Buch lesen: «At the Cattleman's Command»

CHAPTER ONE

‘CHAS BARTLETT?’ Tom Hocking frowned. ‘Are you suggesting a man to organise this wedding, Birdie?’

‘Not so strange when you think about it,’ his secretary, Birdie Tait, offered.

They were talking to each other over the phone, Tom from his stud outside Warwick, Birdie from the office in Toowoomba.

‘Men do design clothes,’ Birdie continued down the line. ‘They also make great chefs and interior decorators, so—why not? Chas Bartlett certainly comes highly recommended.’

‘You’ve met him?’

‘No. But I spoke to a very satisfied customer. All Laura Richmond could say was Chas did this; Chas organised that; Chas was a dream! And her daughter’s wedding was a howling success.’

‘Laura Richmond,’ Tom repeated thoughtfully. ‘Talk about a raging snob if ever I’ve met one. Mind you, things are getting hairy up here, so…’ He paused and shrugged. ‘Go ahead and hire the guy, Birdie, for a consultation at least.’ He pulled his diary towards him. ‘Am I right in thinking I’m free next weekend?’

‘Yes, Mr Hocking.’

‘Then see if you can get him to drive up and stay overnight on Saturday; we’ll all be here, which may not be that easy to arrange over the next few weeks. Explain that to him if he objects to working weekends.’ He paused. ‘It mightn’t be a bad idea to drop the hint that my sister is marrying the heir to a peer of the realm.’

‘A very good idea, Mr Hocking.’

‘Thanks, Birdie. If I don’t hear otherwise from you, I’ll expect him at—say—four o’clock on Saturday afternoon?’

‘I’ll do my best, Mr Hocking.’ Birdie put the phone down.

She was well-named but, although frail and diminutive in appearance, she had the heart of a lioness when it came to guarding and promoting her employer’s interests. In many ways she looked upon Tom Hocking as the son she’d never had—she’d worked for his father Andrew and had been wildly and hopelessly in love with him.

Truth be told, she would have been much more interested in seeing Tom marry and settle down rather than his sister, Vanessa, whose wedding they’d been discussing—but here she often paused and sighed.

At thirty-three and six feet four in his socks with a rock-hard body, Tom attracted women in droves. It wasn’t only that. He was equally at home riding a horse or flying a plane, and his business acumen had seen him advance the Hocking empire with a vengeance when he’d taken over from his father.

He now held executive positions on the boards of several companies that were Australian icons. He mixed—but then the Hockings always had—with the cream of society.

But was there more than the occasional tinge of impatience in his grey eyes, eyes that were often amused as well as devastatingly acute, these days? His sense of humour had always been wicked and irreverent, but when he lost his temper the wisest course was to take evasive action. Not that it happened often but—was it happening more often these days?

Birdie sighed again. She could tell that her boss wasn’t a hundred per cent happy but there was nothing she could do to help.

She might like to pin it down to the lack of the right woman in his life but that was simplistic, she knew. On the other hand, finding the perfect woman could be part of the problem. Even at his best, Tom Hocking was a handful. He was a born leader and capable of sheer arrogance. One suspected a prospective wife would need the patience of a saint, but would a saint be what Tom was looking for?

Tom Hocking also took a moment to ponder after talking to Birdie on the phone.

It so happened he liked the heir to the peer of the realm to whom his sister, Vanessa, was engaged, but he wasn’t totally convinced Rupert Leeton, Lord Weaver, was what she needed. Vanessa was as head-strong as an unbroken filly at times, whereas Rupert was a thinker and a dreamer.

His mother was ecstatic about it, though. Even his aunt Clare, a dedicated, rather eccentric spinster who lived with them, was delighted.

However, the run-up to these nuptials looked set to provide a maelstrom of confusion and turbulence.

Vanessa and his mother were already arguing over wedding-dress designers, venues and bridesmaids. Clare and Vanessa were at loggerheads over the choice of minister to perform the service. Rupert was starting to look strained and his slight stammer was becoming more pronounced.

