Burning Embers

by Hannah Fielding

  “That is when the drinking started…” He hesitated, and then his voice dropped. “The drinking and the promiscuity.” He gulped the rest of his scotch down in one go, poured himself another large one, and stood up. Leaning against a trellis, he continued. “I threw myself into my work. Stanley owned the biggest tour company in Dar es Salaam and had a substantial sisal farm. He’d come to love me like a son and obviously felt guilty about the way things had turned out. He taught me how to hunt and fly and showed me all the ropes of the trade, loading onto me as much work as I could handle. I was often traveling. I suppose I was running away. Looking back on it, I admit I was not much of a support to Faye. I was angry and hurt… all the time. You have no idea what that does to someone.”

  “So you had many affairs,” Coral stated plainly.

  Rafe did not answer immediately. “Coral, how quick you are to jump to conclusions and judge.” His tone was harsh, and though his eyes were hidden in shadow, she knew they were dark and brooding. “Funny enough, affairs, no. A few one-night stands, yes. But they meant nothing — they were just a way of releasing pressure and frustration…and forgetting the pain.”

  “Surely your relationship with Cybil was more than a one-night stand,” she argued.

  “I went with Cybil only after Faye’s death,” he corrected, “and the affair ended when she left Tanganyika. We never resumed it, and you must believe me about that.” He shifted his position and took another sip of his scotch.

  “On the day of the accident, Faye and I had a big quarrel. I did not want her to go on that hunting expedition. She was in one of her electric, frenzied moods, and those were the worst because they made her reckless. Besides, she had started an affair with a despicable creature who I knew to be after her money. He was going to be a member of the party, and I did not relish the thought of witnessing her make a fool of herself. I nearly didn’t go, and that would have been so much better. But at the last minute, Stanley had to attend to some problem on the farm, and he asked me to accompany her.” He sighed, shifted his position again, then came back to the table and sat down. He drained his glass.

  “I have never spoken about this to anyone. Frank was there that day, but we have never talked about it.” His voice faltered as he tried to gauge her reaction. There was pain, hope, guilt, love, and so many other emotions in his expression Coral was unable to decipher. His face was pale, the hollows of his face shadowed with hurt. She knew he was reliving that whole ghastly episode of his life, and the wound was still raw. She wanted to put her arms around him, to relieve him from the pain with her caresses and her love, but she had to let him finish. Frank had been right: for Rafe, exorcising his demons was the only way to heal the hurt and move forward.

  “Faye drank all through the morning and lunch. Her spirits were at their highest. I’d never known her to be so elated. I tried to calm her down, to stop her from drinking anymore, but she abused me in front of everybody, saying I was useless as a husband and as a man, that I only thought of money, and so on and so forth. In the afternoon, we were walking along the bank of a tributary that feeds Lake Tanganyika — the rapids there are well known to be treacherous and dangerous. Faye got it into her head to show her friends how bold she was. I tried to stop her again, but she started to rant and shout, so in the end I let her be and detached myself from the little group. She leaped from rock to rock, singing and laughing, a bottle of champagne in her hand.

  “Finally she slipped and fell into the water.” Rafe paused, and his voice trembled a little as he continued. “The water carried her away. She managed to catch hold of some reeds. I heard the scream and jumped into the water, making my way between the rocks to reach her. I seized her hand, fighting the current, trying to drag her out, but she wouldn’t help herself. I kept telling her to hang on, that we’d make it. I struggled for a while, and we were nearing the bank, but suddenly she looked at me and consciously, deliberately, I know it, let go of my hand. I tried again to reach her, but the fast-flowing rapids swept her away, and she disappeared into the canyon far below.” He buried his face in his hands, as if to blot out the horrific memory. “It was all my fault,” he whispered, hoarsely. Then the heart-wrenching sobs began.

