Valley of the Devil

by Yvonne Whittal

  'I was asked to—to approach you on behalf of my family,' she began haltingly, deciding to deliver the facts before she had to stoop to that distasteful level of begging, and she went on to explain the situation at home as Danny had related it to her.

  Rafe listened to her plight without comment until her voice faded into silence, and Jo swallowed convulsively when she finally scraped together sufficient courage to meet his dark, steady gaze.

  'If Danny loses this contract, then we lose everything my father worked so hard to preserve over the years,' she added, her voice lowered with the urgency of her appeal, and her insides racked by the same tremors she had felt in Danny two nights ago.

  Rafe leaned back in his chair, his expression giving nothing away, and his response—when it finally came—blunt and emotionless. 'So it's money you want.'

  'A loan,' she contradicted him distastefully, wincing inwardly and unaware that she was clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap with nervous anxiety. 'You're our last hope, Rafe,' she pleaded in desperation, 'and I swear I shall make it my personal responsibility to see that you're paid back every cent with interest.'

  Rafe took his time to consider her request, and Jo felt the tension inside her rise to breaking-point as she watched him lace his fingers together across his chest and stretch his long legs out in front of him. To a stranger he might look relaxed, but there was a steely tautness in that muscled body that set Jo's nerves on edge, and she knew a sense of foreboding when those dark, smouldering eyes eventually met hers.

  'How much do you need?'

  'A hundred and fifty thousand.' She held her breath, waiting for Rafe's explosive reaction, but his rugged features remained immobile except for that ominous tightening of the muscles along the side of his jaw.

  'I'll provide Danny with the financial assistance he needs if you'll agree to marry me again and provide me with an heir. I might reconsider the issue when you have fulfilled your part of the bargain and, if I'm in a generous mood, I might even allow Danny to look upon my financial assistance as an investment in the company rather than a loan.'

  Jo had a curious sensation that the breath was being squeezed from her lungs, and she paled visibly. 'If this is intended as a joke, then it's in poor taste!'

  'That's my offer, Joceline,' he said, shrugging his wide shoulders with a gesture of carelessness she had never known him to display before. 'Take it or leave it.'

  She stared at his tanned, ruggedly handsome features, searching for some sign of softening, but his sensuous mouth had thinned to a harsh, uncompromising line that sent an icy shiver racing up her spine.

  'What you're demanding is payment in blood! It's immoral!'

  'It's the fairest deal I have to offer you,' Rafe countered with a flat finality that made the blood chill in her veins.

  'You must be mad!'

  'You may be right,' he agreed, watching her so intently that she was beginning to feel like a foreign specimen under microscopic examination.

  'Why, Rafe?' she demanded, her voice lowered in a desperate attempt to remain calm. 'Why are you doing this?'

  'Satanslaagte has been in the Andersen family for five generations, and I intend to keep it that way.'

  'There is a more humane way of providing yourself with an heir for Satanslaagte. Why choose to do so in this loveless manner?' she reasoned with him, her throat so tight that it was an effort to speak. 'You're thirty-six, Rafe. You're still young enough to meet someone you could love, and you '

  'Love!' The word exploded disparagingly from his lips. 'Love is a grossly overrated emotion!'

  His outburst did not surprise her. He had said 'I want you' often enough, but he had never said 'I love you'. Perhaps that was why he had found it so easy to say, 'It's over.'

  'You might as well know that I'm not particularly interested in marriage, and most especially not now since I've had a taste of freedom again, so what I'm offering is a marriage with a difference.' Rafe smiled for the first time, but there was not even a fraction of warmth in those dark eyes that held Jo's captive. 'We both happen to be in need of something which the other can provide, and in this instance we can do so without having to pretend to something that isn't there.'

  Pretend? Was that what Rafe believed she had been doing during those six months they had been married? Was that what he had done? Jo wondered about that while she fought back the wave of pain that threatened to engulf her.

  'If I—if I agree,' she said, stammering as she felt herself losing that last fragile grip on her composure,

  'what happens when I— I've provided you with an heir?'

