“Funny, yes, I think I felt it, but thought I was dreaming.” There was a brief pause, then she asked abruptly, “Why did you go away last week?”
“I do have engagements, work, duties, you know?” Rafe answered evenly.
“You mean you have a mistress,” she retorted, remembering Morgana’s face looking out at her so defiantly from the black Cadillac that had taken Rafe away.
“Yes, I suppose, that too.” His tone was quiet, his gaze now fixed straight ahead.
“A mere dancer, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Dancing is a job like any other, which in fact demands a lot of skill.”
“Not quite,” Coral scoffed. “Nightclub women use their bodies to tantalize and excite male clients so they become regulars and spend on drink, drugs, and whatever else is on offer.”
Rafe looked at her with serious eyes. “Morgana is a very kind, warm, and beautiful woman.”
“She may be kind, warm, and beautiful, but that doesn’t make her any less loud or vulgar.”
“There’s no need for you to be so disparaging,” he retorted. “You don’t even know the woman.”
Coral turned to him, her posture rigid and her eyes stormy. Now that her jealousy had taken hold of her again, it burned with even greater cruelty. “I can’t believe you’re defending her,” she said, her voice tipped with a slight trill. “These women use men’s sex drives to take advantage of them,” she went on, deliberately goading him. “They’re calculating and wanton.” Coral didn’t try to hide her contempt now, or her jealousy. Burning with hurt and anger, all she wanted was to know the thoughts that hid behind his closed features and find out how deep his feelings went for Morgana.
“And you’re not capable of being wanton, Coral?” he bit back in an insulting tone.
Blood rushed to her face, making her ears and cheeks burn. Rafe was right, she thought, remembering those moments earlier that afternoon when her whole body had pulsated with unrestrained desire in his arms. She had bared herself to him, her body begging for more, and she had not bothered to conceal her delight in his touch. She had lost all self-respect, and now he was contemptuous of her. Oh God, what had she done? Her mother had warned her about that sort of reaction in men, and she had ignored it. But this was not her; she did not recognize herself. She had never been one to indulge in those sorts of carnal pleasures. What had he done to her? What was she turning into? Was this what people called love? If so, she wanted none of it; it was too painful. Hot tears burned her eyes as she tried to restrain them.
Conscious of her distress, Rafe put out a hand and stroked her wet cheek softly. He pulled out a handkerchief from his top pocket and gave it to her. “Here, I’m sorry, rosebud. Wipe your tears and don’t take this silly banter too seriously. If it’s any consolation to you, there is really no need to be worried or jealous of Morgana or anybody else for that matter. You’ve bewitched me, and nothing seems to be able to quench the yearning I feel for you.”
“Still, that didn’t stop you from leaving the clinic with her when I needed you,” she argued reproachfully, knowing full well that she was being irrational and unfair.
He gave a bitter laugh. “You could have fooled me! A more rebellious and belligerent woman I have never seen. Anyhow, even if I did go, I couldn’t stay away very long. I’m back, isn’t that proof enough?”
“Yes, you’re back, but for how long?” Why could she not stop her jealousy and insecurity taking over?
“Oh, I don’t know.” Rafe gave a tired sigh.
“I’ll tell you,” she said, eyes blazing. “You’re back for as long as it takes you to get me into your bed. I’ve known men just like you. Here today, gone tomorrow.’”
Rafe’s brows meshed. “Why are you always so quick to condemn me? What do you know about me, Coral?”
“Then tell me about yourself. I only know what you have shown me. I want to know everything. I think I’m falling in love you.” The words had come blurting out — she would have taken them back as soon as she had said them.
Rafe smiled sadly, but it was dark, his face was in shadow, and Coral couldn’t see his eyes. “You don’t love me, rosebud.” His voice was low and wistful. “You’re just discovering the needs of your beautiful body; it’s demanding, and you respond to it with infinite generosity.”
