Season of Shadows (2 page)

'I hope you had a pleasant flight?' he enquired once she
was seated beside him in the back of the car and they were being driven
from the airport grounds through a private exit.

'The flight was very pleasant, thank you,' she replied
stiffly, clasping her hands nervously in her lap as she felt those
steel-grey eyes observing her intently in the darkened interior of the
car. 'It was very kind of you to place your aircraft at my disposal, Mr
DeVere.'

'My concern was for the child,' he brushed aside her
remark callously. 'She needs you, so I considered it imperative that I
should get you here as quickly as possible.'

That was one way of telling her that she could have gone
to the devil as far as he was concerned, Laura thought wryly, but this
was one occasion when she would not allow herself to be affected by his
cold, autocratic unfriendliness.

'How did it happen?' she asked at last.

'There are plenty of theories, all of them probable, but
the most likely one is that, on their way to South America, Robert and
Elizabeth were caught up in that freak storm which has been ravaging
the west coast during the past few days.' He spoke hurriedly, as if he
wanted to get the explanation over and done with as quickly as
possible. 'An Air Force helicopter spotted the wreckage early this
morning, and there's no doubt that it was the
Bluebird's
.'

'I don't suppose—'

'No, there's no possibility that they could still be alive
somewhere,' he interrupted impatiently, guessing her thoughts, and
shattering her final shred of hope. 'The continuation of the search is
now a mere formality. There will, of course, be an enquiry afterwards,
and only then will their deaths be made official.'

Laura lapsed into silence. She suspected that she had
heard as much as he was prepared to tell her at that moment, and any
further questions which might occur to her would have to wait until he
was in a more amiable mood…
if
such a
thing were possible.

Table Mountain, floodlit and majestic, was ahead of them,
and then the car turned off along the freeway towards Constantia,
leaving the lights of the city behind them. There was no joy in her
surroundings on this occasion, only a deep emptiness and sorrow at the
thought that the two people she had loved so dearly would not be there
at the end of her journey to welcome her.

'Sally will make up for Elizabeth and Robert's absence,'
Anton remarked, sensing her thoughts in that uncanny way of his. His
hand found hers briefly in the dark interior of the car, and the touch
of those strong fingers gripping her own was as unexpected as it was
comforting.

The car swept through the gates of Bellavista and up the
long avenue of cypress trees towards the two-storied, gabled house
which was surrounded by spacious, beautifully kept gardens which were
now shrouded in darkness.

This was not Laura's first visit to Anton DeVere's
impressive home. She had been there once before with Robert and
Elizabeth when Anton had entertained a client on a visit from Germany.
It had been an all-day affair with bathing in the marble pool, and
tennis on Bellavista's two excellent courts. A typical South African
braai
had been arranged for that evening, and afterwards the long dining hall
had been cleared for dancing. Laura had not lacked partners that
evening, but Anton had never once asked her to dance, and his obvious
omission had strengthened her suspicion that she had been there on
sufferance because of the family tie between herself and the wife of
his closest friend.

The car drew up beside the shallow steps leading up to the
double oak doors, and moments later Laura found herself in Bellavista's
large entrance hall with its original black and white stone floor still
in perfect, gleaming condition. Small Persian rugs lay scattered
decoratively on the floor, while a carved wooden bench and an antique
rosewood table were the only other objects to adorn the hall, she
noticed when she cast a swift, appreciative glance about her.

'Sally's room is this way,' Anton announced, and she was
led across the hall, up the curved staircase, down a passage and along
yet another before he opened a door and stood aside for her to enter.
'This is your room,' he said, not giving her the opportunity to look
about her before he opened the interleading door and ushered her into
the adjoining room.

A bedside lamp illuminated the room and a child sat up
eagerly in the bed the moment they entered through the door.

'Aunty Laura?' she whimpered pathetically, her eyes red
and swollen, and Laura went to her at once, seating herself on the side
of the bed as she leaned forward to take the child into her arms and
hold her close.

