Scandals and Secrets

Damian shuddered. 'You poor thing.'

Gemma shrugged. 'I didn't know any differently. But you can imagine what I thought when I came to Sydney and went to live in Belleview. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.'

'How did that come about, Gemma?' Celeste asked. 'You’re going to live at Belleview, that is? Or don't you like my asking that? You don't have to tell us if you don't want.'

'No, it's all right. I don't mind. My dad died, you see. There'd only been the two of us. My mother- er-my mother had died when I was born. I. . .I decided to come to Sydney to live. To be honest, I never did like the heat and the flies either,' she said with a quick smile Damian's way. 'I decided to sell up everything I inherited to get some money. Not that there was much. Dad was an opal miner, but not a very successful one, I'm afraid. All he had to his name was a battered old truck and a small hoard of second-rate opals. That's why I. .. why I. .. '

Her voice trailed away and Celeste suspected some memory was too painful to talk about, for the girl suddenly dropped her eyes to her food and frowned. When she looked up, she still looked troubled for a second then her expression cleared and she resumed her story.

'Anyway, I went to sell these opals to Byron. He goes up to the Ridge to buy opals all the time.'

'Yes, I know,' Celeste said, and threw Damian a reproachful look. 'Byron really knows his opals. So what happened? I hope he gave you a good deal.'

'Well, no, he didn't. I mean he couldn't, because he wasn't there. He was in hospital after some accident or other and he'd sent Nathan in his place.'

Celeste nodded thoughtfully. That would have been the boating accident when Irene was killed.

'I see,' she murmured.

And she did. Nathan had taken one look at this exquisite creature and had simply had to possess her. 'So what happened then?' she asked, impatient to see how Nathan had achieved his wicked purpose.

'I sold the opals to Nathan instead.'

'Yes, but how did you come to be living at Belleview?'

'Oh, that. Well, when I mentioned to Nathan that I was moving to Sydney, he gave me his business card and said if I ever needed a job to look him up, so I did.'

'And what job did he offer you that required you to live in at Belleview?' Damian asked, sounding sardonic.

Gemma flushed a little at his obvious innuendo. 'It's not what you're thinking. Nathan offered me a position as sales assistant at one of Whitmore's opal shops, but Byron insisted I learn Japanese first, so while I was doing that Nathan hired me as a type of minder for his daughter. Kirsty was staying with him at Belleview for a while, you see. She'd been giving her mother some trouble and Lenore had sent her to her father to straighten her out. Naturally, I-er-had to live in.'

Celeste almost repeated the naturally, but didn't.

She did, however, catch Damian's eye across the table and his expression was similarly cynical. Not that he could cast any stones. She'd like a dollar for every devious line he'd thrown a woman.

'And that's when you both fell in love,' Celeste commented matter-of- factly.

'Yes,' Gemma muttered, looking and sounding miserable again.

'Let's talk about something else,' Damian said firmly. 'Some more wine, Gemma?'

She put her hand over the glass and shook her head. 'Any more and I'll be paralytic.'

'At least you'll sleep well.'

Cora came in then, wanting to know who wanted dessert.

'What is it?' Celeste asked. 'Lemon meringue pie with cream.'

Celeste groaned. 'You bad woman, tempting me like that.'

'You shouldn't worry. You can always punish yourself with twenty laps of the pool afterwards.' Cora began stacking up the dinner plates. 'There are no refusals, I take it?'

'No!' they all chorused.

'Just as well,' the housekeeper said crisply. 'I don't like slaving over a hot stove for nothing.'

'She's so nice,' Gemma remarked once Cora was out of earshot.

Damian grinned a wickedly attractive grin. 'We're all nice, aren't we, Celeste?'

She looked at her brother and wished he weren't so handsome, or so charming. Her earlier confidence that Gemma would be able to resist him worried her anew. Women did stupid things on the rebound. Hadn't she gone from Byron to Stefan thinking she could lose herself in his Viking good looks, his supposedly gentlemanly consideration?

And what had happened?

She'd been drawn into a hell that no woman should have to endure but which many did. Celeste could well understand why battered women eventually struck back and did murder. She wished she had had the courage, or the strength. Then she might have kept her lovely baby.