by Isobel Chace
The Whistling Thom by ISOBEL CHACE
When her uncle was reported missing in Kenya, Annot was persuaded by her mother to go there in search of him. Annot wasn't very enthusiastic about the idea. She would have been even less enthusiastic if she had realized that the overbearing James Montgomery was going to take charge of the whole affair!
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
OTHER Harlequin Romance by ISOBEL CHACE
1152—A GARLAND OF MARIGOLDS 1216—ORANGES AND LEMONS 1250—THE SAFFRON SKY
1306—A HANDFUL OF SILVER 1334—THE DAMASK ROSE 1390—SUGAR IN THE MORNING
1436—THE DAY THAT THE RAIN CAME DOWN
1477—THE LAND OF THE LOTUS EATERS
1506—THE FLOWERING CACTUS 1561—HOME IS GOODBYE 1586—TO MARRY A TIGER
1618—THE WEALTH OF THE ISLANDS 1653—THE TARTAN TOUCH
1673—A PRIDE OF LIONS
1698—CADENCE OF PORTUGAL
1721—THE FLAMBOYANT TREE 1750—THE HOUSE OF THE SCISSORS 1773—A MAN OF KENT
1795—THE EDGE OF BEYOND 1829—THE DRAGON'S CAVE 1849—THE HOSPITAL OF FATIMA
1904—THE CORNISH HEARTH 1945—THE DESERT CASTLE 1997—SINGING IN THE WILDERNESS 2023—THE CLOUDED VEIL
2035—A CANOPY OF ROSE LEAVES
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Original hardcover edition published in 1977
by Mills & Boon Limited
ISBN 0-373-02065-1
Harlequin edition published May 1977
Copyright ©1977 by Isobel Chace. All rights reserved.
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All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagina-tion of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired byany individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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CHAPTER ONE
The flight seemed endless. Annot Lindsay rearranged her long legs and longed for a few moment's sleep. Her next-door neighbour, a schoolgirl on her way home to her mother, gave her a sullen look.
'Why don't they turn out the lights?' she demanded crossly.
Annot had been wondering the same thing herself. She tried to tell herself that it didn't matter if she arrived travel-worn and exhausted—no one was going to be there to meet her—but she felt no better about the hours she had still to endure on the plane before their scheduled arrival at half-past six in the morning.
Her neighbour seemed inclined to talk. `Do you make-this trip often?' she asked.
Annot shook her head. 'I haven't been in Africa since I was a child,' she said slowly. 'I'm a bit nervous of going back—'
'Are you?' the child marvelled. 'You don't look as though you'd be afraid of anything! I fly back and forth all the time, and it never gets any better. Have you family in Kenya?'
'Sort of,' Annot admitted. It was half true even if it wasn't the whole truth. She didn't know where her uncle was; that was why she was going back to Africa after all this time. When the rest of the family had sold up and returned to Scotland, her mother's younger brother had stayed on. Her mother had said there was nothing else he could do, for he made his living taking photographs of the wild animals of East Africa, a profession that he mixed
with sporadic attempts at farming the land his father had left him when he died. Another European farmer, who lived next door, had written a couple of months ago saying that Jeremy Lincoln had gone off on a photographic expedition and had not returned. He had sounded impatient rather than concerned and he had not written again, but as the weeks passed Annot's mother had first begun to worry about her brother and then, when the wildlife magazine who employed him began to complain about his unfulfilled contract with them, she started to talk about visiting Kenya herself to find out what had happened to him
'Of course if you were to go, Annot,' she had decided, 'you could finish his present assignment for him and get the magazine off his back. Where can he be?'
Annot, too, earned her living with her camera, but she
was less than keen to go so far away from home at that particular time. She had only just established herself in the studio where she worked and to leave now, even for a few weeks, would revive all those old arguments that she ought to be in front of the camera instead of behind it— an argument that had first bored her, and then seriously worried her when it meant losing out more often than she cared to remember to her male colleagues.
But her mother had won in the end. 'You've forgotten how much you used to love it out there,' she had told her, and had added more tellingly still, 'It was Jeremy who gave you your first camera and taught you how to use it! Surely you can do this little thing for him?'
'What makes you think the magazine will accept my work for his?' Annot had put in, a touch of desperation in her voice. She had known from the expression on her mother's face that she had no choice but to go. Her mother believed in family feeling and all its allied virtues, especially as far as her children were concerned.
'I'll persuade your father to buy your ticket tomorrow,'
her mother had gone on just as if Annot hadn't spoken at all. 'You can live in Jeremy's house while you're there. You won't feel strange at all once you get there, darling. It'll all come back to you, you see if it doesn't'
Annot thought it extremely unlikely. She tried to close her eyes against the lights, wishing she were anywhere else except in the confined space of the VC that was flying her to Nairobi. Her cameras stuck into her shins and she didn't dare kick them out of her way in case she did them some damage. With a sigh she pushed the well-stuffed pillow the plane provided from one side to the other, and back again when she found the new arrangement was as uncomfortable as the first.