Tom was of the opinion that it promised to be a rare bun fight, unless he took a hand, hence his decision to call in a wedding consultant.

He pushed his fingers through his hair then rubbed his jaw as he contemplated his household and his lifestyle.

He’d stepped into his father’s shoes five years ago. At that time Cresswell Lodge, on Queensland’s Darling Downs, had been the main family enterprise. An historic thoroughbred stud pioneered by one of his ancestors, its beautiful old homestead was still a showpiece.

The stud sold yearlings all over the world and, in consequence, the Hocking family rubbed shoulders with the élite of the thoroughbred world: sheikhs, royalty and self-made billionaires from all continents.

Not only had he continued that tradition but he’d also branched out. He’d put his love of flying, brought with him from the air force, to good use, for example, and turned a small crop-spraying business into a private airline. Most of his customers were pastoralists, graziers or mining and exploration companies, but he’d recently opened a deluxe charter wing for anyone who wanted to get from A to B in style and privacy. It was going well. So were his other non-thoroughbred enterprises.

Not that his mother, Harriet, approved entirely. She gave the impression that anything tainted with commercial overtones, which encompassed just about everything that didn’t have to do with horses, was beneath her. She lived and breathed horses. She had been a champion dressage rider in her day with an Olympic medal to her credit.

That was how Cresswell had acquired Rupert Leeton. The son of a friend of a friend of Tom’s mother, he’d come ‘down under’ to further his Olympic equestrian aspirations by taking tutelage from Harriet Hocking—and he’d never left.

A frequent source of irritation for Tom was the way his mother, and his sister come to that, simply refused to recognise that Cresswell Stud was a highly commercial enterprise, even if it did rely on horses. It was his father’s judgement in mares and stallions, and now his own, that kept an awful lot of dollars rolling in, without which they wouldn’t be able to scour virtually the whole world for horses.

Vanessa was also horse-mad. She was a showjumper, with extremely expensive tastes in all areas but little appreciation of how it was all funded. Both Harriet and Vanessa were passionate about Cresswell…but did Rupert, he often wondered, understand this trait in his future bride?

And there was Clare, his paternal aunt. He was very fond of Clare, despite her sometimes daffy ways, but even she had a very expensive hobby. She collected paintings and antique porcelain.

They all, with the possible exception of Lord Weaver, had very decided ideas.

He got up and went over to the mantelpiece. There was a framed photo of himself on it staring out over a vast, untamed landscape. He studied it for a long moment. It epitomised the call of the wild he’d had to resist for the last five years, which he’d spent nurturing the Hocking empire and his mother, aunt and sister. Then he turned away and dragged his thoughts back to his sister’s wedding.

‘Here’s hoping you have a solid constitution, Chas Bartlett, wedding consultant,’ he said to himself. ‘What you really need to be is a battering ram in a velvet glove.’

Charity Bartlett, nicknamed Chas from childhood, did not tend to make the people who knew her think of her in ‘solid’ or ‘battering ram’ terms, even within a velvet glove.

She was twenty-six, with deep blue eyes, pale skin and a mass of rich brown shoulder-length hair with a slight kink in it. She was five feet four, leggy and slender, with narrow hands and feet.

One did discover, if you got to know her, that she was warm and friendly, extremely active and energetic. She was a good lateral thinker but she had trouble telling her left hand from her right without the large round gold watch on a sturdy leather band, which she always wore, and possessed a poor sense of direction.

None of this interfered with her sheer artistry in putting together that ‘one perfect day’. She credited her parents’ genes for this. Her father, a cordon bleu chef, owned and ran a gourmet delicatessen and extremely ‘in’ café. Her mother, Hope, the head buyer for a chain of fashion stores, travelled overseas twice a year and was au fait with all the latest fashions. Her mother, Chas’s grandmother, Faith, had owned an antique shop and taken interior-design commissions. For as long as she could remember, Chas had been exposed to wonderful food, elegant clothes and lovely homes.

