Only Brett seemed discontented. Oddly, he had made no attempt to flirt with Georgia, and even seemed to actively dislike her. 'She's too perfect,' he told Copper a few days later when she found him sitting moodily alone on the verandah.

'I thought you'd like her,' said Copper, trying to cajole him out of his mood. 'We're worried about you, Brett! A pretty girl with no attachments and you've hardly said a word to her!'

Brett hunched a shoulder. 'She's not that pretty,' he said sullenly. 'I don't like those cool, competent types.'

'Georgia may be competent, but nobody could call her cool,' Copper objected. 'She's a nice, warm, friendly girl, and I wouldn't blame her if she felt hurt at the way you ignore her. It's not as if there are lots of other people out here for her to talk to.'

'She's the one who's ignoring me,' said Brett. 'She always makes me feel as if I've crawled out from under a stone.' He brooded silently for a moment. 'I don't want her approval anyway,' he went on unconvincingly, but with a flicker of his old self. 'She's not nearly as much fun as you, Copper. And have you noticed how chummy she and Mal are?'

After that, of course, Copper did notice. Georgia behaved quite naturally, but Copper's jealous eye discerned rather too much approval in Mal's expression when he looked at the other girl. Georgia's knowledge of station life meant that she always knew what Mal was talking about, too, and she could discuss station matters and breaking horses. She knew about musters and how to make billy tea. She could castrate a calf and rope a cow as easily as she could cook a perfect roast, and it wasn't long before Copper began to feel excluded from their conversations. All she could talk about was settling invoices and checking accounts, and nobody was interested in that.

Unable to compete when it came to discussing the day, Copper turned more and more to Brett, who kept pointedly aloof from such station conversation and was more than willing to flirt outrageously with Copper instead. Once or twice Copper caught him watching Georgia with an expression that made her suspect that he had been protesting too much about his dislike of the other girl. She was pretty sure that Brett was harder hit than he wanted to admit. His flirting had a desperate edge that she recognised from her own doomed attempts to disguise how she felt about Mal, and a sense of fellow feeling drew them increasingly together.

Mal didn't say anything at first, but as the evenings passed, and the division between the conversations grew more and more obvious, his jaw acquired a set look, and whenever he glanced at Brett and Copper his mouth turned disapprovingly down at the corners. Copper pretended not to notice. Who was Mal to complain about the way she laughed with Brett, when he spent his whole time monopolising Georgia?

Copper could never put her finger on the moment when the warmth and the fire in her relationship with Mal faded. One day it seemed as if they fell laughing into bed together every night, and the next that the following three years would be spent undressing in tense silence.

'Why are you encouraging Brett to make such a fool of himself over you?' Mal asked one night, after Brett had been particularly obstreperous. They were lying stiffly apart in the dark and the words sounded as if they had been forced out of him.

'I'm not encouraging him,' said Copper. 'I'm just talking to him, which is more than you and Georgia ever do.'

Mal snorted. 'You call that display "just talking'', do you? It doesn't look much like talking to me!'

'I'm surprised you notice,' Copper snapped back. 'You're always nose to nose with Georgia. I thought you'd forgotten who you were married to!'

'I'm not the one who seems to have forgotten,' he said grimly. 'You and Brett are the ones who have decided that you needn't bother about a little thing like a wedding ring!'

Exasperated by his obtuseness, Copper struggled up into a sitting position and snapped on the bedside light. If they were going to argue-as they obviously were- they might as well be able to see each other! 'Brett's not interested in me,' she said. 'It's perfectly obvious that he's in love with Georgia.'

'Brett?' Mal sat up too, at that, and turned to her incredulously. 'Brett's never been in love in his life!'

She gritted her teeth and tried not to let the sight of his bare chest distract her. 'I think he is now.'

'And I suppose being in love with Georgia explains why he spends his whole time hanging over you?' he said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.

'Of course it does,' said Copper impatiently. 'Georgia hasn't shown any interest in him, so Brett doesn't want her to think that he cares about her, that's all.'

'All this amateur psychology doesn't sound very convincing to me,' sneered Mal. 'What makes you such an expert on love suddenly?'

