At the Cattleman's Command. Lindsay Armstrong

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, СКАЧАТЬ