The Winter Rose (104 page)

Freddie had finished with his tie and was standing close to her
now--so close that she could smell the scent of the soap he used, the
starch in his shirt. She forced herself to look at him.

As their eyes met, he said, "Divorce me, and you will never see her
again. Never. Not the odd weekend. Not Christmas. Not even her birthday.
I'll send her to live at Blackwood with only a governess for company--a
governess that I select and instruct. A bitter, severe old woman. I'll
tell her that you abandoned her because you no longer love her. I'll
break her heart, India, and I'll blame it all on you. It's your choice
to make--your lover or your child."

India closed her eyes. What a fool she was to think she could beat him. There was no choice. There never had been.

A sharp knock was heard at the door.

"Enter," Freddie barked.

It was the maid. "Pardon me, Lady India," she said. "I'm terribly
sorry to disturb you, but will you be needing your formal gowns for your
fortnight at Mount Kenya or may I pack them for the return trip to
London?"

Slowly, quietly, her heart tearing in two, India said, "Send them to London, Mary. Pack my tea gowns and riding habit."

"Yes, ma'am," Mary said, closing the door behind her.

"Quite sensible of you, old girl. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have
work to do. And you have packing. Just think ...a family holiday. A
fortnight together. What a jolly good time we'll have. I'm so looking
forward to it."

Seamie stood on the porch of Dr. Ribeiro's surgery, peering in
through a window. The sun wasn't up yet, but a paraffin lamp was burning
inside, illuminating the small room. He could see a man sitting on a
chair by a bed, reading. That was the doctor. Willa was lying in the bed
under a sheet, motionless.

Seamie rapped on the window softly. In a few seconds the door opened
and the doctor stepped out. "Mr. Finnegan, is it?" he asked wearily.

Seamie nodded. He could see from his bleary eyes and rumpled clothing
that the man hadn't slept. He'd been keeping vigil over Willa.

"I thought you'd be here early, but not this early. It's not even five o'clock yet. Couldn't you find the Norfolk?"

"I found it. Took a room. Had a wash. Tried to sleep, but I couldn't.
I had to come back," Seamie said. "Is she all right?" he asked, looking
at Willa again.

"She will be," Dr. Ribeiro said. "She's a fighter. She lost a bit of
blood during the operation, of course, and she's weak, but her fever's
come down a little. Now that the gangrene's gone, she'll make a good
recovery. I'm sure of it." He frowned, then added, "Of course, it's very
hard on a woman--an operation like that. They put a great deal of stock
in shapely legs and dainty ankles."

"Willa didn't," Seamie said. "She put stock in strong legs. She climbed mountains."

"Well, she won't be doing any more of that, and it's a good thing,
too. What was she thinking? The top of a mountain is no place for a
woman."

"It was a place for her," he said quietly.

"Was it? Look where it got her," the doctor replied briskly, obviously unused to being corrected.

"I brought her these," Seamie said, holding up a bag containing some
new clothes, and the latest newspapers. "I bought them yesterday. Can I
leave them by her bed?"

"You may. Just be careful not to wake her. She needs her sleep. Sleep
is the great healer." He bustled off to the back of the room. Seamie
heard water running, smelled paraffin and coffee.

He walked to Willa's bedside as quietly as he could. As he was
placing the bag down, he saw that she was awake. Her eyes were open; she
was staring at the ceiling. She looked so pale to him, so lifeless and
small.

"Wills?" he whispered, touching the back of his hand to her cheek. "How are you feeling?"

She didn't turn to him; she didn't look at him. "My leg's gone," she said in a dull, lifeless voice.

"I know it is," he said, forcing himself to look. He saw the bulge of her thigh under the sheet, her knee, and then nothing.

"How could you let him do it?"

"I had no choice. You would have died."

"I wish I had."

"Don't say that. You don't mean it. You're in shock."

"How will I climb?"

"I don't know, Willa," Seamie said, his voice faltering. "I don't know."

She closed her eyes. Tears leaked from under her dark lashes.

