Season of Shadows

• CHAPTER ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWO
  
• CHAPTER THREE
  
• CHAPTER FOUR
  
• CHAPTER FIVE
  
• CHAPTER SIX
  
• CHAPTER SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER NINE
  
• CHAPTER TEN
  

SEASON OF SHADOWS


When Laura's sister and brother-in-law were killed her
first thought was for their little daughter Sally. Sally needed a
mother—well, that was no problem; Laura was more than happy
to take on the job. But the child needed a father just as
much—and she knew and trusted Anton DeVere, so the obvious
solution was for Laura and Anton to marry. And Laura didn't like Anton
one bit! For the child's sake, could she make the best of a bad job?

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Most girls would have been swept off their feet by Scott
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so although she accepted Scott's proposal she knew she did not really
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had to think again about her true feelings…

SUMMER OF THE WEEPING RAIN

Lisa was spending a few months in the peace and quiet of
the African veld, away from it all, while she recovered from a serious
accident. Away from it all? Hardly, when the tough and ruthless Adam
Vandeleur was around all the time!

BITTER ENCHANTMENT

There was no way Melanie could get out of marrying Jason
Kerr—not at least without bitterly hurting her beloved
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didn't hate her new husband as much as she had imagined she
did—the reverse, in fact. But it seemed she had given her
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First published 1980

Australian copyright 1980

Philippine copyright 1980

This edition 1980

© Yvonne Whittal 1980

ISBN 0 263 73408 0

To every thing there is a season,

and a time to every
purpose under the heaven.

Ecclesiastes
III, 1

Laura
Hoffmeyer's blue eyes were clouded with pain and showed
signs of recent tears as she stared out of the aircraft window into the
blackness beyond, and tried to come to terms with the shocking reality
of what had taken place. She was winging her way from Johannesburg to
Cape Town in Anton DeVere's private jet, but the plush white and gold
interior of the aircraft went unnoticed as she relived the horrifying
events which had taken place since her arrival at her small Hillbrow
flat early that evening.

The caretaker had delivered the telegram which had arrived
earlier that afternoon, and when the thin, grey-haired woman had
departed, Laura stared at the orange-coloured envelope in her hands
with a growing uneasiness. Her scatterbrained sister, Elizabeth, sent
her a telegram each year on her birthday, but that was still more than
two months away, Laura calculated swiftly and, tearing open the
envelope, she read the printed message on the official-looking paper
within. An icy coldness enveloped her as she read it through several
times in order to make sure that her eyes had not deceived her, but the
horrifying words remained unchanged.

'Bluebird wrecked off skeleton coast. No hope of
survivors. Sally safe at Bellavista. Come at once. Will telephone
travel arrangements at 19h00 sharp. DeVere.'

As she stood pale and shivering with shock, the telegram
had fluttered to the carpeted floor from her nerveless fingers, and
then, fighting back the tears while she sought relief in action, she
went through to her bedroom and took down a suitcase to start her
packing. Later, when she was in control of herself, she telephoned her
employer at his home to arrange a week's leave and, when the telephone
rang at seven sharp that evening, she was ready to depart at a moment's
notice.

'A car will call for you at seven-thirty to drive you out
to the Rand Airport where my plane awaits you,' Anton DeVere's
deep-throated voice instructed from his home in Cape Town. 'I'll meet
you here on your arrival.'

'Sally?' she said quickly, anxious for news of Elizabeth
and Robert Dean's ten-year-old daughter before Anton DeVere ended the
call in his usual abrupt fashion. 'How did she take it?'

'She was shattered, naturally,' he told her with that
familiar hint of impatience in his voice. 'I've put her to bed, but I
doubt if she'll sleep until she's seen you.'

There were so many things she had still wanted to know,
but she decided reluctantly that they could wait, and their
conversation had ended abruptly. In the car driving her at speed to the
airport, Laura had shrunk into the shadows on the back seat to give way
to the tears she could no longer control, and the driver, if he had
heard a suspicious-sounding sniffle coming from behind him, had kept
his eyes rigidly on the road ahead.

'Could I bring you something to drink?' a uniformed young
man enquired politely, bringing Laura sharply out of her reverie and,
at her hesitation, he smiled and added persuasively, 'I can make an
excellent cup of tea.'

