'Did you think I wouldn't?'
'But how?'
He smiled then, and a wave of heat swept up into her face when he said: 'I haven't been married to you for four months without learning certain things about you.'
Unable to sustain his glance, she buried her hot face against him. 'Do you mind? About the baby, I mean?'
'Not if it pleases you to have my child,' he said simply, and she flung her arms about his neck in a wild surge of happiness.
'Oh, Anton, Anton, I love you so much!'
His arms tightened about her, and he kissed her hard and lingeringly on the mouth before he released her. 'I'll make you a fresh mug of cocoa.'
'I don't really want anything to drink,' she said unsteadily, her heartbeats quickening when she noticed a wicked gleam in those steel-grey eyes.
'What do you want, then?'
'You,' she said impishly, then she was swung up into his arms.
'You little witch,' he muttered laughingly, then she was being carried from the living-room and up the stairs to their bedroom.
Sally forestalled them in the passage, however, and demanded suspiciously, 'What's wrong with Aunty Laura?'
'Your Aunty Laura has a fever,' Anton announced without hesitation, and Laura flushed hotly.
'Don't be silly, Anton,' she whispered admonishingly, trying to free herself, but his arms merely tightened about her, and a teasing intimacy lurked in the eyes that met hers.
'That's what you said downstairs, wasn't it?' he demanded with mock innocence, and as her colour heightened he turned his attention to Sally. 'By the way,' he told her, 'in a few months' time, if all goes well, we're going to have a baby for you to look after.'
'Really?' Sally demanded, her bright, eager eyes seeking Laura's. 'Really, Aunty Laura?'
'Yes, really,' Laura confirmed weakly.
'Oh, boy!' Sally announced with glee. 'Just wait till I tell the kids at school!'
'Heaven help me,' Laura moaned under her breath.
'What do you want, Uncle Anton?' Sally demanded. 'A boy or a girl?'
'It will be a boy,' he said at once, then his expression grew stern. 'Now get to bed, young lady, and go to sleep.'
'Okay,' Sally agreed obediently. 'Goodnight.'
'Now, where were we?' Anton asked of no one in particular when Sally disappeared into her room.
'Anton…' Laura began warningly.
'Oh, yes,' he said abruptly, walking with firm, purposeful steps towards their bedroom and kicking the door shut behind him. 'I have to do something about your fever, if I remember correctly.'
'Anton, what if it's a girl?' she asked helplessly as he set her on her feet and removed her nightdress in between kisses.
'Then it will be a delightful change after three generations of boys,' he smiled, drawing her against him, and after that she had no further opportunity to discuss that particular subject.
Their desire for each other was intense and, for the first time, Laura held nothing back. She gave as much as she received during those moments of prolonged pleasure until the exquisite tension snapped within her, and she was submerged in a wave of ecstasy that made her cling to Anton weakly.
Content and happy, she lay in his arms with her head pillowed on his shoulder. Could this be true? Or had it all been a dream? she wondered as she lay listening to the rhythmic beat of his heart. She was pleasantly tired, but she could not sleep, and somehow she sensed that Anton too was lying awake.
His skin was warm and faintly damp when she moved her hand across his hair-roughened chest. 'Darling…'
'Hm…?' He turned his head and brushed his lips against her forehead.
'When did you know you loved me?'
He laughed softly as he turned to her and trailed a light, caressing hand down along her thigh and up again to cup her breast. 'I think I must have known the very first time I met you.'
'I don't believe you,' she said, staying his hand as it moved downwards once more across her stomach. 'You ignored me so completely that I felt like an intruder on that one occasion when I came here to Bellavista with Robert and Elizabeth.'
'You were an intruder,' he agreed instantly. 'You intruded into my waking and sleeping thoughts to such an extent that I became determined to keep you out. Fortunately a distance of over fourteen hundred kilometres separated us, and I made a point of staying out of the way when you came down to Cape Town on your occasional visits, but fate eventually threw us together, and I knew then that I wanted you. I tried to think of a way to keep you here, and Sally's hysterical obsession finally offered the solution to my problem.'
'Marriage,' she concluded with a sigh, recalling how frightened she had been at the prospect of marrying this man she now loved so much.
