by Isobel Chace
`What about it? From now on there are going to be no no more Fritzes and no more Normans in your life, whichever side of the Equator you're on. You'll only have time for me! If necessary, I'll sell up here and take you to Nairobi, but we're going to be together whatever we do!'
She was appalled. 'Sell up? James, you can't!'
'It isn't what you're accustomed to ' he began.
This time it was Annot who put her fingers lightly across his lips. 'No. I'm not,' she said. 'I've never lived anywhere
so beautiful in my whole life, and I most certainly wouldn't want to live anywhere else!'
`Judith wouldn't live out here,' he pursued. 'That was the start of her quarrel with Jeremy. She may have given in now, but she'll always recoil from the loneliness and the lack of facilities—'
'Perhaps she will,' Annot cut him off. `So what? I'm not Judith Drummond! I come from the same stock as my uncle Jeremy. He's not the only one who can do without the delights of civilisation. I can, and I will, if I have to!'
James sat very still for a long moment. 'With me?' he asked at last.
She couldn't say it. She couldn't have said a single word to save her life. Instead, she nodded her head and held her breath in case he hadn't noticed. If he hadn't, what on earth was she going to do?
James tipped her off his knee, standing up himself. Not for a moment did he relinquish his hold on her, however. 'Annot, my darling,' he mocked, 'what am I going to do with you? First you won't stop talking and now, when at last you've got something really interesting to say, you're tongue-tied with shyness and look as though you're scared to death!'
She braced herself to meet the affectionate amusement of his eyes. 'There are worse deaths!' she whispered. His expression changed and her eyes widened. 'James?'
'Are you telling me you'd walk across the wilderness to me after all?' he asked her.
She shut her eyes, trembling a little beneath his touch. If she answered that he'd know, she thought. And then she didn't care.
'I came halfway across the world,' she said. 'I didn't know it was to you, but oh, James, please be in love with me too!'
'I shall be in love with you and loving you for the rest of
my life,' he answered her. 'I never thought I'd say it, but thank God for Jeremy. Without him, you might never have come here and stolen my heart away from me in your dreams!'
'It wasn't only Judith I thought you wanted,' she confessed, 'it was Dorcas too. She's such a darling, anyone would want her!'
'I think I rate a poor second in her estimation,' James murmured with a grin. 'And for me she has the wrong mother. I want to see all my daughters in apple-green dresses and with dark, mysterious eyes like yours! How long must I wait, my Annot?'
She fought against the embarrassment that threatened to overwhelm her. She even managed a smile. 'I think it would be more proper if we got married first,' she said, with a primness most of her acquaintance would have been astonished to see in Annot Lindsay.
His laughter exploded around her. 'Wait until you're asked, my girl! ' His laughter died away and he hugged her to him, claiming her ready lips in a kiss that was as passionate as it was masterly. When he finally raised his head, she had to cling to him or she might have fallen.
'I'm asking now, little Annot,' he said. `Will you marry me, my darling?'
She clutched at his shirt, feeling very young and more than a little foolish. She had never, never in her life imagined she could have felt so deeply about anyone. And he loved her too! She flung her arms up round his neck and kissed him on the cheek.
`Oh, James—yes, please!' she said.
Annot sat on the brick steps that led to the verandah and wondered at her own contentment. She had changed out of her bridal finery and was wearing her favourite apple-green. dress. She had pretended to herself that she had considered
some of her other dresses before putting it on, but it had been a question of no contest from the start. James liked the apple-green dress better than anything else she had, and James was the one she wanted to please, especially on this night of all nights.
The cacophony of sound all round her increased in volume until she was almost deafened by it. African nights never had the restrained Calm of an English evening. The insects waited to have their rave-ups after dark when their shrill sounds filled the air, broken every now and then by sudden silences and the cries of distant animals, once a lion, more often the weird laughter of the hyenas and the courting yowls of a family of wildcats. Annot sat and listened, feeling a rush of gladness that this was now her home and that these were the sounds of it. How much she had missed it all while she had been away from it!
It had been a lovely day and a lovely wedding. Jeremy, uncomfortable in a brand new suit, had escorted her up the aisle to give her away while Judith had sat in the front pew, composed and cool and once more completely in control of herself. Her poor uncle, Annot thought, might be sure he had tamed his new wife, but Annot was a lot less certain. Jeremy hall already moved into Judith's house, and all through the reception in James's house had referred to 'our' cattle and once, with considerable pride, to 'our' daughter.
Dorcas had refused to be a bridesmaid, deeming such activities beneath contempt, but she had consented to hold Annot's bouquet while she exchanged her vows with James, and had even on her own account sprinkled some rose petals on the path between the church and the car because she thought it a suitable thing to do at a wedding.
'It doesn't matter that you won't be able to visit me at school,' she had assured Annot solemnly over a glass of Coca-Cola. 'You needn't worry about it after all. Jeremy
has talked Mama into allowing me to go to school out here. Won't that be splendid?'
Annot had agreed that it was. 'It's nice that everything turned out so well,' she had remarked.
'Ye-es,' Dorcas had muttered doubtfully, 'mostly it has. But Sijui won't come and live with us after all. He wasn't happy in our house because Mama wouldn't allow him upstairs at all. Will you have him on your bed, Annot?'
'Not if I can help it!' James had answered for her. 'He'll have to make do with the room Annot has now.'
`Mmm,' Dorcas had said, 'I suppose it will do. When I have a dog of my own
Annot smiled to herself. Who would have thought when she had flown out from England that she would now have a husband and a dog! The dog in particular added a note of reality to what otherwise would have been an impossible dream—a dream from which she never wanted to wake up, but a dream all the same!
