A Spear of Summer Grass (13 page)

I made arrangements with Mr. Patel to have everything delivered and waved goodbye. When we emerged, I was surprised to find the shadows had grown long.

“Don’t worry. There’s plenty of time to get you home,” Ryder said. It was a little disconcerting how easily he read my thoughts. We walked along in silence for several minutes until he stopped and pointed at a tree. A bright yellow bird was busily constructing the most peculiar nest I had ever seen. It was shaped like a teardrop and hung from the branch like some exotic Christmas ornament.

“How beautiful,” I breathed.

“It’s a golden weaver bird. The male builds a nest for the female he admires to come and inspect. If she doesn’t like it, he tears it apart and builds a new one.”

“What if she doesn’t like the second one?”

“Then he builds another.”

“And if she doesn’t like that one?”

“He builds another. He will keep doing everything in his power to make her happy until she finally relents.”

Ryder was looking at me, but I kept my own gaze firmly fixed on the bird.

“It might be simpler if he gave up and found a female that was easier to please.”

“He isn’t interested in simple. He wants what he wants. No matter how much trouble she is and no matter whether he even understands it himself.”

He walked on then, leaving me to hurry along in his wake. He didn’t speak again until we reached the fringes of the garden at Fairlight. “I left the antelope with Pierre for dinner, but it’s only a small one. There isn’t enough to feed everybody in your house. Come home with me. I’ll feed you supper and bring you back afterwards.”

I should have said no. It would have been the wiser course. But then, I wasn’t any more interested in wise than Ryder was interested in simple. Besides, I was curious as to how he lived. He was a mass of contradictions, moody and thorny one minute, charming as the devil the next, and I wasn’t sure which of those men was the real Ryder White. One of Mossy’s altruisms was that a man can fool you in public, showing whichever face he likes, but his home doesn’t lie. His home tells more truth than his tongue ever will.

We walked to his
boma
through the deepening shadows, and just as we reached his little establishment, the sun gave one last brilliant shimmer of red-gold and sank away beneath the horizon. There was a purple-blue stillness that lasted for the space of a few minutes, and then rolled away under the gathering darkness.

Ryder took me in through the hedge of wait-a-bit thorn and into his mud-and-wattle
rondavel.
It was snug and small, but outfitted for most of the essential comforts. There was a tiny table with two chairs, a shelf for plates and cups and a single pot. A bottle of whisky rested there, single malt from an expensive distillery. He had a narrow bedspread with a colourful coverlet and a small trunk, which I presumed held the rest of his wardrobe. There wasn’t much, but what there was was good. Everything was of excellent quality, as if he’d chosen only the very best of the very fewest things a man could live with. He hefted his rifle to a gun rack over the door and set to work preparing the food. His cooking fire was outdoors and two acacia stumps served as seats. The air grew colder as the evening wore on, and he tossed me a blanket. It was a length of the stuff the Masai wore, bright scarlet and surprisingly soft. I wrapped it around myself and sipped at my whisky while I watched him.

Some men can’t do women’s work without looking foolish, but Ryder wasn’t one of them. I suppose it was because he was so fully masculine that even if he’d dressed up in a frilly apron and passed me a
petit four,
he still would have knocked down every man I’d ever met for sheer maleness. I think he knew I watched him. He seemed aware of everything I did whether his eyes were on me or not. I had no sooner taken the last sip of my drink than he poured another. I took it along with the plate of food he handed me. I was ravenous, and the stew, thick with meat and spices and squash, was delicious. There was flatbread to soak it up, and I ate like a field hand. We stayed outside to eat, enjoying the warmth of the fire, and I glanced up once in a while to watch it flicker over his face. He seemed entirely relaxed, like a big cat after it’s been fed and groomed and has nothing better to do than flick its tail as the world goes by.

I cleared my throat. “You are an exceptionally fine cook. I ought to offer you a job.”

He laughed. “I learned in the Yukon. Not many women in the camps there and I was too small to be much good at mining.”

“I can’t believe you were ever small,” I said, my lips twitching slightly.

“Don’t start flirting with me now. I won’t be accountable for my actions,” he said. His tone was light, but the cool blue of his eyes had warmed. Some men have a trick of looking right through you, as if your clothes were something to stop everybody but them from seeing into you. Ryder was one of them.

“I thought you said you would see me safely back to Fairlight.”

“And I will. Just as soon as you’ve finished eating.”