  Rafe was so still that he could have been carved in granite. Only his eyes moved, and they trailed over her body in a deliberate and insulting assessment before he answered her. 'You will naturally have the choice of staying or leaving. Either way will be immaterial to me, but the child will remain at Satanslaagte.'

  The green of Jo's eyes was the only colour left in a face that had gone chalk-white, and her hands gripped the wooden arms of her chair for support as she felt herself start to shake with a rage she could not control. 'My God, you've become a cold-blooded, sadistic swine, and I—'

  'I'd be a little more careful in my choice of words if I were you, Joceline,' he warned softly, a dangerous light flickering in his eyes as he leaned forward with an infuriating calmness to help himself to a second cup of tea. 'I might just change my mind and withdraw my offer completely.'

  Jo pulled herself together with an effort. 'If I'm the beggar in this instance, then it's because circumstances demanded it, but I'm not enjoying it, Rafe Andersen. It's the most degrading task I've ever had to perform.'

  'There wouldn't have been a need for you to place yourself in this degrading situation if Danny hadn't mismanaged the funds during those first couple of years after your father's death,' Rafe pointed out with a stabbing accuracy which Jo could not refute.

  It was true. Danny had enjoyed life in the fast lane, and she now believed that he had foolishly squandered funds which could have prevented their present financial dilemma. The responsibility of taking charge of the

  Harris Construction company had changed her brother, but it was obvious that the change had come a little too late.

  'Don't judge my brother too harshly,' she pleaded. 'Danny has changed, and he'll prove himself if you'll give him that chance.'

  Rafe swallowed a mouthful of black tea and shrugged his wide shoulders once again with that unfamiliar display of unconcern. 'Whether Danny gets that chance or not depends entirely on you, Joceline.'

  A lead weight settled in Jo's breast when she faced up to the facts. Rafe was not going to change his mind; she could see it in his challenging glance and in the relentless set of his jaw. The continued existence of her family home and business now depended solely on her decision. If she sold her body to Rafe, then he would give her family the financial assistance they so desperately needed, but if she refused...!

  A burst of laughter from the group of tourists scraped across her raw nerves, and brought her perilously close to tears.

  'I can't simply sit back and watch the destruction of something for which my father almost slaved himself to death. It would kill my mother, and... Oh, God!' she ended on a groan, raising a hand to press her thumb and third finger against her throbbing temples.

  'I take it, then, that you agree to the conditions of the loan?'

  She lowered her hand to her lap at the sound of that deep, gravelly voice and nodded bleakly. 'I have no choice.'

  Rafe's expression didn't alter, it remained inscrutable as he drained his cup and placed it on the tray.

  'Very well,' he said curtly. 'I'll drive down to Cape Town on Monday to make the necessary arrangements. I dare say you'll have a few arrangements of your own to make, and I suggest you don't drag it out. I want us to be married by the end of next week.'

  Jo was caught between two conflicting emotions, relief and panic, and she was glad she was seated when she felt a terrifying weak
ness surging into her limbs.

  'I don't know whether I ought to thank you or curse you,' she said through her clenched teeth, and Rafe's smile was no more than a cynical twist of the lips as he rose from his chair.

  'Time will tell, Joceline.'

  Jo was still sitting there in the hotel lounge long after Rafe had left, and she was aware only of the dull thudding of her heart at the bitter knowledge that she had sold herself for the sake of her family. CHAPTER TWO

  Jo WALKED across the carpeted floor on stockinged feet to stare disconsolately from her bedroom window at the grey morning light. A mantle of mist covered Table Mountain and it was raining. The rain had started the day before, and there was still no sign of the sky clearing. A car passed in the street beyond the garden wall, its tyres on the wet tarmac churning up a spray of water, and Jo sighed unhappily as she leaned her hot forehead against the cool window-pane. This was her wedding-day.

