“Oh!” Finty’s girlish wail drew my attention back to the real world. When I looked down, every single one of the geraniums had wilted and died.
∗ ∗ ∗
We cantered and then galloped across the dusky valley, following a trail that meandered alongside a bubbling stream. It took us past a cave and a steep cliff face that rock rabbits had made into a home. Climbing a ridge, we paused to view the breathtaking panorama of sharpened knife-edges that went on forever. Dipping down into another valley, we forded the river and dismounted, tying the horses to a tree and sitting on the grass in the shade.
“They are like high-class prostitutes,” I said, handing the binoculars to Nicca. “Absolutely gorgeous, but they spend most of their time in bed.”
It was difficult to see them. Their yellow was the same colour as the dried summer grass. It was the faded, dirty gold of ancient French tapestries or worn upholstered velvet. They lay in a shady dip, cooling their heated pelts, away from the sweltering oven of the noonday heat. Now and then there was a twitch of an ear or flick of a tail. Flies, drawn by the smell of rancid meat from their panting, dripping mouths, clustered around their heads in swarms. Across the distance, it was almost possible to convince yourself you heard the sound of rusty lungs exhaling on the silent, orange noontide.
Just once, the male looked up. His terrible murder-bright eyes, no longer sleepy, gazed directly at us. They were Uther’s eyes, but I pushed the thought aside quickly. I didn’t want the whole pride to drop dead in front of me just because I had allowed thoughts of Jago darkness to intrude. I consoled myself with the thought that I had actually been touching the snake and the geraniums when they died. I had no intention of getting that close to this deadly pride. Nevertheless, I resolutely turned my mind back to the lion. In that instant, it was possible to imagine the prickle of his fur beneath my hand and scent of the kill on his breath. Dismissing our presence with a yawn, he lowered his head again. Our audience with majesty was at an end.
It was the first time we had left the Sonskyn Valley since I first sensed Uther’s presence, but the pull of the lions had been too great. We mounted our horses again and made our way back across the river toward the trail that would lead us back up a rocky incline. That was when it happened. I turned my head to say something to Nicca, and as the first words left my lips, he suddenly jerked upright. Bright blood blossomed in awful contrast to the whiteness of his shirt before he toppled from his horse. With a cry of alarm, I hurled myself from the saddle and knelt beside him. He lay still in the peppery dust. His eyes were closed.
“This is a fine bloody time to find out exactly how much I do love you,” I muttered furiously, starting to undo the buttons on his shirt with shaky fingers.
His hand came up and grasped my wrist, although his eyes remained closed. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘It’s a fine time—’”
“Just the highlights, please, Annie. I’m bleeding to death here.”
“I said I love you, you big domkop.”
He opened one eye and studied my face thoughtfully. “That’ll do,” he said, pulling me down on top of him into an embrace so tight it hurt. That was when the second shot rang out.
Chapter Thirteen
When I opened my eyes, I was in a small, cramped room that was vaguely familiar. Through the haze of pain that enveloped me I could not place exactly where it was. My left shoulder was on fire and, when I tried to sit up, a thunderbolt of pure agony shot through me, and I collapsed back onto the narrow bed where I was lying.
“Don’t try to move, my sweet. You must take care of yourself.” Uther’s voice came from somewhere behind me, and I immediately forgot about the pain in the flare of fear that ricocheted around my mind. “I tried to avoid hitting you when I fired, but if you will go around hugging other men, you must expect a little punishment. It’s a flesh wound. The bullet sliced a chunk of meat out of your shoulder, but there’s no serious damage. I have cleaned and dressed it.” He moved closer so that I could see him. His smile was tender as he leaned over me and smoothed a lock of hair back from my face. “What a dance you have led me, Annie!”
“Where is Nicca?” My voice sounded like chunks of gravel were caught in my throat. Even though I feared the question would inflame his anger, I had to ask it.
