“So my mother preaches. But there are a dozen other stables in her part of the county. It must be more difficult for you to get fresh stock.”
She fixed Ryder with a pointed stare as he came near. “Tell him that. My racehorses are pedigreed, but I breed others, too, also fast as the wind. They’re tidy little earners, but someone refuses to go and get me new stallions.”
Ryder snorted. “That’s because the last time I went, it nearly cost me my manhood.”
Tusker let out a peal of laughter, holding her sides. “Oh, it’s true, my dear,” she said in response to my skeptical look. “The best horses in the world are bred in Abyssinia, but it’s impossible to trade for them. I bet Ryder he couldn’t bring me back an Abyssinian stallion and pair of mares without getting himself caught and castrated.”
“Castrated?” I stared at Ryder.
“The penalties for horse thieving in Abyssinia are a bit extreme,” he admitted.
“You rode all the way to Abyssinia to risk castration?”
“Of course not,” he said, giving me a slow smile. “I walked.”
I shook my head as Tusker went off in gales of laughter again. She wiped her eyes on the hem of her shirt. “I thought for certain the boy was dead. He was gone weeks, weeks. He finally came limping back leading a string of the most beautiful horses you’ve ever clapped eyes on, Delilah. Each one of them was worthy of an emperor. That trip was so dangerous, it was written up in the book at the club.”
“And greatly exaggerated,” Ryder put in. “I didn’t kill three lions. Just one.” He rubbed a finger over the braided bracelet at his wrist. I leaned closer.
“A souvenir?”
He held up his wrist. “He was after the horses. Killed one before I could get him, but I thought a bit of his mane might make a nice memento.” The hair was black as a starless night.
“I didn’t realise they came with black manes.” I touched the hair. It was springy and thick. My fingertip brushed the pulse at his wrist, and for a moment we locked eyes.
“Anything with black hair is trouble for me,” he said. His tone was light, but his expression was serious. A nicer woman would have felt sorry for him. A kinder woman would have put him out of his misery and taken his hand and walked him back to her tent. A sweeter woman would have let him spend the night.
But I’m none of those things. So I rose and said good-night and went to bed alone.
The next morning we woke before sunrise. The lions were still mating. The sounds of their copulating rolled over the plains, and the porters scurried about with a new urgency. Today was the day they’d been waiting for. A kill, a good meal, and the start of the journey home with their families and a hefty tip waiting at the end.
Ryder checked the weapons and he and Gideon and I set out after breakfast. I hadn’t eaten, but Ryder shoved a packet of sandwiches at me and told me to carry them. I took my rifle and ammunition and followed him across the grass and down to the lugga where death waited.
The lion had paid for his pleasure. She’d given him a beating; open cuts laced his nose where she had lashed him. Her own back was marked with foamy pink froth from his mouth where he’d held her, sometimes ungently. Ryder had gone over the procedure while he ate. When they separated, we were to take the male and leave the female if possible. He explained that she might charge, but it was a chance we were going to have to take.
We settled into the bushes and began to wait. We waited all that morning and into the afternoon, sitting so still that it felt as if we had never known how to move at all. The sun rose overhead, burning off the early morning cloud and casting short shadows. Hunger came and went again, and still we waited. At last, as the afternoon was drawing to a close, the lion finished mounting her for the last time. She lashed at him and he crouched and rolled on the ground. She hadn’t meant it. She stretched and wandered a little distance to the stream to drink and then she simply walked away, tail held high, no longer interested in him.
Just then, the male caught sight of something, or perhaps he smelled us.
He rolled back onto his four massive paws, lifting his enormous head and moving slowly toward us. Gideon lifted his spear and Ryder and I shouldered our rifles.
“Got him?” Ryder asked coolly.
“Yes.” The trigger was cold under my finger.
“He’s yours. Take him.”
