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  Ruined. There we go, Richard thought vexedly. In opposite camps already. Damn. This really is a pity. I’m attracted by her. She’s a sweetheart. She’s got me all stirred up...

  “Look, there’s ‘Laguna’,” he told her a few seconds later. “That thatch-roofed pink house in among the trees. See it?”

  “Oh yes. How charming. Don’t you adore thatch?”

  “Wouldn’t touch it out here. Charming, yes. But too risky. I’ve seen too many thatched houses go up in smoke. Quick, Alix, we’re nearly there. When can I see you again? When will you come out and have dinner with me?”

  Alix smiled and shook her head.

  “You’re forgetting...”

  He glanced at her left hand.

  “What? Oh—that you’ve got a understanding with this Bernard character, and may some day be going to marry him?”

  “Have promised to marry him. Soon,” she corrected.

  “Must you?” Richard asked plaintively.

  Alix shot him a quick, uncertain glance, but he was looking straight ahead.

  “Well—that’s why I came out to Africa.”

  “I know, I know. But till you do, are you in purdah? Do you have to forswear the company of all other men?”

  “N—no. I suppose not.”

  “I bet Bernard enjoys himself. Who’s he with?”

  “A tobacco farmer called Barrett; perhaps you know him?”

  “Of course. Old family friend. I used to be rather smitten with his daughter Sandra. Pretty kid.”

  “Bernard rides and plays tennis with Sandra. He sent me a riding snapshot of her. She certainly does look awfully pretty.”

  “Believe me, she is. Dark, flashing-eyed type, looks stunning on a horse.”

  “I could see that,” Alix agreed, conscious of an inner pang of—could it be jealousy?

  “Look, Alix”—his tone was reasonable—“I’m no wolf. But till you exchange that loaned signet ring for a plain gold band, I give you notice here and now that I consider the field remains open.”

  “Field?” Her eyes widened at him.

  “Certainly. Tell Bernard that from me if you like—it’ll probably bring him down here at the double. And meantime, dear kind Alix, please say when you’ll come and have dinner with me. I know such a charming roadhouse the other side of Edward...”

  She looked up at him again, caught his quick sideways glance at her, saw that his grey eyes held an engaging twinkle. She thought with relief, he’s joking. He doesn’t mean a word of it. With a laugh she gave in. “All right. Thanks. I’ll ring you some time, shall I?”

  “Couldn’t we make a date right now?”

  “Please—I must find out my aunt’s plans for me first.”

  For some reason he didn’t seem very satisfied. He assented but with obvious reservations.

  The car skirted some flowering gums and stopped at the gates of ‘Laguna.’ Richard got out to open them. The drive was gravelled and curved between banked, lushly blooming shrubs and bushes. A chromatic, clashing muddle, but surprisingly successful, Alix thought, her professional interest roused.

  A weedy coloured man was raking the gravel. He wore dirty, raggedy pants and shirt and a disgraceful old hat. This he took off in amiable greeting, and Richard punctiliously lifted his hand in response.

  Alix had time to notice the yellowed, dilated eyes and vacuous grin. She felt a little shudder run through her. Perhaps it was premonitory—she couldn’t guess, then, at the part this coloured man was to play in the drama of the next few weeks....

  When the drive turned, the house came into view. It was long and single-storied with shutters turned back from the french windows. Pink ivy geranium spilled over the low veranda wall, and masses of hydrangea, in new leaf, nestled at its base. Around it spread green lawns, roughish, rather neglected, on which trees cast pools of shade.

  Alix liked it. It looked shabby and lived-in and pleasantly private, screened as it was by trees from its neighbours on either side. The rough coastal track wound past it, and the lagoon lay at its feet.

  Richard pulled up at the foot of the shallow steps leading to the wide stoep. A big handsome woman with short-cut, crisp grey hair came out of an inner room, her right hand on the collar of a tan ridgeback dog.

  Alix cried, “Darling!” and jumped out of the car.

  “My dear child, how very nice that you managed to get a lift,” boomed Lady Merrick in a resonant contralto.

  Alix hugged her warmly.

  “How are you, Aunt Drusilla?”

  “Fighting fit, my dear. And you?—but I don’t need to ask, do I? Blooming. Look, you must meet my guardian angel. Nelson, say hallo to Alix.”