I felt an odd little stab of something like disappointment and a far sharper pang of annoyance. I wasn’t accustomed to indifference. I thought of slim Mrs. Patel and the pang turned sharper. I had expected a proper attempt at seduction, something overt and easy to rebuff, something that would give me a chance to put him firmly in his place and keep him there. But he wasn’t playing by the rules. Instead of rushing me, he’d merely left himself open, wanting me to do the work for him. It was a subtle strategy, and I had to give him high marks for it, no matter how grudgingly. He had baited the trap, but whether or not a willing woman fell into it was entirely up to her. If she didn’t, there was nothing to forgive, nothing to excuse. He’d merely offered dinner and conversation. But if she made a move to take him to bed, I had no doubt he’d rise to the challenge so fast she wouldn’t even have time to realise he was the one calling the shots. The beauty of this approach was that the average woman would never even recognise it as a deliberate seduction. She might even, given a little judicious manipulation, come to think of it as entirely her fault. But I wasn’t average—not by half, and it would be child’s play to push him past the limit of his control.

I put on my softest smile, the one that sat in my eyes and looked up through my lashes, inviting and coaxing and promising things I might or might not give.

“Weren’t you supposed to be trying to seduce me? I seem to recall you placed a bet regarding my virtue.”

He shrugged. “That’s a bet I’ve already lost. I knew I should have placed a side bet on Kit.” He shook his head and sighed. I felt my annoyance creeping higher.

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“What? That you’ve slept with Kit Parrymore?” He threw back his head and laughed. “If I thought I would suffer in comparison to Kit, I would walk out into the bush and shoot myself for the vultures to eat.”

“Big talk,” I said flippantly.

He surged up then, pulling me with him. His hands were tight on my upper arms and his face half in shadow. I could feel the sheer power of him, like a force of nature, and I heard the blood beating swift and steady in my ears. My lips curved into a smile. Child’s play, indeed.

His hands bit into my flesh, hurting, and the pain felt good. That pain was power. It meant I had pushed him just that step too far and he was giving me what I had already given him. I parted my lips.

“Sin with me,” he murmured, lowering his head.

At the last second, I turned and his lips grazed my jaw, touching hard bone instead of the soft mouth he’d been looking for. He pulled back, confused, and the smile I gave him this time was for me alone.

“You didn’t really think it was going to be that easy, did you?”

He dropped his hands as quickly as if I’d burned him, and maybe I had. My blood was molten, and I could smell brimstone on my breath. He stepped back, putting the cool evening air between us.

“Didn’t anybody ever teach you it’s dangerous to play with fire?” His voice was hoarse and his hands were flexing, opening and closing on empty air instead of me.

I tilted my head, smiling. “You’re a real piece of work, Ryder White. You wager on my wreck of a reputation while you’re busy screwing half the women in Kenya, including poor Mr. Patel’s little jewel. Tell me, does he even suspect?”

“Probably not. Husbands can be remarkably shortsighted when they want to be.”

“Oh, that’s not unique to husbands. Now, we’re going to see quite a bit of each other while I’m here, so let’s get a few things straight. I do what I like with whomever I like, and I don’t give a tinker’s damn what anybody thinks about it. But I’m not just a carnival prize you win for putting your ball in the hole, and I’m nobody’s notch on a bedpost. I don’t belong to anybody but myself and I am never a sure thing. So, you keep your libido in check and stop sniffing around my skirts. Because it’s not going to happen.”

He folded his arms over his chest and stared at me. The firelight warmed the dark gold of his hair, reddening it as the shadows passed over his face and back again. Any other man would have apologised and smoothed the moment over, patting his dignity into place with soft hands and softer words. Not Ryder. He smiled slowly, and there was a flash of cruelty there, a flash he was happy to show me before he sat it down in the corner and made it behave.

“You understand that we’re alone out here, don’t you, Delilah? There’s not a soul within screaming distance, nobody to hear you, nobody to help you. I could violate you sixty different ways and throw you out for the hyenas to have their way with before anybody ever even noticed you were gone.”

The words were dangerous, but the voice was low and soft and coaxing, mixing me up until I wasn’t sure whether to believe his lips or his eyes. My pulse was coming hard and fast as he put out a hand and wrapped a lock of my hair around one finger. He pulled slowly until my head came forward. He didn’t lay a hand on me aside from that one finger, just that one finger, pulling me closer and closer until my mouth opened. I had had men use their whole bodies to seduce me, and their minds and fortunes, too, but never just one finger, coaxing me closer until that one finger was all I could think about. I felt his breath pass over my lips, felt the warmth of his mouth as he almost but not quite touched me, holding himself just out of reach. I leaned forward, thinking how much I’d like to pin his ears back with my knees.

