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Page 137

| Ashton said, smiling down at her. "Your being with me makes my contentment complete." |

| "Oh, Ashton," Sasha said, leaning more into his embrace. "I am so content, also. I am at this moment more at total peace with myself than ever before in my life. We have so much to be happy for, don't we?" |

| "Everything," Ashton said huskily. "Everything." |

| "I'd like to call our sheep station The Homestead," he said, smiling down at Sasha. "Do you approve of the name?" |

| "The Homestead," Sasha said, as though testing the name on her lips. She smiled up at Ashton. "Why, yes, Ashton, I think that's a lovely name." |

| "Good," he said, nodding. "Then The Homestead it will be. It means more if you give your place a name." |

| "The sheep are beautiful," Sasha said, looking out at the flock beneath the moonlight. "Did you see Rufus? Does he enjoy his sheepherding duties?" |

| "Rufus seems made for the job," Ashton said, laughing softly. "He's always been a dreamer and being isolated with a flock of sheep day in and out gives a man plenty of time for dreaming." |

| "He stays with the sheep even at night?" Sasha asked, looking up at Ashton. |

| "Aye, he does," Ashton said. "It's not safe to leave the sheep untended for even an hour." The hair at the nape of his neck seemed to bristle at the sound of the dingoes' haunting refrain in the distance. |

| "In a good season, the life of the flocks can be idyllic, saved by man from the dangers that can beset them, such as the dingo and the blow fly," he |

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