Since her father and grandmother could also be classified as highly excitable people, it was her mother who must have passed on to Chas some practical genes. It was these genes, added to her innate sense of style, that had enabled Chas to build up a wedding-consultancy business and make a go of it.

She’d called her consultancy The Perfect Day and ran it from her apartment in Brisbane. Thanks to the Richmond-Dailey wedding in Toowoomba, eighty miles west of Brisbane, Chas’s reputation had spread, she discovered as she took a call from one Birdie Tait, on behalf of someone called Thomas Hocking.

‘May I speak to Chas Bartlett?’ Birdie said down the line.

‘Speaking,’ Chas replied.

‘But—is this The Perfect Day wedding consultancy?’

‘Yes, it is, and I am Chas Bartlett, which is a bit confusing, I know. Chas is actually short for Charity.’

‘I see,’ Birdie said slowly.

‘Is that a problem, me not being a man—uh—Ms Tait?’

‘Well, no.’ Birdie sounded a bit confused, however. ‘It’s just that Laura Richmond gave me to understand—the thing is, she only ever mentioned you by name, not by gender, now I come to think of it, so…’ She trailed off.

Chas looked heavenwards. The Richmond-Dailey wedding had been a nightmare to organize, thanks to the bride’s mother, whom Chas had privately nicknamed Attila the Hen. Yet now it sounded as if Laura might have recommended her to someone.

You’re a genius, kid! Chas complimented herself with a grin.

‘Well,’ Birdie said again, ‘would you be interested in organising another wedding on the Darling Downs, Ms Bartlett?’

Ten minutes later Chas put the phone down and studied the notes she’d made.

Cresswell Lodge, the Hocking family, a peer of the realm—no, the son of a peer of the realm, but still a lord. Lord Weaver to be exact.

Chas stopped reading her notes at this point and got up to waltz around her studio. You beauty!

When Birdie Tait put down her phone, she studied it unseeingly for a long moment, then she shrugged.

Tom had found the idea of a man organising Vanessa’s wedding surprising, so he was not likely to take issue with Chas Bartlett being a woman, was he?

She had sounded rather young, though. Still, anyone who’d survived Laura Richmond must be quite tough, so why was she, Birdie, worried?

It came to her. Surviving Laura Richmond and surviving Tom Hocking were two entirely different matters…

Birdie bit her lip. But sounding young didn’t necessarily mean you were young and impressionable in that regard, did it? All the same, for all concerned, it would probably be a good thing if Chas Bartlett wasn’t young, impressionable—and pretty.

She pulled the phone towards her again and rang the stud but all she got was the answering machine. She left a message for Tom, telling him it was all set up for next Saturday and correcting her mistaken information on the wedding consultant’s sex.

Then she tried his mobile but it was unattended so she left a short message saying that Miss Charity Bartlett was arriving on Saturday, and asking him to either call her or check his emails. She then posted him an email message.

More, other than take to carrier pigeons, she thought exasperatedly, I cannot do.

Once she’d started to make money, Chas had invested in a royal-blue Range Rover. She’d had the back seat taken out so there was plenty of space for samples, dress boxes, boxes of invitations and the like.

It was a clear Saturday afternoon as she drove west of Brisbane and via Cunningham’s Gap towards Gladfield, the address of Cresswell Lodge.

The flat-topped vertical striations of the Great Dividing Range stood out rocky, grand and tinged with blue in the clear air. The bellbirds were calling as she drove through the Gap.

On the top of the range, the scenery changed to mostly flat and the temperature dropped a bit. It was early spring so the landscape of vast paddocks was still tending towards dry and old gold or raw and ploughed.

She’d been told to arrive around four and she was running on time. To help with her often non-existent sense of direction, she’d got detailed instructions from Birdie and drawn herself a large-scale map in thick black felt-tip pen.

She turned off the highway as instructed and took a few back roads through the paddocks. She turned right into Cresswell Lane and it ended at the gates of the lodge. Pretty impressive gates too, with horses rampant on each gatepost.

Horses, Chas thought, and—carriages. I haven’t done a horse and carriage wedding yet but this mob might be perfect for it!