“Have it your way, princess,” he said, whispering the words across my skin, raising gooseflesh as they passed. “We’ll see who caves first.”

With that he unwound his finger and stepped away. My legs were shaking as he went into the
rondavel
for his rifle.

I nearly choked on the words, but I managed to say brightly, “Thank you for your hospitality. Dinner was delicious.”

He didn’t respond. He merely led the way home, pausing only once when we heard a loud rasping noise, like someone sawing wood.

“Leopard,” he murmured, his lips annoyingly close to my ear. His chest was pressed to my back. There was a slow, deep rhythm beating behind it, and I stood still, feeling his heart drumming evenly. He wasn’t scared, and because he was there, neither was I. We stood very still until he felt it was safe to continue, and in a remarkably short time we were back at Fairlight. He left me in the garden.

I hesitated, one foot on the veranda. “Ryder,” I started, and only later was I glad he interrupted me. I never did figure out what I might have said to him.

“For Christ’s sake, woman. Don’t stand there mooning about. This is Africa. Go inside before something eats you.”

I went.

12

I slept poorly that night. The moon was small and lopsided, like a child’s balloon being slowly inflated. But still it poured its silky light into my room, and I lay awake watching it move the shadows across the bed. I heard the nightjars singing in the garden and the crickets serenading one another, and under it all the occasional low rasp of the leopard. When I did sleep, my dreams came fast and sharp, like a moving picture running at too high a speed, jerking from one scene to another. I could not remember them in the morning, but when I woke my pillow was wet.

That afternoon my cows arrived. Gideon collected them from the Kikuyu and walked them to Fairlight. He brought with him a boy who walked with a limp, leaning on a crutch. He might have been ten or twelve, with a slender build and a solemn face. He stared at me as Gideon made the introductions.

“This is my brother,
Bibi.
He is called Moses.”

“Hello, Moses.”

“My brother Moses does not speak,
Bibi,
but he hears perfectly, and he is very good with cattle. It is a great responsibility to care for your cattle, and Moses will do an excellent job.”

“I’m sure he will. Thank you, Moses,” I said, turning to the boy.

He looked startled at that. I suppose most whites didn’t bother thanking Masai for anything, but Gideon instructed him where to take the cattle and turned to me.

“He will sleep in the barn with the cows,
Bibi.
Perhaps occasionally, when his work is finished and the cows are safe, he may go home and see our
babu.
”

“Of course. Whenever he likes.”

“No,
Bibi.
It is for you to say.”

“I think we are about to have our first argument, Gideon.” I smiled to show I wasn’t serious, and to my relief, his face split into a wide grin.

“You are joking with me.”

“Yes, I am. I really am quite happy for Moses to go back home whenever he is needed so long as the cattle are secured. What about his schooling?”

“Most Masai never go to school. Moses has already learned much more than many of our people. He is happy to have a job that will pay him money.” He hesitated, and although he said nothing, I sensed there was more.

“Gideon?” I made the word gentle, coaxing.

He took a breath, his voice pitched low as he leaned on his spear.

“
Bibi,
I worry for my brother. His leg is weak and he cannot tend cattle as Masai do, walking many, many miles every day. Without this, he cannot be a man of importance in our tribe, and he will not marry. It is a very bad thing for a man not to marry and have children. It is not our way for a man to be alone.”

“I see. And by earning a wage, he can contribute?”

The tension in his face eased.

“This is true,
Bibi.
And I would not tell you an untruth. If I say that Moses is good with cows, he is very good indeed. He does not speak, but he can whistle and he has a sense for what they need. They like him. Your cattle will be in good hands.”

“I never doubted it. You really think this will help him?”

“Yes,
Bibi.
He will earn money, and in time he will buy his own cows and then a girl will be happy to marry him and give him children because he will be a man like others.”

“Very well. He can skip school and tend the cattle and he may visit your
babu
whenever he likes.”

He gave me a nod. “I will tell Moses of this. He will come to you before he goes to make certain it is your wish.”

“Fine.”

He paused. “Is there anything else you would have me do?”

I shrugged. “Nothing I can think of. I suppose you will be off with Ryder, hunting.”

“No,
Bibi.
I am to remain here.”

I lifted a brow. “To do what?”

