Burning Embers

by Hannah Fielding

  The Indian Ocean was shining silver in the half light, spread out in front of her as she strolled lazily, barefooted on the beach, delighting in the feel of warm sand under her toes and the refreshing breeze on her face. Nothing except a handful of bathers disturbed the quietude of that hour, leaving the landscape at peace. At the edge of night, her arms wrapped around herself, she sat on the shore under the open sky and watched the sea in the dimming light as the waves lapped at her feet.

  Coral’s dream had deeply shaken her. Most of the time she did not remember her dreams, and when she did, they were rarely as vivid. But this time Coral had a feeling of foreboding. Where was Rafe? Was he in danger? Why had he been away for so long? Was she ever going to see him again? Did she want to?

  The sun was just setting, staining the horizon with rose and deep gold. The ball of red fire dropped suddenly into the ocean; its reflection intensified and deepened before fading quietly away into the shadows of the evening. Soon the globe of the full moon took its place, as large as a balloon and as red as blood, an awe-inspiring spectacle that took Coral’s breath away. She loved the red moons that rose some African nights.

  The deepening dusk was charged with melancholy. After the long hot day, the soft night air was very pleasant, but she must be thinking of getting back soon. There were no bathers now — not a soul in sight. She was sorely tempted to stay on a little longer, even though she knew that it was not reasonable to be wandering alone at this hour on the deserted beach.

  Suddenly, a few meters away, a thin pencil of light cut the gloom, startling her. It shone straight on her, and Coral stood up, raising her hands in front of her face. Turning off his torch, Rafe emerged from the darkness and stopped just twenty paces away. Lost in her thoughts, she had not heard him approaching. Coral’s heart leapt; she inhaled deeply, feeling the blood quicken in her veins. Silent, they stared at each other in the moonlight.

  Coral’s body was riding a tidal wave of emotion, drowning out any rational thought except how much her body craved his touch, but she just stared at him.

  “How did you find me?” she asked quietly.

  “I rang the house. I know that you love the beach, particularly at this time of the evening.” Rafe looked like he was holding his breath, gazing at her intently, still keeping a few feet away. “Did you get my letter?”

  “No. What letter?”

  He took a step toward her and suddenly looked anxious. “You didn’t? From Paris…I wrote you a long letter a couple of weeks ago…I wanted to tell you…”

  “Tell me what, Rafe? What did it say?” Now that he was standing in front of her, Coral felt a mixture of intense feelings burning her insides. Rafe stared at her, his features sliding into a serious expression, and she was struck by the marks of strain and tension that furrowed his face as he finally came close to her.

  “My sweet Coral, you are the most desirable woman I’ve met, and I love you to distraction. It’s been hell these last weeks, and I know now that life won’t be worth living without you. All these years it’s as though a part of me was missing, but since you came into my life, I’ve felt whole.”

  Oh, God, Coral thought, he loves me. An almost unbearably sweet pain pierced her heart. She wanted to believe what he was saying to her. At the same time, a nagging voice at the back of her mind would not be silent.

  Rafe traced her cheek with his fingers, and then his arm was around her waist, his eyes still locked on hers as he slowly pulled her against him. For a moment, she resisted, but his arm drew her back with a gentle possessiveness, his expression pleading, and his mouth still moving toward hers. He kissed her with deliberate delay, stroking her bare skin, and her pulse quickened immediately at his touch. She had time to withdraw from his embrace if she wanted to, but this felt so good, so right. Warmth flooded her, and she remained.

  “I want us to get married. I want you to be my wife,” he whispered in her ear, his voice low and thick with passion.

  His words struck her like ice cold water. The threatening specters of Cybil and Morgana swam into her head as her mind spun with confusion and shock. He will destroy you, drown you like his wife. The words of the mishiriki echoed in her head like screaming birds, and her heart was pounding like a drum in her chest. Now, so suddenly, his misgivings were gone? Now, when he thought he was safe, that she was so in love with him she would not hesitate to be his wife, he had reappeared out of nowhere and finally dropped his mask. She wrenched herself away from him.

