To Chase the Storm: The Frontier Series 4 (36 page)

‘Major Duffy,’ Deborah said sweetly as she offered her gloved hand. ‘I already know everything about you from your wonderful Aunt Kate.’

Patrick took her hand, aware that her dark eyes were watching him with more than a passing interest. She was relatively tall and the shimmering black dress she wore accentuated her graceful curves. The famed opera singer’s luxurious, jet-black hair was piled high on her head, and in every way Patrick had imagined she was indeed beautiful.

Patrick already knew that she was just slightly younger than he, as Kate had often mentioned her god-daughter in letters. Kate was as proud of Deborah’s ascent to international fame as if Deborah had been her real daughter.

‘Not everything, I hope,’ Patrick replied lamely. ‘There is a lot that even I would rather forget.’

‘Kate has told me that you are very much like your father,’ Deborah continued, and suddenly checked herself. ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ she said apologetically. ‘Kate wrote to tell me of your father’s passing last year.’

‘There is no need to apologise,’ Patrick offered. ‘My father led a remarkable life, and died in a way
I think he would have preferred to the onset of illness or old age.’

‘Ahem!’ Arthur coughed. ‘I thought that before you two got into a reminiscence of the past that we should steal away from here and retire to a place less public.’

Patrick glanced at Arthur with a puzzled look but received a wink in return.

‘Oh, yes,’ Deborah said, reluctantly releasing Patrick’s hand. ‘Dinner.’

‘Dinner?’ Patrick was puzzled. ‘What dinner?’

‘The three of us are scheduled to dine at the Savoy,’ Deborah said with a soft laugh. ‘Perhaps Arthur has not told you of our long acquaintance from the past. We first met when I was struggling to achieve recognition and it was Arthur who helped open the doors for a poor colonial lass, such as myself, to enter the world of European aristocracy.’

‘I did not know,’ Patrick said, staring at Arthur with a new respect for the man’s less lauded achievements.

‘I kind of found myself as an agent after I was discharged in ’86,’ Arthur said. ‘Then one day this skinny young thing from the barbaric wilds of Queensland knocked on my door. She claimed that she could sing . . . and here she is.’

Deborah took Arthur’s elbow with a gentle squeeze of affection. ‘Arthur had faith in me, and I do not forget who my real friends are.’

‘I must tend my apologies,’ Arthur said in a more serious tone as he flipped open the cover of his gold fob watch and noted the time. ‘I have an
appointment with an American from New York concerning some new photographic equipment being manufactured over there. But the reservations have been made and a cab awaits to rescue you from your adoring but possibly overwhelming public, Deborah.’

‘You are right, Arthur,’ Deborah said and excused herself to address the gathering of patrons of the arts. After a short and breezy speech, she took Patrick’s arm and they followed the doorman to a cab waiting outside.

As Patrick sat beside Deborah, for just a moment he felt at a loss for words. Here he was in the company of one of the most admired and talented women in the world – and yet he did not know what to say. As if sensing his awkwardness, Deborah astutely opened the conversation by asking Patrick about his grandmother and his children, a subject Patrick was able to speak on at length and with warmth. Since Deborah did not ask him about Catherine, he suspected that she already knew of his wife’s estrangement from him.

When they arrived at the hotel the staff received Deborah as if she were royalty and once again Patrick felt just a little out of place, not for anything that Deborah did, but for the way she was courted by strangers who vied to kiss her hand. As it was, the coy looks he caught from one or two pretty young ladies told a surprised Patrick that they found the mysterious man escorting the famed Miss Deborah Cohen attractive in his own right.

They were seated in a private alcove away from the gawking diners attempting to catch a glimpse of
the opera diva. An elegantly dressed waiter hovered at the table to take their order which Deborah delivered in a manner which indicated that she was naturally born to a life of fame and fortune.

The soft flicker of the candlelight in the alcove accentuated the depth of her dark brown eyes and Patrick felt an uneasy twinge of guilt for the desire that this woman had awoken in him. Between courses, Patrick turned Deborah’s conversation on herself and she appeared flattered, relating anecdotes of her life touring the world. Patrick laughed, grateful for this wonderful diversion from thoughts of the future – or darker reflections on Catherine’s absence from his life. For that he felt even more guilty.

