A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,27

all right?”

“Quite,” I said with an artificially bright smile.

And then I slithered to the ground in as graceful a heap as I could manage.

I came to a few minutes later, my cheeks stinging and gasping for air as something toxically alcoholic was being forced between my lips. I shoved it away.

“I am awake, thank you,” I said coldly. Ryder shrugged and took a swig from the flask he’d been shoving in my mouth.

“Your loss. It’s single malt.”

I rubbed at my cheek. “Did you hit me?”

He shrugged. “It seemed called for under the circumstances.”

He moved away then, leaving Dora to help me up. “I have a vinaigrette somewhere, but Ryder said he could bring you to faster.”

“I’ll just bet he did,” I said, testing my jaw. “It’s going to bruise.”

“Not at all,” Dora assured me. “It was really just a tap, I promise.”

I took her word for it, although the pain in my cheek said otherwise, and I heaved myself into the truck. I turned to speak to Ryder.

“Get us to Fairlight. Get us there as quickly as humanly possible. And then go. I think I’ve seen quite enough of you for now.”

He smiled. “Pity you feel that way.”

I thought of the extremely arrogant bet he’d made at the club and felt a stab of satisfaction that at least I was making him eat his own heart out.

“Really? And why is that?” I asked sweetly, prolonging the pleasure of the moment and his humiliation.

He turned to face me. “Because I live at Fairlight.” He leaned closer, so close I could see the yellow flecks in the blue of his eyes. “Howdy, neighbour.”

6

We drove on in silence. Dora slept, mouth open, snoring gently as she cradled her flask. I made no move towards the luncheon basket and neither did he. He seemed content to drive forever on roads that stretched off to nowhere. The murram gave way to straight dirt, but that didn’t slow him down. My grandfather always swore it was better to drive as fast as possible on a dirt road because you were halfway through the next bump by the time you felt the first. Ryder seemed to believe the same. We flew down the road, raising a cloud of dust that must have been visible for miles across the savannah.

Ryder didn’t say a word, but his silence was comfortable. He wasn’t upset in the least. My silence was different. Mine had sharp edges and a thorny underbelly, and my biggest annoyance was that he didn’t seem to notice. I had planned to punish him with it, but if he didn’t even care, there wasn’t much point. I finally sighed and asked the inevitable.

“How much farther?”

He shrugged. “Nobody measures miles in Africa. Journeys are measured in time—a two-day walk, a four-hour drive. But it depends on the roads. When the rains have come, it can take two days to get to Nairobi. It’s dry just now, so we’ll only be another half hour or so.”

I resorted to my stocking flask then, taking discreet sips at first, but subsiding eventually into the deep pulls of an accomplished drinker. I felt only a little better as we approached Fairlight. There were no gates—or rather, there were, but they were rusted, hanging limply from broken hinges.

“I do hope this is not a sign of things to come,” I muttered darkly, but Ryder said nothing. He wore a grim smile I did not like, and I soon realised why.

The estate was, in kindest terms, a wreck. The fences were broken, offering a gap-toothed smile to the savannah beyond, while the house itself was long and low, squatting with its back to the drive. It was built of solid stone and handsome enough, but the trim was chipped and peeling and the boards of the veranda were warped. I alighted from the truck without a word and stood, overcome by the awfulness of it all. From the overgrown bushes to the torn curtains at the windows, the entire place lacked care. I thought of the sketches in Nigel’s diary and could have wept. It was like being shown a photograph of a winsome orphan one meant to adopt, only to arrive and find the child had rickets and a snotty nose and was dressed in rags. I felt my shoulders sag as I stood, rooted to the spot.

Of all emotions, disappointment is the most difficult to hide. Rage, hatred, envy—those are easy to mask. But disappointment strikes to the heart of the child within