“Good. Then the first item of business you have to deal with is who we’re going to appoint to the remaining four board places. Women, mind!”

“I must be dreaming,” said Octavia.

“Not at all,” said Drusilla, at her most majestic. “This is real, sister. The ladies of Missalonghi have come into their own at last.”

“What a day!” sighed Octavia.

What a day, indeed. The last of it was going on outside the open back door, which faced west. So did Missy’s chair. She could see the great fanning ribbons of high cloud dyed as scarlet as her dress, and the apple-green sky between them, and the mass of blossom on the fruit trees in the orchard, drifts of white and pink gone pinker in that lovely waning sun. But her mind and her eyes, normally so receptive to the natural beauty of the world, were not preoccupied with that glory. For Una was standing in the doorway, smiling at her. Una. Oh, Una!

“Don’t ever tell him, Missy. Let him believe his love and care cured you.” Una chuckled gleefully. “He’s a darling man, darling, but he has a terrible temper! It’s not in your nature to provoke it, but whatever you do, don’t tempt fate by telling him about your heart trouble. No man likes to be the dupe of a woman, and he’s already had a fair taste of that. So mark what I say – don’t ever, ever tell him.”

“You’re leaving,” said Missy desolately.

“With knobs on I’m leaving, darling! I’ve done what I was sent to do, and now I’m going to take a well-deserved rest on the softest, fattest, pinkest, champagniest cloud I can find.”

“I can’t do it without you, Una!”

“Nonsense, darling, of course you can. Just be good, and especially be good in bed, and you can’t go wrong. That is, as long as you heed my warning – don’t ever tell him the truth!”

That exquisite radiance welling from within Una had fused with the last of the sun; she stood a moment longer in the doorway with the light pouring through her and out of her, then she was gone.

“Missy! Missy! Missy! Are you all right? Are you in pain? Missy! For God’s sake, answer me!”

John Smith was standing over her, chafing her hands, a look of desperate horror in his eyes.

She managed to smile up at him. “I’m quite all right, John, truly. It’s been the day. Too much happiness!”

“You’d better get used to too much happiness, my little love, because I swear I shall drown you in it,” he said, and caught his breath. “You’re my second chance, Missalonghi Smith.”

A chill breeze puffed in through the open door, and just before Drusilla reached to shut it out, it whispered for Missy’s ears alone, “Never tell him! Oh, please, never tell him!”

~

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Colleen McCullough

Also by Colleen McCullough

The Masters of Rome series

An invitation from the publisher

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From author of The Thorn Birds, one of the biggest-selling books of all time, comes this epic saga of love, betrayal, ambition and redemption in 1920s Australia.

The four Latimer sisters are famous throughout New South Wales for their beauty, wit and ambition. They have always been close; always happy. They thought this would never change.

But then they left home to train as nurses, swapping the feather beds of their father’s townhouse for the spartan bunks of nursing accommodation. And now, as the Depression casts its shadow across Australia, they must confront their own secret desires as the world changes around them. Will they find the independence they crave? Or is life – like love – always bittersweet?

Part 1

Four New-Style

Nurses

1

Edda and Grace, Tufts and Kitty. Two sets of twins, the daughters of the Reverend Thomas Latimer, Rector of St. Mark’s Church of England in the Shire & City of Corunda, New South Wales.

They were sitting on four slender chairs in front of the vast maw of the fireplace, where no fire burned. The very large drawing room was filled with chattering women invited by the Rector’s wife, Maude, to celebrate the event looming in less than a week: the Rector’s four daughters were quitting the Rectory to commence training as nurses at the Corunda Base Hospital.

Less than a week to go, less than a week to go! Edda kept saying to herself as she endured the embarrassment of being on display, her eyes roaming about because she preferred not to look at her stepmother, Maude, dominating the talk as usual, natter, natter, natter.

There was a hole in the wooden floor to the side of Edda’s chair, the last in the row of four; a movement inside it caught her attention and she stiffened, grinning deep within herself. A big rat! A rat was about to invade Mama’s party! Just an inch more, she thought as she watched the head, then I’ll emit a loud gasp and screech “Rat!” at the top of my voice. What fun!

But before Edda could find her voice she actually saw the head, and froze. A polished black wedge with vibrating tongue — huge for what it was! — followed by a polished black body as thick as a woman’s arm — a black body, yes, but beneath it a red belly. And the thing kept on coming and coming, seven feet of red-bellied black snake, lethally venomous. How had it found its way in here?

It was still emerging, ready the moment the tip of its tail was free to make a bolt in some unpredictable direction. The fire tools were on the far side of the hearth, with the oblivious Tufts, Grace and Kitty in between; she’d never reach them.

Her chair had a padded seat but no arms, and its frail legs tapered to fine round points no bigger than a lipstick tube; Edda drew in a great breath, lifted herself and the chair a few inches, and brought the left front leg down on the middle of the snake’s head. Then she sat, hard and heavy, hands clenched grimly around the sides of the chair seat, determined to ride out the tempest as if she were Jack Thurlow breaking in a horse.

The leg pierced its skull between the eyes and the snake, all seven feet of it, reared high into the air. Someone gave a shrill scream and other screams followed, while Edda Latimer sat and fought to keep the chair leg embedded in the snake’s head. Its body whipped, pounded, crashed around and against her, dealing her blows more savage and punishing than a man’s fist, raining on her so thick and fast that she seemed surrounded by a whirling blur, a threshing shadow.

Women were running everywhere, still screaming, eyes filled with the sight of Edda and the old man snake, unable to get past their panic to help her.

Except for Kitty — pretty Kitty, gritty Kitty — who leaped across the hearth wielding the tomahawk used for last-minute splitting of over-chunky kindling. Wading through the lashing snake’s blows, she severed head from spine in two hacks.

“You can take your weight off the chair now, Eds,” Kitty said to her sister as she dropped the hatchet. “What a monster! You’ll be black and blue from bruises.”