  The ridgeback sniffed Alix’s outstretched hand. Then he waved his tail gently, sank back on his haunches, and gravely offered a paw.

  “What a darling,” cried Alix, delighted. “And now you must meet Richard.”

  Richard had remained discreetly beside the car. Gaily she called him.

  “Come and meet my aunt. Darling, this is Richard Herrold. We met at the Murrays and he drove me here. But of course you know. Mrs. Murray promised me she’d telephone.”

  “My line happens to be out of order. I did not know,” said Lady Merrick. Her normal expression was that of a benevolent mare; but Richard, half a head taller than she was, found himself quailing now as she' scrutinised him.

  “Herrold? Andrew Herrold’s son? The architect?” she demanded sharply, not offering to shake hands.

  “I’m afraid so, Lady Merrick.”

  “Ha.”

  At something in her aunt’s tone of voice Alix glanced at her in startled enquiry. But all she saw was a polite, conventional smile. The smile on the face of the tigress, thought Richard, who knew a thing or two that Alix didn’t.

  “Well, thank you very much indeed for bringing my niece along. Most kind. If you wouldn’t mind, when you go, just lifting her suitcases down and leaving them on the drive, the garden boy will bring them indoors. Thank you again, Mr. Herrold. Goodbye.”

  What in the world? wondered Alix, aghast.

  Nelson having sniffed Richard from all angles, was now clearly on the point of offering his paw.

  “Nelson!” snapped Lady Merrick. “Basket!”

  With marked reluctance the ridgeback betook himself to a vast dog’s bed beneath a corner table. Lady Merrick said again, pointedly, “Goodbye, Mr. Herrold.”

  “B—but, darling ... long journey ... thirsty ... tea...” Alix babbled. What could her hospitable aunt be thinking of?

  A quick shake of Richard’s dark head, a look, warned her to pipe down.

  “Goodbye, Lady Merrick. I very much enjoyed Alix’s company,” he said pleasantly. “Don’t forget my telephone number, will you, Alix? Edward 136. Any time you like to make it, m’m? Till then.”

  Descending the steps, he lifted out her cases and placed them neatly side by side in the drive. Then with a smile, brimful of charm, that included them both, he waved and drove away.

  “Most unfortunate, my dear, that you should have become involved with that man’s son,” boomed Lady Merrick on the lower register. “Not that I blame you, you couldn’t possibly have known. But you must have nothing more to do with him, dearest. When I tell you about his dreadful father, you won’t want to. A grasping speculator. A promoter, bent on vulgarising one of the Cape’s finest beauty spots.”

  When Alix remained silent—being unable to think of the right thing to say—she went on briskly, taking her niece’s arm, “But don’t let’s think of him now—it makes me boil. Come along and let’s have tea. How pretty you’ve grown, dear.”

  “Oh no, Aunt Drusilla. A good skin and a decent figure, but hardly pretty. Not like Mummy and Daphne.”

  “Whether or not, it’s lovely to have you here.”

  “Lovely for me too,” Alix said in her warm voice. And of course it was. But behind the happiness was just a pinprick of something. That ultimatum about Richard. “You won’t want to.”

&n
bsp; In point of fact she did want to see Richard again. He was amusing and intelligent and congenial. She believed they could easily have become good friends. And he had brothers and a sister in the house in Edward. It would have been pleasant to know them. She needed to make new friends in this big new continent, at the start of the rather tremendous adventure on which she had embarked.

  But she reflected sensibly that if her aunt was seriously feuding with the father, she couldn’t very well insist on having dates with the son.

  She gave a small regretful sigh. A pity...

  A plump coloured girl in a pink overall, starched white apron and cap was pushing a tea trolley into the room.

  “Tea ready, meddam, please,” she gulped. The moony eyes that stole a glance at Alix showed traces of recent tears.

  “Thank you, Effelina, bring it here,” Lady Merrick said crisply. “This is Miss Alix, my niece.”

  Effelina said, “Good afternoon, Miss Ellix” in her most refined voice, gulped again and fled.

  “Hopeless,” shrugged Lady Merrick resignedly. “What’s the matter with her?”