“How do you know that?” she went on. “What do you know about love anyhow? For you it’s just a sexual exercise, and you think that everybody is like you.” Coral knew her behavior was churlish, yet the violence of her emotions made her act foolishly, and her wiser self could only look on.
“Come on, rosebud, don’t spoil the wonderful afternoon we’ve had. Stop tormenting me and hurting yourself. It must be obvious to you by now how much I want you, even though it kills me. Didn’t every part of my body give you enough proof this afternoon? Mon Dieu, Coral, no woman has made my senses come alive the way you have; no woman has ever made me obsessed the way you have. You must realize that by now.”
“I’m sorry, Rafe,” she whispered. “But I can’t bear the idea of you with another woman, doing to her the things you’ve done with me, and more. It hurts too much that you escape to her to fulfill your needs.”
“That’s the problem,” he murmured as though to himself. “Nothing is able to blot you out of my mind. No one else can relieve the need you talk about, absolutely no one.”
He was doing it again, his words almost a palpable caress, stroking her, inflaming her. “Stop it,” she cried out, “I can’t bear it any more. You’re driving me crazy!” She was trembling, her senses raw with the need for him without any immediate hope of release.
“Join the club,” he muttered with an almost inaudible self-deprecating grunt.
“I don’t want to join the club of women that hanker after you,” she replied hotly. “I have no desire to be your puppet. I won’t let you play with me, take me up, and then put me down whenever the fancy takes you…”
He drew in a harsh breath. “You’ve misunderstood my words,” he interrupted, trying to explain. “I didn’t mean it in that way.” But Coral wasn’t listening. Calmly, Rafe parked the car on the side of the road.
“Don’t you dare try to talk to me in those alluring tones you use so well,” she continued, anger burning her cheeks as Rafe watched with a bewildered expression on his face. “Don’t try to seduce me, Rafe de Monfort.” Coral felt completely out of control, lashing out at him as wounding words indiscriminately rolled off her tongue.
“You’d better do something about this temper of yours,” he murmured as he started the car engine again. “It doesn’t become you.”
They rolled along in silence. When they got to the plantation Coral went straight to her room without dinner. Aluna was waiting for her. The old yaha did not need to be told she was upset. Coral could see the observant black eyes taking in her swollen lids, flushed face, and her tense stance.
“You were with that Frenchman again,” she said, eying Coral disapprovingly.
“That’s none of your business,” Coral answered tersely. She recognized she was being brusque, but her yaha had cared for her during the first ten years of her life, so Coral found it easy to fall back into the ways of a temperamental little girl prone to her stormy moods.
“I have told you before and I will never tire of telling you that this man is poison for you. You must believe me, my little one, or he will destroy you.”
Coral sighed. “Not tonight, Aluna, please, no lectures tonight.”
“You have fallen for him, haven’t you?”
Coral didn’t answer, not only because she was tired, but because she had no answer. Rafe confounded her. She had never met anyone like him, neither man nor woman. She could not understand what was happening to her. Jealousy was not a natural trait with her; she had never thought herself capable of such a lowly emotion. Was this really love that made her flood with such jealousy every time she thought of Morgana? The stabbing pain that gripped her heart told her that this could no
t be anything other than love.
Coral showered and climbed into bed. Aluna came back into the room, bearing a tray of fruit that she placed on the bedside table. “Where have you been all afternoon?” the older woman asked, still prying in the face of Coral’s taciturn muteness.
“I was at the lake.”
“So, you found the lake you’ve been looking for?”
“Yes, Aluna.” Coral was becoming irritated.
“Aluna knows there’s something wrong. You are normally so full of stories when you come back from your wanderings. Talk to me, my little malaika.”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
The older woman came and sat on the edge of the bed. “I want you to tell me what you were doing again with the Frenchman. He has upset you, I can see. He has troubled your mind and your body.” She sighed. “I was afraid of that. I knew he would get to you as he has gotten to every woman around here.”
“Since you know it all, Aluna, why do you ask?” Coral snapped.
“There is no reasoning with you tonight. I will let you sleep.” Aluna got up, turned off the light, and left the room.
