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‘Marry me,’ he said, holding her away from him.

‘Why?’ Her heart was thudding. ‘Why, Hugo?’ Her eyes held his.

‘Well,’ he went on looking at her, ‘with all the irons in the fire, we could form quite a team. We’d combine businesses. Together, we should be a great success.’

‘It—it might just surprise you if I say yes,’ she whispered. ‘You know how to hurt me, don’t you? You would even go so far as to marry me—just to hurt me—to punish me for being Tirza
Theron
Harper. You’re ruthless, you’re conceited and you’re...’

He cut in, ‘Nevertheless, think about it.’

‘Yes. Make no mistake—I’ll think about it. I
am.
You despise my father’s money, and all it can buy, and yet you wouldn’t mind a share in it. It’s perfectly plain now. I think you’re despicable! But yet, I will think about it. You see, it might just suit
me
to marry you. I guess you hadn’t thought about that one, had you?’

At that moment Delphina came to announce that dinner would be served in the indoor patio and, confused, Tirza thanked her, for she had been aware of Delphina’s shocked eyes going to the broken glass and spilled liquid on the tiled floor in the hall, as she had stepped around them.

The indoor patio was furnished in cane, upholstered in bronze, cinnamon, black and white fabric, and Douglas Harper had arranged for a television set to be installed here. On the outside there were ginger and white striped canvas awnings at the windows, which were set in arches. Everywhere in this house there was this extravagant and lavish touch. They ate dinner at a glass-topped cane table, set with crystal goblets and gleaming silver. The cane chairs were high-backed and intricately scrolled. After dinner Hugo turned on the television and, feeling tense beyond words, Tirza stood up. ‘I’m going for a swim,’ she said.

‘That scar might be vulnerable to infection,’ he hardly gave her a glance. Obviously he had forgotten that only a short while ago he had proposed to her, she thought bitterly.

‘It seemed all right when Gerry took the stitches out,’ she said.

With considerable impatience he glanced away from the television set and said, ‘Can’t you hang out for a couple of days? Why argue about something that makes sense?’

‘I don’t think it makes sense. In fact, nothing makes sense to me any more,’ she stormed at him, and then rushed from the room. All that made sense, she thought wildly, was that she was willing to take the risk of marrying Hugo, willing to throw prudence to the winds.

He was in the pool when she got there and she saw him look up at her and guessed, correctly, that he was angry with her. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said. ‘Keep out of the water, for a day or two.’

‘I am a fool,’ she said. ‘If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here with you now.’

‘That happens to be beside the point.’ She heard the anger in his voice. ‘Let’s not make a drama about this, Tirza.’

‘If I want to swim, I’ll swim,’ she replied with childish bravado, as she slipped out of the jacket she was wearing over her bikini and tossed it over a chair. The enormous red poppies, yellow sunflowers and green leaves in the material looked almost real. For a moment she looked sleek and beautiful in the moonlight and the light coming from the garden lamps and underwater light of the pool, before she did a neat dive and vanished in a swirl of translucent turquoise-blue water. When she surface she discovered that she had come up near him.

‘You always seem to go through life with an imperious indifference to possible danger,’ he said.

‘I don’t think I do. Often I’m only too aware of danger—only half the time, there’s never anybody around to share those fears with me. Right now, I’m aware of danger, as it so happens.’ She began a slow crawl away from him and she was very flat on the water and her style was good.

‘Very good,’ he called out. ‘If that was meant to impress me—I’m very impressed. But then you’ve been perfectly coached, quite obviously. You are talented and beautiful—enough to excite any man, even when the man happens to be married. No doubt, he was one of many.’

Suddenly she hoisted herself from the water and stood looking down at him before she picked up a towel and began to dry herself. Silver drops of water that clung to her smooth tan were easily seen in the softly glowing light which suffused this part of the garden. The Karroo night was silent and the air was perfumed with night-scented tobacco plants, their pale flowers gleaming beneath the stars.

‘Oh yes, I’ve had a string of affairs. I thrive on variety,’ she told him.

‘I believe that,’ he flung back at her. ‘I can quite believe that the intimacies you’ve shared with me— plus some more—have been shared with countless other men.’