  “Her love-life, my dear. She’s just heard that her husband—not her husband really, but by courtesy—has been gaoled for peddling dagga.”

  “Oh—poor thing. What is dagga, Aunt Drusilla?”

  “This frightful weed they all smoke. Sort of drag, same thing more or less as marijuana, reefers—the thing those juvenile delinquents smoke in America, you must have heard of it. Recently there’s been a wave of dagga-smoking around here—can’t think where they get it, as it’s illegal to grow or sell it—or for that matter how they afford it. It makes them perfectly useless till the effects wear off. Dangerous too, sometimes. However, I suppose I’ll have to advance her the cash to bail him out. One usually does in the end.”

  “Really? Why?” asked Alix, bewildered.

  “No husband, no girl, my dear. When you take on a house servant and give her a room, you take on her current domestic life too. Even a baby sometimes! Sub rosa, of course, but we all do it. Simply wouldn’t get a servant at all nowadays, otherwise. Try these scones, my dear. Christina will be offended if we don’t finish them.”

  Alix ate her scone and took another. They were feather-light and delicious and she was hungry after her journey. Poor banished Richard...

  “Does that garden boy smoke dagga?” she demanded, recalling how peculiar he had looked.

  “Francis? Of course. But he’s such a good gardener—got the authentic green fingers. And anyway he’s Christina’s husband. Unfortunately, dagga makes him rather pugnacious. Still, one’s got to have a garden boy—and where to find a better?”

  With a sigh for the vagaries of coloured servants in general (only where would she or anyone else be without them?) Lady Merrick took Alix’s empty teacup and began to refill it. As she handed it back she remembered something.

  “There’s mail waiting for you. From Rhodesia,” she said, and rang for Effelina to fetch it in. Alix blushed with pleasure.

  But before she could tear open the flimsy air-letters—addressed in Bernard’s scrawl—a big American car, flashing with chromium, drew up in front of the house.

  From it emerged a tall man in a debonair suit of tropical light grey, with a beautiful silk shirt and tie. He took the veranda steps in two vigorous strides.

  “Am I in time for tea, Lady D.?” he asked, standing smiling in the doorway.

  Nelson, lifting his head from the edge of his basket, gave a muted growl.

  “Quiet, Nelson. Of course, Eric, come along in,” beamed Lady Merrick, getting up and offering her hand. “Delighted to see you. Come and meet my niece, Alix Rayne. She’s just arrived. Alix, this is Eric Gore—he has that superb farm at the head of the lagoon, quite our local showplace, isn’t it, Eric?”

  “You’re a flatterer, Lady D.” But his look was complacent.

  Alix murmured a civility and took his outstretched hand. It held hers firmly and just a second too long. She found herself looking up at a blond head and face that would have been perfect above a Reichswehr uniform in one of those cloak-and-dagger films. Ice-blue eyes were studying her with candid admiration—too candid for her comfort. To her annoyance she felt her colour rise.

  “Welcome to Paradise, Miss Rayne.”

  Eric Gore spoke cordially, in a light smooth voice with an overtone of some accent that Alix couldn’t quite place—was he a foreigner? “I hope you’ve come prepared to make a long stay with us here?”

  Alix smiled and shook her head.

  “Well, no—just a short one. I’m on my way to Southern Rhodesia,” she said, thinking how unusually handsome he was, but wishing he wouldn’t look at her so hard with those remarkable eyes.

  “Then we must do everything we can to delay you,” he told her with his confident smile. “You’re going to enjoy Paradise, you know—everybody does. Folks come, see, and are conquered. Some of them come back here for good and all.”

  “I’m not surprised. I think it’s lovely,” Alix said politely. She had recovered her poise and was curious to learn what had brought Eric Gore to visit her aunt. It wasn’t long before she found out.

  “Of course you must bring Miss Rayne over to Northolme on Tuesday, Lady D.,” he said.

  “Why, yes, I will, Eric. Good way for her to meet everybody at one go. Northolme is Eric’s farm, Alix. You’ll love it—so picturesque, there under the mountains. And the most darling Jerseys—Eric breeds them. Three lumps, isn’t it, Eric?”

  “Thanks.” He took his cup and at last came to the point. “I say, have you heard the latest buzz. Lady D.?”

