy ones with the pearly-grey backs and the rose-pink heads and underparts—what are they?”
“Galahs.” Ava smiled. “It’s the aboriginal name for the bird. It’s also a name for a silly, dim-witted person. You’ll hear it a lot around the stockyards, especially in relation to the jackeroos. Some, although they’re very keen, aren’t cut out for the life. They’re given a trial period, and then, if they can’t find a place in the cattle world, they go back home to find alternative work. Even so they regard the experience as the adventure of a lifetime.”
“I understand that,” he said, straightening his head. “Who wouldn’t enjoy such freedom? Such vast open spaces virtually uninhabited by man? Our gauchos want only that life. It’s a hard life, but the compensations are immense. Kooraki is a world away from my home in Argentina,” he mused, studying Ava as though the sight of her gave him great pleasure. “There is that same flatness of the landscape. Quechua Indians named our flatness pampa—much like your vast plains. But at home we do not know such extreme isolation at this. There are roads fanning out everywhere from the estancia, and the grounds surrounding the house—designed many decades ago and established by one of our finest landscape designers—are more like a huge botanical garden. Here it is pure wilderness. Beautiful in the sense of not ever having been conquered by man. The colours are indescribable. Fiery red earth, all those desert ochres mixed in beneath dazzling blue skies. Tell me, is the silvery blue shimmer the mirage that is dancing before our eyes?”
“It is,” Ava confirmed. “The mirage brought many an early explorer to his grave. To go in search of an inland sea of prehistory and find only great parallel waves of red sand! It was tragic. They even took little boats like dinghies along.”
“So your Kooraki has a certain mysticism to it not only associated with its antiquity?”
“We think so.” There was pride in her voice. “It’s the oldest continent on earth after all.” Ava shifted her long heavy blonde plait off her nape. It was damp from the heat and the exertion of a fantastically liberating gallop with a splendid horseman who had let her win—if only just. “You do know we don’t call our cattle stations ranches, like Americans? We’ve kept with the British station. Our stations are the biggest in the world. Anna Creek in the Northern Territory spreads over six million acres.”
“So we’re talking thirty thousand square kilometres plus?” he calculated swiftly.
“Thirty-four thousand, if we’re going to be precise. Alexandria Station, also in the Territory, is slightly smaller. Victoria Downs Station used to be huge.”
He smiled at the comparatives. “The biggest ranches in the U.S. are around the three thousand square kilometres mark, so you’re talking ten times that size. Argentine estancias are nowhere in that league either. Although earlier in the year a million-acre estancia in north-west Argentina was on sale, with enormous potential for agriculture—even eco-power possibilities. Argentina—our beautiful cosmopolitan capital Buenos Aires—was built on beef, as Australia’s fortunes were built on the sheep’s back—isn’t that so?” He cast her a long glance.
“I can’t argue with that. Langdon Enterprises own both cattle and sheep stations. Two of our sheep stations produce the finest quality merino wool, mainly for the Japanese market. Did Dev tell you that?”
“I believe he did. Dev now has a great many responsibilities following your grandfather’s death?”
“He has indeed,” she agreed gravely, “but he’s up to it. He was born to it.”
It was her turn to study the finely chiselled profile de Montalvo presented to her. He wasn’t wearing the Outback’s ubiquitous akubra, but the startlingly sexy headgear of the Argentine gaucho: black, flat-topped, with a broad stiff brim that cast his elegant features into shadow. To be so aware of him sexually was one heck of a thing, but she strove to maintain a serene dignity, at the same time avoiding too many of those brilliant, assessing glances.
“Your father was not in the mould of a cattleman?” he asked gently.
Ava looked away over the shimmering terrain that had miraculously turned into an oasis in the Land of the Spinifex. The wake of the Queensland Great Flood had swept right across the Channel Country and into the very Red Centre of the continent.
“That jumped a generation to Dev. He was groomed from boyhood for the top. There was always great pressure on him, but he could handle it. Handle my grandfather as well. The rest of us weren’t so fortunate. My father is much happier now that he has handed over the reins. My grandfather, Gregory Langdon, was a man who could terrify people. He was very hard on all of us. Dad never did go along with or indeed fit into the crown-prince thing, but he was a very dutiful son and pleasing his father was desperately important to him.”
“And you?”
Ava tilted her chin an inch or so. “How can I say this? I’m chiefly remembered for defying my grandfather to marry my husband. Neither my grandfather nor Dev approved of him. It soon appeared they were right. You probably know I’m separated from my husband, in the process of getting a divorce?”
Varo turned his handsome head sideways to look at her. Even in the great flood of light her pearly skin was flawless. “I’m sorry.” Was he? He only knew he definitely didn’t want her to be married.
“Don’t be,” she responded, more curtly than she’d intended. He would probably think her callous in the extreme.
He glimpsed the flash of anger in her remarkable eyes. Obviously she longed to be free of this husband she surely once had loved. What had gone so badly wrong?
“I too tried very hard to please my grandfather,” she offered in a more restrained tone. “I never did succeed—but then my grandfather had the ingrained idea that women are of inferior status.”
“Surely not!” He thought how his mother and sisters would react to that idea.
“I’m afraid so. He often said so—and he meant it. Women have no real business sense, much less the ability to be effective in the so-called ‘real’ world. Read for that a man’s world—although a cattle kingdom is a man’s world it’s so tough. Women are best served by devoting their time to making a good marriage—which translates into landing a good catch. Certainly a good deal of time, effort and money went into me.”
“This has led to bitterness?” He had read much about the ruthless autocratic patriarch Gregory Langdon.
Ava judged the sincerity of his question. She was aware he was watching her closely. “Do I seem bitter to you?” She turned her sparkling gaze on him.
“Bitter, no. Unhappy, yes.”
“Ah … a clarification?” she mocked.
“You deny it?” He made one of his little gestures. “Your husband is not putting up a fight to keep you?” Such a woman came along once in a lifetime, he thought. For good or bad.
Ava didn’t answer. They had turned onto a well-trodden track that led along miles of billabongs, creeks and water-holes that had now become deep lagoons surrounded on all sides by wide sandy beaches. The blaze of sunlight