A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,20

oblige me in this.”

I hesitated, and then it occurred to me that with the governor out of the colony, Fraser was the most powerful man around. It might not be such a bad thing to have him in my debt.

I shook his hand again and said, in an appropriately sober tone, “Very well, Mr. Fraser. I shall take your excellent advice. You may rely upon me.”

I saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes and knew that Annabel would be getting an earful that night. I took my leave then, passing the scruffy villain from the platform on my way out. Before the door shut, I had just enough time to hear Fraser say, “Blast you, Ryder, what have you done now? Couldn’t you have thrashed the man on his own property instead of the middle of Nairobi station with a hundred witnesses?”

The pirate gave a laugh as the door closed behind him, and I left, adjusting my fur and frowning at the blood on my shoes. So much for decorum and respectability. All I had done was step off a train and got my knuckles rapped for it while the great white hunter knocked a man’s teeth out and was clapped on the shoulder. Men!

* * *

I found Dodo waiting at the Norfolk. She had already checked in and unpacked what we needed for the evening. She clucked and fretted over my ruined shoes while I tidied myself up and told her what Mr. Fraser had had to say on the subject of my arrival in Kenya.

“That’s the price of leading a notorious life,” she said, primming her lips as she sponged at my shoes.

I blew out a smoke ring and lay back in the bath. “I prefer to think of it as energetic. What do you fancy, Dodo? Shall we wear something inappropriate and scandalise the rustics tonight?”

“We shall not. I have already ordered dinner to be served here in our rooms, and our transportation will apparently be here immediately after breakfast, which is also to be served in private.”

I pulled a face at her. “I’m not a leper, you know. Notoriety isn’t contagious.”

She didn’t reply, and why would she? We both knew it wasn’t true. Notoriety was indeed contagious. If you were a carrier, decent people didn’t care to spend time with you lest they come down with it. Infamy was an infection most folks could do without, even if the price for it was living a very small and colourless life. They were beige people in a beige world, and Dora was one of them.

But she had been a swell sport about being dragged off to the wilds of Africa. I could give her an evening of good behavior.

I rose from the tub and dried myself off, dusting thoroughly with rice powder scented with mimosa. I pulled on my favourite Japanese kimono—raw peacock silk embroidered in silver—and slid my feet into satin mules. I unpacked the phonograph and opened a bottle of gin.

“We can have a party, just the two of us,” I told Dora, and by the time dinner was served, she was wearing the window curtain as a Roman toga and an open handbag on her head in place of a crown. She was cataloguing dolefully the men she had loved and never kissed, and didn’t even stop when the waiters began piling dishes on the table. They served up a lovely dinner and I tipped them lavishly as Dora started in on Quentin.

“He has the handsomest mustache. I always wondered what it would be like to kiss a man with a mustache.”

I refilled her glass. “You ought to have asked him. He might have obliged you. Quentin is a very obliging fellow.”

It was proof of her advanced state of intoxication that she even considered it. She shook her head, then put both hands up to stop her head from moving.

“No, I don’t think so. I seem to remember he’s married.”

“To Cornelia,” I supplied, ever helpful.

“But that doesn’t ever stop you.” She seemed genuinely mystified.

I shrugged. “I got there first. I have a prior claim.”

She struggled a moment to count on her fingers. “No, that isn’t right, it isn’t right at all. He was betrothed to Cornelia when he met you.”

“I didn’t say I got to his heart first, Do. I got there first,” I explained with a pointed look at her crotch.

She shrieked and pulled her toga even tighter, although I don’t know why she bothered. She had tied it over her clothes