  “So it’s true! Every word I have heard about you is true!” she said, anger sweeping through her veins. “You want to marry me, do you? Is this your latest scheme? Do you think I don’t know you want to marry me to take back Mpingo? You don’t love me — it was all pretense. You’re a cold, calculating, and unscrupulous gold digger.” Coral was sobbing now, frantically stumbling back in the sand. Words suddenly seemed useless. In her distress, she wanted to scratch his face. She went for him, hammering his chest with her clenched fists. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…”

  He stood there staring at her wide-eyed. “Will you tell me what’s going on? What all this is about?” He seemed almost paralyzed by this frenzied outpour. Coral welcomed the adrenaline that raced through her veins and felt fury rise up in her. Teeth clenched, she lashed out at him to hurt him as he was hurting her. “I see you clearly now,” she hissed between sobs. “You’ve used our bodies as an instrument for your own ends. Even now as you asked me to marry you, you were trying to influence my answer by striking at my weakness and seducing me first.”

  He took a pace or two away from her, a dazed expression on his face, and passed his hand over his head like a man in a dream. “Honestly, Coral,” he said numbly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I love you, and I thought you loved me too…”

  “Yes, oh yes, I fell for you all right, like all your other women,” she said with a sneer. “You acted your role beautifully. But I’m stronger than you think, and I will not let you destroy me as you did your wife — or my father! You never told me that you were the grandson of the settler who sold Mpingo to my father. You married your heiress, got rid of her, and inherited her estate. How much more vile can you get? Is that what you want to do to me? Well, I have news for you…”

  He glared at her, smothering a profanity, his face drained of all color, his features distorted by anger but also by incredulity and pain. “Enough!” he bellowed. “Don’t you dare drudge up this venomous filth. You know nothing of my past and nothing of me. Nothing! You’re an unbalanced, hysterical, and spoiled child, and I don’t give a damn if I never set eyes on you again.”

  His face burned with contempt as he wrenched a little box from his pocket and threw it at her. “Here, that’s yours. I have no use for it anymore,” he said before he turned his back on her and strode off.

  Still trembling and crying, Coral watched his silhouette fade away slowly until it was swallowed up by the night. She waited for him to look back, but he did not. Throwing herself down on the cold sand, she crumpled up, weeping bitterly.

  She had never seen Rafe lose control like that. What was he hiding? If what she said was so scandalously untrue, why did he not defend himself? Of course she knew nothing of his past. Maybe if he had been more forthcoming, she would have understood him better. Then the image of his face swam in front of her and the pained look that had overwhelmed him. She realized with horror that she had gone too far.

  Did she hate him? It was said that hate was akin to love. Now she had lost him, she realized that she truly loved him. But however agonizing this realization was, she had done the right thing. She had listened to reason instead of her heart. He was not for her. She must be strong and pull herself together. She was young. With time she would get over him. Exhausted, Coral fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  When Coral opened her eyes again, stars overhead were starting to wane as though the first chilly breath of dawn had reached them, dimming their brilliance. She sat up and hugged herself aga
inst the cold, wiping her face with the heel of her hand. How long had she been there? The beach was deserted and remote, the sudden hush before sunrise when dark patches would soon be tinted pink. Coral noticed the small, black box on the sand beside her. She reached out for it and opened it. The most beautiful diamond ring lay on its velvet cushion like a large, iridescent tear. She held the little box to her chest and wept, this time for her shattered dreams. “Oh, Rafe… Rafe,” she sobbed, her face buried in her hands, her whole body shaking uncontrollably. Dear God, how this hurt. Why had he not explained himself before things had gone this far? She wanted to trust him; she would have gone to any lengths to erase from her mind all doubts and misgivings. Just a few words would have sufficed, but those words had remained unspoken and instead others had been said, causing irreparable damage.