'I know more than you, anyway,' she retorted. 'You wouldn't recognise love if it got up and punched you in the face!'

'Whereas you have all your experience with Glyn to go on!' he snapped back.

'Yes, I do,' said Copper defiantly. 'It's more than you have, anyway! Glyn and I loved each other.'

'Some love when he couldn't wait to dump you for someone else!'

'At least Glyn was honest about what he felt,' she said furiously. 'He's kind and he cares about me, which is more than I can say for you!'

'Why didn't you fight for him if he was so great?' sneered Mal, and Copper's green eyes flashed.

'I wish I had!'

'Just think,' he taunted her, 'if you'd waited a few more weeks, you could have had him back!'

'It's not too late,' Copper pointed out, so angry by now that she hardly knew or cared what she was saying. 'Ellie's still with her husband.'

Mal's brows snapped together. 'How do you know that?'

'There is a world outside Birraminda, you know,' she said sarcastically, 'and I still communicate with it occasionally!'

'You've been in touch with Glyn?' Mal shot out a hand to grasp Copper's arm and pull her round, but she jerked herself out of his grip, terrified in case the mere touch of his fingers against her skin should be enough to defuse her anger. After the numb misery of those endless tense, silent nights, it was oddly invigorating to feel the fury churning through her.

'What if I have? It's none of your business, anyway!'

'None of my business if my wife rings up her ex-lover for cosy little chats? Of course it's my business!'

'We agreed what sort of marriage we were going to have,' she said with a resentful glance, ostentatiously rubbing her arm where he had gripped her with his hard fingers. 'It was to be a purely practical arrangement. There was nothing in the contract about giving up all contact with the outside world!'

'We agreed that we would do our best to make sure that everyone thought that we were genuinely married,' said Mal savagely. 'You married me, Copper, and I think it's time you did a better job of acting like my wife than you've done so far-and for a start you can forget all about Glyn until your three years is up!'

Copper shook her hair angrily away from her face. 'Careful, Mal!' she said provocatively. 'You're sounding almost jealous, and you don't want that, do you? Jealousy is one of those "messy'' emotions, like love or need, and we all know how you feel about those!'

'What would you know about emotions?' he said unpleasantly.All you care about is business.'

'That's good coming from a man who had to resort to blackmail to get a wife!'

'Then I got what I deserved, didn't I?' said Mal with dislike. 'A woman prepared to sell herself just to be able to pitch a few tents and make people pay through the nose for the privilege of sleeping in them!'

Copper's hands clenched around the sheet. 'If that's what you think of me, I think we'd better put an end to this farce right now,' she said, in a voice that shook with fury. 'There's no point in us carrying on like this. All you wanted was a housekeeper, and you've got Georgia now. It's pretty obvious that you think she's doing a much better job than I ever could, so I might as well leave you both to it and go back to Adelaide.'

'What, and give up on your precious project?' Mal mocked. 'You'd never do that, would you, Copper? No, you signed a contract that committed you to staying here for three years, and three years you're going to stay. You can't tear up our agreement just because you've got the chance to go running back to Glyn.'

'It might be worth losing the project to live with a man who appreciated me!' said Copper wildly.

There was a dangerous pause. 'I'd appreciate you if you'd just stick to your part of our agreement and act like a proper wife,' said Mal, in a voice of cold control. 'And leave Brett alone, of course.'

Back to square one! Copper blew out a hopeless sigh and put her head between her hands. It might have felt good to let off steam, but the argument wasn't going anywhere. 'Look, I keep trying to tell you,' she said grittily. 'Brett only flirts with me because he's jealous of you.

'Brett's jealous of me?' Mal gave a mirthless laugh. 'That's a good one! How do you work that out?'

'He never gets a chance to impress Georgia because you're always there.' She lifted her head from her hands and tried to explain. 'You're the one who runs everything. You're the one who decides what should be done. You're the one who monopolises Georgia every night. How can Brett compete with you?'

'He's never found any difficulty before!'

'I know, but it's different now. This time Brett's in love.'

'Which he shows by behaving as if he's infatuated with my wife?' Mal suggested sardonically.

Copper gave a despairing gesture. 'It's all aimed at Georgia,' she insisted. 'Surely you can see that?'