  Coral let him cry for a long time as he let go of his anger and the guilt that had been crushing him. She understood so many things now. Of course he had it all wrong. She could imagine how it might have seemed to an onlooker when Faye drifted away, and someone like Cybil could easily have played on that for her own ends, fueling the rumors. Rafe had nursed his pain for so long that he had completely twisted the facts. He should have sought out help immediately; Frank should have seen to that. Her heart squeezed painfully as she thought of the hell he must have been going through all these years. She had not helped, of course, but she would make it up to him.

  When Rafe finally looked up, his lids were swollen and red; he seemed ill. Coral felt a pang of guilt. She shouldn’t have let him talk. He was not yet up to it; he was still convalescing. She was silent for a few seconds, debating what she should say. Then, reaching out, she took his hand and kissed it in the same way he had done so many times to hers. “I love you, Rafe,” she whispered. “I will always love you.”

  He caught her other hand across the table, his long fingers sliding gently and curling round her wrist. He stood up, came toward her, and pulled her up against him, burying his face in her hair. His proximity was making her dizzy, but she let him hold her tightly for a moment, drinking in his touch as he caressed her head with his cheek. Then at once his body was in flames of desire; she could feel the torment of his arousal. He was breathing heavily, his eyes shining, his hands roaming all over her body. He was not yet well enough; the doctor had warned her against such indulgences. She turned her head so he would not read the fierce need that was making her ache and gently pushed him away.

  “Why, Coral, why are you rejecting me?”

  “I’m not rejecting you, my love,” she said, panting a little as she took two steps along the patio to escape him. “I’m protecting you. You’ve had enough emotion today, don’t you think? We must be reasonable.”

  “Is that all that’s keeping you?” he asked, his eyes gleaming mischievously, the old fire burning in them as strong as ever. He moved toward her.

  “Don’t, please don’t, Rafe,” she begged in a small voice. “I won’t be able to resist you.”

  That was enough. In one stride, he crossed the space that separated them, and she was in his arms. He hugged her to him, and his hands found her contours again, palms wandering over her, seeking, finding, and then caressing her with a hunger and a passion that made her tremble, waves of pleasure rippling through her body. The more she shuddered, the more she yielded, and the more he touched and excited her, fueling his own arousal.

  “Coral, I love you. I want you so badly,” he whispered against her mouth, kissing her ever so slowly and then cupping her chin with both hands as his kisses became more urgent and more demanding. “Can you feel the things you’re doing to me?” He slid his hands under her thin blouse and peeled off her strapless bra. The shirt came off too, and Coral surrendered longingly to his caresses, her breasts swollen with desire. His tongue found her nipple, and his teeth started to tease it.

  His warm breath and the cool evening breeze were tantalizing her. Excitement raced through her; she was desperately aroused now, and he must have known it by the thundering of her heart and the quickening of her breathing. He dipped his hand gently into her shorts. Instinctively, she parted her legs a little, but he was being cruel — his touch was designed to increase her desire, making her wait, making her want him more. Without conscious thought, her hands slid down below his waist. She unzipped his jeans and discovered his warm and satiny arousal. She heard his intake of breath as she clasped him gently, applying pressure, stroking up and down. She felt his fingertip locate her most sensitive spot, brushing at first lightly and then rubbing a little harder and faster as she moved with him, until they both tipp
ed over the edge of a high cliff, soaring, gliding, and floating down to earth again in the throes of unbridled pleasure.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  That night, they slept in each other’s arms in his large bed. Rafe was the first to drift off to sleep while Coral lay there, snuggled against his warm body, listening to the even rhythm of his breathing and looking out through the open window at the moonlit darkness. She fell asleep, her heart and mind full of Rafe.

  When she awoke next morning, Coral was astonished to find him washed, shaved, and dressed, propped up on his side on the bed next to her, his gaze caressing her adoringly.