  She would leave Africa as soon as possible. She had written her articles, taken her photographs, and had made a good job of it. There was no need for her to remain here anymore. Suddenly her heart yearned for England. She missed the mellowness of its colors, the coolness of its air, the ethereal scents that floated in its gardens. Africa was too dazzling, too passionate, and too savage. Her life in Derbyshire was more uneventful, but at least there she could be at peace with herself and with the world.

  * * *

  Rafe had walked all night, smoking and thinking of Coral. Loving her was tearing him apart. The fury had drained out of him. He replayed in his mind over and over again Coral’s senseless outburst, wondering what could have brought on such terrible accusations. He was aware of the gossip and poisonous aspersions that surrounded him. His father-in-law used to tell him to ignore it. “The more they talk about you, my boy, the more venom they spread, so the more jealous of you they are. It only means that you are successful.” Rafe had taken his advice and disregarded malevolent tongues. At the beginning, it was hard. With time, he had learned to accept rumors as a fact of life. Until this day, they had never really harmed him.

  Today, the evil of this gossip had finally caught up with him, destroying the loveliest thing he had ever known. Just as he had thought he would never find his heart’s desire, Coral had waltzed into his life. She had roused him, and despite his misgivings, he had fallen in love with her. For the first time in his life, he had known what it was like to feel safe, loved, and fulfilled. He was so close to holding his dream, and now it was being snatched from his hands.

  It was his own fault. He had been so excited to see her that he had not explained everything to her first, and instead had foolishly stunned her with a marriage proposal. Why didn’t you defend yourself? The voice at the back of his mind kept reprimanding him. There’s still time. Go to her, find her, and tell her everything. But pride had set in. She shouldn’t have lent an ear to such slander; she should have given him the benefit of the doubt. During these last weeks in Paris, he had finally determined to tell Coral how he felt. He had asked her to be his wife, and she had thrown it back in his face.

  Obviously she did not love him. I’m not asking you to marry me; I’m just asking you to treat me like a woman and take me to bed. Weren’t those her words to him that night of the storm? As he had feared, her feelings for him were simple infatuation, a physical attraction that he admitted freely he had encouraged. But wasn’t the Coral he knew incapable of passion without emotion? Not like the other women he had been with who just wanted him for mindless physical pleasure. That had suited him well enough until he had met Coral and had discovered the beautiful fusion of body and soul in her arms. And yet now it was unbearable that her faith in him, her love for him, was not enough for her to take him as her husband.

  She had shaken the very foundations of his world, and now he must rebuild them. After all, he thought, perhaps it’s for the best. He was too old for her, she would have eventually tired of him, and sooner or later he would have lost her. At least this way, fate or circumstances had taken the decision out of his hands, and he would not try to alter the situation, however much he suffered. He had fought fiercely against his demons…but it was no use; he should have known that it was a losing battle from the start. It had been madness to think that it could have been otherwise.

  Dawn was breaking when he got back to Whispering Palms. Morgana awaited him, sitting on the stairs, and he smiled ruefully as he saw her. Poor, kind, loyal Morgana — how she loved him. Somehow he wished he loved her too, a straightforward, uncomplicated love where passion had no place, but peace was king.

  Presently, she came up to him and laid her hand on his arm. “You look tired,” she said, eyeing him with concern. “Come, I will prepare you a hot bath. It will relax and soothe you.” Rafe knew this was her way of asking him if he needed to vent his physical frustration in her arms. He shook his head. “No, my sweet.” He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “This time, at least, it’s no use and not fair to you. I think I’ll shower and go straight to bed.”

  Rafe went to his room and stood on the veranda, his features set and remote, waiting to meet the new day. Darkness paled, and he watched the lightening of the sky as the streaks of color seeped through from the east. It was all so gentle, the fading away of blackness, the opening of the day’s gates, so much in contrast with the turmoil that inhabited his soul. Coral’s wounding words went round in his mind like a whirlwind. In all his black despair, he felt no hate for her. His love was still there, bruised perhaps, but still there, tugging at the root of his being, whole and frightening in its strength.

