A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,48
as a crown colony. Naturally, we oppose this.”
I remembered what the ship’s captain had told me as we approached the teeming harbor at Mombasa. “But if they are business owners surely—”
I hadn’t even finished before the doctor cut me off. “One cannot expect an American to be sensible about these things!”
“Yes, we know nothing about colonies and revolution,” I said sweetly.
Rex threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Hoist with your own petard, Bunny.” He covered my hand lightly with his own. “I’m glad you’re taking an interest in what will become of us. I know you don’t mean to stay forever, but I do hope we will have the pleasure of your company for some time to come.”
He removed his hand then, but the warmth of it lingered on my skin and when I looked up, Helen was regarding me thoughtfully.
Kit rose then and lifted his glass. “To both of our enchanting new additions,” he said, graciously including Dora in his salute. The rest of the company joined in and Dora and I clinked glasses merrily across the table. I sipped deeply from the Sauternes, thinking that if Rex could run a country as well as he could stock a wine cellar, Kenya wouldn’t have a thing to worry about.
Rex rose. “And another toast, to Bianca and Gervase, who are leaving us tomorrow. Safe journey, my friends.”
Everyone drank, and I turned to the Pembertons. “Where are you bound? Safari?”
Bianca’s only reply was another curl of her lip, but Gervase was more forthcoming.
“We’re going down to the coast. Our place is farthest up the valley, and the altitude isn’t good for Bianca’s blood pressure. Once a year we take a rest and go down to sea level.”
“Ryder has a house in Lamu,” Helen put in. “It’s a divine old ruin, once the palace of an Arab slave trader! It’s terribly haunted by ghosts and djinns and that sort of thing, but it’s perched on the loveliest spot overlooking the ocean. It makes for a wonderful escape, and Ryder is a dear about loaning the place to any of his friends desperate to get down to sea level.”
“He must be a popular fellow,” I said mildly.
Helen gave a peal of laughter. “Oh, my dear, he’s legend! If you’d stayed in Nairobi any longer you’d have heard some of the stories.”
“Most of them far too scandalous for a respectable dinner table,” Miss Halliwell put in, her lips prim.
“Oh, he isn’t as bad as all that,” Helen said, flapping a hand at her. “He’s just high-spirited. For instance,” she said, turning her attention to me, “every year at Christmas everyone gathers at the club. It’s a wonderful time, so many people from all over the colony meeting up with old friends, the parties, the dances! Well, at one of the formal dinners, everyone was having a marvelous time when all of a sudden, the club steward comes in shrieking something about a lion out in the street.”
I lifted a brow. “A lion. In Nairobi?” I glanced around the table, but Rex was nodding.
“There was. A young male. Nasty piece of work, too.”
Helen picked up the tale, breathless and wide-eyed. “Well, everyone was so stunned, they just sat like statues, they simply couldn’t move! But not Ryder. He got up and walked straight to the nearest gun rack, took down a rifle and strode right into the street and shot that lion dead!”
Rex leaned near. “The story made it as far as the English papers because he was wearing full evening dress at the time.”
I gave him a little push. “Now I know you’re teasing.”
“Not at all,” he protested. “I’ll dig the clipping out after dinner.”
Good as his word, after we’d adjourned to the drawing room for a little dancing to the gramophone, Rex appeared at my elbow with an album, a sort of scrapbook of the colony. There were pages devoted to the races and the Christmas festivities in Nairobi with photographs of smiling people and newspaper clippings detailing the silly pranks they played on one another, some of them straight out of the schoolroom. But here and there were other clippings, sober reminders of lives lost too early, death notices and mentions of accidents and misfortunes.
“A hard place, your Africa,” I said softly.
Rex gave me a gentle smile. “But worth every life it takes, and so many more.”
“You really love it here, don’t you?”
The elegant silvering brows rose. “Of course. I know you don’t understand that yet. How could you? Africa