Sins Read Free Page A

ask questions of one another; like outback drovers they shared a common code that meant that they respected one another’s right not to talk about the past.
    Dougie had been grateful for that on his long voyage to England. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about the fact that he might be a duke. His uncle, who had despised the British upper class for reasons he had never properly explained, would have told him in no uncertain terms to ignore the solicitor’s letters.
    But what about his parents–what would they have thought? Dougie didn’t know. They had been drowned in a flash flood shortly after his birth, and if it hadn’t been for his uncle, he would have ended up in an orphanage. His uncle had never said much to him about his parents. All Dougie had known growing up was that his uncle was his mother’s brother, and that he hadn’t really approved of her marrying Dougie’s father.
    ‘A softie, with an English accent and fancy ways, who couldn’t shear a sheep to save his life,’ had been how his uncle had described Dougie’s father.
    It had been a hard life growing up in the Australianoutback on a large sheep station miles from the nearest town, but no harder than the lives of plenty of other youngsters like himself. Like them, he had done his schoolwork sitting in the station kitchen, taught by teachers who educated their pupils over the airwaves, and like them too he had had to do his bit around the station.
    When he had finished his schooling and passed his exams he had been sent by his uncle to work on a neighbouring station as a ‘jackeroo’, as the young men, the next generation who would one day inherit their own family stations, were known.
    Times had been hard after the war, and had continued to be hard. When his uncle had fallen sick and had been told by the flying doctor that he had a weak heart and should give up work, he had flatly refused, dying just as he had wished, one evening at sundown on the veranda of the old dilapidated bungalow, with its tin roof on which the rain rattled like bullets in the ‘wet’.
    As his only relative, Dougie had inherited the station, with its debts, and his uncle’s responsibilities towards the people who worked for him: Mrs Mac, the housekeeper; Tom, Hugh, Bert and Ralph, the drovers; and their wives and families.
    It hadn’t taken Dougie long to work out that the only thing he could do was accept the offer of partnership from a wealthy neighbour, who bought a half-share in the station.
    That had been five years ago. Since then the station had prospered and Dougie had taken time out to finish his education in Sydney. He had been there when thesolicitor’s first letter had caught up with him and he’d been disinclined to pay it any attention.
    Half a dozen letters down the line, and with a growing awareness of just how little he knew about his father or his father’s family, he had decided that maybe he ought to find out just who he was–and who he wasn’t.
    The solicitor had offered to advance his airfare. Not that Dougie needed such an advance–he had money of his own now, thanks to the success of the station–but he had been reluctant to get involved in a situation that might not suit him without knowing more about it. And more about himself.
    Working his passage to England might not have been the swiftest way to get here, but it sure as hell had been the most instructive, Dougie acknowledged as he walked out of the dock gate and into a fog-enshrouded street.
    He was Dougie Smith, Smith being his late uncle’s surname and the name by which he had always been known, but according to his birth certificate he was Drogo Montpelier. Maybe, just maybe, he was also the Duke of Lenchester, but right now he was a merchant seaman in need of a decent meal, a bath and a bed, in that order. The solicitor had explained in his letters the family setup that existed here in England, and how the deaths of the last duke and his son and heir had meant that he, the