  The sun finally rose. He must rest; he had a long day in front of him. He had so much wanted her to be a part of this new life ahead of him, but now he would be facing it alone. Preparations had to be made. But without Coral, he now found the prospect tiresome and almost pointless. There were so many things about Africa that he would miss…eating by a campfire under a full moon to the sound of the animals’ cries, sleeping out in the bush beneath the blazing stars, listening to the sudden volley of tom-tom beats, the warmth and the vivid colors in the hills, and the eternal chirping of cicadas. Now, without Coral, civilization and all its obligations seemed monotonous and unbearable. Rafe resigned himself to a sentence of solitude in the jungle. He was alone again, as he had always been.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It had been a fortnight since Coral’s quarrel with Rafe on the beach. How long ago that all seemed now. Lying in her hammock among the frangipane trees, Coral was feeling resigned. After dawn had broken, she’d sat there, miserably reflecting on the past months and the immediate future. It had been mid-morning when she had finally brought herself to go back to Mpingo.

  Aluna had not tired of telling Coral how worried she had been by her disappearance that night. When the young woman had not shown up at nightfall, Aluna had gone searching for her on the beach and had found her in a crumpled, exhausted heap in the sand. Aluna had pleaded for her to come home, but Coral had remained, secretly hoping that Rafe would return. Though Coral would not speak to her over the following days, the older woman repeated endlessly that “the devil Frenchman” was responsible somehow for her little malaika’s distress.

  Since then, time had drifted on as golden, luminous days turned into sapphire moonlit nights. But to Coral, life was like being suspended in a sort of twilight. She half expected the telephone to ring at any moment, but it had stayed mute. Of course he would not call — why would he following her crushing words? She had debated whether to go to him, but pride, guilt, and mortification kept her from making the first move. After what she had said, how could she face him?

  In the cold light of day, things now appeared differently to Coral; she could find no concrete evidence for her recriminations. In retrospect, most of them were based on hearsay and the rest could have been her false deductions mixed with pure imagination. Even if they had been true, why had she reacted with such a volcanic eruption? Could she not have controlled herself and been less wounding, at least giving him a chance to defend himself? Once again her willful temperament had got the better of her. She
had been immature and even unjust, but most of all she had turned what they had shared so deeply, their beautiful love-making, into something vulgar and vile. There was no reason for him to forgive her this time. Their brief and fiery relationship was over.

  Soon she would be back in England, a little earlier than planned, but that was a good thing. She would be busy with the new documentary, and life would become more down-to-earth again. At some point she would need to go into Mombasa to buy a plane ticket, but for the moment she just wanted to take advantage of the sun, the sea, and the beach.

  A few days later, Coral decided to head down to the beach. Opening the front door, she found Morgana standing on the threshold. The dancer looked tired and pale, giving her a sallow appearance. Her cheekbones seemed overly prominent. Big, dark shadows under her eyes gave her a mask-like expression, and she had lost a noticeable amount of weight. Gone were the luscious curves along with the haughty demeanor that had both made Coral feel small. Nevertheless, she was still beautiful, with a new vulnerability that somehow made her less bewitching but more feminine.

  The dancer smiled. “I’m sorry. You are going out. It’ll not take long, but I need to speak to you.”

  “Please come in,” said Coral, a little puzzled, before leading Morgana to the living room. “Can I offer you some refreshment? It’s a hot day.”

  “You’re very kind. There’s no need for that, thank you.”

  They sat down. A few moments passed in silence. Morgana tilted her head a little. “It’s about Rafe. He is very ill and he needs you. Please, Miss Sinclair; he will die if you don’t come.” Morgana passed a trembling hand through her hair.