benches and could be covered with a canvas hood as seen in all the best westerns. Phryne half expected to hear someone play ‘The William Tell Overture’.
She walked around the vehicle, noting its allover muddiness and resolving to take an oilskin. Then she noticed a clean spot of bright metal in the centre of the front spoked wheel.
‘Mr Willis, have a look at this,’ she called, and the old man tutted, looped the rein over a mounting-block, and came to her side.
‘Someone’s been playing tricks again, Mr Willis,’ she said. The axle nut was missing. Fresh sawdust on the muddy ground indicated that the axle itself might have been partially sawn through. Terry Willis rubbed a shaking hand over his gnome’s face. He looked like a kobold who had just been told that he was mythical.
‘Jeez, it’d take mebbe ten minutes to work loose, then . . .’
‘You know, I’ve lost all my taste for travelling,’ commented Phryne. ‘I think we’d better give Dobbin a holiday and tell the Boss that the trip to the caves is off.’
‘Yair, reckon,’ agreed the old man. ‘You want to unharness ’im? I gotta get my boy and we gotta get this dray back inta the shed. Don’t want every man and his dog ta know.’
Phryne found that unharnessing the carthorse was a lot easier than harnessing him. One just undid every buckle in sight and led the beast forward with his enthusiastic cooperation.
‘There you are,’ she hauled on the rein to bring the big head down low enough so that she could take the headstall off past his ears. ‘And a nice little walk back to your paddock. At least I’ve improved your day,’ she said to the horse, who shook his head at the contrariness of humans and trotted back to his paddock, waited for her to unlatch the gate, and plodded through.
Tom Reynolds was as astonished as a man with a newly recovered hangover could be when he heard Phryne’s news. Stopping only to pull on some gumboots, he rushed out of the house to interview Willis. The house party scattered in search of other diversions and Phryne went up to her room.
‘I’m going for a walk, Dot,’ she yelled to her maid, over the hammer blows of Mr Black, the houseman, who was fitting the bolt. Dot nodded. Phryne pulled on a heavy velvet-lined cape and went to find Lin Chung.
He was standing in the parlour, looking out of the window. When she came in, he asked quietly, ‘How was the beautiful young man?’
‘Beautiful,’ said Phryne carelessly. ‘But only beautiful.’
‘And I?’
‘Ah, you are quite different. Much more than just beautiful.’
Lin Chung sighed. Then he held out a closed hand to her. She opened his fingers and revealed a chess-piece. It was the Red King.
Phryne scanned the board, caught up a small figure and laid the White Queen beside the Red King. The alchemical marriage. The Shanghai ring gleamed on her hand, next to a bright, silver-mounted diamond. Lin Chung took up their intertwined hands and kissed her palm.
Phryne did not care for hunting. Her view was that she had never been personally threatened by a rabbit (unless you took into account a villainous long-dead
Wandering out into the grounds, however, she noticed Jack and the angelic Gerald heading out bush with a couple of rifles, apparently intent on slaughtering some of the local wildlife. That disposed of them. According to her careful investigations, the staff were all safely in the house. Tom was in the stables, Mrs Reynolds was arguing with the cook about bottled beans, the Major was apparently still sleeping off his dissipated evening and his wife was sitting on a bench under the beech tree embroidering. Miss Fletcher and Mrs Fletcher were playing the Victrola in the parlour and Miss Cynthia was inducing the Doctor to dance a foxtrot with her. The poet, having been inspired by the sight of Cave House at dawn, absurd amongst the gum trees, was in the library, immersed in ink and swearing under his breath in some Finno-Ugric language. Miss Mead was knitting in the parlour and Miss Cray was in the kitchen, attempting to extract contributions from the staff in aid of missions to the heathen.
The heathens Phryne and Lin Chung were drifting across the lawn toward the boathouse, which had a door that latched, a punt, two boats loaded with cushions, and the requisite amount of privacy.
Phryne found that she was breathing as if she had been running. They slipped inside, into a scent of old mattresses and varnish. The door had barely closed before she was unfastening the buttons of Lin’s shirt, and he had pulled her jumper over her head.
‘We can lie there, in the punt,’ she said, as her shirt peeled away and his mouth came down to her breast. His silk shirt fell open and she wrapped her bare arms around his waist, his skin smooth and warm.
‘And if we are surprised?’ he breathed into her neck.
She laughed and said, ‘We glare.’
They lay together in the boat, squeezed close in the semi-dark, on musty cushions and Phryne’s velvet cloak. She sneezed, chuckled and gasped as his clever mouth found the right place.
She felt his body react to her touch. Under her fingers the jade candle was lit. When she managed to manoeuvre into the right position, it was extinguished inside her and she stifled a cry.
The butterfly danced on the flower. Lin Chung lifted one of her hands to cover his mouth. She felt his jaw clench. Muscles tightened and trembled in thigh and buttock. He was a golden man, a brazen statue. She clutched his shoulders and they were as hard as iron; then she felt his lips thin as his climax bloomed inside her and her bones were filled with honey.
For a while she thought she was seeing stars, then realised that small shafts of sunlight were shooting arrows through the holes in the boatyard roof.
There was a weight in her arms, a beautiful man. The air was redolent of female musk and his hay-scented skin and she leaned up to lick beads of sweat off his throat.
‘Silver Lady,’ his voice was husky and very low, ‘you are full of wonders. I was wrong, I cannot bear to be without you. Let me come to your room tonight. I will not be seen.’
‘Yes. Ah, Lin, don’t move – let me feel you, so close.’
They lay coupled in the boat, dust settling on them, heavy with completion, not yet sated, kissing, endlessly kissing.
The door opened. Phryne and Lin Chung lay still. Phryne had chosen this boat because it could not be seen from the door. And if she was going to be caught, she was not going to make an undignified, shamefaced scramble of the discovery. She would be found lying with her lover, and she hoped the finder would appreciate his truly remarkable beauty and her own.
The footsteps came closer – two people. They heard the sound of a kiss on a long, gasping breath. Someone else, it seemed, had noticed the advantages of the boathouse.
Phryne, moving silently and with great care, edged around so she could see over the gunwhale. The other punt creaked as a young man unloaded the padding and spread it on the floor. He was evidently preparing a bed, and would be making love in Phryne’s plain view. She heard a whisper. ‘No, we can’t.’
‘Yes,’ urged an unmistakably male voice. ‘You know you love me.’ Phryne heard the sound of something heavy and metallic being put down with a clatter.
‘I love you,’ agreed the whisper. Lin Chung had also moved; he was kneeling behind Phryne, his belly against her buttocks, both hands on her breasts. His touch, as always, sent sparks through her.
‘I love you,’ declared the whisper, louder this time. Phryne watched as a male chest was bared by skilled hands, to be mouthed and kissed by . . .
Another man.
Phryne had never seen men make love to each other. She would not have sought out the sight – available for a fee in certain places in Paris, for instance – but she could not move without alerting the lovers, and they were fascinating.
Beautiful. Gently, carefully, Jack peeled off Gerald’s clothes, baring the slight body with olive skin, long thighs and the scribble of pubic hair. Gerald’s dark curly head was drooping as his body relaxed into desire. Jack tore off his own clothes; taller and paler than his lover, and dropped to his knees. He kissed and gently stroked the beloved body, then finally drew Gerald down onto the punt cushions. They kissed, first tentatively, unpractised, then with ferocious passion, locked mouth to mouth, chest to chest, thigh to thigh. They panted, grappled again, the dark
