Far in the Wilds

Ryder grinned. “Is that all?”

“I’ve signed you both up for the decorating committee at the club. Mind you don’t catch anyone unsuitable under the mistletoe.”

Ryder propped one booted foot on the toe of the other. “I should think you’d know by now—I specialize in unsuitable.”

* * *

Ryder was not surprised that Jude resisted; he was even less surprised when Sybil prevailed.

“What did she bribe you with?” Jude asked as she chucked her hold-all into the back of Ryder’s truck. “I know you wouldn’t do this willingly.”

Ryder slammed the door and set off with a crash of gears. “I had a little business in Nairobi. Two birds with one stone,” he said lightly.

Jude laughed, an oddly creaky sound, as if she hadn’t done it for a very long time. “Idiot,” she said affectionately. “She’s worried about you. That last bout of blackwater fever was nearly fatal. She wants you to have some fun before you’re six feet under,” she finished on a teasing note.

Ryder said nothing. He had learned long ago that most women wanted more than anything else a man who could listen. And Ryder could listen with the best of them.

“We’re both idiots,” Jude said finally. “She worries about your health and she worries that I think too much about Stephen. I must be losing my touch if I didn’t see through her right off.”

“She still thinks Stephen is coming home,” Ryder told her.

“So did I,” Jude admitted. “It’s just that I always believed he would turn up when the war was over. So long as the fighting was still going on, I could pretend he was lost somewhere, that he couldn’t find his way home to me. But now the war’s done, I can’t pretend anymore. I have to accept he’s gone.”

“Tusker hasn’t. Can you?”

Jude reached into her pocket and took out a cigarette, lighting it slowly. She blew the smoke out in a single gust of regret. “I don’t know.” She was silent a minute, then turned to his profile. “It’s frightful to think of how happy we all were when we got married. And now look at us. You and I are all that’s left of the shipwreck, survivors clinging to the mast.”

Ryder’s hands tightened on the wheel, thin lines of white crossing his knuckles.

“Do you think about her? About Eliza?” Jude asked.

“I sleep better when I don’t.”

She laughed again. “Can you accept she’s gone? Have you made your peace with it?”

He flicked her a glance. “What do you think?”

“I think Eliza is the reason you’re shooting and sleeping your way across Africa.”

Ryder stomped hard on the brakes, sending up a shower of dark red dust. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Jude. We’re not kids anymore, but I will still haul you out by your hair and leave you tied to a thorn bush.”

Jude lit a second cigarette and handed it over. “Peace offering?”

Ryder took a deep pull of smoke and jammed the vehicle into gear.

“Why is it that you are the one person who can always get under my skin?” he asked, half to himself.

“Because we’re the same,” she replied. “We couldn’t be more alike if we’d hatched from the same egg.”

“I think Tusker regrets the fact that we won’t just make a match of it. That we can’t.” He chose the words carefully, wrapping them softly in a tone so casual she couldn’t feel the sting of his finality.

“Ryder, dear, if that’s your subtle way of telling me it’s just not on, relax. I have never once thought of you as anything other than a brother.”

“Not even the time we went skinny-dipping in Lake Wanyama?” he teased.

“Especially the time we went skinny-dipping in Lake Wanyama, skinny being the operative word. You were a pole bean.”

“I was fifteen! I have matured a bit,” he protested.

“You have. You are as fine a specimen of manhood as I have ever seen,” she admitted. “But the one time you kissed me it was like being kissed by my dog. In fact, I’d rather be kissed by the dog. His hair is shorter.”

“Tusker has already had a go at me. But I’m not cutting it,” he warned. “It’s too much trouble to keep it short when I’m in the bush. You may have noticed the lack of barbers.”

Jude snorted. “I think it’s more likely that you enjoy looking like a pirate.” She touched a finger to the slender gold hoop threaded through his earlobe. “That’s new.”

He shrugged. “Too much gin one night and Gideon thought he would make a man of me. He told me he hadn’t so much as flinched during his circumcision and he wanted to see if white men were as tough as Masai.”

“And are you?”

“I bled like a pig, but I didn’t move,” he told her with an unmistakable air of satisfaction.

“And what about the rest of it?” she asked, flicking a significant glance at his trousers.

“Off limits,” he said firmly. “To you and anybody with a knife.”

Jude’s laughter, full and genuine this time, rolled out over the savannah.

* * *

Helen Farraday, head of the Colony Club social committee, looked over her list and sucked the end of her pen. It was not a coincidence that she was keeping half an eye on Ryder White as she did so.

“Helen? I’ve finished the place cards.” Jude came up behind her, eyes bright with malice as she startled Helen.

“Oh! How nice of you, dear. And what original penmanship. I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said, scrutinizing the cards. “I suppose people can just sit where they like. They always end up doing that at these affairs. I must tell you, Jude, I’m so very happy your Aunt Sybil suggested you and Ryder join us this year. I can’t think of the last time we saw either of you at the club.”

“There’s been a war on,” Jude said helpfully.

A rosy flush touched Helen’s cheeks. “Well, of course. We all did our part, I hope. I myself volunteered three afternoons a week at the hospital here in Nairobi. And Rex and I had several of the young officers to our farm to convalesce.”

“Really?” Jude tried to lift a brow as she’d seen other, more sophisticated types do. But sophistication was not in her repertoire. “I can’t imagine what you would think to do with a houseful of bored young soldiers.”

Helen’s mouth went slack, but before she could reply, Ryder appeared, holding masses of evergreen garlands in his arms. “I’ve finished the banisters and there’s just enough left to hang over the mirror above the bar. Does that suit you, Helen?”

She shifted her hips, smoothing her dress over them as she turned to him. “It suits me marvelously,” she breathed.

“Fine.” The syllable was clipped but it did not deter Helen. She watched as he moved to the bar, put one hand lightly on the long polished surface, and vaulted behind it.

“He is quite an athletic animal, isn’t he?” Helen observed.