My belly rolled. I didn’t want to do this. I would never have done this. This was destruction, something that felt criminal and wrong. The lion moved closer, never hurrying, secure in his own size, his own ferocity. His amber eyes surveyed the bush, and I saw that they were yellow around the pupils, just like Ryder’s.
“Princess?”
“I have him,” I said. My voice shook, but my hand was steady. The lion gathered himself then, and gave a roar so loud the ground trembled under my feet. The sound moved from the earth up into my legs and spread through my belly and my heart and lodged in my throat. I could feel it still when I pulled the trigger and the roar of the lion and the roar of the gun and the roar of my own voice were the same.
The lion stopped, stuttered a step, then kept coming. I fired again, and this time he gave a whimper and rolled onto his side. Ryder told me to reload and cover him as he moved out from the bushes. My hands were slick, and the bullets rattled in my palm.
“I will cover him, Bibi,” Gideon said softly, his spear arm ready.
I nodded and stuffed the bullets into the chamber, cocking the gun. Ryder motioned me forward.
“He’s done.”
“I don’t want to see him. Do I have to see him?”
“He’s your trophy.”
“Leave him there. I don’t want him touched. The hyenas can have him. And that’s not why I killed him. You know that.”
“Doesn’t matter to him,” Ryder pointed out. He bent to the bloody business with his knife, and rose a moment later. He walked back and opened my hand. He pressed something hard in the palm and I looked down. It was a tooth, as long and broad as a man’s finger. It was sharp and gleaming white through the blood. It was warm in my hand. He gave me a tuft of its mane as well, and I shoved the two trophies into my pocket.
Ryder turned to Gideon. “Any sign of the female?”
“No, Bwana. She ran at the sound of the guns.”
“Good,” Ryder told him.
“Yes, I am relieved,” Gideon said with his gap-toothed smile.
We turned and began to walk back to the camp. I felt nothing, no fear, no euphoria, nothing but an odd, incomparable lightness. I could have floated away just then, and only the weight of that tooth in my pocket held me down.
“Why are you relieved?” I asked suddenly.
Gideon turned to me. “The female is very deadly and very dangerous, and if she decided to avenge her mate, she could harm Bwana. And then perhaps I would have to kill her myself.”
“You don’t want to kill her?”
“No, Bibi. I have killed nine lions. That is enough.”
“Nine is a very great number,” I agreed.
He shook his head. “It is too great a number. For a man to kill more than nine lions, he has taken more than his share, and he will suffer very bad luck, Bibi. Very bad luck indeed.”
15
We returned to the cheers of the men just as Tusker was returning with her bearer. He carried a reedbuck slung over his shoulders and in one hand he held the stomach, stuffed with the internal organs and sewn shut. The cook went to work and the porters brought water, filling a canvas bath in my tent. I cleaned myself first, scrubbing off dirt and sweat and blood, surprised to find that I didn’t look any different. I spread my fingers and stared at the clean skin and immaculate nails.
“No perfumes of Araby needed to clean this little hand,” I murmured.
“Talking to yourself? Ah, well,
at least you’re assured of intelligent company,” Tusker put in. She thrust only her head and hand through the tent flap as she offered me a glass. “Champagne. It’s tradition.”
She vanished and I sipped at the champagne. It was marvelously cold, and when I joined them at the fireside for dinner, I told her so.
“It’s the wicker,” she said, nodding toward the narrow woven bottle covers. “We just put the bottles into them and sink the whole mess into a river or stream. Keeps the bubbly nice and cold. Let’s pop another cork, shall we?”
In fact, we popped three more and in the end only Tusker and Ryder and I were left at the fireside, each with our own bottle.
“Glad to see you ate a good dinner,” Tusker said, hiccupping gently. “Ryder thought you might have been upset at killing that lion. I walked over to see the body. The vultures had made a start but he was a big brute.”
“It had to be done,” I said faintly. I took another deep swig from the bottle and the bubbles tickled my nose.