  “No. What is it?” Lady Merrick gave him rather a harassed look. Buzzes had been rife in Paradise ever since Andrew Herrold—“Tornado Andrew” as someone had aptly named him—descended on the place six months ago and mooted his outrageous plans. Though often exaggerated, there was usually a grain of truth in them.

  “It’s the Braines—they’re going to sell, I’m afraid. It seems Herrold’s company has made them such a good offer the Colonel says he can’t afford to let it go, with expenses rising and his Army pension getting no bigger.”

  Lady Merrick snorted.

  “So he’s ratting, is he?”

  “It looks like it. And Chambers is all ready to sign on the dotted line too, they say.”

  “If they both sell, the brute will have got me hemmed in,” Lady Merrick said wryly. “And I don’t trust him not to resort to the dirtiest tricks to get me out. Pigsties on my boundaries—or worse.”

  Eric Gore gave her one of his keen ice-blue looks.

  “In that case, we must think up some way for you to retaliate,” he suggested smoothly.

  “We certainly must,” agreed Lady Merrick with crisp decision.

  Alix mentally said goodbye to any hope of meeting the other young Herrolds, or of dining with Richard or even seeing him again. She felt absurdly disappointed, considering the shortness of their acquaintance.

  “Herrold wants my land and theirs for his disgusting caravan park,” Lady Merrick went on in tones of deep scorn. “Your uncle, poor darling, would turn in his grave.” With a sudden startling neigh of laughter she added, “The creature actually offered me—through his lawyers, of course—eight thousand pounds for my three acres and the house. He little knows we’ve got woodworm so badly I’m always half expecting the roof to fall in. But even so, nothing would induce me to sell to him.”

  “Bravo, bravo, that’s the spirit,” applauded Eric Gore, looking at Alix as if confident of her approval too.

  Alix wondered why, if he was farming in the district, he should object so strongly to Paradise being developed. Surely it would mean a better market for his produce?”

  She returned his look warily. He was certainly striking with his height and looks and air of calm assurance. But she didn’t care about those eyes. Their scrutiny, and the steely clasp of his long-fingered hand, had given her an uneasy kind of thrill. Her heart had jerked almost as if with fear. Abs
urd, of course—Aunt Drusilla obviously thought a lot of him, and she should be a pretty good judge.

  “Why not bring Miss Rayne over early on Tuesday, in time for tea?” he was suggesting to her aunt now with flattering eagerness. “Then I could show her round the place before the rest arrive.”

  “Thank you, Eric. Delighted.”

  Alix murmured, “Thank you,” too—rather confusedly, feeling her poise desert her again. What was it about this man?

  “I’ve called a meeting of all the property owners in Paradise to discuss the present emergency,” he explained for her benefit as he set down his empty cup. “Action stations now, isn’t it, Lady D.? I must be off and go the rounds now, and make certain they’re all going to turn up. I’ll expect you on Tuesday at four, then? ... Splendid. Goodbye.”

  He took the veranda steps in two strides again, slid lithely into his powerful car, and was off.

  “A perfectly charming man, and a tower of strength in our fight against this Herrold menace,” Lady Merrick boomed deeply when the dust of his going had settled. “How did you like him, Alix dear?”

  Alix hesitated.

  “He—rather puzzled me. Is he a German, Aunt Drusilla?”

  “German? Nonsense, dear. Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “I don’t quite know. His looks, perhaps—rather Teutonic, aren’t they? And then that slipped sort of accent...”

  “That? Oh, but there are so many odd accents in this country. You mustn’t expect everyone to speak B.B.C. English here, you know.”

  “No, of course not. I must say, though, Mr. Gore doesn’t look a bit like my idea of a Cape farmer.”

  “Perhaps not—if your idea was some old Boer with a beard like Kruger. But he seems to be a highly successful one. Rolling, they say. He only came here a few years ago—but such an asset to Paradise! Apart from what his farm produces, he’s a keen fisherman and a dead shot—and so generous with the bag! You’ll be dining tonight off a haunch of venison he sent me. He often goes out after buck, you know. He’s a wonderful sportsman.”

  He certainly sounds a paragon, Alix thought, with a trace of derision. Perhaps I’ll like him more when I get to know him better.