Gideon shuffled a moment. The Masai do not like to tell untruths. Neither do they like to admit something distasteful, but then no man likes to tell a woman something that might annoy her.

“Gideon?”

“I am to watch over you,
Bibi.
”

“I do not require watching over.”

“Regardless,
Bibi,
this is the thing I have been given to do.”

I kept a rein on my temper and thought the matter through. I liked Gideon. Ryder had set him to watching over me, which I deplored, but that was my issue with Ryder, not Gideon. I nodded.

“I understand. It’s not your fault Ryder is a high-handed arrogant jackass.”

“I beg your pardon, but this word I have not heard. What does ‘jackass’ mean? Is it like ‘son of a bitch’?”

“I’m assuming you didn’t learn that phrase at the mission school?”

“Oh, no.
Bwana
is very fluent in bad language.”

“No doubt. And no, ‘jackass’ isn’t quite as bad as ‘son of a bitch.’ It just means someone who gets on your nerves.”

He nodded, his expression serious. “A woman could love a jackass. She could not love a son of a bitch.”

“Many have tried, Gideon. Many have tried.”

* * *

Gideon put himself to work finishing the fencing in the small pasture where I had elected to keep the cattle. The huge Masai herds roamed over vast tracts of the savannah and scrubland, but a few dairy cattle would be far easier to keep penned near the house. Moses moved among the skittish cows, petting them and humming an odd little tune. From time to time he gave me a wide smile, very like his brother’s, and I carried lunch out to them, leaving it on a rock for them to find since they didn’t like to eat directly from a woman’s hand.

As I walked back to the house, I saw the rising dust cloud on the horizon, and in a very few minutes Mr. Patel arrived in his motorcycle, his turban half-unwound and fluttering behind him and his motoring goggles coated in red dust. His sidecar was packed tightly with all I had ordered and a cage of traumatized chickens was lashed to the top. His monkey had ridden pillion, and as soon as he stopped it launched itself at the nearest tree, chattering angrily.

“Then why do you insist on coming, you diabolical creature?” Mr. Patel demanded, raising his fist. He climbed off the motorcycle, shaking out his robes and winding his turban firmly about his head. He pulled the goggles down to his neck and smiled.

“
Memsa!
I have brought your things. And would you like to buy a monkey? I could give you an excellent price.”

“No, thank you, Mr. Patel. Would you like help with all of that?”

“Absolutely not! A lady should not sully her hands,” he insisted. Dora emerged from the house then and I introduced them.

“Dora, this is Mr. Patel. He’s the nearest thing we have to Harrod’s out here. Mr. Patel, this is my cousin, Miss Brooks.”

Patel bowed with a courtly flourish as Dora inclined her head. “How do you do? I’ll show you where to put all of that if you’d like to follow me.”

He trotted off, shouldering the cage of chickens as if they weighed no more than a pillow. Well, they were mostly feathers, I supposed with a shrug.

I had just turned to follow them when I saw another cloud of dust approaching. I shaded my eyes and stayed to watch, waving as I saw Rex’s buttery Rolls coming down the drive.

“Hello, Rex. Goodness me, but it’s like Grand Central around here today.”

He stepped from the car and dropped a friendly kiss to my cheek. “Hello, my dear. I was on my way to Nairobi and thought I would stop in and see if you needed anything from town.”

“That’s terribly neighbourly of you. We’re fine. Could I interest you in a drink to speed you on your way?”

He grinned. “I oughtn’t. I’m going to be frightfully long on the road as it is, but a man can only resist so much temptation.”

“Am I temptation?” I teased.

The smile deepened. “More than any woman has a right to be,” he said lightly. “A gin and tonic if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. Let’s have them on the veranda. The house is filthy enough without me tracking half the savannah inside.”

He followed me up to the veranda and I poured. He took his first sip and something seemed to roll off him then, some hidden weight that had bowed him down.

“Everything all right, Rex?”

He struggled with himself. Whatever was on his mind, he was itching to share it, but something stopped him. He merely gave me another of his remote smiles and sipped at his drink.

“Have it your way,” I said with a shrug. “But you’re always welcome here if you need a friendly ear.”

He drained his glass and put it down with a loud crack. I jumped a little and he clamped a hand over mine. He didn’t look at me, but his hand stayed where it was, covering mine as he drew in a deep breath. He let it go, surrendering something.

“I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell you everything,” he said, his voice sharp.

I put down my glass. “You can, Rex. Of course you can. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Are we?” He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. “Yes, I think we are. I think I could tell you anything.”