  “Good morning, rosebud,” he said as he placed a butterfly kiss first on the tip of her nose then on her parted lips. “Your skin has the translucence of fine china, so fresh, so unblemished. Such perfection is almost sinful.” He grinned and brushed back a lock of blond hair from her forehead. Still full of sleep, Coral gave him an indolent smile and stretched herself lazily. Rafe pulled her against him, into the shelter of his embrace, and she felt how well her body fitted with his. For a moment, Coral could feel him struggling with his desire to take her there and then, but he reluctantly pulled back and leaped off the bed. “We’ve got a lot to do today,” he said. “I’m going to paint you in the garden. I know exactly where. I was thinking about it as I watched you sleep.”

  He laid out breakfast on the veranda while Coral showered and dressed: champagne, freshly squeezed pineapple juice, the fruit salad he knew she liked so much, scrambled ostrich eggs and caviar, hot toast, delicious exotic jams, eucalyptus honey, and his very special coffee from the Kongoni estate.

  After breakfast, he took her to a remote part of the garden that she had not seen before. “This is my studio,” he said as they reached a rectangular outbuilding painted in terracotta, with a thatched makuti roof, and surrounded by coral-pink kapok trees and a few acacias. He pushed the front door and the shutters open, and the white walls of the room were suddenly bathed in sunshine. There was both exuberance and a serenity about Rafe’s mood as if a big load had been lifted off his mind. “Will you sit for me outside, or will it be too hot?” He took a white linen coat off a peg and put it on.

  “I shall be delighted to sit for you wherever you choose.” She laughed, her face shining with happiness, as they went back into the garden. Rafe had recovered. Not only that, he was a changed man. She had always known him to be energetic and alert, but there was something different this morning. At first she could not put her finger on it, and then slowly it came to her: the sadness she had so often perceived at the back of his eyes had vanished.

  Coral’s hair was pulled back into a loose bun, and rebellious tendrils framed her face. She wore a white cotton dress edged with lace; nearly transparent and charmingly feminine in its simplicity, it made her look ephemeral. Rafe stared at her.

  “What is it?” She felt almost shy under his intense gaze.

  “Nothing, rosebud. It’s just that you remind me of the nymphs in my favorite ballet, Les Sylphides.”

  Rafe sat her on a stone bench beneath a climbing white rose tree. Close by, a lonely lizard stretched motionless on an old wall covered in lichen while quarrelsome birds hopped and fluttered in the kapok trees, each trying to drive the other away. It was a dreamy sort of morning, untroubled by any thoughts of the outside world.

  He put a canvas on an easel, picked up some brushes, and quickly began to mix some paints on his palette, as though fearing that his inspiration would flee.

  “Where did you learn how to paint?” Coral asked as his skillful artist’s fingers started to sketch.

  He shrugged. “It came naturally, I suppose. When I was a child, my mother painted. She used to take me to the beach, and we’d spend days playing at being artists together. We would bring our canvases back home, and in the evening my father, my nanny, the cook, and sometimes one of our neighbors would be the judges, and the winning painter would receive a prize, usually a bar of coconut covered in chocolate, which I remember enjoying immensely.” A wry smile hovered on his face, and his eyes were dreamy.

  “Where was that, in French Guinea?”

  “Yes, in French Guinea. All that stopped when I was eleven and my mother died.” A muscle twitched briefly in his jaw at the painful memory. “Then I was sent to France, to my father’s parents in the Luberon where they lived. I was put into a Jesuit school as a boarder. I hated it and ran away twice. Once a year, during the summer holidays, I returned home to Conakry to visit my father. I spent the Christmas and Easter holidays with my grandparents. They were very kind but old, and there were no children in the neighborhood I could play with. I had the run of the manoir and its grounds. The gardener’s sons used to come over from time to time, and that was fun. Still, I was very lonely. Every year I waited impatiently for what they call in France les grandes vacances, so I could go back to the sun and the sea and the wide spaces of Africa.”

  “So it wasn’t a happy childhood?” Coral was beginning to understand what lay behind Rafe’s complexity.