Coral twisted and turned in bed for an hour. Sleep was evading her, and all sorts of thoughts were clamoring in her brain. She couldn’t remember half the things she had said to Rafe, but she knew that she had been rude and wounding, which of course had been her intention in the heat of the moment. She regretted it now. Rafe really brought out the worst in her, but he had also brought out dormant physical desires that she never knew could be so overwhelming. If only she could reach over the barriers between them. But then again, to what end? Rafe was a hunter; he collected women like others around here accumulated animal trophies. Did he love her, or merely lust after her? Lust, however potent, was ephemeral. She wished she could be sure of him.
Coral got up and pushed back the shutters. Her heart felt like lead in her chest. The night was a dense black. The sky was full of unusually large and clear stars flickering so brightly they seemed like crackling embers trying to convey their eloquent message in a twinkling language.
Coral walked out into the garden. The temperature was hot and heavy, the air without breeze. It took a moment to become accustomed to the darkness. The trees stood motionless, eerie shadows standing like dark sentinels on a summer night. Silence was king save for the persistent singing of crickets and bull-frogs.
“Still prowling around like an angry wild cat?” Rafe’s laugh scorched Coral’s skin, and she turned abruptly, her heart beating a little more rapidly. Rafe drew on his cigarette, the minute bead of fire winking defiantly at her, exposing his location. He was leaning nonchalantly against a tree a few yards away, a hand in his pocket, legs crossed, his dark, exotic features hidden.
Coral went to him slowly. Although she managed to control the biting answer that instinctively rose to her lips, she gave him a slow and determined look. “You do know how to hurt someone, don’t you?” It was more of a statement than a question. She was close enough now to see his eyes. They were not hooded in anger; they were staring at her with a devilish smile.
“Then we truly deserve each other,” he said, his grin broadening. In a frantic outburst of relief, they laughed — a cheerful, healthy laugh that went on for a few moments. Tension melted; the ice was broken. They were friends again.
They wandered through the garden together and spoke for a long time, touching on many subjects but keeping stealthily off those of a personal nature. Rafe asked her about her work, and Coral spoke freely about the job and the assignment she had been given, the fears she had of not meeting with the firm’s standards and expectations, her ambitions, and the places she had traveled to.
“You needn’t worry about collecting material for your commission. I’ve been keeping very quiet about a surprise that has been my preoccupation for the past week,” Rafe said with a smug smile. Coral looked at him quizzically. “Have you ever been for a ride in a balloon?” She shook her head, her eyes widening expectantly. “Ballooning has been my hobby for some time. I touched on it slightly when I was in Tanganyika, but it’s only during the past few years that I have taken it up seriously. I do it quite often.”
“Is it safe?”
“Yes, when the rules are followed, just as in flying an airplane. Basically, a hot-air balloon is literally that: a large bag, filled with hot air, attached to a basket that holds the passengers and the equipment. The burner, which is the engine of the balloon, propels the heat up inside it and is placed in the bow, between the basket and the balloon.”
“To be honest, it sounds downright dangerous,” she said, eyebrows pulling together in a worried frown.
“If I can say so myself, ballooning is an art, not a science. You need to know what you’re doing, and the only way of learning is from personal experience. I’ve done a lot of balloon flying.”
“It must be rather scary,” Coral said, still not convinced.
“Maybe for the ten first minutes, but once you’re up in the sky, there is nothing that compares with the sense of freedom you get as you glide through cloudland. The silence and the peace while the balloon drifts over the unfolding countryside are unparalleled.”
Seeing the sparkle in his eyes and the glow of happiness on his face couldn’t help but make Coral feel his exhilaration. “Will you take me up there one day?”
“Lady Langley has asked me to put together a morning’s ballooning over the Rift Valley and the Masai Mara. I have arranged it for the end of the week. The balloon in question can carry up to six passengers. We’ll lift off just before sunrise, when the air is still cold. You’ll be able to take the most wonderful photographs and see breath-taking scenery. This is an experience not to be missed. I promise you will not be disappointed.” Rafe smiled into her eyes and then gazed off into the distance, his features relaxed.