She drove on between well-fenced paddocks, past a lovely old barn with a central cupola, then the drive climbed a bit and as she breasted the rise she took a quick, excited breath. Cresswell Lodge homestead was a gem as it spread out below.

Beneath a vast green roof, the walls were of honey-coloured stone. The house was L-shaped with paved verandas. Some of the walls and posts were creeper-hung, and a smooth lawn flowed down to a creek flanked by graceful old willow trees.

Curls of smoke were coming from the chimneys and two dogs were gambolling on the lawn—a large Great Dane and a miniature fox terrier. They stopped gambolling and streaked towards the Range Rover as she pulled to a stop.

A woman in her sixties, all kitted out in riding gear, came round the corner of the house and called the dogs to order as Chas got out of the car. They took no notice of her.

‘Hello! Who are you? Don’t worry about Leroy and Piccanin, they don’t bite.’

Since Leroy, who had to be the Great Dane, now had his paws on her shoulders and had her pinned to the car as he licked her face, this was just as well, Chas felt.

‘Um—down boy!’ She wiped her face with her jacket sleeve. ‘I’m Chas Bartlett. I believe I’m expected.’

‘Good heavens! We thought you were a man! How do you do? I’m Harriet Hocking, Vanessa’s mother. To be perfectly honest, I’m relieved. I was expecting some long-haired arty chap.’

‘You were? But—uh—Ms Tait knew I wasn’t a man, after the initial confusion.’

Harriet raised her eyebrows. She was good-looking, thanks to great bone structure and a slim figure, but in a rather weathered kind of no-nonsense way. ‘Well, she somehow failed to pass it on; not like our Birdie. Never mind, come in!’

Several exhausting hours later, Chas closed herself into her bedroom, slipped her shoes off and sat down on the bed.

Then she lay back flat across the bed with her arms outstretched and started to laugh softly. Beside Harriet, Vanessa and Clare Hocking, Laura Richmond paled into insignificance.

If she could get this wedding to the altar she’d be more than a genius!

She sat up. The only member of the immediate wedding party not present this evening had been the man who had hired her, Thomas Hocking. Would it be too much to hope that he might actually be normal?

Yes, it would, she decided.

She herself had brought his name up halfway through dinner—a dinner that she would probably remember for a long time. It had been served in a large panelled room at a vast table with silver cutlery, crystal glasses and Wedgwood china. A pale, tense-looking young man, apparently part of the kitchen staff, had dished up and passed around a feast.

‘I thought Thomas Hocking might be here since he actually hired me, I believe,’ she ventured at the dessert stage—brandy pudding and custard, which she was secretly viewing with despair after all the food that had gone before.

‘Thomas?’ Vanessa, a stunning brunette, raised her eyebrows and smirked. ‘As a matter of fact, Thomas more or less press-ganged the rest of us into being here, then he sloped off. Typical, and with a woman, no doubt! I bet it’s that peachy blonde who’s opened up a riding school down the road.’

‘She certainly finds plenty of opportunities to visit Cresswell,’ Harriet said drily, ‘so you can’t exactly blame Thomas.’

‘Can’t you?’ Vanessa said with some patent cynicism. ‘If there wasn’t such a very long line of them, I might agree.’ She shrugged and turned to Chas. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she advised. ‘He’s only paying for the wedding.’

‘If the details were left to him,’ Harriet said, ‘Vanessa would have to make do with a registry office, come to that.’

Clare Hocking, about the same age as her sister-inlaw, Harriet, put in, ‘There is a lot to be said for elegant simplicity, you know.’

They all gazed at her. Far from elegantly simple in her appearance, Clare wore several layers of clothing, none of which matched, as well as a stole and three long necklaces. Her silvery hair was tumbling out of a bun and she had two bright spots of artificial colour on each cheek, rather like a clown.

‘All the same…’ Rupert, Lord Weaver, cleared his throat. ‘I’m quite sure we won’t have to r-resort to a r-registry office. He would never do that to you, Vannie,’ he added reproachfully.