  “It wasn’t an unhappy one but as I said, I hated boarding school. Besides, I missed my mother terribly. She was a lovely lady — very affectionate, passionate, and in some ways flamboyant. She wasn’t a beauty, but people always said she had charm and charisma, and she was kind, very kind. I think that is the quality my father fell in love with. I only learned about their love story after my father died and I found my mother’s diary. Until then I knew nothing about my mother’s side of the family. I’d been told that they were all dead, that the only family she had was my father and me. I never thought to ask, and consequently I had no idea she had eloped from Kenya with my father and been disowned by her own family. Up until then I had no idea about Mpingo either. When I came to Kenya years later, I didn’t even know whether Mpingo was still in existence. I was intrigued to find it, but not for any financial reason — I already had money. Stanley Bradshaw was a decent and generous man. When I married Faye, he had given me a share in his company.”

  “Probably out of guilt,” Coral was quick to point out.

  “Maybe. Nevertheless it was very generous of him — some people wouldn’t have cared about their son-in-law. I think he was genuinely fond of me. After Faye’s death, I stayed on in Tanganyika to help him with the business — mainly out of inertia — but I was very unhappy. There were too many bad memories there, and the gossip about the accident never ceased. When I learned about my mother’s past and about Mpingo, it gave me a reason to start my life afresh. My father-in-law kindly bought my share out. It was worth a lot and would be amply sufficient to set me up without me having to touch the modest inheritance that came from my father after my grandparents died. Somehow I was never very interested in all that. Besides, it only really amounted to the manoir, big though it is. Lawyers in Paris were taking care of affairs, so I never really thought of it being mine. But Mpingo was different. It had belonged to my mother, and I wanted to somehow reclaim the part of her — and my own roots — that had been lost when she was disowned by her family. I admit that I came to Kenya with a view to buy my inheritance back. I even offered your father a great deal of money for it. But once he had explained to me that it was not for sale and he was keeping it for his wonderful daughter” — he eyed her with a smile — “I put it out of my mind.”

  Rafe had worked while talking, without respite, and now stepped back to view the effect of his creation.

  “Can I have a look?”

  Rafe held out his sketchbook. The image of a beautiful young woman with huge sapphire eyes gazed out of the page, with a fire in her look and slightly parted lips — features that were absent from any other picture he had painted of her beforehand. He had read her thoughts while sketching: it was provocative and sensual — the way he made her feel when he was close to her. Her eyes were soft and luminous. She looked like a woman in love, drawn by someone who was so profoundly in love himself that he could conjure the intimate essence and perceive the inner-most secrets of the person h
e loved. Once again Rafe had captured her soul.

  “It’s beautiful,” she murmured, “but you make me feel naked. You read me so well. How do you know?”

  “I love you, and I let my heart guide me.”

  He came to her and took her in his arms. In doing so, he brushed against a branch of roses and brought down a mass of fully bloomed rose petals. They fell in a cascade of snow on Coral’s hair. She gave a clear, crystal laugh. Rafe gasped at the sight of her and stepped back, clearly stunned by the image in front of him.

  “Wait!” he said, seating her back onto the bench. “Stay where you are. Don’t move.” He disappeared into his studio and returned with a large blue velvet box. Lowering himself to one knee, he took her slim hand in his with infinite tenderness. “Coral, my darling, as long as the sun rises and the night falls, I promise that from this day forward I will love you with my whole heart. I will shield you and comfort you till my last breath, remain faithful, and prize you above all for the rest of our lives. Will you be my wife?”

  Coral could hear the emotion in his trembling voice and see the intensity of his love written all over his face. She remained silent for a minute, hardly able to believe what she was hearing, before throwing her arms around him.

  “Oh, Rafe! Yes, yes, yes,” she said with a sigh of relief. “After the way I behaved, I thought you’d never ask me again.” Her voice broke. “I love you, worship you with all my heart, my body, my mind, with every breath of life in me, and I will until my dying day. I think I loved you from the moment you first spoke to me, before I even met you.” She tightened her arms around his neck, trying to convey to him all her adoration.