And of course they found time to let the horses graze while they spread out a blanket in the inviting shade of a manuka tree. Carol wasn’t an enthusiastic cook; she didn’t have time to prepare the kind of delicacies that Deborah Butler liked to spoil her son with. But she had packed some cold roast lamb and fresh bread from the kitchen, and told him she’d felt very baroness-like when she’d added a bottle of wine to her basket.
“Cat will kill me,” she said with a giggle.
Her adoptive mother enjoyed wine, but it was expensive and complicated to order from Christchurch. For that reason, Cat seldom allowed herself the pleasure. She wouldn’t be pleased to find out that a bottle was missing.
Oliver didn’t really care what he ate or drank as long as Carol was with him and didn’t resist when he put his arms around her. Now out of his mother’s sight, she returned his affections enthusiastically, and even allowed him to undo a few buttons of her blouse and kiss the tops of her breasts.
For her own part, Carol allowed her hands to roam under Oliver’s shirt and stroke his smooth skin and muscular body. Finally, she encouraged him to take off his shirt and regarded him with obvious pleasure.
“I finally understand why men row,” she murmured, and traced his biceps with the tip of her finger. “You look like one of those marble statues. You know, the Greek ones in the foyer of the White Hart.”
In England it was fashionable to decorate noble homes with antique Greek or Roman art, and the owner of the hotel in Christchurch had embraced the trend. Since then, there had been dissent in the provincial religious community about whether the exhibition of naked male bodies should be allowed in the name of culture, or if it was corrupting the innocence of the youth.
“Michelangelo’s David,” Oliver said, smiling as he pushed Carol’s blouse a little farther over her shoulders to get a look at her breasts. “Did you know my mother’s seen it? The real one, in Florence. Oh, Europe must be fascinating. Perhaps I should have gone there to study. Or maybe we’ll go together someday. Would you like that? Of course, we would only stay at the best hotels.”
Carol and Oliver had a certain glow about them when they returned to Rata Station that evening. Cat regarded Ida’s daughter thoughtfully, and Linda looked at her sister in annoyance. But there was no excuse to scold her. Carol had checked the fences as she had been told to, and Fancy danced happily around the five escaped sheep that Carol had found and brought back. Cat trusted both girls when it came to the temptation of physical pleasure. They knew very well what happened in bed between men and women. After all, they’d grown up in close proximity to a Maori tribe, and most of their friends had already had experiences with boys. The Maori didn’t share the Europeans’ prudery. They allowed their teenagers to experiment before they finally chose a partner. Some of the Maori boys had made attempts with Linda and Carol, and they had been allowed a few stolen caresses in the shelter of rata thickets. But nothing more had come of it. The girls listened to Cat, who dissuaded them from going too far.
“The problem is that rumors would go around with the pakeha. Believe me, all it would take would be for some boy to brag a little in front of the drovers, and your good reputation would be gone, stupid as that is.”
Cat knew all too well how the European community felt about girls’ sexuality. When she’d had to leave the Maori and move to Nelson, the white citizens of the town had made up such wild stories about her that her safety was threatened. In the end, she’d had to flee.
Of course, Linda and Carol were not in that kind of danger; they had the protection of their families. At the same time, they hadn’t shown signs of serious interest in any Maori boys, and Cat suspected they would seek their future husbands among the pakeha. For that reason, Cat thought it better if they conformed to pakeha customs.
That night, Oliver attempted to convince Carol to ride out into the night with him, but she declined. Still, she was delighted about the idea of going with him the following year when they were married to drive the sheep to the mountains, like Cat did with Chris.
“Then we’ll make love under the stars,” she whispered, after they’d kissed an acceptable distance from Cat and Chris’s Maori-style wooden house. The land stretched down to the river, like Deborah Butler’s garden. The Waimakariri twisted through the open plains like a band of liquid silver in the moonlight. The silhouette of a cabbage tree threw strange, magical-looking shadows on the riverbank. “It’ll be like a dream, Oliver. Much, much more beautiful even than Florence.”
Oliver nodded, but he didn’t look particularly convinced. He wanted Carol and longed to explore her body in moonlight or sunlight, under the stars or under the canopies of the luxurious English beds at Butler Station. If he were honest, he’d prefer a comfortable bedroom to a tent on the plains. But it was better if he didn’t admit that to Carol. She would be more reasonable when they were married. And if his mother managed to talk his father into letting her send them to Europe as a wedding present, he knew Carol wouldn’t object.
He kissed her again, leaning her against the trunk of a tree and pressing his body against hers. Perhaps she’d give in and let him open her bodice. As Oliver felt for the buttons, voices and hoofbeats broke through the darkness of the early night.
Carol freed herself from his arms. “Horses are coming!” she cried. “And I think—” She dashed along the riverbank toward the three riders who were approaching. “Mamida! Kapa!”
Oliver followed his fiancé slowly. He knew that Mamida was the twins’ name for Ida, to differentiate her from their other mother, Cat, whom they called Mamaca. It surely wouldn’t be appropriate to disturb their reunion, even if Carol wasn’t acting ladylike when she jubilantly threw her arms around Ida. Just as unabashed, she returned Karl Jensch’s embrace, although the man was definitely not her biological father. Oliver thought that relationships in general were treated far too casually at Rata Station. Just the way the girls referred to their parents! Mamida, Mamaca, Kapa . . . it all sounded far too exotic—and childish. Oliver had been stopped at ten years old from calling his parents Mummy and Daddy, and instructed to address them as Mother and Father instead.
“What are you doing alone here in the dark?” Ida asked. She was a slender woman, who now, in the coolness of the evening, was wrapped in a shapeless riding coat. “Oh, you’re not alone!”
Ida’s voice hardened at the sight of Oliver. At Rata Station, things were definitely less formal than they were at the Butlers’, but Oliver knew that Ida came from a very devoutly Christian German family. She must not be pleased to find her daughter alone with a man on a moonlit riverbank.
Oliver bowed formally. “Mrs. Jensch, Mr. Jensch, please rest assured that in no way did I come too close to your daughter.”
“You didn’t?” Karl Jensch asked with a smile.
He was a tall, thin, but strong-looking man with curly blond hair, which he wore longer than usual, like his friend Chris Fenroy did. It poked untidily from under his broad-brimmed hat and gave him a rakish air.
“Then something must be wrong with you, young man. With a girl as pretty as Carol, and the moonlight—” He smiled. “The two of you have been engaged for a couple of months, haven’t you? So, what exactly were you doing out here without getting too close to her? Counting sheep?”