Margaret Way - Her Outback Commander

“Blaine?”

Sienna moved the phone away from her ear again. “I can hardly refer to him as Mr Kilcullen,” she said, suddenly sick to death of her cousin. “Your late husband’s half -brother very much wants you to accompany him back to Australia. He’s assured me you will be welcomed. Mark has a twin, by the way, name of Marcia. Apparently they weren’t all that close—unlike most twins.” Now definitely wasn’t the time for Amanda to learn about the scorned fiancée.

“Mark wouldn’t have deliberately lied to me,” Amanda asserted in a thick voice, when her normal tones were soft and breathy.

“Mark had a twin, Amanda,” Sienna said. “The truth was an alien concept to him. He lied to us all the time. He kept his true self and his true life well under wraps. Probably he was laughing at us. He had a cruel streak.”

“He was a fabulous husband.”

Clearly Amanda was in denial. “Mandy, you contradict yourself all the time. Why were you always so desperate for me to join you and Mark? You never did explain. Was the marriage all but over? Was that what it was all about, Mandy? Do you ever come clean?”

Silence for a moment, then Amanda’s harsh reaction. “I need you to understand something, Sienna. If my marriage was over, it was because of you . You had to take the one thing I had.”

Sienna was too appalled to continue. Drink turned some people happy. It turned others abusive. “I’m hanging up now, Amanda,” she said, thinking things would never get better. Amanda would most probably worsen. “You’ve been drinking. You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re exhausting my good will. In case you’re thinking of ringing back, I’m taking the phone off the hook.”

“Do it. Go on—do it!” Amanda urged, her voice rising to a crescendo.

Sienna did, wrapping her arms around herself. There were only two ways to deal with Amanda. Put up with her, or remove her from her life. After all these years since decided she could never do that. Maybe a good man would come along to take care of her cousin.

Sienna was upstairs, talking to valued client and family friend Nadine Duval, when Amanda walked through the front door of the gallery.

“Sienna, where are you?”

Her voice was pitched so high and loud it was startling. It echoed right through the large open space, its white walls hung with stunning paintings from her father’s last sell-out showing. In the last fifteen years Lucien Fleury had moved on to international eminence with numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions. Sienna was enormously proud of him. He in turn was enormously proud of both his children. Both had been hailed as major talents.

“In the genes, Sienna, my darling.”

Of course he took the credit.

Nadine Duval, an extremely rich woman, who had paid a fortune for arguably her father’s finest canvas in the showing, gave her an understanding little smile. “That will be Amanda, poor girl. We all feel so sorry for her, but I just bet she’s giving you a bad time. You have to get free of her, Sienna,” Nadine warned, not for the first time. “The girl is trouble.”

“Well she’s suffering now,” Sienna explained, beginning to walk Nadine down the spiral staircase.

“Of course she is.” Nadine’s response was vaguely ironic.

“I’ll have the painting delivered this afternoon,” Sienna promised, when they arrived at the bottom.

Nadine reached for her hand. “Thank you, my dear. Tell Lucien I want to see him. Maybe lunch?”

“Will do.”

They exchanged kisses.

Amanda looked far more fragile than the strength of her voice had suggested. Indeed she looked waif-like. She had lost weight when she couldn’t afford to do so. Her skin, her best feature, was so pale it was almost translucent. She had violet half-moons beneath her eyes, and the silky curls of her pretty blonde hair had lost their lustre and bounce.

“I really don’t like that woman,” she growled.

It was a mercy Nadine had gone through the door to her waiting limousine.

“Your loss, Mandy. Nadine has so much character.”

“And of course she loves you too.” Amanda was looking hung over, and haggard for her years.

“I hope you haven’t come here to make a scene, Amanda.” Sienna was worried that just might happen. It was fortunate that, with the exhibition over, all that remained was for her to have the paintings delivered to their clients. That meant fewer visitors to the gallery.

“Nothing matters. Nothing matters any more,” Amanda said, face and voice full of woe.

Sienna’s tender heart smote her. “Come through to the office. Would you like a cup of coffee? You don’t look good, Amanda. I know this is a terrible time, but you have to take care of yourself.”

“ Why , exactly?” Amanda asked bitterly, sinking her fingers into the skin of her face and dragging her eyes down. “I know I look awful. No need to rub it in.”

“I hope I wasn’t doing that. I care about you, Mandy. We’ll all help you work through your grief.”

“Who’s all ?” Amanda shot back, as if she had been fiercely rejected all her life instead of cosseted. “I hardly see Aunty Francine.”

“She works, Amanda, as well you know. But she does ring you often,” Sienna reminded her. Like the rest of them, Francine had tried hard to take to Mark, but found she couldn’t. Consequently, as often happened, it had put distance between them all. “The family are busy people with busy lives, Amanda. But we’re all there for you when we’re needed. Come and sit down,” she urged, putting out a sheltering arm. “I have things to tell you.”

Once seated in the office, Amanda began to gnaw on her nails. “It’s taking all my energy just to stay alive.”

Sienna risked another caution. “You have to stop drinking, Mandy.”

“I need something to get me through,’ Amanda maintained doggedly.

Sienna made coffee from her excellent little machine, adding cream from the refrigerator and two teaspoons of sugar. “I have some cookies if you want them?”

Amanda laughed shortly. “I can’t get a thing down my throat.’ She looked up, her blue eyes moist, her expression wretched. “What am I going to do, Sienna? What sort of a job am I going to get? I was never a good student. Not like you . I didn’t make university. Not only did you get all the looks, you got all the brains and a gift for painting.”

“From Lucien,” Sienna acknowledged, taking a seat behind her mahogany desk. “Drink up, and I’ll tell you what Blaine Kilcullen had to say.”

“It had better be good,” Amanda warned. “What a shocking lot those people are. How cruel they were to Mark.”

“There are two sides to a story, Amanda,” Sienna said quietly, not wanting to provoke her cousin. “Mark did his level best to put us off his family.”

“He had good reasons.” Wrath registered on Amanda’s white face.

Mark had seen himself as a victim. It struck Sienna that was the way Amanda saw herself too. It showed a link between them. All the bad things that happened in life were never their fault. The fault lay with others. Both had dark places.

“Oh, my God, Sienna!” Amanda cried, when Sienna had finished outlining Blaine Kilcullen’s proposal. “There’s money!” She gave a great cry of relief.

“The Kilcullens aren’t going to see you in financial trouble, Mandy.” So much for the Fleury family’s generosity! She recalled one of her father’s recent comments.

“She’s not you, my darling, frail little creature that she is!”

“I don’t know exactly how much, but I’d say a substantial sum. Blaine administers a family trust. After meeting him, I have to say I don’t see him as the ogre Mark made him out.”