“Who will be coming with us? You said that the balloon carried six passengers. I can only think of five.”
“Frank will be coming along. We often balloon together. He started in Tanganyika and was the one who introduced me to the sport in the first place.”
“I like Dr. Giles. He seems a very kind person.”
“He is,” Rafe said thoughtfully. “A kind person and a very good friend. The natives like him too; they don’t distrust him as they do most bwanas.”
“Do they really distrust us?”
“Oh, yes, very much so.” He threw his cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with his foot. “One of our workers was injured on the estate. His leg was crushed by a tractor. I wanted to fly him over to Frank’s clinic, but he insisted he wanted to go back to his village. I told him there would be no doctor to care for him in his village and that the wound could get infected — that he could lose his leg or even die. He grinned back at me, looking me straight in the eye, almost insolently. ‘I would rather die in my village, bwana, than take the remedy of the white doctor.’ Luckily Frank was staying with me at the time. I called him over, and within an hour, he had convinced our reluctant friend to be transported to his clinic.”
“Frank told me that he never married because he never had the time to meet the right person. I do think that’s terribly sad, don’t you?”
“He’s a dedicated medicine man, a good Samaritan who loves Africa and deeply cares for its people.”
“You, too, love Africa.”
“I used to. I don’t that much anymore,” Rafe said, almost in a whisper.
Coral looked up at him, sensing his tension and the change in his voice. She knew better than to probe; for once, they were having a civilized conversation. To her surprise, Rafe went on, unprompted. “Africa has been much romanticized. Nostalgia and the clouded memories of the old hunter-cum-writer have created myths that have nothing to do with reality. There is poverty, illness, savagery, and death around every corner in Africa. Rebellion, war, and misery are simmering at its heart. My only hope is that you don’t stumble into the same pitfall, and that your articles and photographs are not a
n account seen through rosy spectacles.”
Coral looked up at him a little puzzled. “Meaning?”
Rafe lit another cigarette, inhaled, and watched the smoke curl up into the night. Whatever emotion had seized him earlier was now gone, and he was looking at her gravely. “Do you really want to hear what I’ve to say on this matter?” he asked.
“Of course I do. My recent experience of Africa is so slim; I need any help I can get.”
Rafe shifted his position and hesitated a few seconds more. “I meant that, when you come to deliver your account, I hope you will illustrate both sides of the coin. More often than not, writers only describe one aspect of a situation, usually completely out of context. The tribes’ men and women become people who are staggeringly handsome, having a most idyllic life. There is no mention of the ignorance, poverty, and disease that plague them. Seas, lakes, and rivers have a powerful and mysterious beauty, but the sharks, crocodiles, pythons, and other monsters that inhabit them are conveniently forgotten or barely hinted at. Elephants, lions, and panthers become those fabulous peace-loving animals that lazily trumpet or bask harmlessly in the sun. Basically, perfection reigns in an ideal world.” Rafe raised his hand as if he was going to touch Coral’s cheek but checked himself.
“And now, Miss Sinclair,” his voice held a tenderness as he smiled at her ruefully. “I think it’s long past your bedtime. We’ll not put the world right tonight.”
* * *
When Aluna brought a cup of tea to Coral’s room before dawn on the morning of the balloon excursion, she found the young woman already dressed and ready to go. The old yaha looked gloomy to say the least and shook her head disapprovingly. “Most people would be content to go for a drive on solid ground, but you’ve got to go haring off in some flying machine.”
“Oh, Aluna, don’t spoil my fun. I’m so happy,” Coral said, excitement surging through her at the prospect of the adventurous expedition. Rafe had been away during the past few days since their last conversation, and her heart leaped at the thought of seeing him again. After her childish outburst in the car, she was relieved to find that he did not bear a grudge against her.
Burning Embers Page 20