"Please don't cry. It'll be all right. You'll see." He didn't know
what to do. He wanted to take her into his arms, to kiss her pale cheek,
but he was afraid to. Afraid of her anger, of her despair. Afraid that
she was right. That the doctor had taken more than her leg. That he'd
somehow cut away her spirit, too.

"I brought you some things. New clothes, the papers..."

"I'm tired," she said, not opening her eyes.

Seamie nodded, feeling wounded by her words, by the accusation in
them. He wanted to hear her say that she still loved him. He wanted to
tell her that he loved her. Instead he said, "All right, then. I'll come
back later."

He took the clothes out of the bag and put them on a chair at the
foot of her bed. He put the newspaper on a small table by her head. A
headline about a local man's arrest shrieked up at him. He barely
noticed.

As he was making his way toward the door he noticed the doctor motioning to him from the back of the room. He joined him.

"She was awake? Talking?" Dr. Ribeiro asked.

"Barely," he said. "She blames me for what happened. She's angry."

"They all are at first. It's hard to lose a limb. Acceptance comes slowly, but it does come. Give her time."

Seamie nodded, rubbing a hand over his face.

"Mr. Finnegan, have you eaten anything recently?"

"I don't know," he said. He didn't. It was so hard to remember. The
last few days had passed by in a blur of fear and desperation. "I think
the conductor gave me something on the train. A sandwich."

"Listen to me, if you don't take care of yourself, you'll wind up in
here, too. Go back to the Norfolk, have a proper breakfast, and then
sleep. Let Miss Alden sleep. And the next time the two of you talk,
things will be better. You'll see."

Seamie thanked him and headed for the Norfolk. On the way, he told
himself that the doctor was right. He and Willa were both spent. He
would visit her again tonight when they were both a bit recovered.
Things would be different then. They each needed time to adjust.

Nairobi was not a large town and Seamie was back at the Norfolk in
fifteen minutes. It was a pretty hotel--built of stone, with a shingled
roof and a long veranda.

"The dining room's not open yet, sir. It doesn't open until seven,"
the clerk at the front desk told him when he inquired about breakfast.
"However, the bar's open. If you'd like to sit there, I can have some
toast and coffee brought."

Seamie made his way to the bar. Other men were already seated in the
room. Three or four looked like planters. There was a priest, two
military men, and a traveling salesman. He found an empty table and sat
down. A waitress came almost immediately with a steaming pot of Kenyan
coffee. Seamie poured himself a cup and savored it. The waitress came
back with hot toast, fresh butter, and a pot of strawberry preserves.
After days of dried goat meat and muddy water, coffee and toast seemed
like the greatest of luxuries to him.

He decided that after he ate he would have a long hot bath and a kip.
And when he woke things would look brighter. He was sure of it. Willa
was still in shock. As she recovered, she would begin to think more
clearly and see that he'd done the only thing he could do. He hadn't
forgotten what had happened on the mountain. Nothing could make him
forget. Not the accident. Not the five hellish days that followed. He'd
told Willa that he loved her. And she'd said that she loved him, too.
That was all that mattered. They were strong and they had each other and
they would get through this.

He ate another piece of toast, sipped the bracing black coffee. He
was beginning to feel like a human being again. Now all he needed was a
newspaper. And maybe a cigarette. There was no sign of any tobacco for
sale at the bar, but he did spot a paper folded up on a table near one
of the planters.

"Excuse me, is that yours?" he asked the man, pointing to it. "Do you mind if I take a look at it?"

"Not at all," the man said, handing it to him. He turned back to his
friends. "You see that headline?" he asked them, his voice loud with
amazement. "Baxter's been arrested."

"Sid Baxter? Bloke who works up at the Carr farm?"

"The very same. Turns out he's wanted in London for murder. Killed
some actress there a few years back. Got out of London on a supply ship.
Changed his name."

Seamie froze. He put his cup down and unfolded the paper.

"No," he told himself. "It's not him. It can't be. World's not that small. It's just a coincidence, that's all."

But it was him. There was a photograph. Black and white, grainy. And
with a long jagged line running through it, as if the plate had been
cracked. It showed a man coming down the steps of someone's porch, his
hands cuffed. His head was slightly bent, but Seamie knew him all the
same.

It was Sid Malone. His brother.

