Cimmerian Sunrise

Chapter 8 - ***REVISED***

The next few days proceeded in a slow, dreary procession for Breanne. She tried as best she could to keep busy, quickly discovering that whenever she wasn't preoccupied, her thoughts turned to Adam and she would find herself in her room, blankly staring out of the window or at some imperfection on a wall, just as she had done on the days following his death.

The line of questions that whirred through her head as she sat staring was unending. How had she come to be in this place...half a world away from everything she'd ever known? It had been her own choice, her own doing, but had she ever really had a choice? Had she ever, in her life, truly had a choice in anything? Why did Adam go off and leave her almost directly after their marriage? He'd gone to Scotland. Why Scotland? Why had he been in such a hurry? Why had he deeded this far off acreage to her? Had he anticipated her need for escape from the control of her parents? Why else would he not have left the property in England to her, and the property in Australia to Reese or to Colin? Had he known about the papers Reese had been bringing for him to sign and had subsequently foisted into her own hands? Those papers...what was it they were authorizing? Into what business would she be entering if she signed them?

It was time to speak to Reese. And, much as she hated buckling to her mother's will in even such a small thing, it was time to seek out the advice of a solicitor. After cleaning herself up, she left the confines of her home, and for the first time stood still, absorbing the wide, lush landscape from the porch.

So many times she had complained, within herself of course, that it was a poor decision for the MacIntosh family to settle near the Blue Mountains. Tightening her shawl against the chill in the air swooping in from their heights, she realized that although she was uncomfortably cold, the land she was on, with its untamed beauty and its wild surroundings, appealed to her more than the civil, quiet and safe living that the Port Jackson colony offered.

She'd lived near the sea all of her life, and for that reason was content to exchange one view for another. The mountains themselves with their jagged cliff faces were enough to send her stomach plummeting to her feet in sheer awe, as indeed they had when she had her first proper look at them. At the far edge, the three oddly box-shaped jutting peaks looked so like a picture she'd seen as a child of Jericho's crumbling wall, that she half expected to see a scarlet cord hanging from a window somewhere up at the top of the center column. Outside her home as she looked off into the distance, there was a fern swathed glade with the strangest pygmy trees. Leaving the porch to get a closer look, she could see their bark was a bright red brown and peeled from their trunks and branches in curled ribbons. As she leaned in to examine them she almost tripped over a large rock, and there growing in its shade was some sort of orange organism Breanne had been given to believe only appeared on the ocean floor. No end of curiosities.

Veering back toward the immediate proximity of the house, she came to the large pen where one of the horses pranced, seemingly to draw her attention. She grasped the top board of the ridged wooden fence and pulled herself up to stand upon the lower rung.

The same white horse stood at the far end, flicking its tail twice before turning to look at her. After a large snort blasted from its nose, the horse suddenly galloped her way. Breanne hastily let loose her grasp and took four quick steps backwards. Her feet tangled, and just as she was close to balancing herself out, a large stump caused her to tumble backwards over it and land rear-first into a trough of water.

Gasping from the cold liquid gushing across the lap of her black gown, Breanne held her hands up in the air, mouth wide open in shock. Her heartbeat quickened as her body tried to adjust to the chill of the water.

 A deep chuckle snapped her out of her surprised state, alerting her to the presence of Lucifer, himself. Her eyebrows slashed together in irritation as Reese walked into her line of vision and stood before her. Determination to overcome her own embarrassment prompted her to act quickly. Grasping the sides of the trough with her soaked black silk gloves, she lifted herself up, only to slip and sink even further into it, one side of her shoulder and chest now drenched.