‘However, he can,’ Harriet said at large, ‘make things awkward, as we all know. Therefore this way, with Chas here to help—at his suggestion—we can keep the rest of his involvement to a minimum.’

‘Agreed.’ Vanessa pushed away her dessert plate and reached for a plum. ‘So whatever you do, Chas, take a stern line with Thomas!’

A womaniser, obviously, Chas thought as she considered Thomas Hocking in the privacy of her bedroom, but who was he and what other bizarre qualities did he possess?

He obviously held the purse strings but he didn’t sound like Vanessa’s father or Harriet’s husband. An uncle perhaps, who was now the head of the family? Who was resented, even, not only for his grip on those purse strings but also for his reprehensible taste in peachy young blondes?

She shook her head. Time would tell. In the meantime, the couple of hours after dinner she’d spent with Vanessa, Harriet and Clare had been tricky to say the least.

She’d listened to Vanessa’s ideas for her wedding and her dress, she’d listened to both Harriet and Clare’s ideas, and had formed the opinion that never would the trio meet.

That was when she’d quietly produced her folder of wedding dresses and pointed to the one she felt would suit Vanessa best.

There’d been a startled silence, then Vanessa had jumped up and thrown her arms around Chas. ‘It’s perfect! So different but so beautiful.’

‘It is lovely,’ Harriet agreed.

‘My, my!’ Clare enthused.

Then they discussed venues, and Chas gave her opinion that Cresswell Lodge was the perfect spot for a wedding reception. And, thinking rapidly, she outlined some ideas for decorating the house and garden for a wedding, including a silk-lined marquee on the lawn, because, as she told them, she never took chances with the weather.

‘Ah,’ Harriet said thoughtfully, ‘not just a pretty face, Chas Bartlett.’

‘I hope not, Mrs Hocking,’ Chas replied. ‘I did also wonder if it mightn’t be appropriate for the bride and groom to arrive at the reception in a horse-drawn carriage. Naturally they’d have to drive from the church in Warwick by car, but we could do a discreet changeover somehow or other. And horses do seem to feature prominently in your lives.’

Harriet sat up and Vanessa drew an excited breath. ‘Awesome!’ she said.

‘Wonderful,’ Harriet agreed. ‘You can leave that bit to me, Chas. Of course, we’d need matching carriage horses but that shouldn’t be too hard.’

Chas came back to the present and bit her lip. Matching horses?

She really needed to know what her budget would be before she made any more expensive suggestions. Not—she gazed around the impressive guest bedroom—that the Hockings appeared to be short of a dime, but there was the mysterious Thomas and his ‘registry office’ notions to take into account.

She yawned and was startled to see it was close to midnight so she changed into her night gear. Then she remembered that, impressive though the room was, with a king-size bed invitingly turned down, lovely drapes and a matching carpet, and warm as it was from central heating, there was no en suite bathroom.

The guest bathroom was several doors down a passage. She picked up her sponge bag and walked to the door, and the lights flickered, went out and stayed out.

Damn, she thought. I hate going to bed without cleaning my teeth! I’ll just have to manage in the dark.

She stepped out into the passage and waited a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. The house was quite silent.

She found the bathroom and, after a bit of fumbling around, managed to clean her teeth, wash her face and attend to all else that was necessary.

As she came out of the bathroom she hesitated and felt for her watch. It wasn’t there, for the simple reason that she’d taken it off when she was changing.

Not that it matters, she assured herself. I know that I have to turn this way, count two doors down and the third is my bedroom.

It all worked to plan and with a sigh of relief she shut herself into the room. There was nothing for it but to go to bed, since the lights were still out—she’d flicked the switch she’d groped for beside the door then flicked it off when nothing had happened. She pulled off her robe, felt around for the bed, and slipped into it.

The next few moments were electrifying. An arm descended on her waist, a sleepy exclamation issued forth, a pair of hands started to run down her body and a man’s deep voice said, ‘Holy mackerel! Not again!’