Authors: Judith Stephan
Lady Carina Delucci sat opposite her husband at the other end of the gleaming mahogany dining room table. They both had a newspaper and it was common practice to exchange snippets of news over breakfast.
“Have you seen this on the front page, dear?” she said, tapping the paper. “Isn’t it awful? This killer goes around picking up women, killing them and then, and then leaving them just as they fall…” she drifted off.
“I’ve read it. It’s shocking!” Henri said, buttering another piece of toast and reaching for the marmalade. “He doesn’t perform necrophilia though, does he?
”
“What?” his wife replied innocently.
“Having sex with dead people,” he replied.
“Henri!”
“I do it all the time,” he continued winking at his wife, who even after twenty-five years of marriage still looked so appealing to him. Her hair was loose now, and the fine spray of wrinkles around her eyes made it look like she was always laughing.
“What do you mean?” she asked, recognizing the mischievous twinkle in his eye.
“I feel this body in my bed. It’s fast asleep, dead to the world, and I give it to her.”
She blushed. “I’m not asleep for long, Henri. That thing always manages to wake me up.”
“Come on, Carina, how would you feel like some after breakfast necrophilia?” he said laughing as he rose and starting to walk around the table towards his wife. He stood behind her and slipped his hands down the front of her gown until he touched her breasts. She giggled and grabbed his hands.
“You’re such an animal, my dear,” she said in mock coyness, but he knew she was the animal once the bedroom door was closed and she was away from the prying eyes of the staff.
*
Shilo did not speak to Stratt for the next four days: Circumstances dictated that they were to miss each other. Shilo was
mostly locked away from the sun’s penetrating rays, and Stratt was out in the reserve doing job. He took Michaela and Dorianne out to the Elephant Pools on the third day. It was the perfect opportunity to talk to Michaela about Shilo.
“So what is it with your sister, anyway?” asked Stratt, as he and Michaela sat in the front of the Jeep watching a bachelor elephant having a mud bath.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“I lost my temper with her the other day …I know I shouldn’t have, with her being a guest here and all but she has just got this way of making you feel like absolutely nothing at all, like an inferior being… of her being better than anyone else,” Stratt replied.
“Don’t worry about her,” Michaela said. “She is just like that. It will wear off once she gets to know you a little better.”
“Why, though? … What is she trying to prove?” Stratt asked.
“I really can’t tell you … let’s just say it’s a front to prove to herself that she’s worth something. Something terrible happened to her when she was a child … something which she has never got over and probably never will,” Michaela sighed.
“Has it got something to do with those nightmares she has?”
“God, is she still having those awful recurring dreams?” Dorianne chipped in from a back seat, “I thought those had stopped some years ago.”
“Well, yes. Maybe it was the fever that brought it on, but she had one the night of the camp fire … I was there,” said Stratt.
“You were?” laughed Michaela with a twinkle in her eye, “And what may I ask were you doing in her bedroom while she was sleeping? Is there a little holiday romance starting here?”
“No, it’s not what you think. I went to wake her up for a pre-dawn game drive I had promised her and she was feverish and thrashing about and screaming ‘No!’” mused Stratt; “It was quite awful to see. The terror, the unadulterated fear … I had to physically restrain her as she became very violent and supernaturally strong for such a tiny woman.”
“She’ll have to tell you, not me. I’ve been sworn to secrecy … but just remember … the horrible Shilo you see is not the real Shilo. She’s really a lovely person. I hope you’ll understand one day.”
“If I knew, maybe I would understand her better,” he said.
“I gave her my word. She’ll tell you when she’s ready.”
And then Stratt took a group of Americans out on an overnight trip to a mini-camp at the other side of the lake. Shilo spent her time reading and writing letters and postcards to her friends and family back in England. Her stupid cell phone had no reception and she wished she had brought her laptop, because emailing and texting would have been far quicker – and she could not remember the last time she had actually taken pen to paper and written a letter. She wrote quite a long, rueful epistle to Charles Lambert-Carr … but as she was considering how to end it (either with mush and gush or formally) she realised that she really was not missing the man at all. She thought of his thin, pasty legs; his dark, dead straight, always neatly combed hair; his thin, impeccably trimmed moustache and the fact that he thought he was really slumming it if he didn’t wear a tie, and she smiled to herself. Her letter contained nuances at how awful Africa was, with references to the uncomfortable heat, her bout of sunstroke and the brusqueness of their guide. She rambled on for pages, in her neat feminine print, about the animals they had seen: the experience with the lions, the elephants and the crocodile … but at its closure it dawned on her that Africa was not as awful as she was making it out to be: It was actually exhilarating! Africa was exciting and although she hated to admit it, she was having the time of her life. She had experienced more fun and excitement in her brief sojourn in the African wild than she could ever remember having before. It made her feel alive. And Stratt … she kept on comparing him to the men in her circle of friends. He was leagues ahead of them in every single way except that he was not one of them. She just wished she would see him again so she could apologise. Maybe try and explain why she had insulted him. She ended the letter with the word “Regards” … it was a conscious decision to cool it with Viscount Lambert-Carr.