Yet she must have slept, for the next thing she knew the lights in the cabin had all come on and the cabin staff were beginning to move along the aisle handing out paper cups of fresh fruit juice to the passengers.
'We're nearly there!' the child beside her sighed. 'Sometimes I think the last half-hour is the worst, don't you?'
'Nothing,' said Annot; 'absolutely nothing could be worse than the last few hours!'
'It could be, you know,' the girl pointed out. 'We could have had to come down somewhere and been stuck there for ages! That's the worst!'
When they did finally land Annot thought the child looked rather lost, and made a push to keep close to her as they made their way through the Health Authority and Passport Control.
'Can you see your parents?' she asked, clutching her own papers to her and wondering how they seemed to have multiplied by ten since she had last looked at them.
'No,' the girl said flatly, 'I expect it's too early for my mother. She'll be along later.'
'But I can't leave you here by yourself,' Annot objected. 'Why not? You don't even know my name.'
'Mine is Annot Lindsay—'
'I'm Dorcas Drummond. How d'you do?'
Annot
took the outstretched hand in hers. 'Not very well,' she said gravely. 'I feel as though I could sleep for a week!'
I've never known anyone called Annot before,' Dorcas told her. 'May I call you that?'
'Please do. It's a Scottish name, so my mother tells me, but I don't know anyone else who has it either. If we're going to have to wait for your mother, do you think we could find somewhere to have breakfast here?'
Dorcas's eyes lit up. 'Mama never eats breakfast. I hope she takes ages in coming! She probably will. She doesn't look after herself properly since Daddy died, and I can't do it because I'm always in England at school. In her last letter, though, she said she'd met this man whom she thinks I'll like too—he's called James Montgomery. She says he gets awfully cross if she doesn't eat and goes to too many parties, so I'm hoping for the best.'
Annot hid her amusement at this confidence and did her best to entertain her young charge as the child managed to put away the largest breakfast Annot had ever seen. Restricting herself to a large slice of pawpaw, its orange flesh liberally dowsed in fresh lime-juice, and toast and marmalade, she was nevertheless momentarily tempted to share Dorcas's scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon, served with fried bread and tomatoes.
'That looks good!' she smiled.
'It is. Are you going to have coffee or tea?'
When that problem had been satisfactorily decided by them both, Annot became aware of a tall, gorgeously tanned woman making her way through the tables towards them. She bore only a faint resemblance to her daughter in her immaculate,' faintly bored features, but it was enough to tell her that this was certainly Mrs Drummond.
'Hello,' she said as she came up to the table.
'Mama!' Dorcas exclaimed. 'We're having a marvellous breakfast!' she added unnecessarily.
`So I see. You'll get fat if you eat so much, darling.'
Dorcas scowled. 'I don't care if I do. The food is much better here than it is at school.' She turned away from her mother and bit her lip, recalling herself with difficulty to the task in hand of introducing her elders to one another. `This is Annot Lindsay. She sat next to me on the plane.'
Mrs Drummond raised a pair of beautifully plucked eyebrows. 'Hello, Annot, my name is Judith. I hope my pest wasn't too much of a nuisance to you?'
`She was the only good thing about the flight,' Annot answered, aware of the sudden tension the question had produced in Dorcas.
Mrs Drummond frowned. 'School holidays come round so often, don't they? I hope James finds her even halfway likeable too. He isn't the sort of man who goes much for children.'
Annot, already at odds with Dorcas's mother, began to think she was not going to like the unknown James either. 'Oh well,' she said, rising to her feet, 'now that you've found each other I must be going. Goodbye, Dorcas.'
The girl's eyes opened wide. 'But where will you be? You haven't told me where you live!'
'I shall be at Jeremy Lincoln's place mostly. He's my uncle.
'Oh, that's all right, then!' the child sighed in relief. `I'll see lots and lots of you if you're going to be there!'
`Good,' said Annot. Mrs Drummond said nothing at all.
As the taxi whirled her through Nairobi, Annot was overcome by the sheer be'auty of a city she could only remember vaguely from her childhood. It wasn't only the flowers which lined the main streets in glorious profusion and lit the trees at all the roundabouts with purple, mauve and pink blossoms, but the buildings were some of the best modern architecture she had ever seen and quite unlike the
government buildings she had grown accustomed to as they had proliferated across England with the growth of local government there.
'I hope you know where to go,' she said to the taxi-driver. 'I'm afraid I only have a Post Office box number, which isn't very helpful when you want to find an address.'
'I know,' the driver answered. 'I know Mr Lincoln well. I see him often when he goes to the shop where my brother works to buy film. He is a famous man!'
`Yes, well, he happens to be my uncle,' Annot said uncomfortably. 'My mother is worried about him.'
The driver was too tactful to show that he didn't believe her. Instead, he turned his head and looked her up and down slowly. `Mr Lincoln is a young man,' he told her.
`A lot younger than my mother,' Annot conceded, 'but my uncle nevertheless.'
The driver turned his attention back to the road. 'Okay, he's your uncle.'
Nettled at being so blatantly disbelieved, Annot began to elaborate on her mother's family history. 'My mother is the eldest of eight children. Uncle Jeremy is the youngest and my mother practically brought him up. We used to play together as children.'