“Dead.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the mountains. “It was probably just as well you lost consciousness when I hit you with that second bullet, my sweet. It really wasn’t a pretty sight. That shot that got you also hit him right in the head. His brains were spread all over the—what do you call it in that outlandish language of yours?—bushveldt?” Numb with shock at what he had just said, I lay still and silent, trying to avoid the images that invaded my thoughts.
“Well?” Uther was waiting for an answer to his question. Mechanically, I nodded, my lips too numb to utter the questions my mind was forming. “I expect the vultures will get to him before too long. Now all we need to do is finish off that brother of yours, and everything will be back on track.”
The rough wood panels on the walls stirred a memory, but it was the smell that finally told me where I was. Mingling with sour stench of sweat, beer and unwashed clothes were the combined scents of vinegar, pepper, coriander and cloves. All of the ingredients that were used to cure raw meat and turn it into biltong. I was in Piet Smit’s shack.
“Where is Meneer Smit?” I asked.
“What is this new obsession you have with the whereabouts of other men, my darling?” Uther gave a soft, indulgent chuckle. “For a price, Mr Smit offered to make himself scarce so that you and I could have this reunion. I explained we would need a little time alone. You are not his favourite person, you know. What did he call you? A heks? A witch, I interpreted that to mean. I don’t know what you can have been doing to enrage him, but while I have been staying here, he has been most vocal about you and ‘the big bugger.’ From that description, I believe he is referring to my dear brother. But it seems Nicca had been behaving in something less than a brotherly manner of late. It shows a disappointing lack of loyalty to his older sibling and the head of the family.” His smile was more frightening than his frown.
“You are not the head of the family. Rudi is.”
“An unfortunate quirk of fate, but one that is easily rectified.”
I thought of Nicca’s words. “Too many people know the truth, Uther. You can’t kill us all.”
His eyes gleamed bright gold. “Don’t be so sure. You are not the only Jago who likes a challenge, my sweet.”
“May I have some water?” I braced myself as he moved away and, biting down hard on my lip, eased myself into a more upright position.
He returned and held a cup to my lips. I looked at his face as I drank. My mind had made him into a fairy tale ogre, but I was wrong. He was still the most beautiful man I had ever seen. There was a lingering part of me that wanted to throw myself into his arms and send the rest of the world to hell. I had pictured this meeting so many times since I left Tenebris, and my biggest fear had been my own reaction. But the ties that bound me to him had been weakened beyond repair. Because I love Nicca. That thought brought with it the tiniest glimmer of hope. Could I allow myself to believe that Uther was lying and that Nicca was not dead? Dare I? Even though Uther’s hand was on the back of my neck as he helped me to drink, still I sensed a distance—a separateness—between us. His touch did not send that electrifying thunderbolt of lust thrumming through me that it had always done in the past, and that knowledge meant I also had to believe that Nicca must be alive. I clung to that hope as a drowning man clings to a raft.
I sat up a little straighter. “How did you find us?” I kept my tone deliberately conversational.
“Cost me a bloody fortune in private detective fees and two weeks spent staring at the four walls of a hotel room in Cape Town. He was able to trace you through the passenger list on the Arundel Castle. I’d already been stuck in Southampton for a week because
of bad weather. Since the Titanic, these nautical types are overcautious, in my opinion.”
“So you did wait in London for Wilson’s inquest?”
His eyes narrowed. “I suppose Nicca shared that little snippet with you?”
Steeling myself, I rose to my feet. The room spun slightly, then righted itself. My shoulder throbbed, but I knew I would be able to walk, perhaps even run. If I got the chance. “I think he felt I should know I was marrying a murderer.”
“Yes, my brother seemed to have taken a quite extraordinary interest in your…er…welfare.” His lips twisted into something that was a parody of that deliciously wicked smile I had loved so much. He stepped toward me. “But why are we bothering with him when we have the rest of our lives to plan?”
“It’s not that simple, Uther,” I said quietly. Even though I feared the consequences, I had to destroy any hope he might have that I still belonged to him. Or that this might end happily for us. “I’m carrying Nicca’s baby.”
