A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,78
along together and we were happy enough.”
“What became of him?”
She flapped a hand. “Same thing that happens to all of us, dear child. He got dead.” She took another deep drink. “It was blackwater fever that took him. A nasty business, that. It comes after you’ve had malaria too many times and it can kill you. A man can only withstand so many bouts of blackwater fever before his body just gives out and he drops dead. Poor Balfour died his first go-round with it. But Ryder is stronger stuff. I imagine he’ll make it through another time or two before he goes.” She frowned at her glass. “I think I need topping off. What about you, dearie?”
I held out my glass and she poured. “What did you mean about Ryder? He’s sick?”
“Not now. Got the constitution of an ox. But he’s had blackwater fever three times. No man lives through five.”
“Is there any way to prevent getting it?”
She shrugged. “Kill all the mosquitoes? It’s the mosquitoes that cause it, you see. It starts with the malaria. Just after the rains, when the weather is warm and damp, he takes precautions. Usually heads up to the hills, gets up too high for the mosquitoes to be a nuisance. But there are no guarantees. Oh, don’t look so grim, child! He doesn’t think twice about it most days. And why should he? Out here you can be right as rain and step on a cobra and that’s it, your number is up and you’re singing harmony in St. Peter’s choir.”
She fell silent and I glanced to where the men had gathered around their fire. They were listening intently to Ryder, plucking ticks off their legs and flinging them into the flames.
“It must be nice for the two of you to have one another out here. Family, I mean.”
“Oh, that. Well, it was an accident, pure and simple. I’d lost touch with his father after he left home. Ran off at seventeen, Jonas did. Always a flighty boy. There’s a streak of wildness in the family, you know,” she added with a wink and a nod. “But he always wanted to see the world, and see it he did. I wasn’t altogether surprised when he landed here. Of course, if you’re English and you want wilderness, there aren’t many spots left, are there? All the cast-offs and vagabonds make it through Mombasa at some point. When I heard Jonas was there, I cabled him and he came up. I was surprised to find he had a boy. None of us had known about him. And that brought troubles of its own, of course.”
“Troubles?”
“Our elder brother, Miles, had inherited the family title. Nothing at all impressive, just a baronetcy with no money and little land. But Miles hadn’t had children of his own yet, and Ryder was heir presumptive. Miles insisted on having him sent to England to be educated. Ordinarily, Jonas wouldn’t have agreed, but he’d just been through a bad patch health-wise. Feeling a bit of his own mortality, the Grim Reaper’s long shadow, all that rot. So he sent Ryder to England, much against the boy’s protestations, I can assure you. He spent two terms at Rugby and was sent down for fighting. Miles decided to find a private tutor and that was even worse. The boy ran away and it took a fortnight to find him, living rough on Dartmoor, of all places.”
“I can believe it,” I said, smiling into my glass.
“Yes, well, that was enough for Jonas to regain his sense. He brought Ryder back to Africa and Miles did what he ought to have done and found himself a wife and started making his own heirs.”
“I take it Ryder isn’t the heir anymore.”
“God, no. There are now seven between him and the title, and that is perfectly fine with him. He’d sooner hang than live in England. He said the whole country is too damned small. Gave him claustrophobia.”
“It can be a little stifling,” I agreed.
“What about you? Where do your people come from?” she asked suddenly.
“Here and there. My father was a Devonshire Drummond and my mother is a L’Hommedieu from Louisiana.”
“Devonshire? I remember dancing with a Devonshire Drummond at my coming-out party. Thick as two planks nailed together but a damned fine dancer. And quite good-looking. All the Devonshire Drummonds are handsome and stupid.”