'Marriage, yes,' Anton repeated. 'Graham practically suggested it, and although I found the idea as distasteful as you did at the time, I knew it would be the only way I could have you.'
'How you must have hated me!'
'Hate is a very strong word,' he said after a thoughtful pause. 'I disliked what you were doing to me, it made me feel uncomfortable, but I wanted you and, as a result, I disliked myself a little bit more each time I made love to you. I tried to stay away from home as much as possible, but when you were at Gordon's Bay with Sally I knew I had to find some excuse to go with you. I remembered your birthday, and rushed out there like an excited schoolboy at the first available opportunity.' He groaned suddenly and buried his face against her throat. 'My behaviour sickened me at times, but I couldn't help myself.'
'Those few days together at the cottage,' Laura whispered, sliding her fingers lovingly through his crisp, dark hair, and pressing her lips against his temple. 'They were something special, weren't they?'
'You certainly made them so.'
'I was trying to show you, in the only way I thought you would understand, that I loved you, but when we returned to Bellavista everything somehow settled back into the same unhappy pattern.'
'Camilla had come back,' he said with the old harshness in his voice. 'When she contacted me a few hours after her arrival, I knew I had to do something about her… and quickly. It didn't take me long to discover what she was up to, and when she became interested in Avron Enterprises, her motives for looking me up became crystal clear. She was power-hungry, and she wanted it either through me, or through a company of her own. She knew she couldn't succeed either way without me, so she turned on the old charm, and I pretended to fall for it in order to teach her a lesson she wouldn't forget in a hurry.'
'I understand, although I don't entirely approve,' Laura whispered into the darkness. 'I could have murdered both you and Camilla that night you invited her to dinner, and then you still had the gall to stay away hours before you returned home, reeking of her perfume.'
'That was quite a night, one way and another,' Anton laughed mockingly as he kissed her hard on the mouth, then he seemed to sober, and she felt him grow tense beside her in the darkness. 'God, Laura, you've certainly brought out the best and the worst in me since we've been married, and I'll never forget that night when I searched the mountain for you. I knew then what Friedrich must have felt like when he searched for his Dora, and if I'd found you dead, they could have buried me as well.'
'Anton…' She tried to speak, but couldn't, and instead she held him close with all the strength in her slender arms.
'I can't tell you what I felt like when I found you lying there in the mist,' he groaned against her breast.
'Why didn't you say something when you came in to see me later that night?'
'I tried to, but you seemed determined to offer me my freedom, so I took myself off and drove about for hours in a reckless fury.'
So it had not been Camilla he had rushed off to in such a hurry, she realised as he switched on the light and lit a cigarette.
'Afterwards,' he went on, blowing a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, 'when I heard about your visits to Alex Muir's flat, I thought I'd discovered the reason for your desire to be fr
ee.'
'What idiots we've been!' she sighed.
'Alex Muir has a very discerning eye. It was all there in the portrait, and it's here before me now.' There was an unmistakable light in his eyes as he looked down into hers. 'Why have you never looked at me like this before?'
'How could I bare my soul to you when you'd made it so clear that you had no need of my love? That you had only contempt for it, and that—in your own words—you never wanted your intelligence insulted by the mention of the word "love" between us?'
'I recall that incident.' Anton's jaw hardened at the memory. 'It was on our wedding night. You'd said you hated me, and, dammit, it had hurt coming from you while I was feeling like an utter cad after having taken you by force.'
Laura trailed coaxing fingers along the hard line of his jaw. 'None of it matters now.'
He turned his lips into her palm, and the tightness left his mouth as they sat in silence for a time, then he sighed and put out his cigarette.
'Laura…' he began, and for the first time since she had known him, he seemed to be having difficulty in saying what was on his mind.
'You don't have to be afraid to tell me you love me,' she told him gently, and when the look in his eyes told her that she had guessed correctly, she added: 'There are no traps I want to set for you, and no chains to bind you, or limit you in any way which you might find tiresome.'
His strong hands framed her face lightly, and there was a new warmth and tenderness in his glance that made her feel weak with happiness. 'I'm not too proud to admit defeat,' he said, his voice deepening with emotion. 'You've made it possible for me to tell the whole world that I love you, and I shall welcome whatever chains your small hands may desire to place on me, but don't ever go up into the mountain alone again.' His eyes became haunted. 'If you'd fallen down that cliff—'
She silenced him swiftly with her fingers against his lips. 'Forgive me,' she begged softly, then she could no longer delay the questions which were crowding her mind. 'Anton, tell me about that cliff. Are there any ledges or crevices below it?'