She didn't hear James cross the verandah, but she gave him a quick look of welcome as he sat down beside her. In the light that flooded out from the window he looked very -big and unyielding and almost a stranger to her.
'How went your day, Mrs Montgomery?' he said.
There was a note in his voice that made her tremble. It wasn't the honeyed note he had used to her previously, this one held a pride of possession she had never heard before.
'It was super! ' she said as Dorcas would have done.
He put his arm about her. 'I thought you might have missed your parents?'
'Not really. I'd have liked them to be there, of course, but it was much more important that you should be there! I was thinking that it all seems like a dream. Only Sijui seems real. He's far too solid to inhabit a fantasy, don't you think?'
'Indubitably,' James agreed. 'I'm sorry to introduce an
earthy note, love, but you look much less dreamlike in that frock than you did in your wedding dress. You look beautiful and inviting, and I'm beginning to get ideas about you.'
Annot smiled and rubbed her hand up his arm. 'Mother would have liked to have seen me in my wedding dress, though,' she said. 'We must send her plenty of photographs.
James pretended to bite her ear. 'I know just how she would have felt to see you walking up the aisle in a cloud of white veiling!'
'Really?' Annot said, surprised.
'Triumph, mixed with relief! Especially relief, if she's ever fel
t one half of the frustrated fury I felt to see you being kissed by Norman and apparently enjoying it! It was almost as bad as sharing a house with you these last few days. However, we made it, your mother and I! You were a bride we could be proud of in every way, but now, thank God, you're a wife. My wife!'
'My parents never spoiled me as much as you think they did,' Annot objected, but without much heat. 'They gave me a lot of love, but they never gave me many things! My mother isn't Jeremy's sister for nothing!'
His closeness was beginning to disturb her. She turned impulsively towards him and found herself captured more closely against him
'James,' she said, determined to get one thing straight with him while she still could, 'I haven't given up about paying for the balloon, so don't think I have! Please let me!'
His hands on her waist roused an answering passion within her and she knew he was aware of it too. How nice it was that they were married at last!
'I have a confession to make about the balloon,' he told her, kissing her lightly on the lips. 'I thought we might use it for our honeymoon—'
'I thought you were afraid of my breaking my neck!' she interrupted him indignantly.
'So I was! But, darling, it's the most marvellous sensation and I think you'd enjoy it—with me!'
'I would have enjoyed it all along!'
'Maybe, but the thought of you in such close proximity with Norman for hours together was more than I could stand.'
Annot stared at him through the darkness. 'You were jealous!'
'Of course I was jealous! How could I be otherwise, with you smiling at every other man in sight and insisting you didn't even like me?'
'Oh,' she said. 'Well, that wasn't quite true. I liked you very much, only I was a bit scared of you, too.'
'And now?' he prompted her.
She buried her face against him. 'You know how I feel now. You've had me at your feet all along—and it isn't kind to make me say so!' she added, her courage deserting her.'
'And you'll come with me in my balloon?'
That startled her into looking up. 'Your balloon?'
James kissed her lips again. 'That's what I'm trying to tell you, sweetheart. I didn't hire Norman's balloon, I bought it!'
She gave a little yelp of laughter. 'It doesn't matter,' she smiled. 'With your photographs and mine it will soon pay for itself. I didn't tell you how good your photos are, but they're terrific! Poor Jeremy is going to have a lot of competition from the Montgomerys!'
'He's a professional,' James pointed out, 'we shall be strictly amateur.' He lifted an expectant eyebrow, waiting for her to argue the point with him, but she accepted the distinction with no difficulty at all. 'No comment?' he teased her, and his voice was full of honey then.
`We'll be too busy,' she answered comfortably, 'I know that!'
`Do you?' The doubt in his tone made her laugh.
'Of course I do! I only want to be your wife, James. That's all I shall ever want!'
His hands began a more intimate exploration of her curves and she gasped against his shoulder.
`I love you very much, Annot,' he said.
She put her hands flat against his chest, relishing the feel of his skin and the solid beat of his heart. Some of her fright left her as she realised he was as acutely aware of her as she was of him.
`Are you going to love me now?' she asked.
For a moment he was completely still. 'Annot, are you flirting with me again?'
She kissed the corner of his mouth, edging closer still. `When I was a child I used to try and count the stars in the 'sky at night, but now I'm a woman and I've put away such childish pursuits.'
`Oh?' he said, deeply interested. 'Tell me more!'
She kissed his mouth again. 'I don't need a physical heaven, such as the sky and the stars, any longer. I've found my heaven in you.'
She had thought she was kissing him, but the quality of the kiss changed and it was he who took the initiative now, stirring her to the very depths with a new emotion that sang in her blood and hinted at the mutual pleasure that was still to come.
'I love you,' she said when she could.
`This is only the beginning,' he answered. He stood up and lifted her high against his chest, ignoring her protests that she was too heavy for him to carry up the stairs. 'Every man has the right to carry his bride over the threshold!' he told her. 'Tonight, I'm going to do that with you. We'll find our heaven together. Okay?'
'And tomorrow we'll go up in the balloon,' she said. 'Maybe.' He grinned at her. 'Right now I'm concentrating
on the pleasure of taking up where we first began!' 'And where was that?' she murmured.
He put her down, bending over her, his lips still curved in a smile. 'Don't you remember, my apple-green girl? It all began on a certain morning with you in my bed ! '
Her eyes widened as he adjusted her dress. `So it did,' she said.