“You did well,” Ryder said softly. He was sitting opposite me, the fire flickering between us. His eyes were warm.
“I must admit, Delilah, I did worry you might lack bottom,” Tusker put in. “I thought you might turn and run or at least make Ryder shoot the bloody thing. Glad to see you’re made of sterner stuff.”
“So I’ve been tested and found not wanting?” I said lightly.
“Something like that,” Tusker replied. Ryder said nothing, but his expression was unlike any I had seen on his face before. There was something marginally softer there, something almost vulnerable. “Women out here fall into two camps,” Tusker went on. “Those who are worth everything and those who are worth nothing. There is no in-between. And those who are worth everything are rare as hen’s teeth. You’ve got bottom,” she said, lifting her bottle.
I sipped again. Ryder was still watching me.
“I don’t know how much bottom I have,” I said slowly. “I didn’t want to pull that trigger. I still don’t want to.”
“That’s what makes you worth something,” Ryder said, his voice barely audible over the crackling of the flames. “You didn’t want to, and you did it anyway because it was a thing that had to be done.”
“I should have left it to you.”
“You couldn’t have. It was your battle, not mine. The lion made sure of that when he killed one of your Kikuyu.”
“They’re not my Kikuyu,” I returned, my voice sharper than it needed to be. Tusker upended her bottle, sucking the last of her champagne.
“The minute you set foot on Fairlight they became yours,” Ryder countered. “Whether you like it or not, they’re your responsibility. And you know it, or at least your bones and your blood do. Otherwise you never would have taken that lion yourself. You protected your own people because that’s what we do out here. You’re becoming one of us.”
“One of you?” I echoed. “Your sense of humour is better than I thought because that’s a damn good joke. I’m not one of you. I’ll never be one of you.”
“Of course you will,” Tusker put in, hiccupping again. “Just takes a bit of time, that’s all. By this time next year—”
“This time next year I won’t be here. I’m not staying. I was never supposed to stay. I’m here to serve out a sentence and nothing more. As soon as I make parole as far as my family is concerned, I’m taking the first steamer out of Mombasa.”
Tusker snorted. “You’ve already got a taste for Africa, child. You won’t be satisfied with anything less. Europe, America, even the Orient. They’re all pallid and bloodless, full of people who’ve had all the fire and spirit leached out of them. Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” I said coolly. “I want to wear silk shoes without getting them bloody. I want to eat without swallowing as much red dirt as I do food. I want to go to bed without worrying about ants or scorpions or snakes trying to have their way with me. And I want to be in a place where children don’t get chewed up just because somebody turned their back.”
Ryder said nothing as I spoke. He just took another long drag off of his bottle.
“Well, children, I’m turning in,” Tusker said, rising unsteadily to her feet. We said good-night to her and she lurched off toward the car.
“Will she be all right?”
Ryder gave me a half smile. “I’ve seen her take down an elly twice as drunk as she is now. She’ll be fine.”
We rose as well and Ryder put a hand to my shoulder. “Stay inside tonight, no matter what you hear. If that lioness decides to come sniffing around, it could be dangerous.”
“Fine,” I said. I turned to go, but before I had made it a dozen steps, Ryder was at my side.
“What the hell did I just tell you?”
“To stay put once I turned in. I haven’t turned in yet,” I pointed out reasonably.
His voice was harsh. “You saw what one of those things can do to a human. How damned stupid do you have to be to go wandering around?”
“I’m not wandering around. I just need a moment alone before I go into the tent,” I told him. “I drank a bottle and a half of champagne.”
“For Christ’s sake,” he muttered. He took me hard by the hand and dragged me into the bushes. “Go there.”
“I think not,” I said, folding my arms. I stood toe-to-toe with him, refusing to budge.
“Women,” he said finally. He circled around to a thick bush and struck it several times with the flat of his hand. An irritable porcupine wandered out, shooting him resentful glances as it waddled away.