‘It makes no difference to me what you believe. Go ahead, feel free—but if you want to marry me, you’ll just have to accept me the way I am, for I’ll accept your proposal, if it’s still open, of marriage.’ She laughed carelessly, but her heart was racing. ‘Getting married for business reasons has its advantages—even
I
can see that.

Tirza had slicked her wet hair right back from her face and it was easy to see that thin white line where her tan ended and her hair began. Tiny circles of gold glinted in each ear. A full orchestra of crickets filled the otherwise quiet air.

When Hugo had hoisted himself from the water he strode to where she was standing, and she caught her breath as he grabbed her wrist between his fingers. ‘Do you ever stop to think?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I do. I think all the time, believe me. You and I do have much in common. You’ve called me ambitious and nobody can deny that
you
are ambitious. And then there’s my father’s money, isn’t there? It will come in very useful. I mean, you did say that bulldozing your place in Cape Town very nearly broke you, didn’t you?’

‘I’ll advise you not to judge me on your imagination, over which, I might add, you appear to have no control. Money has never been my undoing, Tirza.’ His grip on her wrist tightened. ‘Just put that on record. What’s more—especially when that money doesn’t happen to be my own. If you marry me, Miss Harper, you won’t exactly be marrying a poor man.’

‘There is no if about it. I am willing to marry you. But, while we are having this discussion, isn’t this just what you have done? You’ve judged me on your imagination.’ She glanced down at her wrist. ‘Will you let go of me, please? You have a cold, calculating character.’

‘To match your own, in fact,’ he answered. When he kissed her she had the weakening but exciting feeling that she and Hugo were both caught in a slowing down of time, as if they could go on kissing like this, for long, long minutes, with no particular urgency until the moment when they both realised that only complete surrender on her part could assuage the hunger that was mounting in both of them. Tirza realised that his power over her was such that she would deny him nothing. To her humiliation, however, he released her suddenly and reached for her jacket and draped it about her shoulders.

‘I suggest you go and change,’ he told her, ‘and I suggest, also, that you put an antiseptic of some sort on that scar, which still looks inflamed enough to give rise to trouble. Tomorrow we’ll go into town and make arrangements to be married by special licence. So that rules out all those charmingly engraved invitations, St Joseph and arum lilies and a veil.’

‘So our marriage is still on?’ Her breath was coming fast and she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘You still intend to go through with this farce?’

‘Yes, of course. Marrying you will have its advantages and so that makes two of us.’ Hugo’s eyes went over her. ‘There are worse things than marrying for business reasons.’

In the morning Tirza was up early and devoted time going through the clothes hanging in cupboards and folded in drawers—clothes she had almost forgotten about ... abandoned ... It seemed incredible that this was her way of life. What was there here, forgotten about until this moment, for her to wear on her unbelievable wedding day— for she was drifting into it without any thought of the future.

At the time of visiting the farm with her father and the Winters, she remembered she had
been
madly attracted to vivid, handcrafted clothes made in loosely-woven cotton fabrics worn by the Shangaan, Venda and Lobedu tribes. She took out a scarlet Shangaan caftan, which had widely-spaced stripes at intervals all the way up, in cream, brown and black. Well, she mused, that was out. A blushing bride would hardly sweep the pavements of a Karroo town with it, on her wedding day. A label inside the neckline stated that the garment was from the Kuziwe Range, created by Dolores Perkins. Nothing but the best for Miss Tirza Theron Harper, she thought bitterly.

The next garment was off the shoulder and therefore not suitable. It was beautiful, though, with gathered long sleeves and skirt created out of Shangaan fabric which had wine-red and slate-blue bands. And then came the Swazi Mahia wrapover which, because of its name alone, should be appropriate. The brown Mahia print was patterned with cream loops and squares, and Tirza recollected there had been beads to go with it. Cream coloured ostrich beads, and the necklace was so long that she used to twist it three times round her neck, and even then the strands fell to beyond her waist. The Mahia wrapover it would be. After all, she knew from experience that the colour did things for her tan, but after she and Hugo were married and got back to the farm, she would change for dinner, she thought. She would get Delphina to prepare Karroo partridge that night and she would invite Gerry round for drinks, although he had no idea of the drama which was being played out in this house, right at this moment. After searching around for the bronzy-brown high-heeled sandals to go with the dress, she put them all to one side and went down to the lounge, where she poured herself a sherry. Her hands were shaking and she went to one of the huge windows.

