A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,131

the time he arrived, the barn was gone and the kitchen was fully engulfed. Pierre and Omar had rallied the men and they were passing leather buckets of water, but even as they worked I could see it was futile. The lake was full of water but there was no pump to bring it up, and so they worked as best they could, carrying the heavy buckets and passing them from hand to hand. Ryder soaked a handkerchief in water and tied it over his mouth before climbing up to the roof of the house, bucket in hand. He made the trip dozens of times, determined to save the house if nothing else. We worked all the rest of that night, and when the sun rose, it rose upon a battlefield. Two of the workers had fallen from the roof, breaking bones in the process, and several others had collapsed from the smoke and the exertion. Omar had burned his hand badly and Pierre’s eyebrows were singed off. The barn was nothing but a charred ruin and the kitchen with all its stores had been utterly destroyed. The fences and half the garden burned as well, and the guest wing of the house had been gutted. Only the main living area remained, although the drawing room was heavily damaged by smoke.

I sat on what was left of the lawn, both of us muddy, stinking wrecks at that point. As I watched, the tortoise crawled out from under the veranda and made for what was left of the jacarandas, giving me a baleful look as he went. Ryder came to sit next to me, his hands blistered and raw from the night’s work.

“At least no one died,” he said drily.

“Leave it to you to find the silver lining.” I fished in my pocket for a cigarette, but the case had been damaged. All that was left inside were sodden shards of loose tobacco and a few shreds of paper.

“I would have thought you’d have been cured of that after what you just went through,” he said. I gave him an evil look and he smiled. “Cigarettes are in my truck. I would be the gentleman and get them, but if I stand up I’ll probably fall over.”

Soot was ground into his skin, but when he smiled the lines appeared, white and sharp, highlighting his good humour even at the worst of times. I fetched the cigarettes and a flask I found in the glove box. We each took a cigarette and a long pull from the flask before he passed it to the men who stood, shocked and exhausted, at the periphery of the garden. Their women had come to tend them, and for once I wasn’t the one doing the mending and patching. The two with broken bones had been carried off to their homes. Until the swelling went down, the bones couldn’t be set. Pierre applied salve to Omar’s burns and covered them loosely, and the others needed only rest and a good meal to put them right.

“Do you suppose this place is cursed?” I asked Ryder. “Was it built on an ancient Masai burial ground?”

“The Masai leave their dead out for the hyenas, princess. No, you’re just unlucky all on your own.”

“You mean Fairlight never had trouble until I came?”

“I mean you are trouble,” he said. He took a deep drag from the cigarette and immediately started coughing. He spat black soot into the grass and ground out the cigarette on the sole of his boot before clearing his mouth with gin. “If you’ve ruined me for cigarettes I’ll never forgive you.”

I said nothing and he leaned over, pushing his shoulder firmly into mine. He lowered his head, his voice consoling. “You can always rebuild.”

“I can’t rebuild what isn’t mine,” I reminded him. “Fairlight belongs to Edgar now, and for all I know, he’ll want the whole place torn down and the land sold.”

“Pity,” Ryder said lightly. “This place could be a real goer with the right hand at the helm.”

He rose slowly to his feet and put out a hand to help me up. He winced a little as I grasped his blistered hand. “If the smoke gets to you, you can come stay with me.”

“You don’t have a guest bed,” I reminded him.

He gave me a slow smile. “I know. That’s why you would be sleeping out in the boma.”

He bent and kissed me gently on the mouth, then walked away. I sat on the remains