Exhausted, so sore moving was agony, Meggie inched herself over onto her side with her back to Luke, and wept into the pillow. Sleep eluded her, though Luke slept so soundly her small timid movements never caused so much as a change in the pattern of his breathing. He was an economical sleeper and a quiet one, he neither snored nor flopped about, and she thought while waiting for the late dawn that if it had just been amatter of lying down together, she might have found him nice to be with. And the dawn came, as quickly and joylessly as darkness had; it seemed strange not to hear roosters crowing, the other sounds of a rousing Drogheda with its sheep and horses and pigs and dogs.
Luke woke, and rolled over, she felt him kiss her on the shoulder and was so tired, so homesick that she forgot modesty, didn't care about covering herself.
"Come on, Meghann, let's have a look at you," he commanded, his hand on her hip. "Turn over, like a good little girl."
Nothing mattered this morning; Meggie turned over, wincing, and lay looking up at him dully. "I don't like Meghann," she said, the only form of protest she could manage. "I do wish you'd call me Meggie."
"I don't like Meggie. But if you really dislike Meghann so much, I'll call you Meg." His gaze roved her body dreamily. "What a nice shape you've got." He touched one breast, pink nipple flat and unaroused. "Especially these." Bunching the pillows into a heap, he lay back on them and smiled. "Come on, Meg, kiss me. It's your turn to make love to me, and maybe you'll like that better, eh?"
I never want to kiss you again as long as I live, she thought, looking at the long, heavily muscled body, the mat of dark hair on the chest diving down the belly in a thin line and then flaring into a bush, out of which grew the deceptively small and innocent shoot which could cause so much pain. How hairy his legs were! Meggie had grown up with men who never removed a layer of their clothes in the presence of women, but open-necked shirts showed hairy chests in hot weather. They were all fair men, and not offensive to her; this dark man was alien, repulsive. Ralph had a head of hair just as dark, but well she remembered that smooth, hairless brown chest. "Do as you're told, Meg! Kiss me."
Leaning over, she kissed him; he cupped her breasts in his palms and made her go on kissing him, took one of her hands and pushed it down to his groin. Startled, she took her unwilling mouth away from his to look at what lay under her hand, changing and growing. "Oh, please, Luke, not again!" she cried. "Please, not again! Please, please!"
The blue eyes scanned her speculatively. "Hurts that much? All right, we'll do something different, but for God's sake try to be enthusiastic!" Pulling her on top of him, he pushed her legs apart, lifted her shoulders and attached himself to her breast, as he had done in the car the night she committed herself to marrying him. There only in body, Meggie endured it; at least he didn't put himself inside her, so it didn't hurt any more than simply moving did. What strange creatures men were, to go at this as if it was the most pleasurable thing in the world. It was disgusting, a mockery of love. Had it not been for her hope that it would culminate in a baby, Meggie would have refused flatly to have anything more to do with it.
"I've got you a job," Luke said over breakfast in the hotel dining room. "What? Before I've had a chance to make our home nice, Luke? Before we've even got a home?"
"There's no point in our renting a house, Meg. I'm going to cut cane; it's all arranged. The best gang of cutters in Queensland is a gang of Swedes, Poles and Irish led by a bloke called Arne Swenson, and while you were sleeping off the journey I went to see him. He's a man short and he's willing to give me a trial. That means I'll be living in barracks with them. We cut six days a week, sunrise to sunset. Not only that, but we move around up and down the coast, wherever the next job takes us. How much I earn depends on how much sugar I cut, and if I'm good enough to cut with Arne's gang I'll be pulling in more than twenty quid a week. Twenty quid a week! Can you imagine that?"
"Are you trying to tell me we won't be living together, Luke?" "We can't, Meg! The men won't have a woman in the barracks, and what's the use of your living alone in a house? You may as well work, too; it's all money toward our station."
"But where will I live? What sort of work can I do? There's no stock to drove up here."
"No, more's the pity. That's why I've got you a live-in job, Meg. You'll get free board, I won't have the expense of keeping you. You're going to work as a housemaid on Himmelhoch, Ludwig Mueller's place. He's the biggest cane cocky in the district and his wife's an invalid, can't manage the house on her own. I'll take you there tomorrow morning."
"But when will I see you, Luke?"
"On Sundays. Luddie understands you're married; he doesn't mind if you disappear on Sundays" "Well! You've certainly arranged things to your satisfaction, haven't you?" "I reckon. Oh, Meg, we're going to be rich! We'll work hard and save every penny, and it won't be long before we can buy ourselves the best station in Western Queensland. There's the fourteen thousand I've got in the Gilly bank, the two thousand a year more coming in there, and the thirteen hundred or more a year we can earn between us. It won't be long, love, I promise. Grin and bear it for me, eh? Why be content with a rented house when the harder we work now means the sooner you'll be looking around your own kitchen?" "If it's what you want." She looked down at her purse. "Luke, did you take my hundred pounds?"
"I put it in the bank. You can't carry money like that around, Meg.
"But you took every bit of it! I don't have a penny! What about spending money?"