'There's a deep crevice about fifteen metres down,' he replied frowningly. 'Why do you ask?'
'If someone fell down there—'
'For God's sake, Laura!'
'No, listen,' she pleaded urgently. 'Is it possible that someone could fall into that crevice and remain undetected?'
Anton's frown deepened. 'It's possible, I suppose, but I fail to see why that should interest you.'
'Would you do something for me, Anton? Would you have that crevice investigated?' He sat up slowly and stared at her incredulously, but before he could question her, she added quickly, 'Don't ask for an explanation now, but would you do it for me?'
She thought for a moment he would refuse, then he nodded slowly, and smiled down at her with tolerant amusement lurking in his eyes. 'If it's important to you… yes.'
'Thank you, darling,' she smiled excitedly, the endearment slipping naturally off her lips as she flung her arms about his neck, and kissed him on the mouth, but when she would have drawn away, she found herself held there and kissed with a lingering, deepening passion that found a swift response in her.
Three days later a small party of experienced climbers came down the mountain to report their findings to Laura, and soon after their departure she telephoned Anton at the office to ask him to return home a little earlier that evening.
'You asked me once for proof that Dora hadn't walked out on Friedrich,' she said when they eventually faced each other in the living-room, and in the hand she extended to-wards him lay a faintly tarnished, heart-shaped gold locket with the name 'Dora' engraved on the face of it. 'This was found up there in the crevice, together with what remained of her body.'
Anton examined the locket in silence, and there was an odd whiteness about his mouth when he asked, 'What made you suspect there was something up there?'
A nervous little smile plucked at her lips. 'If I tell you, will you promise not to laugh?'
He nodded silently, and then Laura told him about that night when she had imagined she had heard a voice warning her not to go further, and how, after questioning about the cliff, she had begun to suspect that Dora's body had remained undiscovered in the crevice.
A long, tense silence followed her disclosure, then Anton opened his arms wide, and she went into them swiftly to bury her face against his broad chest.
'We'll bury what's left of Dora alongside Friedrich, and perhaps now his soul will rest as it should,' Anton murmured almost reverently against her temple, and she nodded, tears filling her eyes and spilling over on to her cheeks to dampen his shirt as she pressed closer to him.
The shadows passed on like the seasons and, as Jemima had predicted, Laura's son was born when the grapes, swollen with sweetness, were harvested in the valley, and now, at the age of five months, he already showed signs of possessing a will as strong as his father's, as well as a smile which could quite likely disarm the devil himself.
From the window of the master bedroom they could see Sally and Jemima pushing little Friedrich in his pram through the sun-drenched garden, and their eyes followed the trio adoringly until they were out of sight.
Laura sighed then, and turned in her husband's arm to glance up at him with a tender smile hovering on her lips. An answering smile lurked in the depths of those heavy-lidded eyes, and the hard mouth softened. That core of ruthlessness was still there, and so also that immense vitality which was so much a part of his tall, muscular frame. Anton relaxed more often, shedding the pressure of work to become less strained, and, although his cynicism was still clearly evident at times, she had discovered a gentle side to him which few people ever saw. She felt privileged, special, and eternally grateful to be able to share his life.
He brushed the long strands of silky hair away from her face and placed his thumbs beneath her chin so that she was forced to meet the soul-searching penetration of his eyes. 'I have no words to tell you how much I love you.'
'Nor I to tell you how happy it makes me to hear you say that,' she sighed, thrilling to his touch as he slid his hands down her back and drew her closer to the familiar hard length of his body.
'Do we really need words?' he asked against her lips.
'No,' she smiled, then his mouth was plundering hers, and his hands were igniting a flame of desire within her that made her blood flow swiftly and strongly through her veins as he edged her towards the bed and followed her down on to it.
Her fingers tightened in his hair as she drew his head down invitingly on to her breast, but it was when she felt him tremble against her that she knew this man would be hers until the seasons no longer came and went in the valley.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Season of Shadows Page 18