  It had rained the first time she had married Rafe, but the sunshine of happiness had been in her heart. This time Jo felt as emotionally bleak as the weather, and when her breath misted the window-pane she turned back into the room to continue dressing.

  The arrangements were that the marriage ceremony would take place in her home at ten o'clock that Saturday morning, and Jo was doing her best to remain calm, but with every passing second that well of anxiety inside her became more intense.

  Dressed in her silky undergarments, she moved about the room with a natural, fluid grace. Her tall, slender figure was trapped every now and then in the full-length mirror against the wardrobe door, but Jo did not pause to admire her small-breasted, slim-waisted body with the nicely rounded bottom and long, shapely legs. Her hair, swept back into an attractive chignon, looked dark in the dreary light filtering in through the bedroom window, but on a clear day the sun could set fire to the rich auburn as easily as the carelessness of a junior nurse could set fire to her temper.

  Jo slipped into the long-waisted, ivory-coloured dress with the puffy sleeves and scalloped neckline. Her hands went round to her back to pull up the zip, but just below her shoulder-blades it met with an obstruction.

  'Damn!' she muttered irritably, her winged eyebrows almost meeting in a frown above slanted green eyes. She tugged at the zip, but it refused to budge in any direction, and she was becoming a little frantic when there was a knock on her bedroom door.

  'Are you decent, Jo?' her brother demanded, opening the door slightly.

  'I'm covered in all the right places, if that's what you mean,' she said, laughing mirthlessly. 'Please help me with this zip, Danny.' She turned her back on him the moment he entered the room and closed the door behind him. 'The metal catch will insist on hooking the material halfway up my back.'

  It took no more than a few seconds for Danny to rectify the problem, and Jo barely had time to don a pleasant expression before he spun her round for his brotherly inspection.

  'You look beautiful, Jo,' he said gravely, his hands resting on her shoulders. 'I think you're more beautiful now than the first time you married Rafe.'

  'Thank you, Danny,' she murmured, her gaze lingering for a moment on the red carnation pinned to the lapel of his pale grey suit before she turned from him to seat herself in front of the dressing-table. There was a stabbing pain in the region of her chest, but she dared not pause to analyse it. If she did she knew she would burst into tears, so she snapped on the light above the mirror and concentrated instead on applying the final touches to her make-up.

  'Everything has worked out rather well, don't you think?' Danny took up a lounging position against the wardrobe from where he had an unobstructed view of his sister's attractive profile with the straight nose, generous mouth and firm chin. 'What I mean is,' he continued with a short laugh, 'who would have thought that the desperate circumstances that led to this meeting with Rafe would have made the two of you realise that you still love each other?' Danny was silent for a moment, then he asked unexpectedly,

  'You do still love him, don't you, Jo?'

  She picked up the single strand of pearls she had borrowed from her mother, and fastened it about her throat. It gave her time to think and to steady the anxious beat of her heart before she turned on the stool to face Danny with an outward calmness that hid the unhappy turmoil inside her.

  'I never stopped loving Rafe,' she lied.

  'Thank God for that!' Danny sighed audibly as he straightened himself from his lounging position against the wardrobe. 'I've had this horrible feeling all week that your decision to marry him again might have something to do with the loan. Ridiculous, isn't it?'

  'Ridiculous,' she echoed, smiling, but Danny had hit on the truth with such an unexpected accuracy that her heart was beating nervously in her throat, and she quickly changed the subject. 'Where's Mum?'

  'Downstairs with Rafe. And that reminds me,' he patted her shoulder in passing as he went to the door,

  'the minister phoned to say he was on his way, so you'd better buck up.'

  'I'm almost ready,' she said, her face a serene, smiling mask despite the fact that every nerve and muscle in her body had become painfully tense with growing anxiety. 'Just give me a few minutes to myself.'

  Danny paused at the door to smile at her, then he raised his fingers to his forehead in a casual salute.

  'I'll wait for you in the hall.'

  Jo sagged physically and mentally the instant she was alone. If she had found the past few minutes of pretence exhausting, then how was she going to survive the next hour before she left with Rafe on that long car journey into the Karoo?