“Then do. Clearly something’s troubling you. Get it out and you’ll feel like a new man,” I promised him.

His smile was back, smaller and more tentative than before. “Is that really how it works? I think you must be more American than English to suggest it. We’re good at bottling things up, holding them so tightly we can’t let them go even when we want to.”

He didn’t say anything more and I sat back with a shrug and picked up my drink.

“This place breaks my heart,” he said finally. “It is so beautiful and so vast and so untouched. There’s nothing ahead but destruction if something isn’t done about it. Someone has to protect it. Someone has to love it enough to try.”

“Are you talking about Africa or Fairlight?”

The smile was still small, still tentative. “Both, I suppose. I’ve offered to buy Fairlight, you know. More than once. But Sir Nigel is sentimental, too attached to the place to let it go. I can’t blame him. I feel that way about all of Africa.”

He fell silent again and I went back to my drink. He rose then and put out his hand, pulling me to my feet.

“I think I might actually feel better.”

“I can’t imagine how. I didn’t do anything.”

“You let me sit and just be. That’s a rare gift for a man. You have no idea how rare.”

He dropped another kiss, this one markedly warmer, to my cheek and left, his step lighter. Dora appeared just as he drove away.

“Was that Rex?”

“It was.” I poured her a gin and tonic of her own and handed it over.

“What did he want?”

“To have a moan about an unrequited passion. Apparently he’s in love with Africa and she doesn’t love him back.”

She kicked off her shoes. “Mr. Patel has stacked everything in the storeroom, and retrieved his vile little monkey. He just left. I managed to get Gates to finish the henhouse just in time for the chickens. They’re not settling in at all well. The hens are all huddled together in the corner, whimpering, and the rooster is making a nuisance of himself by trying to escape.”

“Just make sure you warn them, the first one to wake me at dawn is going into the cookpot.”

She saluted wearily. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

* * *

It wasn’t the rooster that awakened me at dawn. It was the shouts of the Kikuyu, keening and wailing as they gathered in the garden. I shoved my arms into a kimono and hurled on my slippers, falling over Dora as we threw back the locks and hurried outside. All the Kikuyu farmworkers were there, clustered around a group in the centre who were carrying something on a blanket. As we got closer, they set it onto the ground, and it took me a moment to realise what I was looking at. The body was small and so broken I could only recognise bits of it. I saw the white bandage, grubby and torn and a handful of shredded skin attached to small braids. The feet were entirely intact, the little white bones snapped just above the ankle, and there were long white femurs, cracked open, the marrow lapped. Above the ululations of the Kikuyu, I heard another sound, a high, gasping shriek that went on and on.

I turned to Dora and shoved her head down onto my shoulder, shielding her eyes and muffling her scream. After a moment she stilled and pushed away from me to be sick in the bushes. I moved forward to the mother who had collapsed onto the ground. She was tearing a bit of bougainvillea into shreds in her fingers. I covered her hands with my own.

She looked up at me, and the word came out flat and dull between lips that were stiff with shock.
“Simba.”

I nodded. A shadow fell over us, and I looked up to see Gates, struggling into his shirt, the broad fish-belly white of his torso gleaming in the early morning light.

“A lion has killed her child.”

He nodded. “You can tell from the bites. Lions like big muscle. That’s why the thighs and buttocks are gone. They don’t bother with the smaller bits,” he added, pointing toward the tiny feet.

I swung around on my heels. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.” Each word was punctuated by a slap to his legs.

His eyes were round as he stared from the mother to me, comprehension slowly dawning. “Are you worried about her? These Kukes don’t speak English, Miss Drummond. There’s no need to tiptoe around their feelings. Besides, if it wasn’t lion or leopard or snake, it would have been disease or fire. They don’t always have the best luck keeping their children alive,” he finished with a shake of the head.

I rose, putting one hand to the mother’s head as I did so. I turned to the Kikuyu and addressed them in halting Swahili. I asked if the lion had been killed, and they shook their heads. After a great deal of pantomime, it became clear that this was why they had come. They wanted to show me the lion’s work and take back with them a promise that it would be taken care of. I turned to Gates.

“Did I understand them correctly? They expect us to hunt down the lion and kill it?”

He nodded. “They could do it themselves, but it’s dangerous work and they aren’t allowed guns. It’s easier for a white man to do it.”

“Fine. Then you will do it.”

He blinked rapidly. “I don’t think so, Miss Drummond.”

“You just said—”