Follow Your Star: An Australian Outback Romance by Lucy Walker

Author:Lucy Walker [Walker, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: small town and rural, outback romance, clean romance, clean and wholesome, australian romance, autstralian rural romance, australian author, australian rural novels
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Small Town & Rural Romance)
Published: 2021-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

A hundred yards away, in the garden, Kylie walked along the footpath with Wilson Hendry.

‘Yes, you are quite right. Or nearly right,’ she was saying. ‘I am ‒ or at least I thought I was ‒ Rosemary Bentley.’

In a few words she told him of the fact that Horace Bentley and her aunt had never changed her name to theirs; or formally adopted her as she had always assumed. All along she had been really Kylie Brown. Her aunt had added the ‘Rosemary’ as a name in front of the Kylie for some sentimental reason. Brown had been her parents’ name.

She told him how she had been left penniless except for a few bonds given to her by her aunt long ago … and the gold bracelet. She had simply taken the job on Rock Hill as a means of earning a living. When she had discovered how closely associated the Coulsell family was with her uncle’s estate she had decided to remain silent about her identity to save everyone embarrassment.

‘The situation is a foolish one,’ Wilson Hendry said. ‘You know, of course, of Mrs. Coulsell’s relationship to Horace Bentley? She is his sister and a beneficiary under the laws of next-of-kin.’

Kylie stood stock still.

‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘Of course! How stupid of me never to have seen it. Yet … the day I came I thought I had seen Mrs. Coulsell before, somewhere. Then I thought I was mistaken. I was mistaken. It’s the likeness…

‘The situation is still a foolish one, whether you know the relationship or not,’ Wilson Hendry said kindly but bluntly. ‘You can’t possibly let it go on, you know. To begin with, the family lawyers are hunting high and low for Rosemary Bentley, and here you are roosting under the family’s own roof.’

‘Why are they looking for her?’ Kylie asked. ‘Why can’t they leave her dead and buried? She was a poor lonely frustrated nobody. There’s only me now.’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea why they’re looking for her. That part of their business is none of mine. I’m merely employed to assess the value of their various estates for probate and for the distribution amongst the next-of-kin. But I don’t think it’s advisable to remain in obscurity when you know there are advertisements out for you.’

‘Advertisements?’ said Kylie incredulously. ‘You don’t mean I’m on the Missing Persons list or something?’

‘Not quite. Merely in the personal columns. I happened to see it in the papers. And incidentally I brought all the recent papers with me from the Harveys’ station. They told me you didn’t get an air drop here and asked me to bring the mail and papers on. The Coulsells will see the advertisement ‒ if they don’t know about it already.’

‘Please,’ Kylie pleaded, ‘would you give me that paper? If you have brought a whole bundle, they won’t miss one paper, will they?’

‘Listen, Miss Brown! Or Bentley, or whatever you must be called. You are being strictly dishonest stealing as much as one newspaper.

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