But as the evening moved along, Deborah seemed to become aware of something missing from the conversation. ‘Major Duffy, you have spoken so little of your remarkable life,’ she said. ‘You have tricked me into speaking about my own and I have prattled on incessantly about matters of little consequence to the state of the world. You are a man who has truly lived and yet you remain so modestly silent about yourself.’

‘You know,’ Patrick said disarmingly, ‘you have the most beautiful eyes.’

As Deborah glanced away Patrick thought he saw a flush rise under the golden hue of her olive skin. ‘I do not mean to flatter you or attempt to win your affections,’ he continued hastily when he saw her reaction. ‘There is just something quite bewitching about them.’

Leaning towards him, Deborah said softly, ‘I know about your sadness. Kate wrote to me of how your wife left you for another. I am very sorry but I must
say that your wife must be the most foolish woman ever born, to leave a man such as yourself.’

‘You do not know what I am really like,’ Patrick responded, looking down. ‘I think that I made the mistakes that forced Catherine from my life. It is not she who is completely at fault but I.’

‘I know a lot more about you than you might imagine,’ Deborah said. ‘I have followed your life through the years via Kate’s letters. It was as if I was with you from that terrible time you were listed as missing in action in the Sudan, to when you were wounded in South Africa, last year. And all the time that I read about you over the years I drew a picture of a rather remarkable man.’

Patrick was humbled by the intently delivered words of this beautiful woman. He sensed a genuinely caring woman with an infinite capacity to give love without asking anything in return.

‘Miss Cohen –’

‘Please call me Deborah,’ she said cutting him short. ‘May I call you Patrick?’

‘I would feel more at ease if you did,’ Patrick replied. ‘In a sense, you have been very much part of my extended family. It is just that now we have finally met.’

‘I know that it is extremely brazen of me to suggest that we meet again,’ Deborah said softly. ‘But I would like the opportunity to learn more about the man who has until now only existed in Kate’s prose.’ Noticing the slightly confused expression on Patrick’s face, she hurriedly added, ‘Oh, please do not misconstrue my intentions. But it would be nice
to have the company and conversation of a fellow colonial when I am surrounded by men who only want to claim my affections. With you, I feel that you are an honourable and genuine man, and in my world that is a rare thing.’

‘I would be honoured to see you again,’ Patrick said. ‘In fact, you could visit my place in the country for the weekend, if that is possible?’

‘I would be delighted,’ Deborah answered sweetly. ‘Shall we say this weekend? I am free, if you are?’

‘I am and will look forward to sharing a walk with you, weather permitting.’

When Patrick departed from the hotel late that evening he did so in a gloomy confusion of thoughts. He had never expected to meet a woman such as Deborah Cohen, one who had the ability to turn his world upside down.

‘Bloody imbecile,’ Patrick muttered to himself as he waited for the doorman to hail a Hansom cab on the busy street.

He was angry at the attraction he felt towards Deborah and suffered a terrible guilt for the fact that he still loved his estranged wife. But no harm could come from a weekend in the country, he consoled himself. It would be good to have some company in the empty old mansion far from the crowded city.

Deborah stood in her plush hotel room wearing only a tight corset. She too felt confusion for what
had unexpectedly transpired between them over dinner. Or was it that she had always wanted to meet the man whose life she had followed in Kate’s letters?

‘Silly girl,’ she sighed as she ran her hand down her stomach. Patrick Duffy was not one of the royal princes she had bedded in the past, nor was he a man of European sophistication. So why should she find him so desirable?

Deborah struggled from the corset to slip on an ankle length flannel nightgown. No, Patrick was not the kind of man she should ever have any romantic thoughts about. After all, she could have any man she wanted. She attempted to dismiss him from her thoughts. But the more she tried to do so the more he returned in a way that was disconcerting. She had fleeting images of his head buried between her breasts and his strong hands forcing her legs apart as she lay beneath him. The more she attempted to rationalise her relationship with Patrick, the more she wanted him.

Deborah slipped under the thick eiderdown to sleep. It did not surprise her that Patrick came so easily to her dreams that night.