Almost absentmindedly, the man I once thought I would love until the end of my life dealt me a back-handed blow that sent me staggering halfway across the room. I hit the wall and slumped into a sitting position. Blood trickled from my bottom lip, which seemed instantly to have swelled to twice its normal size.
Uther laughed. “We can sort that little problem out later, before we leave for England. It’s only been a matter of weeks, so there’s time yet to get rid of it. Unless you were fucking him while we were at Tenebris?” He came closer. “But I don’t think so. I don’t think your blatant desire for me was an act. If it was, it was a bloody good one! And your belly is still flat.” He studied me through half-closed eyes. “Of course, I’m not happy about you whoring around behind my back. And with Nicca of all people! Really, Annie, I expected you to have more taste than to choose a dyed-in-the-wool puritan! You must have moved fast to get him into bed. There’ll have to be a penance, my sweet. But once we are home again—well, we can be happy once more. Just you and me and, in time, our children. The Jago dynasty will evolve as it was foretold.”
I felt for the little dagger inside my pocket. A brief pang of memory—of Nicca winding my plaited hair around his hand and the comical look of surprise on his face as I sliced swiftly through the thick braid—tugged insistently at my heartstrings. I brushed it away, concentrating on this moment. I would get only one chance. Uther leaned over me and I withdrew the blade, striking out at the base of his throat. With lightning reflexes, he ducked his head and the knife glanced past his neck, slicing across his left cheek. The dagger clattered across the room and blood welled beneath the hand he pressed to his face. Realisation dawned on us at the same time. I had just scarred him in exactly the same way that the first Uther Jago had been branded. His transformation was complete.
He slumped into a sitting position next to me, and we sat together as we had that first night in the ballroom at Tenebris. There was no champagne and no giggling this time. No burning sexual attraction or breathless anticipation of his touch. Had I felt any inkling then of what the future was to hold for us? How strange that at Tenebris our focus had always been on the past. The future had been a distant echo.
“Uther, this darkness that has invaded us has made us into people even we cannot like.” I spoke through lips that were swollen and sore. “What will we become if, in so short a time, this is what it has made us?”
He held a folded handkerchief to his face, and I could see the fear in his eyes. Perhaps for the first time, I was looking into this Uther Jago’s eyes. “But how can we break free of it, Annie? I love you.…I am in heaven every time I touch you and in hell every time I think of losing you.”
“It isn’t love, Uther. We don’t even know each other. It has chosen us because we are Jagos and it wants to control us.”
His laughter rose on a wild note of terror. “You make it sound like demonic possession.”
I didn’t answer.
“Christ, Annie, now you are really scaring me!” He dashed a shaky hand over his eyes. “He speaks to me. In here.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “Makes me promises. Do you hear him, too?”
“No, I don’t hear a voice. With me it’s more a feeling, something deep inside me. I would call it a premonition or foreboding. Do you know whose voice you hear?”
“I could hazard a guess.”
It was as if neither of us wanted to say the name aloud. As if somehow acknowledging it would make it true.
“Arwen Jago.” The dark shape of my nightmare shifted slightly in my mind, took on a human form, laughed at my belief that I could possibly win this fight.
At the sound of that name, Uther pressed his fists to his temples, his face contorting in pain. “You have to go,” he said through clenched teeth. “I can’t hold him off for long. I’m not as strong as you.”
Getting to my feet, I turned back to him, wanting to say something more. Regrets and goodbyes crowded onto my tongue.
“I mean it, Annie! Go. Now. Run.…”
As my feet disregarded the pain in my shoulder and carried me swiftly down the trail into the Sonskyn Valley, my conversation with Finty on board the Arundel Castle played repeatedly through my mind. She had asked why a person who felt an evil spirit inside them could not take control of their own body. At the time, I had taken her words to be a rallying cry for myself and had done my best ever since to fight the Jago darkness I felt inside me. Now, my life, and that of those I loved, depended on someone else. On Uther’s ability to fight Arwen Jago. The thought terrified me.
