Dark Moonless Night. Anne Mather

mud-coloured pants and a cream bush shirt, but what attracted Caroline’s attention was the man’s hair. It was corn-fair, streaked with a lighter shade, as though the sun had bleached it, and it was startling against the dark tan of his skin. She had only known one man with hair like that, one man whose ice-blue eyes could turn to green when he was emotionally aroused, one man who had once asked her to marry him, and she had turned him down because she had youthfully asserted that she didn’t intend to marry a penniless engineer and go and live in some awful, Godforsaken, undeveloped country. How stupid she had been, how careless with the one thing in her life she had ever really wanted …

      The man was standing quite still now staring at her, and she moved uncomfortably under that intent scrutiny. But for a moment she had felt as shocked as he must be at seeing her here. What could he be thinking? What kind of a coincidence did he think this was?

      Realising that it was up to her to make the first overture, she took a few steps towards him and said: ‘Hello, Gareth. This is a surprise, isn’t it?’

      Gareth Morgan seemed to recover admirably quickly from his momentary pause. In fact, he didn’t seem too shocked at all. It was Caroline who could feel the tremor of this encounter rushing through her veins, moistening her palms, sending a rivulet of sweat down her spine. She had not realised until then just how much she had wanted to see him again, and she had the most ridiculous impulse to run to him, to press herself against him, and beg his forgiveness for what happened seven years ago.

      But of course the very fact that it was seven years ago precluded any show of emotion. Seven years was a long time, and a lot had happened—to both of them. Why else had she waited so long before making any attempt to contact him? Even now, facing him, the width of the years stretched between them, made even wider by the cold detachment on his face.

      ‘So you really came, Caroline,’ he remarked at last. ‘I never believed you would.’

      He made no attempt to take the hand that she had tentatively offered, and awkwardly she allowed her arm to drop to her side. She was aware of Miranda’s speculative interest, of David’s curiosity, and gathering all her composure, she said: ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

      Gareth looked sceptical. ‘No? Oh, well, never mind.’

      Caroline frowned. ‘Did you know I was coming, then?’

      ‘Know? Of course I knew. I thought that was the general idea. I just can’t imagine why you bothered.’

      Caroline coloured. ‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken if you think I supplied advance notice of my arrival——’ she began hotly.

      ‘Am I?’ Gareth’s tone was mocking. ‘Didn’t you expect us to meet?’

      Caroline bent her head to the children. ‘Look!’ she said. ‘There’s a monkey hiding in that tree just outside the window. Why don’t you go and see what it does?’

      David looked at Caroline and then at the tall man standing nearby. ‘You’re just wanting to get rid of us,’ he declared, with his usual candour. ‘Why? Who is this man? Does he work for Daddy?’

      Caroline straightened, her cheeks burning now. This was hardly the way she had envisaged her first meeting with Gareth Morgan. She had thought to surprise him, and if she had hoped for any reaction from him it had not been this mocking derision and scarcely concealed contempt.

      ‘Are these Lacey’s children?’ he asked now, and David said:

      ‘I’m David Lacey, and this is my sister Miranda. Who are you?’

      ‘My name is Gareth Morgan,’ replied Gareth, his expression changing somewhat as he went down on his haunches beside them. ‘I suppose you could call me a friend of your daddy’s.’

      ‘Do you live at La Vache, too?’ asked Miranda.

      Gareth shook his head. ‘No. I live at a place called Nyshasa, but it’s not far from La Vache. I live near the river.’

      David’s eyes were round. ‘Are there crocodiles in the river? My teacher at school said there were crocodiles in Africa.’

      ‘Oh, there are. But they prefer calmer waters than where I live. We do have hippos, though, and they’re quite interesting.’

      ‘How super!’ David was enthralled. ‘Do you think my daddy would take me to see them——’

      ‘And me,’ piped up Miranda, when Caroline interrupted them.

      ‘Not now, children,’ she exclaimed, realising the sharpness of her tone had less to do with them than with the man talking so casually to them. ‘Er—I’m sure Mr. Morgan has more important things to do than waste his valuable time talking to us.’

      Garth straightened, flexing his back muscles, unwillingly drawing Caroline’s eyes to the broadness of his chest. He was leaner than she remembered, but no less attractive because of it. ‘On the contrary,’ he was saying mildly, ‘I came here to meet you and take you back to La Vache.’

      ‘What?’ Caroline gasped, and then quickly tried to hide her astonishment. ‘But—but I don’t understand——’

      ‘Nicolas Freeleng and I are old friends. Lacey told him that an old—acquaintance—of mine was coming out here with his wife to help her with the children. Then, when they ran into some trouble at the mine, and it was going to be difficult for Lacey to get away, Nick asked me whether I’d do it—seeing that we were old acquaintances.’

      ‘I—I see.’ Caroline digested this with reluctance. ‘Well, I’m sorry if we’re being an inconvenience to you.’

      ‘Did I say you were?’

      ‘No. No, but——’

      ‘But what?’ Gareth’s eyes narrowed to thin slivers of blue ice. ‘Wasn’t this the way you intended us to meet? What did you hope to do, Caroline? Disarm me with surprise—and seduce me with what might have been?’

      Caroline was shocked at the bitterness in his tone. ‘Of course not,’ she denied defensively. ‘Surely after all these years we can meet as—as friends.’

      ‘Friends?’ There was pure contempt in his voice now. ‘Caroline, you and I can never be friends, and you know it. Now, I don’t know what you hoped to achieve by coming here—I imagined you’d be happily married to some comfortably-off business man by now. That was your intention, wasn’t it?’ His lip curled. ‘I might even be doing you a disservice by suspecting that I figure in any way in your plans. But I’m giving you fair warning, if you have any foolish notion of entertaining yourself while you’re here by trying to rekindle old fires, you’ll be wasting your time!’

       CHAPTER TWO

      THE heat in the station wagon was intense, but to wind down the windows was to invite clouds of choking dust into the car, and therefore the heat was the lesser of the two evils. All the same, Caroline felt as though every inch of her body was soaked with sweat, and she wished David would stop bouncing about from side to side in his determination not to miss anything. Even Elizabeth, more comfortably ensconced in the front of the vehicle beside Gareth, fanned herself constantly with her handkerchief, and could no longer keep up the inconsequent chatter she had bubbled with when first they started off. Elizabeth was invariably at her best when in the company of an attractive man, and the fact that Gareth made only monosyllabic replies to her inane questions seemed to bother her not at all.

      But the afternoon was wearing into early evening now, and the shadows were lengthening beside the mud-baked track. There was a dank smell of rotting vegetation from the jungle-like mass that encroached on the narrow road, and from time to time the shrill cry of some wild animal rent the dying afternoon air. Miranda had long since passed the excitable stage and now curled into her corner, persistently sucking her thumb in spite of Caroline’s reprovals and David’s jeering.