Hugo was in the pool, and he was the man she was going to marry. He was also the man who had received a telephone call from Paige Mobray that very morning ... and she watched him moodily. It was a staggering thought that, if she had not been bitten by Delphina’s dog, this would never have happened to her. Hugo would have gone back to his house in Cape Town and possibly she would have travelled back with him, where they would have parted.

Glass in hand, she went out to the pool. Magenta bougainvillaea, in white tubs, was reflected in the filtered pool and the colour seemed to be dancing around Hugo in the water. Directly he looked up at her Tirza saw his eyes go to her glass and, because it was such a hostile glance, she said flippantly, ‘You know, I was just thinking—you might well end up with a mad wife. If Delphina’s dog was rabid, you know. Do people who’ve been bitten by a rabid dog go mad, or what? I’ve never known.’ She took a sip of her sherry, as fear washed over her and she realised how tense she had been with the thought of rabies never very far from her mind.

‘Cut that out,’ he snapped. ‘Okay?’ She watched him as he got out of the water. ‘What’s the
drink
in aid of?’ he asked, while he reached for his towel. ‘At this time of day?’

‘I’ve been busy,’ she told him. ‘I’ve been choosing my wedding outfit for the civil ceremony.’

‘And that warrants drinking sherry at this time of the day?’

‘How did you know it was sherry?’ She took another sip.

‘I can smell it’s sherry.’ He sounded impatient.

‘I’m unsettled,’ she went on. ‘Everything seems so—so unbelievable and unreal.’ Her troubled green eyes went over his face and she longed for him to take her into his arms, wet as he was, and to hold her very close and to tell her that he loved her. When he remained silent she said, ‘Despite Women’s Lib, you know, brides still want to appear fragile and lovely.’ Her voice was superficial and carelessly frivolous.

‘There’s nothing fragile about you,’ he said cruelly. ‘If there were, you wouldn’t be marrying me.’

‘Don’t you want to marry me?’ she taunted.

‘Try to figure it out for yourself,’ he snapped, ‘but go on, I’m interested—being the future groom and all that.’

‘Well, the outfit I’ve chosen, and I hope you’ll approve, happens to be of Swazi origin, which I think is very appropriate.’

She watched him moodily as he went on drying himself. ‘You make a drama out of everything.’

His dark blue eyes came back to her. ‘What difference does it make what you wear? Maybe you can see some humour in this, Tirza, but I’m afraid it escapes me. However, in the circumstances, I suppose it’s just as well you left it behind, along with all the other items of clothing.’

The dry air was faintly perfumed and Tirza thought it must be drifting in from those stunted Karroo bushes and she knew that she would always remember it.

‘When you’re ready, we can drive into town and arrange a special licence,’ he told her.

‘Do you mean—today?’ She looked at him with wide eyes.

‘Yes. Unless you’ve changed your mind?’

‘No, I haven’t.’ She turned away from him, afraid for him to see what was written in her eyes.

In the late afternoon they drove into the small town. Hugo was wearing a casual oatmeal suit which she had not seen before and which emphasised his hard, lean body. He was, she thought, feeling the need to breathe deeper, completely and utterly male, and she was going to be his wife.

The Karroo today was majestic, vast and endless. Those silent, brooding and fiat-topped koppies looked almost amethyst in the distance. At close range they became khaki-green, but still exciting, for the very reason that they were so barren. The vast arid plains were dotted with remote farmhouses, simple of architecture but orientated towards the extreme heat. The windmills were motionless, although there was a small, pulsing breeze to arouse the senses.

Hugo seemed preoccupied and disinclined to talk, so she stared out of the open window. This was, she thought, the land of merino sheep. The wool-store, in fact, of the country, and her father owned a part of it and, because of the Swazi Signature Weaving Industry in Swaziland, Hugo also had an interest in it. So much so, in fact, that he had even proposed this reckless marriage merely because it suited him.