Bride in Flight Read Online Free PDF

disappeared into the obscurity of a new country.
    She said, “Let’s say no more about it. I’m—I’m on the way to making a new life for myself. I’d rather hear about you.”
    “All right.” He patted her arm in a wordless gesture of sympathy that almost made her break down. She had a feeling that bereavement might have been easier to bear.
    She said quickly: “Have you no relations to look after them? I mean won’t the children be with their grandmother or an aunt or something?”
    His voice was a little grim. “We haven’t any relations except each other. Neither has Morris, Nan’s husband. We were all brought up in the same orphanage.”
    “How strange. So was I. I lost my mother when I was about ten, and my father had been killed in the war.”
    “You’ve had tough luck in more ways than one, then. At least I had my sister. She’s quite a bit older than I am—she made a home for me as soon as ever she was able to support us. That’s why I must get home to see if I can in any way look after the kids?’
    “It’s going to be a problem, isn’t it? The school children won’t be so difficult, out for most of the day, but the wee one will be. What are you going to do? Put him—her?—in a day nursery or something?”
    He chuckled, though ruefully. “There aren’t any nurseries where I’m working. I’m at the back o’ beyond. Right out in the buhai. It couldn’t be more remote. I’m a surveyor with the Ministry of Works Department on a major project. We’re hacking a road through dense bush, out on the West Coast, to link up, South Westland with Otago, through the Haast Pass. Westland is the province on the Tasman Sea side of the Southern Alps. It’s something like a logging camp. Not the sort of place where you can get daily help. I’m trying to sort it out in my mind. No woman in the place could take three extra kiddies. I often have to be away at night, camping with the advance parties, and the houses are all small, joined up in sections, from huts. You’ll know the type of thing. No housekeeper would look at it.
    “We aren’t even at Haast township, which is the one at the end of the Pass, where it strikes the coast. We’re miles further out in a small camp, partly engaged on helping with the construction of the road up to Westland, but mainly on a subsidiary project, pushing a minor road up into a valley.
    “It will be a blind end, but it’s got great possibilities. It will mean deer carcases could be brought down from several otherwise inaccessible valleys. At present the deerstalkers and cullers can only hump out the skins. We’re hoping it will start a new New Zealand industry in a world where meat protein is so desperately needed. And earn us overseas funds. It would be exported, frozen, to Asia. It’s a grand life for men but the hell of a life for women.”
    He shrugged. “Till now that hasn’t bothered me. The children are with a neighbor temporarily. But Nan will be terribly worried about them. Because of her own childhood, she almost has a thing about family life. She’ll worry about the effect on the kids. And I know she won’t let Morris know. This is his big chance, he’s on a scholarship in his own particular line that will make up, eventually, for the studies he’s missed through being an orphan. But there must be some way I can help. If only I could find it.”
    “You have,” said Kirsty. “ I’ll come. It sounds like heaven to me, after all I’ve been through. The uttermost ends of the earth.”
    Their eyes met, his blue ones under the thatch of chestnut hair kindling with interest. Then the light died out of them.
    “It’s a gallant offer,” he said reluctantly, “but you haven’t any idea what it’s like. Talk about the saying: ‘Sydney to the Bush’—well, that’s it exactly. You couldn’t conceive what it’s like.”
    “Why not tell me?”
    He grinned. “Well, you know the South Island of New Zealand consists mainly of a wide strip of