A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,112
next afternoon I consoled myself with a visit to Kit. His prospects were indeed improving. He’d gotten a much better gramophone, and a dozen new recordings which we spent the afternoon listening to while we sipped champagne—expensive stuff, not the swill he usually bought. He gave me caviar and toast points for lunch and when I asked if he’d sold a painting, he gave me a close-lipped smile and touched the side of his nose. I wasn’t surprised he chose to keep silent. I recognised the gramophone as Helen’s. She had apparently decided to tip the scales in her favour by giving him expensive presents, but she needn’t have bothered. Kit was a diversion for me and nothing more. I was frankly more interested in how my portrait was coming along. It was almost finished, he told me. Only the edges left to complete, but still he wouldn’t let me see it. He wanted it to be a surprise. That was Kit, I mused. Ever the child, he wanted the thrill of unveiling it at the opening. No doubt he expected gasps of admiration. But a grand gesture was a small thing to give him.
Later I remembered that afternoon. I forced myself to relive every caress, every word, every stroke and kiss and gasp. I wrote it down and tore it up. I dreamed it. I sat for hours on the sofa with a gin in one hand and a cigarette in the other, remembering it all. Did I know when he touched me it would be the last time? Did I have a premonition when he slid into me that never again would I feel the weight of his body on mine? I don’t think so. But there was something sad about that last afternoon, a sense of something winding down, like a clock ticking past its last minutes, a phonograph offering up its last song.
I kissed him as he slept and gathered up my clothes and walked back to Fairlight. I ate alone and it was afterwards, when I sat alone on the dark veranda nursing a gin and tonic that I saw lights approaching. The car turned sharply up the drive and I stood as the car rolled to a stop. Rex alighted and walked slowly to the house, his eyes fixed on mine. I must have looked ghostly in the darkness, my dress pale against the black shadows.
He came near and he took my hand. “I’m so very sorry.”
“What happened?” I asked in a voice I had not heard since I had buried Johnny.
“He was found this afternoon. Shot in the head. I’m so sorry,” he repeated.
“Was it an accident? On safari?”
Rex held me by the shoulders. “Safari? What are you talking about? I’m not talking about Ryder. It’s Kit who has died, Delilah. It’s Kit. Kit is dead.”
He tightened his grip, but no matter how hard he held on, I knew I was slipping away as I fainted straight into his arms.
I came to on the sofa with Rex chafing my wrists. He had me propped against him, his arms holding me up. It felt blissful for a few minutes just to float there with nothing but his warmth tethering me to the earth. I knew there was something I did not want to remember, and I pushed everything aside except the feel of him. I was a shipwreck survivor, clinging to the only thing that could keep me afloat.
“Delilah,” he said softly. And then I remembered.
I sat up, pushing away from him. “What happened to Kit?”
“There’s no need to go into it just—”
“What happened?”
“He was shot. In his house. In bed. It was murder, but no one knows by whom.”
In the same bed where I had slept with him only that afternoon. I went to the bathroom and heaved for several minutes. I felt better then. I washed out my mouth with eau de cologne and went back to the drawing room to find Rex with his face buried in his hands. I sat next to him, shoulder touching shoulder, soldiers together.
“Helen is grief-stricken, as you can imagine. She was very fond of Kit. We all were. I will make the necessary arrangements. I don’t suppose his family would care to.”
“They’ll have to be told.”
“Of course. But they wouldn’t have time to come out. We will have to stand as his family instead.”
He rose and straightened, and I saw the force of Empire in him. “I will make sure an investigation is opened and