The Sun Sister (The Seven Sisters #6) - Lucinda Riley Page 0,79

her first husband, then married Jerome Preston – Cecily remembered meeting him as a young girl, and being struck by his handsome looks and jovial nature. Her whole family had been shocked by his sudden and unexpected death five years ago. Then, her mother had told her, Kiki’s brother-in-law had died a couple of years ago, and only recently her beloved cousin, William, had suffered paralysis due to an automobile accident.

Now, here was Kiki, lying in her bed a few yards away, alone.

‘And so sad,’ Cecily sighed, the thought striking her out of the blue. ‘She is so sad.’

‘I am afraid my mistress is feeling unwell again today,’ Aleeki announced as Cecily appeared on the terrace at noon the following day, ready to drive to tea at Alice’s farm.

‘Oh dear, it’s nothing serious, is it?’

‘No, she will be quite well by tonight, I am sure, memsahib. But she says you are to go alone. And take this as an apology.’

Aleeki was holding two wicker baskets, one full of bottles of champagne and the other covered by a linen cloth, which Cecily could only presume contained food of some kind.

She followed Aleeki round to the back of the house and he opened the rear door of the Bugatti, which had been cleaned and polished so thoroughly that the sun glared off its white roof. The interior was burning hot, and Cecily perched close to the open window, fanning herself violently on the cream leather seat.

‘This is Makena, memsahib. He is driver who will take you to Wanjohi Farm.’

The man, dressed in spotless white, bowed to her. She vaguely remembered him from their journey here.

‘I will see you later for dinner, Miss Cecily,’ said Aleeki as he closed the door and Makena started the engine.

The drive along the lake was a pleasant one, but it was only as they passed through a small settlement, which Cecily realised must be Gilgil as she saw the train line running right through the centre of it, that it began to become interesting. She could feel the car’s powerful engine straining to bump upwards over the rough rutted road (which would be considered no more than a narrow pathway in America), and she smiled as she thought how typical it was of Kiki to have a stylish but fundamentally unsuitable car for the Kenyan terrain. In the distance, the scenery became increasingly lush and verdant and she could see a range of mountains, their peaks covered in misty cloud. She only wished she could ask Makena what they were called, but after a couple of attempts to make conversation, she realised his English was limited to a few stock phrases. She noticed the temperature was growing considerably cooler, with a brisk wind that blew her hair about her face. The scents here were different to those at Mundui House; she could smell the metallic charge of future rain in the air and wood smoke emanating from the various farms they passed.

‘Goodness!’ she said as she saw houses that would not have been out of place in the English villages she had passed through on the way to the airfield in Southampton. Ditto the impeccably kept gardens, which were blooming with roses, trumpet lilies and jasmine, filling the air with their rich, sweet fragrance.

Two hours after they had left, the Bugatti pulled into the drive of a U-shaped single-storey house, featuring similar oversized roofs to the others she had noticed on her way. She presumed it must be to keep the sun out of the rooms, but as she stepped out of the car, Cecily gave a small shiver in the biting wind. Dark green bushes bordered the lawn and Cecily saw an antelope was nibbling the grass; it glanced up at her with its large brown eyes, then calmly returned to its grazing.

‘Hello, darling, you made it!’

Cecily turned to see Alice approaching her, wearing an oversized cotton shirt and a pair of khaki culottes.

‘Oh yes, hi, I mean, hello, Alice. Forgive me, I was transfixed by the view. It’s . . . spectacular,’ said Cecily as she gazed down across the verdant valley, at the bottom of which ran a river.

‘It is quite extraordinary, isn’t it? When one sees it every day, one tends to ignore it.’

‘Last time I was in Europe with my parents, we travelled from London up to the Scottish Highlands for a few days. It reminds me a little of there,’ Cecily said as she realised that her hostess had a strange-looking