Laura accepted, realising suddenly that the hollowness at
the pit of her stomach was not entirely due to the shock of the news
she had received. She had had nothing to eat, or drink, since
lunch-time that day, but somehow the thought of food at that moment
nauseated her. When the young man returned with her tea she smiled at
him gratefully and, taking that as encouragement, he sat down on the
seat opposite her and lit a cigarette which, he told her, was forbidden
up front in the cabin and staff quarters.

'Do you know Mr DeVere well?' he asked with eventual
curiosity, his openly appreciative glance resting on her honey-brown
hair which was coiled into a casual but elegant knot in the nape of her
neck.

'I know him well enough to know that he's a man who's so
accustomed to having his own way that he could be dangerous when
crossed,' she could have said, but instead she said stiffly, 'My sister
was married to a very close friend of Mr DeVere's. They were killed
this morning when their yacht was wrecked.'

'Oh, I'm sorry,' he said, his sympathetic glance bringing
a renewed lump to her throat. 'I'm terribly sorry.'

Laura averted her tear-filled eyes, and the young man,
realising that she wanted to be alone, remained only long enough to
finish his cigarette before he took her empty cup from her and excused
himself.

Anton DeVere's telegram had realised the fears Laura had
had since Elizabeth had married Robert Dean. As sisters, with a
five-year difference in their ages, they had been close since the death
of their parents when Laura had been fourteen. They had been left with
sufficient money to support themselves, but, when Elizabeth married
Robert a year later, Laura had had no option but to become a boarder at
the convent during her last two years at school.

Robert Dean, a wealthy yacht builder from the Cape, had
been almost fanatical about his love for the sea and, under his
enthusiastic guidance, Elizabeth had developed a wanderlust to match
her husband's. The birth of their daughter, Sally, had been almost an
inconvenience, but Elizabeth had been determined that nothing would
deprive her of her husband's company when he took to the sea in his
favourite yacht,
Bluebird
, and Sally had spent
her first six years accompanying her parents on their many voyages to
foreign continents. She had been able to speak a nautical, seafaring
language even before she had been able to speak English, but having to
attend boarding school finally curtailed these trips for her, and now,
at the age of ten, she had grown into a fiercely independent little
creature. Dark-haired, with her father's brown eyes and her mother's
smile, Sally occupied a special place in Laura's heart, and it was her
concern for the child which succeeded in keeping her dry-eyed and
rational now despite her own personal grief.

It was typical of Anton DeVere to take the child into his
custody, but Laura had to admit that Bellavista, with its park-like
gardens and its splendid view of the wine-producing Constantia valley,
was an ideal setting for a child who needed sanctuary while adapting
herself to the distressing news that the sea had robbed her of both her
beloved parents.

Anton DeVere
. Laura shifted her
position uncomfortably, almost as if she felt his dominating presence
there beside her. She had met him for the first time six years ago
while on a visit to her sister, and she had been left with a lasting
impression of ruthless strength and raw masculinity. He was the only
man who, in all her twenty-six years, somehow had the ability to make
her acutely conscious of her femininity merely by being in the same
room with her. Cynical and coldly dispassionate, he had treated her
initial attempts at friendliness with suspicion and scorn, and through
the years, whenever they had met on her frequent visits to Cape Town,
she had found herself behaving towards him with a frigid politeness
which stemmed from an inexplicable wariness in the company of a man who
sometimes had the uncanny knack of reading her mind.

'Please fasten your seat belt, Miss Hoffmeyer,' her
thoughts were interrupted apologetically by the young man who had
served her tea during the flight. 'We'll be landing in about ten
minutes,' he warned.

The two and a half hour flight from Johannesburg to Cape
Town was soon at an end, and Laura found herself and her suitcase
transported swiftly from the aircraft to the large chauffeur-driven
limousine which had driven up moments after the pilot had cut the
engines. Anton DeVere stepped from the car at her approach, but she was
unaware of the flicker of interest in his hooded eyes as he observed
the lithe, easy grace with which she moved. Seeing him again, after an
interval of months, was an experience that needed all her self-control,
for his tall, wide-shouldered presence exuded that same shattering aura
of masculinity which she had encountered at their very first meeting.