A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,99

had gripped an electric wire and couldn’t let go. I lay awake for hours, watching the shifting shadows through the mosquito netting. I must have slept at some point. It was full daylight when I woke, and when I did, my skin still smelled like Ryder.

18

The next morning Gideon appeared. Again Ryder had left him behind to watch over me, and again I was glad of it. I shouldn’t have been. I should have been outraged that he thought so little of my ability to take care of myself. But Gideon was the nearest thing Ryder had to a best friend; being with him meant being with Ryder, in a way. And if I stopped to think about how badly I wanted that, I would have scared the hell out of myself, so I didn’t. I didn’t think about the feel of him, on me and in me, and I didn’t think about what that night might mean. I packed that thought as far away as I could, folding it into a trunk in the back of my mind and slamming the lid shut. There were plenty of other thoughts to keep that one company.

“Habari zu asabuhi, Bibi,” Gideon said.

“Good morning to you, too.”

“I have come to ask a favour.”

I stared at him. Gideon never asked me for anything. I raised a brow.

“My babu wishes to see you. Will you come to the village with me?”

“Of course. We’ll take Moses so he can see your babu as well.”

I told Dora we were leaving and she ignored me. She had pointedly left the wreck of my dress bundled into the corner of my room, but my shredded stockings had been carefully washed and hung up in my bathroom. It was her way of expressing her disapproval—without words, but not at all silent. That gesture spoke volumes about her disdain. She didn’t ask who I had been with, and I didn’t volunteer. As near as I could tell she was still speaking to me as little as possible, and I slammed the door again on my way out just to get some noise in the house.

“Memsa Dora is unhappy,” Gideon observed as we started towards the pasture.

“Not exactly. You see, Memsa Dora doesn’t approve of me, and that actually makes her quite happy indeed. She likes to be better than me at something.”

“I do not understand, Bibi.”

I blew out a sigh and breathed in the cool purple air of the morning. “Memsa Dora has always hated me a little. We were children together. Our fathers were cousins. When I went to my babu’s house in England, Dora was always there. But as we grew older our situations changed. My family had money and Dora’s did not. She resented me for it.”

“Is that all?”

“No. My life has been a difficult one, but it has been exciting, Gideon. I have loved men and they have loved me back. I am written about in newspapers and I have travelled the world. Dora’s life in comparison is very small. She has spent most of her time in a tiny village in England while I gallivanted around.”

“Gallivanted?” His brow furrowed. Across the pasture Moses stood, singing softly to the cattle as they grazed peacefully around him.

“It means I travelled a lot. I had fun. I’ve lived.”

He smiled. “Your life is like mine, then. I have seen much of the world around my village and I have had fun. I, too, have lived.”

He was serious. He had probably been no farther than a hundred miles from the village where he’d been born and he’d walked every step of it, but he considered himself a well-travelled soul.

“I have seen many things and I have had great friendships,” he went on. “But Moses has not. He has stayed in our village, and his life, like Memsa Dora’s, has been very small.”

“Then you understand what I mean.”

He shook his head, his beads clacking gently. The sound reminded me of my grandmother’s rosary. She told it twice a day, every day, praying on her knees in the rose-scented smoke of the incense she burned in her bedroom. The servants even whispered that when they washed her pillowcases there was always a faint halo scorched into the linen.

“I do not understand at all, Bibi. Moses and I are very different, but we are brothers. And I would never be angry with him for something that he has, nor would he be angry with me. He sits in my heart, and I sit in