Ryder indicated the bush with a flourish. “Behind there. I’ll wait here by the tree, until you finish. Then I will personally escort you to your tent and tie it closed. Deal?”
“Fine.” I did what I needed and hurried back. He was resting a shoulder against the tree, and when I approached, he didn’t move.
“Ryder?”
He pointed upwards, and I stood next to him, watching as the moon emerged from behind a narrow cloud. It was still weak, but it was enough to silver the whole of the African savannah, washing everything with cool light. In the distance I could hear the men still talking at their fires, their voices low and sleepy as they settled down for the night. Far in the distance I heard the lioness give a long, low howl and it sounded like mourning.
I looked up at Ryder to find him watching me. I put out my hand, running my fingers over the scars on his arm. He sucked in his breath sharply, but didn’t move. The night breeze stirred a little, rustling the leaves around us, and the air was thick with the sage scent of the leleshwa and the sharp green brightness of the tiny violets we had crushed underfoot.
I put the flat of my other hand against his chest. I stepped as close as I could, pressing myself to him, thigh to thigh, belly to belly, ready for him to make the next move.
I didn’t have long to wait. He grabbed both of my wrists and pushed me, slamming my back against the tree, pinning my arms high overhead. I was stretched taut as a bow. My legs shook and he shoved his thigh between them, holding me up.
I said his name and he lowered his head. Any other man would have kissed me. Ryder didn’t. He pushed himself hard against me, filling the space so that there was no me, no him, no tree, no separateness. He put his face close to mine, his nose at my temple. And then he inhaled, slowly, tracing his way down from my hairline. He circled my ear, lingering at my neck, and nuzzling a moment before moving lower. My arms ached and my thighs hurt and I wanted it to go on forever, until the end of the world burned us up into ash that would scatter on the wind over the savannah.
He buried his face between my breasts and then lifted his head again, still sniffing me like an animal. His hands were bruising my wrists, but I wanted them tighter. I pulled, and he growled, pressing me farther into the hardness of the tree behind. He wasn’t gentle or sweet or ea
sy, and I wanted him so badly that the wanting was a thing apart, driving everything I did. I would have clawed off my own flesh to get rid of it, and I wanted him to know it.
His face was pressed to my neck and I turned my head, putting my mouth against his temple. He reared back as if I’d scalded him, then shoved his body even further against mine, punishing, stretching my arms further. “Yes,” I said, half sobbing.
He shook his head. “No.”
He let go of me then, releasing me so fast I slipped to the ground. My legs and arms were boneless, useless things. I sat hard, staring up at him.
He put out a hand, then quickly pulled it back as if touching me would scorch him. “Sorry, princess. I can’t take the chance.”
“What chance? You were willing enough before. What’s changed?”
“Everything. You’re leaving.”
“You knew that.” I put my hands flat against the dirt and pushed. I managed to stagger to my feet, dizzy and aching. I pulled a cigarette from its case and lit it, my hand shaking so badly that I dropped three matches before I managed to kindle a flame.
“I thought you might change your mind after you spent some time here.”
“Well, I won’t.” I took several long pulls off my cigarette before I spoke again. “You’re just full of surprises,” I said finally.
“Don’t make me talk about it. I can’t explain it.”
“No, I don’t think you can. I ought to be insulted. I don’t get turned down very often. But this isn’t about you not wanting me, is it? I’m a big girl, Ryder. I know when a man wants me. And I know you want me so badly right now it’s taking everything you have not to throw me down right here. You don’t even have to tell me I’m right. I can see your hands shaking. I know you’re hard for me.”
I had meant it as a jibe, but his face was serious. “You think it’s the first time? I’m used to this by now, Delilah. It takes nothing these days. The sound of your voice, the smell of your perfume. Hell, you don’t even have to be around. All I have to do is think about you and I’m so ready I could take this damn place apart rock by rock just to get to you.”
A Spear of Summer Grass Page 20
