Outback Bachelor / The Cattleman's Adopted Family. Margaret Way

up to scratch. Of course, no one could be beside Keefe. Come back to me when you’ve finished paying your respects. I want to hear all about what you’ve been doing, you clever girl! Mother is very impressed. She spotted you the instant you walked into the room. You do stand out. ‘Why, that’s little Skye McCory all grown up! And she looks simply stunning! One would never know she had such a humble start.’”

      Skye hadn’t forgotten how patronising the McGoverns were.

      “There you are, my dear,” Lady McGovern said, indicating with her heavily be-ringed hand an empty chair beside her. Lady Margaret McGovern was a diminutive woman but she had enormous presence. Even at eighty it was easy to see she once had been a beauty. The bone structure was still there. Her skin stretched very tight over those bones was remarkably soft and unlined.

      Skye obeyed. “I’m so very sorry, Lady McGovern,” she murmured as she sat down. “I couldn’t get to you before with so many people wanting to offer their condolences. I know how much pain you’re in. I feel so sad myself. Mr McGovern was a wonderful man. He was always very kind to me.”

      “Who could not be?” Lady McGovern said. She took Skye’s two hands in her own, her face carefully in control of emotions. “Welcome home, Skye.”

      It was so unexpected, so enormously comforting, that tears sprang to Skye’s eyes. Home? With an effort of will she forced the tears away. Too many people were watching.

      “Let me look at you,” Lady McGovern said, turning her full scrutiny on Skye. “You’re even more beautiful than your mother. But the colour of your hair is exactly the same. The same radiant blue eyes full of expression. She would have been very proud of you.”

      “Oh, I hope so!” Skye released a fluttery breath. “But I wouldn’t be where I am today without you, Lady McGovern. I will never forget that.”

      “Enough of the Lady McGovern!” The old lady spoke as if she were heartily sick of the title. “I want you to call me Margaret, or Lady Margaret if you feel more comfortable with that. Margaret is my name. It’s a name long in my own family. I would like you to use it. I rarely hear it any more. It’s Gran and Nan, Aunt and Great-Aunt and, I dare say, the Old Dragon. Don’t try to tell me you can’t do it. I look on you as family, Skye.”

      That touched a finger to an open wound. Some things would seem to be hidden, but they couldn’t be hidden for ever. “I’ve always felt something of it,” she confessed. “But why? Can’t you tell me?” The plea came straight from the heart. “Who was my mother really? I never knew her, which is the tragedy of my life. Dad always said she was an orphan.” Skye’s frown deepened. “He said she spoke beautifully. Not an educated Australian accent, but an English voice. Like you. Was she English?” There was something in Lady McGovern’s fine dark eyes that was making Skye very uneasy.

      “As a solicitor, Skye, you’ve made no attempt to trace your mother’s background?” Lady McGovern asked with a grim smile. Could it be pain or disapproval?

      “Very oddly, no, Lady Margaret.” Now that she had said it, “Lady Margaret” came surprisingly easily to her tongue.

      “You had concerns about what you might find?” Again the piercing regard.

      Skye shook her head. “After all, my mother had a connection to you.” Though she didn’t expect to be answered, Skye prepared herself for whatever might come.

      In vain. “I was very fond of her,” Lady McGovern said briefly, then changed the subject. “Your use of my name comes sweetly to my ear. Kindly continue to use it, no matter what. I’m fully aware my granddaughter has always been jealous of you. Jealous of Keefe’s affection for you. That is her nature. She’s going to find it very hard to find a husband if she’s expecting someone like Keefe to come along. It won’t happen.”

      “No,” Skye agreed quietly. “Rachelle loves both her brothers, but she adores Keefe.”

      “Exactly.” Lady McGovern brushed the topic aside. “I want you to know Cathy herself chose your father.”

      “But of course!” Skye was startled. “She fell in love with him.” She knew she was supposed to hold her tongue but it got away from her. “But how did they find the opportunities to meet? She stayed at the house on her visits. My father at the time was a stockman. Times have changed somewhat, but there was a huge social divide.”

      “Of course,” Lady McGovern acknowledged, as if the divide was still firmly in place. “Nevertheless, Cathy knew Jack McCory was the man for her. And a fine man he is too. He mourns your mother to this day. As do I. Let’s not talk any more about this, Skye. It upsets me. I don’t know if Jack ever told you, but Cathy knew the baby she was carrying was a girl. She had the name Skye already picked out for you. And doesn’t it suit you! Somehow she knew you would have her beautiful sky-blue eyes.”

      Skye stayed a few minutes more talking to Lady McGovern, but it was obvious others wanted the opportunity to express a few words of sympathy to the McGovern matriarch. She no sooner moved away than Robert Sullivan made a beeline to her side.

      “I don’t really know why but you and my great-aunt look more comfortable together than she and Rachelle,” he announced. “Why is that, do you suppose?”

      “I have no idea, Robert,” she responded calmly.

      “Neither do I. Just one of those quirky things.” Robert took her arm and began to lead her away. “Look, how long are you staying?” He stared down at her smooth honey-blonde head.

      “No more than a week.” Actually, she had weeks of her leave left. “I only came for the funeral.”

      “But we’ve got to meet up.” Robert spoke with extraordinary determination. “I’ve thought of asking Keefe if I can spend a little time here. I’m sure he won’t mind. The house is big enough to billet an army.”

      “But won’t you be expected back home?” Robert worked for his father, a well-known pastoralist running both sheep and cattle on a large property on the Queensland/New South Wales border.

      “I could do with a break. I’ll check it out with Dad. He was as impressed with you as Mother. I want you to come over and say hello. That’s if I can find them in this crush. Even in this huge house there’s hardly room to move. And just look at Keefe!”

      Look at him! Skye couldn’t drag her eyes off him. Everything about him pierced her to the heart.

      “The minute he enters the room, he’s the stand-out figure,” Robert said with undisguised envy. “And it’s not just his height. He really takes the eye. He’s a man with power. And money. Poor old Scott is still as jealous of him as he ever was. Scott really ought to go away and make a life for himself. Rachelle, too, though she spends plenty of time in Sydney and Melbourne.”

      “I see Scott with Jemma Templeton,” Skye sidetracked. She didn’t want to discuss Rachelle. “What I remember of Jemma is good.”

      “But isn’t she plain?” Robert groaned, with a pitying look in his eyes. “Talk about a face like a horse!”

      “A particularly well-bred one.” Skye’s eyes were still on Keefe’s tall, commanding figure. He looked beyond handsome in his formal funeral attire. “I don’t consider Jemma plain at all. She has a look of breeding and intelligence.’

      “I suppose. But I bet she’d love to be pretty. And you are being kind. I suppose a woman as beautiful as you can afford to be kind. Poor old Jemma must be nuts if she’s looking to land Scott. She’s mad about him, poor thing!” Robert rushed on with characteristic candour. “Who knows why. Doesn’t say much for her intelligence in my book. Scott is trouble. It’s the way he goes off like an out-of-control rocket from time to time.”

      “Whatever, he’s always got a whole string of girls after him.”

      “And Keefe?” Couldn’t she control her tongue?

      Robert