'You were here as a child?' the driver asked her. He seemed to be as pleased for her good fortune in having known Kenya before as he would have been if he had won the local sweepstake.
`Yes,' she agreed.
They moved out into the suburbs of Nairobi now, and Annot amused herself by looking at the multiplicity of designs of the many splendid houses, all of them set in equally fine gardens. Life hadn't changed so very much, she reflected. Some of those same gardens she could remember from being taken to visit their owners when the children
of the house had been giving a birthday party, or on some other occasion.
They drove on for about an hour. Kabete had grown into a fair-sized town, she noticed; Mgugu she didn't remember at all. Then, suddenly, the Rift Valley was before them, the great divide in the land that stretched from Palestine in the north right down to Malawi in the south. Here it was a flat-bottomed .valley with towering cliffs on either side, broken only by the soda lakes that were the homes of the great flocks of flamingos which drew the tourists to East Africa as surely as the great cats that still roamed the golden plains.
At the foot of the cliff they turned off the made-up road and started off along what appeared to be a dry river-bed. A shower of rain in the night had made the surface slippery and Annot held on tight to the handle provided for that purpose on the side of the roof. The driver was amused by her fright.
'This is a good road,' he reminded her.
'Fantastic!' she retorted.
He laughed. 'Don't worry, I'll deliver you to your uncle alive and well. I have my reputation as a safe driver to think of.'
Annot managed a wry laugh. 'I'd forgotten how slippery the murram surface can get when it rains. I'm beginning to think I'd forgotten quite a lot about Kenya.' She sounded as sorry as she felt. Her childhood had been an extremely happy one and she knew that living in such a beautiful, wild land had had a lot to do with it. The freedom she had known would be difficult to find almost anywhere now.
A large round disc on a tree bore the legend Montgomery. Below it, almost rusted into oblivion, she read Lincoln, and sighed with relief. The thought of a bath and bed was an attractive one. She stretched her still-cramped limbs and gave a little gasp of pleasure as she caught sight of the
garden that surrounded the house in front of which the driver had drawn up.
'Is this it?' she inquired.
'This is where Jeremy Lincoln lives,' he confirmed.
She paid him the fare and added a handsome tip because she felt like it, and got out of the car with something like relief.
'Don't bother to carry the cases in,' she murmured, 'I'll find someone to do it in a moment.' She felt much, much better now that she had arrived. 'Thank you very much,' she went on, and added in Swahili, 'Asante sans,' to show that she remembered something of her childhood.
'Kariba,' he responded immediately. 'You're welcome.'
Annot watched him drive away with a sense of loss. Perhaps she should have asked him to wait until she had made sure of her welcome? But that was ridiculous. Her uncle had always been extremely fond of her, and he was unlikely to have changed just because he hadn't seen her for a few years. If he was there—? But if he wasn't there where was he?
She approached the open front door and called out 'Hodi?' There was complete silence inside the house.
'Hodi?' she called again.
A small, extremely fat smooth-haired fox-terrier came panting down the stairs towards her. After she had tickled his ears, he decided to emit a number of gruff barks, a sound which brought an African running into the hall. He looked as startled at seeing Annot as if she had been a visitor from outer space.
'Memsahib?'
'Is Mr Lincoln in?' she asked him
His eyes grew rounder and he shook his head. 'Mr Lincoln not here. Not here for a long time.' He pointed vaguely into space. 'His house over there, but Mr Lincoln not there either.'
'I thought Mr Lincoln lived here?'
The African scuffed his feet. 'Sometimes,' he said vaguely.
Annot felt completely defeated. She had been so sure that all she had to do was to arrive and that she would immediately be shown to a bath and bed, but it wasn't turning out like that.
'I've just come from England,' she said aloud. `I'm extremely tired and, if my uncle lives here even sometimes, do you think I could use his bed until someone comes?'
The African who, like all his kind, hated to be thought inhospitable, became much more cheerful at the prospect of being able to oblige her. In a matter of moments he had collected her luggage from the drive, rebuked the dog, who was now barking his head off, and had ushered her upstairs into a cool bedroom which had an adjoining bathroom all to itself.
`Shall I bring tea?' he offered.
Annot thanked him warmly. She crossed the room and looked out of the window, hushing the dog in her turn'. He sat at her feet, begging for attention, and she bent down to tickle his chest, a gesture he accepted as his just due.
But I want to look at the garden,' she told him.
The dog opened his mouth and panted with the exertion 'of getting his own way. He knew a sucker when he saw one and he saw no reason why she shouldn't indulge him for as long as he thought fit.
`You are a big bully!' Annot said in his ear. 'And, whatever you think, I'm going to look at the garden, so there!'
He put his head on one side and stared at her as she carried out her threat. Annot did her best to ignore him, encouraged by the view of the garden that met her eyes. She had never seen a lovelier oasis of colour anywhere, with jacaranda trees, hibiscus, plumbago, frangipani, poinsettias, and, far away in the distance, the deep scarlet of some Nandi flame-trees. True, the jacaranda was patchy, the
