“This is awful—the waiting.” Alana was so anxious she felt sick to her stomach.
“Listen, it’s not that bad.” Kieran, nervous himself, but hiding it extremely well, tried to comfort her, even though he had the gut-wrenching feeling it was going to be. This sale represented twelve months’ growth of wool and a hell of a lot of hard work from him and Alana. They had virtually carried their father, once such a dynamo.
Wangaree’s clip, one of the star attractions of the sale, was recognised as superb. Everyone in the Valley had seen it, marvelling at the quality. Another top producer from the adjoining State of Victoria had called it perfection. Guy’s comment had been, “It’s better than that. It’s damned good!” One didn’t hear him say that all that often. Guy wasn’t one to commit himself, but the Exchange was abuzz with excitement. People in the know were predicting a record price for Wangaree’s clip, and as a spin-off maybe others in the Valley.
If she turned her head she would be able to see him, Alana thought. He was sitting with the top people of the industry. In his group would be her uncle Charles—her mother’s brother, Charles Denby. Uncle Charles was as good as a stranger to her and Kieran, though their resemblance to their Denby mother was most apparent. In fact, Uncle Charles was so remote he mightn’t have been their relative at all. It was no secret he had been deeply shocked when his beautiful sister, Annabel, the apple of everyone’s eye, had married a struggling sheep farmer, an Irishman, “rough diamond” Alan Callaghan. And Denby brother and sister had been near enough estranged since the day of the wedding, which unhappily no Denby had attended. A lasting wound.
The three Denby sisters, Violette, Lilli and Rose, dressed to kill and turning heads, fresh from a splendid lunch at one of Sydney’s top restaurants, had been present at the inspection earlier, but two had since disappeared—most likely to hit the fashion boutiques. Only Violette remained with her father and—need it be said?—Guy. Violette wouldn’t want to miss out on the Denby sales, let alone miss the frenzy of bidding when Wangaree’s clip came up.
“I’m glad Dad’s not here,” Alana sighed, her spirits wilting. Their father had been too nervous to come. Once upon a time he had been right in the thick of it, so proud of having his beautiful wife and family beside him, receiving handshakes and congratulations when his sale prices were good.
An hour later Wangaree’s lot came up. It was sold, as predicted, in the blink of an eye, once again to a leading European fashion house. Italian designers had a wonderful way of mixing wool with silk. Alana loved the top designers, their work cut and tailored by people whose ancestors had been handling the finest fabrics for hundreds of years. She remembered how her untrained mother had cut and woven fabric so it fell into the most beautiful soft folds.
By four o’clock the sale was over, with hundreds of lots having gone under the hammer. Alana and Kieran, though heartsore over Briar’s Ridge’s downspiralling fortunes, remained behind to shake Guy’s hand. All eyes were on him as he stood in the centre of the floor, surrounded by prominent people within the industry, head and shoulders above most of them, clearly The Man. Simon had been spot on when he had found this name for his illustrious cousin.
“Don’t look now, but Uncle Charles and Vindictive Vi are coming our way,” Kieran muttered. “Of course there’s the strong possibility they’ll spot us and shoot off in the opposite direction.”
“And who would care?” Alana asked wearily, fully expecting to be ignored. Charles Denby knew nothing about the milk of human kindness. He was a civilised monster.
“When do you suppose dear old Charles is going to make the transition to a real person?” Kieran asked, with a flash of black humour. “I mean, I’ve never understood a damned thing about the big estrangement. What was so shocking about Mum breaking with family tradition and marrying Dad? The Denbys aren’t Royalty, for goodness’ sake. Even hell bent on wrecking himself, Dad’s still a handsome man. So he was a nobody on the social register? He must have been really something when he was young. Big, handsome, strong. He was hard-working, perfectly respectable. People liked him. He’d even managed to buy himself Briar’s Ridge, though it was mortgaged up to the hilt. He didn’t take Mum to a hovel. And she loved him. Wasn’t that all that mattered?” Kieran broke off angrily, visibly upset.
“One would have thought so!” Alana sighed.
“Oh, no—they haven’t spotted us,” Keiran groaned in dismay.
Charles and Violette were so busy talking, heads together, probably planning a night out on the town with Guy’s party, they all but walked into Alana and Kieran.
“Oh, it’s you two!” Violette reacted with her usual hateful disdain. She looked Alana up and down, her gaze deliberately pitying, as though Alana were dressed by charity shops instead of a smart-casual designer.
Alana, well used to her cousin’s intended put-downs, took no notice. What consumed her was the look in her brother’s eyes. Slow to anger, Kieran had been known to go off like a rocket if sufficiently provoked. It was their father’s temper—nearly always under control, but always there. She gave her brother a beseeching look. It would do no good at all for Kieran to lose his temper right here and now.
Ignoring Violette, she addressed her distinguished-looking, ultra-remote uncle. “How are you, Uncle Charles?” she asked politely. “You look well. Congratulations on the Denby prices.”
A tall man, Charles Denby stared down at his niece with the strange intensity he always bestowed on her. “Everything we wanted,” he announced with ice-cold suavity. “You, on the other hand, mustn’t have liked what you heard for the Briar’s Ridge lot? I saw it myself. Not up to scratch, my dear. Or rather it’ll make up darn scratchy.”
Kieran broke in, the heat of anger coming off his powerful, lean body. “Why, sir, do you go out of your way to be so damned cutting?”
Violette’s breath exploded in shocked indignation. “I beg your pardon, Kieran?” she huffed. “You apologise to my father this instant.”
Kieran gave her a sidelong look that blazed with contempt. “Tell me, Vi, you silly, pretentious creature, what is there to apologise for? All our civility, all our polite overtures, get met with freezing dislike. My mother and your father were brother and sister. I could never treat my sister the way your father treated his—no matter what! And my mother did absolutely nothing but marry the man she loved.”
Charles Denby’s only reaction was a narrowing of his glacial blue eyes. “Your mother brought disgrace on herself and the family,” he said finally. “Alan Callaghan was a nothing and a nobody who put my sister in her coffin. Now the whole Valley knows him as a hopeless drunk. Get out of my way, young man. I have better things to do than talk to an upstart like you.”
Upstart? The irony was that Kieran looked more like their uncle than he did their own father. Alana sucked in her breath, fully expecting the rocket to launch.
Only Kieran surprised her. He spoke quietly, but his body language was immensely threatening. “There’s plenty of room for you to walk around me, sir. Another word and I can’t guarantee your safety.”
Alarmed, Alana took hold of Kieran’s hard-muscled arm—but not before Guy, aware of a mounting crisis, moved swiftly to join them.
“It might be an idea to cool it, Kieran.” He came alongside the younger man, keeping his voice low and level. “This is the Wool Exchange, and every eye is on us. You’re my friend, and I don’t want to see you get into trouble.”
Kieran shook his leonine head, as if to clear it. “This man here—” he gritted.
“It might be time, Charles, to walk away.”