  Her hand was shaking when she adjusted the light above the dressing-table mirror, but she had steadied herself when she picked up the sprig of imitation orange blossoms and pinned it to the side of the chignon at the back of her head.

  I never stopped loving Rafe. Her reply to Danny's query drifted back into her mind. Why did she feel so uneasy about that lie?

  Was it because she was beginning to suspect she had spoken the truth?

  Impossible! After their divorce Jo had forbidden the use of Rafe's name in her presence. She had picked up her nursing career where she had left off, and she had flung herself into her work with a vengeance. She had made every possible effort to put Rafe out of her mind and her heart, and she had succeeded. Hadn't she?

  Jo couldn't be sure of this, but if her feelings for Rafe had remained unaltered, then this was the worst possible moment to make that discovery, because the Rafe Andersen she was marrying today was not the same man she had married almost four years ago. The man she was marrying today was a heartless replica, and he was demanding an equally heartless price for his generosity.

  The past eight days had been a nightmare of working her notice at the hospital and feigning happiness to her family. Jo had to admit, though, that Rafe had made it easier for her by scheduling his visits to her home to coincide with the time when she would be away on duty at the hospital, and on the one occasion when they did meet it had been to select a wedding-ring and to confer with the officiating minister. Jo stared long and hard at her image in the mirror. She had been adding an extra touch of blusher to her high cheekbones when she remembered how she had looked the first time she had married Rafe. Happiness had made her face glow and her eyes sparkle like jewels, but this time she had had to resort to the clever use of make-up to achieve a semblance of that happy look.

  She had gone into marriage then with so many naive, romantic notions, but this time there was only the harsh reality of what would be expected of her.

  The sound of a car coming up the drive made her switch off the light above the dressing-table mirror. She sat there for a moment, listening to the rain dripping down the gutters, then she rose from the stool with a look of resignation on her face and slipped her stockinged feet into high-heeled shoes that matched the ivory colour of her dress.

  'Ready or not, this is it, Jo,' she addressed herself through clenched teeth and, drawing a deep, steadying breath, she left her room and wal
ked along the carpeted passage towards the stairs. Danny was waiting down in the hall as he had promised, and he smiled up at her when she descended the last flight of stairs. Jo tried to smile back at him, but her facial muscles were too rigid with tension. He handed her a small bouquet of crimson carnations. Held against the pale ivory of her dress the flowers looked like splashes of freshly spilled blood.

  How appropriate, she thought, swallowing convulsively to quell an unexpected wave of hysteria as Danny offered her his arm and opened the living-room door.

  The murmur of conversation in the living-room ceased the moment Danny opened the door. There were no guests—Jo had insisted on this—and there was no wedding march, recorded or otherwise. She entered the room with Danny to a silence so intense that her nerves received a painful jar at the sound of a vehicle's safety siren going off in the street.

  The Reverend Mr Stirk was a lean, balding man in his early fifties. He was standing beside the tall floral arrangement which had been delivered to the house shortly after breakfast that morning, and Lavinia Harris stood a little to his left, her pink corsage the only splash of colour on her pearl-grey outfit. Jo was aware of their presence, but her glance was drawn irrevocably to the granite-hard features of the man in the dark, impeccably tailored suit who had turned to face the door when she had entered the room, and her knees threatened to buckle beneath her. The hand that Rafe held out to her was big, tanned, and callused with manual labour. Jo felt the roughness of his palm against hers and the crushing strength of his fingers. Suddenly she panicked.

  Call it off! she wanted to shout. For pity's sake, let's call the whole thing off!

  Her glance collided with Rafe's and she wondered what he was thinking, but his expression remained shuttered.

  The marriage ceremony was brief, and their responses were prompted by the minister. 'With this ring I thee wed,' Rafe said when he slipped the wedding-band on to her finger, and Jo knew the claustrophobic sensation of a trapdoor being slammed shut, imprisoning her.