Wealthy Australian, Secret Son. Margaret Way

the tall stranger who was carrying his beautiful mother back into the house.

      This was the new owner of Riverbend! By now everyone was saying his name, turning one to the other, themselves in a state of shock.

       Rohan Costello.

      Fate had a way of catching up with everyone.

      CHAPTER TWO

       Silver Valley, summer fourteen years ago

      IT WAS one of those endless afternoons of high summer—glorious months of the school vacation, when the heat sent them racing from the turquoise swimming pool in the mansion’s grounds into the river. It meandered through the valley and lay in a broad glittering curve at Riverbend’s feet. They knew they were supposed to keep to the pool that afternoon, but it wasn’t as though they weren’t allowed to take frequent dips in the river. After all, their father had had a carpenter erect a diving dock for their pleasure. Prior to that they had used a rope and an old tyre, fixed to stout branches of a river gum to swing from.

      She was twelve, and very much part of the Pack of Four, as they had become known throughout the Valley. She didn’t feel honoured to be allowed to tag along with the boys. She was one of them. All three boys were inseparable friends: her older brother Mattie, Rohan—Mrs Costello’s son—a courtesy title insisted on by their mother, because Mrs Costello was really a miss, but who cared?—and Martyn Prescott, young son of the neighbouring estate, High Grove. Charlotte was their muse.

      Although she would have died rather than say it aloud, Rohan was her shining white knight. She loved him. She loved the burning blue looks he bent on her. But these days a kind of humming tension had cut into their easy affection. Once or twice she’d had the crazy desire to kiss him. Proof, if any were needed, that she was fast growing up.

      Rohan easily beat them into the water that day, striking out into the middle of the stream, the ripples on the dark green surface edged with sparkles the sunlight had cast on the river. “What’s keeping you?” he yelled, throwing a long tanned arm above water. “Come on, Charlie. You can beat the both of them!”

      He was absolutely splendid, Rohan! Even as a boy he had a glamour about him. As her mother had once commented, “Rohan’s an extraordinary boy—a born leader, and so good for my darling Mattie!” In those early days their mother had been very protective of her only son.

      “Won’t do him a bit of good, wrapping him in cotton wool.” That irritated comment always came from their father, who was sure such mollycoddling was holding his son back.

      Perhaps he was right? But their mother took no notice. Unlike her young daughter, who enjoyed splendid health, Matthew had suffered from asthma since infancy. Mattie’s paediatrician had told their anxiety-ridden mother he would most likely grow out of it by age fourteen. It was that kind of asthma.

      That fatal day Charlotte remembered running to the diving dock, her long, silver-blonde hair flying around her face. It was Martyn who had pulled her hair out of its thick plait. It was something he loved to do. Most of the time she rounded on him—“How stupid, Martyn!” was her usual protest as she began to re-plait it.

      “You look better that way, Charlie. One day you’re going to be an absolute knockout. Mum and Dad say that. Not Nicole, of course. She’s as jealous as hell. One day we’re going to get married. Mum says that too.”

      “Dream on!” she always scoffed. Get married, indeed! Some husband Martyn would make.

      Mattie always laughed, “Boy, has he got a crush on you, Charlie!”

      She chose not to believe it. She didn’t know then that some crushes get very crushed.

      Rohan never laughed. Never joked about it. He kept silent on that score. The Marsdons and the Prescotts were the privileged children of the Valley. Certainly not Rohan Costello, who lived with his mother on the outskirts of town in a little cottage hardly big enough to swing a cat. Their mother said the pair would have to shift soon.

      “Rohan is quickly turning into a man!”

      At fourteen, nearing fifteen, it was apparent the fast-growing Rohan would easily attain six feet and more in maturity. Mattie, on the other hand, was small for his age. Rohan was by far the strongest and the best swimmer, though she was pretty good herself—but built for speed rather than endurance.

      Totally unselfconscious, even with her budding breasts showing through her swimsuit and her long light limbs gleaming a pale gold, with Rohan—her hero—watching, she made a full racing dive into the water, striking out towards him as he urged her on, both of them utterly carefree, not knowing then that this was the last day they would ever swim in the river.

      Years later she would shudder when she remembered their odd near-total absorption in one another that summer afternoon. A boy and a girl. One almost fifteen, the other twelve.

       Romeo and Juliet.

      Martyn appeared angry with them, sniping away. Jealous. Mattie was his normal sweet self. At one stage he called out that he was going to swim across to the opposite bank, where beautiful weeping willows bent their branches towards the stream.

      “Stay with us, Mattie,” Rohan yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth.

      “What’s the matter? Reckon I can’t do it?” Mattie called back, sounding very much as if he was going to take up the challenge.

      “‘Course you can!” she had shouted, always mindful of her brother’s self-esteem, undermined by his sickness. “But do like Rohan says, Mattie. Stay with us.”

      Mattie appeared persuaded. He turned in their direction, only then Martyn yelled, his voice loud with taunt, “Don’t be such a cream puff, Marsdon! Are you always going to do what Mummy says? Are you always going to stick by Rohan’s side? Rohan will look after Mummy’s little darling. Isn’t that his job? Go for it, Mattie! Don’t be such a wimp!”

      “Shut up, Martyn!” Rohan roared, in a voice none of them had ever heard before. It was an adult voice. The voice of command.

      Immediately Martyn ceased his taunts, but Mattie confounded them all by kicking out towards the opposite bank, his thin arms stiff and straight in the water.

      “Perhaps we should let him?” Charlotte had appealed to Rohan, brows knotted. “Mummy really does mollycoddle him.”

      “You can say that again!” Martyn chortled unkindly. Everyone in the Valley knew how protective Barbara Marsdon was of her only son.

      “I’m going after him.” It only took a little while of watching Mattie’s efforts for Rohan to make the decision. “You shouldn’t have taunted him, Martyn. You’re supposed to be Mattie’s friend. He’s trying to be brave, but the brave way is the safest way. Mattie doesn’t have your strength, or mine. He isn’t the strongest of swimmers.”

      “He’ll make it.” Martyn was trying not to sound anxious, but his warier brain cells had kicked in. Rohan was right. He shouldn’t have egged Mattie on. He went to say something in his own defence, only Rohan had struck out in his powerful freestyle while Charlotte followed.

      Martyn chose to remain behind. He thought they were both overreacting. Mattie would be okay. Sure he would! The distance between the banks at that point wasn’t all that wide. The water was warm. The surface was still. There was no appreciable undercurrent. Well, not really. The waters were much murkier on the other side, with the wild tangle of undergrowth, the heavy overhang of trees, the resultant debris that would have found its way into the river. For someone like Rohan the swim would be no more than a couple of lengths of the pool. But for Mattie?

      Hell, they could be in the middle of a crisis, Martyn realised—too late.

      One minute Mattie’s thin arms were making silver splashes in the water, and then to their utter horror his head, gilded by sunlight, disappeared beneath the water.