At last, the farmhouse came into view and my heart leapt with relief as Rudi hurried toward me. “Annie! Thank God. When you didn’t come back for lunch, we started looking for you. Your horses came back without you an hour ago.…” His gaze took in my swollen lip and torn, bloodied blouse. “What happened?”
I ignored his question, clutching at his arm with desperate fingers. “Where is Nicca?”
He slid an arm around my waist, holding me upright against him. As he led me to the house, he spoke the words I dreaded. “I thought he was with you?”
“Uther shot him. Then he shot me. He told me Nicca is dead, but I’m not sure he was telling the truth. We have to find him, Rudi. Even if he is alive, he is injured…” I broke off because he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were fixed on a point beyond my shoulder. When I turned my head, Uther was standing at the edge of Ouma’s precious patch of lawn.
I gazed at him. He raised his right hand in salute. I raised my left, and across the yards that separated us, I could feel his palm warm on mine. Briefly, I saw again the man he had once been. He wasn’t strong, but he wasn’t evil. Even when he drew the pistol from his pocket, I knew he would not harm us.
“I do love you, Annie.” Uther’s voice spoke sadly in my mind. “I won’t let him win.”
He raised the gun to his own temple, but before he could fire it, a shot rang out from the stoep and he toppled face-forward into the red earth.
“Darling Cad taught me to shoot,” Finty said rather shakily as she descended the steps. “He said you never know when it will be useful. I thought at the time he meant I might marry a man who enjoyed hunting. I wonder now if he knew I would one day have to do something like this.”
She dropped the rifle and buried her face against Rudi’s shoulder. Over the top of her head, Rudi stared at Uther’s body lying on the harsh, thin earth. I couldn’t interpret the expression that flitted across his face. I wanted to believe it was relief, but it was also tinged with something else. Prior to that moment I had not believed that the title and Tenebris meant a great deal to him. But, for an instant, his sensitive features were overlaid with something altogether harder and colder. There was no mistaking the emotion that lightened the hazel of his eyes and made them blaze with brighter gold. It was triumph.
∗ ∗ ∗
Ouma’s old friend Police Commissioner Potgieter arrived from Pietermaritzberg. He drank hot, sweet tea and ate the sticky cakes known as koeksusters whil
e listening to our carefully worded story of a hunting trip gone horribly wrong.
“Ja,” he said, shaking his head. “We are seeing this sort of thing more and more these days. The world is shrinking. Rich Europeans like your fancy relatives come to Africa thinking they can shoot some big game just because they’ve killed a few rabbits and maybe a deer in England. They have no idea what to do when they are faced with real animals. You wouldn’t believe it, but this is not the first story I’ve heard of two grown men stalking the lions through the grass and managing to shoot each other in the process.” He turned to Ouma. “You’ll arrange the burial?”
“Ja,” she confirmed. “And we can go ahead right away? There’ll be no need for an enquiry?”
“No, it’s a straightforward accident. I’ll file my report when I get back to town. What about the other one? The one still missing?” He consulted his notes. “Nicca Jago? You have your men out searching for him still?” He scanned the sky. “I don’t like his chances anyway, but once the daylight goes…” I raised a hand to my mouth, but Rudi gripped it and held it firmly. The commissioner tipped his hat to us. “Eina, it’s a bad business, all right. I’ve never seen you so pale, Annie van der Merwe. I hope your visit to England hasn’t drained your spirits?”
When he had gone, I went to Nicca’s room. Even though the bed had been made, I imagined I could see the indentation of his head on the pillow, and I lay down, pressing my face into it. I started to make wild promises in my mind. If he were alive, he would never again feel the sharp edge of my tongue. If he would just come back to me, I would turn into that paragon he had pictured himself marrying. But my mind stubbornly returned to one thought. Nicca—my Nicca—was in all likelihood dead. Now I would have a lifetime to regret not recognising real love when I felt it.
Harlequin E Shivers Box Set Volume 4: The HeadmasterDarkness UnchainedForget Me NotQueen of Stone Page 30