'Sally darling!' Laura exclaimed softly, controlling her
own desire to weep as she felt the small, firm body in her arms shaking
with the force of her tears.

'They're d-dead, Aunty Laura,' Sally sobbed brokenly into
Laura's neck. 'M-Mummy and D-Daddy are d-dead.'

'I know, darling, I know,' Laura whispered, brushing a
strand of dark hair out of Sally's eyes and kissing the wet, flushed
cheek to hide the moisture in her own eyes.

'Why, Aunty Laura?' Sally cried. 'Why did they have to
die?'

Laura swallowed convulsively to relieve the ache in her
throat and tightened her arms about her young niece. 'I can't answer
that, Sally, but for all of us there's a time to live and a time to
die, and we must accept that God wanted it this way.'

'I wish I were dead too!'

'Don't wish that, darling,' Laura cautioned swiftly with a
lump in her throat. 'You're all I have now.'

'You should go to sleep now, Sally,' Anton instructed,
speaking for the first time since they had entered the room, and Laura
felt almost guilty at having forgotten his existence for those few
brief moments. 'It's been a long day for you,' he added sternly, 'and
you must get some rest.'

'Yes, Uncle Anton,' Sally whispered, sliding beneath the
covers, but her anxious glance returned swiftly to Laura. 'You'll be
here tomorrow when I wake up?'

'I'll be here,' Laura promised, and the plea in Sally's
eyes wrenched at her heart as she leaned forward to kiss her on the
forehead.

Later, in the living-room with its stone, fireplace and
priceless seventeenth-century furniture, Anton poured coffee and
extended a silver salver towards her.

'Have a sandwich,' he ordered.

'I'm not—'

'I doubt if you had anything to eat this evening,' he
observed dryly, his cold grey eyes narrowing at the look of guilt that
flashed across her pale, sensitive face. 'I thought not,' he added
reprovingly before she could think up a reply.

'I wasn't very hungry,' Laura explained lamely, accepting
a sandwich much against her will.

'Neither was I,' he stated calmly, placing the salver on
the low table between them and helping himself. 'I was also too busy to
take time off for dinner this evening.'

Laura bit into the tastily prepared chicken sandwich, and
was surprised to discover how hungry she actually was. The sandwiches
disappeared rapidly, and while they ate, she observed the man reclining
in the armchair opposite her. The silver threads in his dark hair had
become more pronounced since their last meeting, but the tanned,
angular face with the hawklike nose still wore that mask of
ruthlessness she remembered so well. There was nothing attractive about
the hard set of his mouth and jaw, but there was that indefinable
quality about him that reminded her of a sleek panther, always on the
alert, and with those powerful muscles geared for action at a moment's
notice to claim its terrified prey. Perhaps it was that quality of
danger about him which had first stirred her senses and made her so
aware of him that she had never quite succeeded in forgetting him, she
thought ruefully.

Anton DeVere was a man apart; an enigma, and, as the head
of DeVere Enterprises, she was certain that he would never quite
realise the total extent of his wealth. He was far beyond her reach,
and even if she had ever been foolish enough to hope for something more
in their relationship— which she had not—then she
had known from their first meeting the futility of it. With Elizabeth
and Robert no longer there, she would, in all probability, never meet
him again after this, and the realisation left her with the curious
sensation that she was in the process of losing something of value.

'More coffee?' Anton interrupted her thoughts, and she
lowered her lashes swiftly to conceal what was mirrored in the depths
of her deep blue eyes, but she could not conceal the guilty flush that
stole up into her cheeks at the thought of how close she had come to
being caught staring.

'No, thank you,' she said with frigid politeness. 'No more
coffee for me.'

'Cigarette?'

'Please,' she nodded, leaning forward to accept a
cigarette from him.

Laura seldom smoked, except in moments of stress, and
this, she felt, was one of those moments. She had grown tense with
concern for her niece, and the knowledge that she had to be strong for
the child's sake. The shock of Elizabeth and Robert's deaths had had to
take second place, but she felt it now in every taut muscle as she sat
in Bellavista's luxuriously furnished living-room, smoking her
cigarette in thoughtful silence. She felt Anton's eyes on her, invading
the turmoil of her unhappy thoughts, and she said the first thing that
came into her mind when the silence between them became unnerving.