THIRTY-SEVEN

A
feeling of despair at the desolation of the Holy Land greeted Saul Rosenblum. It was not the land of milk and honey of his father’s nostalgic words for a land he had never even visited. Instead he found a miserable landscape where barely a tree flourished in a terrain of rock and dust shimmering under a baking sun. He and Jakob Isaacs were travelling by donkey to the newly established
moshava
in the Ottoman territory of Sanjak Jerusalem. The
moshava
was a privately owned farm village inhabited by Jewish European men and women seeking to turn the seemingly barren lands into self-sufficient hamlets. But, as Jakob had explained on their journey south from the old city of Jerusalem, the immigrants were not farmers and they were only able to survive thanks to the financial support from the great European banker Baron Edmund de Rothschild.

But the support came at a price. The baron insisted on placing his representatives in the
moshavas
, to make decisions on just about every aspect of community life. The settlers found themselves in opposition to many of the decisions, and Jakob had explained how the diamonds he had exchanged for cash would go a long way towards making the
moshava
he had adopted self-sufficient.

Saul had learned much about Palestine from Jakob on their sea voyage from Portuguese Africa. He knew that Jakob had attended a congress in Basel, Switzerland, four years earlier to hear a Jewish Viennese journalist speak about the idea of Zionism. Jakob had been inspired by the words of Theodor Herzl whose aim was to establish a permanent homeland for the dispossessed people of the Hebrew faith who were persecuted across Europe and beyond. Eretz Israel was proclaimed and now Jakob told Saul optimistically that they were the small vanguard for the millions of Jewish people, first scattered two thousand years earlier by the Romans. They would unite in the land of Abraham.

Unmoved, Saul had listened to Jakob’s impassioned recounting of history and current politics. Only the memory of Karen – and the knowledge that he was wanted by the British authorities – had caused him to travel to this land, so foreign from what he had known in the past. What was familiar was the unforgiving nature of the land for the settler. Alongside his father, Saul had experienced the taming of a tough land and Jakob had pointed out that such a venture would be very little different to
what lay ahead. In no uncertain terms, Saul had explained to Jakob that he intended to eventually make his way back to Australia, to Queensland. The vast former colony, now a state in the Commonwealth of Australia, was considered by Saul to be big enough to provide him with anonymity. Palestine was not his land; it was merely a place to stay for a few months before finding a berth on a ship steaming to the Pacific.

Jakob had acknowledged Saul’s plan with a knowing nod, muttering something in Yiddish Saul did not understand. With the matter settled Saul added, ‘I am not even a real Jew. My mother was what you call a gentile.’

Jakob pondered the young man’s declaration. ‘My daughter loved you,’ he said. ‘She wrote to me about you and said that you were destined to be like Gideon, a warrior fighting for the chosen people. My daughter was like her mother, and her mother wisely chose her husband.’

Saul reflected on Jakob’s words and wondered if he would ever understand the Jewish jewel trader’s logic. But a gentle bond had formed between them, and Saul sighed.

‘A bitterly cold winter will come to these lands soon enough,’ Jakob said as they rounded a bend on the stony track to look down on a shallow arid valley with a small stone village at its centre. ‘And when winter comes we will need the funds I have obtained to get us through.’ He brought his donkey to a stop. ‘Ah, there it is,’ Jakob continued. ‘My
moshava
– and your new home, Saul.’

Saul gazed down at the distant village surrounded by fields wilting under the sun. It did not look very impressive.

‘Do they speak English?’ Saul asked hopefully. The local languages seemed impossible to learn.

‘English, Russian, Austrian, Slovakian and everything else, even a little Hebrew. But mostly Yiddish. Maybe you should learn Yiddish.’

‘Thought so,’ Saul mumbled. ‘Nothing comes easy around here and I bet Yiddish has to be the toughest language of the lot.’

Within a couple of hours the two men arrived at the village to be met by a giant bear of a man with a huge black beard. He greeted Jakob with a crushing hug that lifted him off his feet.

‘Saul,’ Jakob said when he had disengaged himself. ‘I would like you to meet my very good friend Ivan Putkin. He was once a Cossack in the Tsar’s army.’

Ivan turned his attention to Saul as he stood by his donkey. ‘Is good to eat you,’ he said with a crushing handshake.