Sid sat on the dirt floor of his jail cell, his back against the
wall, his head in his hands. A bowl of suferia, a slop made of boiled
beans, sat untouched beside him. A mattress, filthy and bug-ridden, lay
on the floor. A battered tin chamberpot stood in one corner.

Sid's eyes were closed, but he was not asleep. He hadn't slept all
night. Images from his past, hellish memories of his time in prison,
replayed behind his eyes, torturing him. He heard the footsteps again,
coming to his cell at night. Felt the desperation, the fear. He heard
the guards' laughter, heard Wiggs telling him he'd be back one day.

This was his life now--this despair, this suffocating fear, this
desperate loneliness--and he knew it would be until the day he stood on
the gallows and a guard put a noose around his neck. Wiggs was dead, but
there were more like him. Plenty more. And they were waiting for him.

Sid heard footsteps again. They were coming down the hallway outside his cell. He flinched at the sound.

"Jesus Christ, it is you! You know something? This is getting pretty bloody old."

He looked up. A face looked back at him through the bars. He thought he knew it, but it seemed so haggard, so hollow.

"It can't be," he finally said. "It bloody can't be. Seamie?"

Seamie nodded. "In the fiesh," he said. "What's left of it."

Sid was on his feet in no time. Seamie reached a hand through the bars to him; he took it.

"How the hell did you get here?" Seamie asked.

"Might ask you the same thing."

"It's a long story."

"You've got a captive audience."

Seamie laughed wearily.

"Sit down," Sid said, pointing to a chair behind his brother.

Seamie pulled it over to the bars and sat. He leaned over, elbows on
his knees, hands clasped in front of him, and grinned at his brother.
"Can't believe this," he said.

"Nor me. You look terrible. Bloody awful," Sid said, forgetting his own misery. "What happened to you?"

"I climbed Kilimanjaro," he said. "On a bet."

Sid listened in amazement as Seamie recounted the whole adventure for
him, all the way from a dare made in a pub in Cambridge to the trek off
the mountain to Willa's operation. He gave a low whistle when Seamie
finished.

"Is she going to be all right?" he asked.

"The doctor says she will. I don't know. She looked awful just now."

"She's bound to, though. She must've been in terrible pain. And then the infection and the operation..."

Seamie shook his head. "It's more than that," he said. "She looked
gutted. As if they'd taken a lot more than her leg. Climbing's
everything to her and now she'll never climb again. She blames me. I
know she does."

"Who is she to you?"

Seamie stared down at his clasped hands. "No one special. Just the love of my life."

Sid's heart ached for him. "She'll be all right, lad. You'll see."

Seamie nodded, but didn't look convinced. "Well, anyway, that's my sad story," he said, trying to buck up. "Tell me yours."

Sid told him everything. For the first time, he told him about India.
He told him about coming to Africa and meeting Maggie and achieving
some small measure of peace. He told him how grateful he'd been for that
peace and how it had been smashed forever only days ago when he'd come
face-to-face with India again. And then her husband.

"The paper says he's having you returned to London to face charges in the Dean case."

"He means to hang me. I know he does."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a threat."

"To his marriage?"

"To his millions."

"Luckily, he's not the one who'll make that decision. There has to be
a trial. With a judge and jury. They'll see there's no case and set you
free. They'll have to."

"You don't know Lytton. When it comes to villainy, he makes me look
like a bleedin' amateur. He'll get his verdict. By buying the judge or
intimidating him." The despair he'd felt, momentarily chased away by the
shock of seeing his brother, came flooding back. "I'm a dead man,
Seamie."

"Look, you can't--" Seamie began.

His words were drowned out by the sound of angry voices coming down the hallway.

"You must wait here!" a man said. Sid recognized it; it was the
guard's. "Nairobi law states that a prisoner is allowed only one visitor
at a time."

"Get out of my way, George! I've traveled two bloody days to get
here. I've been forced to leave my farm in the hands of a drunken ninny.
My women won't work. And seven hundred acres of coffee are going to
hell while I'm standing here. All because that damned Hayes Sadler
arrested my foreman. So you can take your Nairobi law and stuff it up
your arse. Let me through!"