On the fourth day, after a boring morning watching cable television while Stratt went out to see to an injured blue wildebeest, Shilo decided to go for a sauna. In the small changing booth, she stripped off, wrapped her hair in a fluffy white towel and fastened another over her breasts. She sat in the steaming room on a slatted wooden bench with her back against the cool tiles, a copy of Vogue on her lap and her eyes closed... The steam engulfed her, and there was a tingling in every pore as the moisture caressed her tender skin.
After five minutes, the door opened and a huge figure stood in a shroud of steam. It was Stratt, and her heart skipped a beat. He was wearing only a royal blue towel around his waist.
“Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was in here,” he said, but never-the-less he entered and closed the door of the small chamber, and sat down opposite her, without saying another word. Initially Shilo was indignant. No one would ever intrude on the privacy of a sauna back home … especially with someone like her in there … She reprimanded herself again. There was plenty of room in there for two.
Shilo looked at his muscular, golden torso beginning to glisten with moisture, his hirsute chest and thighs, the way his towel was stretched around him revealing every bulge, every sinew, every muscle… And silently scolded herself for admiring his physique. She was surprised to see that around his neck he still wore the chain and pendant she had given him. She tried to wrench her eyes back onto some damp and superficial article on a collagen cream in her now sodden magazine.
She could feel him staring at her, his eyes boring into her, but refused to look up, even though her mind was not on the near-soggy page at all. The silence was deafening and only punctuated by the whispers of hot, moist air emanating from jets on either side of them. Shilo felt very uncomfortable.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the thick, heavy air and then looked up at Stratt who was only two feet away. He was staring straight into her eyes, his face expressionless.
“Listen,” she said impulsively, “I’m really sorry about what I said the other morning. I don’t blame you for being angry… but I’m going to be here for a while before we take Michaela into town. I can’t bear this tension. Can we call a truce?”
He just continued to stare at her with his startling green eyes and without responding. Outwardly he appeared indignant, yet inside he wanted to laugh at her serious expression. She looked so exquisitely beautiful with her face shining, her body gleaming and the promise of her breasts visible at the edge of the towel that was wrapped around her. Her long, shapely legs were only centimetres from his own. If he reached out he could have touched her.
“Stratt, please talk to me?” she pleaded.
No answer. He saw a wet tendril of her hair that had escaped the towel turban and was plastered over her shoulder and onto her chest. He looked deep into those mysterious eyes, but said nothing.
“Stratt? This is so childish.”
The silence was agonizing. She rose self-consciously and picking up her now wrinkled, dripping journal, she took a step towards the door. She felt awful, humiliated. She was on the verge of tears. She had better leave before he noticed. It was like talking to a brick wall, and she certainly did not want to lower herself any further with any more begging – it was not her style. Suddenly he grabbed her wrist as she tried to brush past him.
“Apology accepted,” he said, and then he smiled a sadistic smile.
She had groveled a bit, and he had won. She instinctively tried to pull her arm free, but he held it in a vice-like grip from which there was no escape.
“Two things,” he said, “you don’t talk down to me again. You are no better than me.”
Shilo cringed as she waited for the next point.
“And secondly, you really shouldn’t bring magazines in here – they get wet and disintegrate.”
Suddenly they were both laughing at the wad of wet pages she held in her hand. He pulled her down and she landed on his lap.
“How’s your sunburn?” he asked, trailing light fingers over her shoulder.
“It’s not so sore any more … now I’m just starting to peel. It’s not a pretty sight.”
“That’s not possible,” he mused, “You are always a pretty sight.”
He could not help himself, the words had just tumbled out before he realized the significance of them.
Shilo wanted to flee. She felt trapped. He was flirting with her. It felt wrong. She was a guest and he worked here. But … he was like forbidden fruit. She couldn’t move. Some uncontrollable, supernatural force was slowly drawing her to this man.
He laughed and again ran a finger gently over her flaking shoulder. She was like a magnet. He just had to touch her. He was surprised at how light she was, at how he became instantly aroused as they touched, at how he was enjoying the feel of her so close.
“Stay away from the sun,” he said.
“I never want to see it again.”
There was an uneasy silence. Shilo was acutely aware of her near nakedness, his near nakedness and the thrill of his touch. The next step was to let him kiss her … but she was not ready for that. Not yet. She needed to leave. Quickly.
“Let me go, before I start to cook,” she said standing up.
And with a flurry, she was gone. Stratt rested his head against the cool tiles. Plan A had worked and she had apologised and begged. Now he was still going to play hard to get as he focused on Plan B. God, she was so beautiful. He had longed to kiss her … but he had to hold back. It was just all so wrong.
CHAPTER 6
Stratt thought about this
mysterious woman. Something deep inside him had awakened shortly after her arrival. But no matter how hard he had tried to suppress it, it just would not die. And now he was embroiled in this complicated plan, this game of cat and mouse.