'Do you think their bodies will ever be recovered?'

'I doubt it,' Anton replied without hesitation. 'The sea
nearly always holds on to its own.'

'It's a distressing thought,' she said unsteadily,
crushing her half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray beside her chair.

'It's a very appropriate burial ground for two people who
loved the sea as much as they did.'

'I think I'd like to go to bed,' she said at once, unable
to bear the idea of two such vital people lying fathoms deep somewhere
under the ocean, and Anton rose politely to wish her goodnight, but at
the door she paused and turned. 'I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to
stay until the end of next week. There's Sally's future to think about,
and—'

'You may stay as long as you wish,' Anton interrupted in
that firm, autocratic voice, 'but Sally's future has already been
decided.'

Laura felt a new tightness coiling about her insides.
'What do you mean, her future has already been decided?'

He dismissed her query with an imperious wave of his hand,
but when she stood her ground, he said harshly, 'I think we'll leave
that discussion for the morning when we're both less tired.'

'But I insist on knowing!'

Except for a slight narrowing of those heavy-lidded
steel-grey eyes, his granite-like expression remained unaltered, but
Laura knew at once that she had overstepped the mark.

'You are not in a position to insist upon anything,' he
reminded her coldly. 'It's I who am insisting that you retire to your
room and leave me to the privacy I'm accustomed to.'

Laura felt very much like a child who had been rapped
severely over the knuckles, and, as the blood surged painfully into her
cheeks, she realised that, despite his hospitality and the generosity
of his efforts to bring her to Sally's side, Anton DeVere still
considered her an intruder. She wished she knew why this knowledge
should hurt so much, but she was not going to hang around to find out
and, muttering a hasty 'goodnight', she managed to find her way back to
the room she was to occupy for the next few days.

There was no sign of her suitcase, but, to her
astonishment, she discovered that her clothes had been transferred
neatly to the stinkwood wardrobe and dresser in the room. The satin
quilt had been removed from the old-fashioned copper bed, and her thin
cotton nightgown had been folded and placed neatly on the pillows.

She entered Sally's room quietly and found that she was
sleeping soundly with her one hand curled beneath her cheek. Laura
stood looking down at her with sympathetic concern until a warm
tenderness threatened to choke her and, drawing a steadying breath, she
turned away and returned quietly to her own room.

In the adjoining bathroom she soaked herself in a hot bath
until she felt the aching tension drain from her body, but reaction set
in when she eventually put out the light and climbed into bed. Choking
sobs racked her body, and she buried her face in the pillows to stifle
the sound of her tears for fear of disturbing Sally. Laura had felt it
coming since her arrival in Cape Town, but somehow she had managed to
keep it in check until now. She had been terrified, also, of making a
fool of herself in her imperious host's presence, but she had
thankfully been spared that humiliating experience.

When the storm of her weeping finally ceased, Laura
slipped into an exhausted sleep from which she did not awake until a
light hand touched her shoulder the following morning. She opened her
eyes reluctantly to find herself staring into two accusing brown eyes.

'I've been waiting ages for you to wake up,' Sally
announced with a hint of impatience in her voice.

Laura sat up at once and stifled a yawn. 'What time is it?'

'It's half past eight,' Sally informed her, perching on
the side of the bed and flicking her long plaits over her shoulders. 'I
had breakfast with Uncle Anton before he went to the office, and he
said I was not to wake you until now because you were very tired last
night.' Laura could not quite make up her mind whether to feel touched
or displeased by that remark, but she allowed it to pass when she
noticed a suspicion of tears in Sally's eyes. 'I'm so glad you came,
Aunty Laura.'

Laura opened her arms wide, and Sally almost fell into
them. 'Did you think I would stay away when I knew that you needed me,
darling?' she asked with her cheek pressed against the smooth dark head
resting on her shoulder.