by Vaso
'Congratulations,' she said mockingly a few. minutes later when Kemp entered the breakfast room. She was determined to start this new day without revealing weakness. 'For the last six months Freddie Jansen has grumbled constantly about your non-appearance. and now, when you finally arrive, he's instantly on your side.'
'On my side?' Kemp tested the words thoughtfully as he accepted a cup .of coffee from her and sat down. 'Is there a war on, then?'
Valentine regarded him contemplatively with her head tilted slightly, her sapphire eyes sparkling as she registered the challenge which touched her pain even as she admired it.
'Quite possibly,' she conceded, and smiled.
'But tell me then, Valentine, who is the aggressor?'
She arched a delicate eyebrow. 'Whichever one is in the position of strength, surely?'
'Who is?' he prompted, looking amused.
'Ah, well . . .' She lowered her eyes to the table, deliberately flirtatious, but the answer to his question frightened her. 'I feel it would be diplomatic not to speculate about that, darling.'
'Or else you prefer not to admit the truth,' he guessed tauntingly. 'Do you always bestow endearments on all and sundry?'
'You're not exactly all and sundry, are you?' she countered truthfully.
He leaned back, watching her with idle interest. 'You're really quite remarkable, aren't you?' he commented quietly. 'Are you always this bright and beautiful at breakfast?'
'Always. I pride myself on it.'
'Our visitors must adore you.'
'Sales of wine on the estate have escalated since I came here,' she said mischievously, but wondered if she was succeeding in hiding her pain—or did he guess at the rawness within her and wonder at its cause?
'Conceited too,' he mocked. 'You're on duty from when?'
'Nine. But today being Saturday, I finish work at lunchtime.' Valentine paused before confiding. 'When I first came I was amazed to learn that we're closed to the public on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, since one imagines that those are the times when most people are likely to get into their cars and drive out into the Boland. But since none of the other estates welcomes the public at those times, there'd be no point in our doing so.'
'You see, on so many of the estates your job is done by the owner's wife or daughters and if they kept such hours they wouldn't be able to enjoy any sort of relaxation in their own homes,' Kemp explained.
'As it is, we get the occasional people who haven't read the information turning up out of hours,' Valentine told him. 'Anyway, even with the short hours, the whole business seems to have gone from strength to strength since its inception in the early seventies. We get local people and tourists calling.'
'You sound like a brochure—is that what your job entails?'
'I have to be available to our visitors, to conduct tours through the production cellar, although those who prefer it can stroll through on their own,' she began. 'I also pour the wine for those who wish to taste; I handle the sales on the estate; and I must be able to answer questions about simply everything—what to look for when tasting, the soil, climate, cultivars, the whole process of wine production and I must have a knowledge of Fleurmont's architectural history and the furniture on display in the room where diey taste and buy.'
'And was all the requisite knowledge already inside that pretty head of yours when you came here?'
'What I didn't know, Sylvie and James Hattingh taught
me, but we're a Cape family, so we always had wine at home,' she explained.
'The other provinces are catching up with us,' Kemp commented. 'In fact, South Africa has become more and more a wine-drinking country in recent years.'
'A trend that's not going to change while prices remain as reasonable as they are now,' Valentine suggested.
'Where is home, incidentally?'
'Gordon's Bay.'
'An attractive town. I used to go to the yacht club there. Have you always lived there?'
'Until I went to U.C.T. at seventeen.'
'You've a degree?'
'Not a hollow woman after all, you see,' she challenged. 'Plus, I have secretarial skills. I wasn't sure exactly what my majors, English and Industrial Psychology, would equip me for, so I spent my vacations getting extra qualifications.'
'I'm surprised you found the time,' Kemp drawled. 'I rather visualise you as being so involved in the social side of varsity life that you'd have failed to get your degree. Surely you must have been Rag Queen at some stage?'
'I didn't go in for that sort of thing,' Valentine said.
His lips twisted into the ironic smile that was becoming familiar. 'Modesty or reserve? Or that conceit I mentioned just now—you didn't need any confirmation of your beauty? I suspect you're · singularly arrogant, Valentine.'
'As you are.' She knew it was unwise and that she was inviting for herself the pain of rejection, but she timed her pause perfectly. 'We make a good pair.'
'We're not a pair—yet,' he added meaningly, and Valentine knew in that moment that, much as he still disliked her, he meant to have her. 'But, my dear girl, all your qualifications are quite wasted on your present work. Even your secretarial skills aren't required, since Sylvie Hattingh apparently handles the office work. What brought you out here, away from Cape Town which, I would say, is your natural element?'
It was an opening for her to tell him the truth, but something in her cried out against doing so. Not yet, oh, not just yet. Let her have just a little longer before she must see the hatred in his eyes. She had derived bittersweet pleasure from their encounter this morning and he had listened when she had described her work, so ... Just a little longer.
Kemp was watching her intently as he waited for her answer and she wondered if she had inadvertently betrayed her inward dilemma. To keep on acting, concealing, was so difficult, when all she yearned for was rest; die support and strength he might have given to a woman he cared about.
'What was it, Valentine?' he prompted impatiently. 'The knowledge that the wine-producing districts abound in wealthy and eligible young men like Adam Ducaine?'
She met his eyes. Here at least was a truth she could give him. 'Whatever other descriptions may be applied to me, mercenary isn't one of them.'
'I believe you,' he said surprisingly, but his tone was far from friendly. 'Your interests lie in other directions, don't they? And some of those other adjectives that may be applied to you are far less flattering than mercenary. So—what brought you out here?'
'You're condemning me for being myself again,' she said flatly, an inner ache flawing her1 act. 'Should I creep around like a little brown mouse because my true image makes people distrust me? Oh, let's just say I like the life here.'
Kemp looked disbelieving. 'Emma was telling me that you don't appear to have adapted at all well.'
Regretful envy quivered through her. Emma had no past to destroy her dreams. Still Valentine managed a smile. 'I'd forgotten Emma. I wonder why she hasn't come rushing over yet to make sure I'm keeping my hands off you. It's quite late already ... In fact, I'd better get over
to die cellar. I like to make sure I've got enough of everything before people start arriving.'
Kemp rose widi her. 'I'll accompany you. I went around most areas with Freddie Jansen before breakfast, but I haven't seen your particular province yet.'
They crossed the short distance between the house and cellar in silence. Distantly the voices of Binnie and Trevor could be heard, punctuated by barks from Rufus. A few people were about now, going about their business, and Valentine smiled at those employees she knew.
Maude was already in the room, attached to the cellar, where Valentine had her dealings with the public.
'Enough glasses, Maude?' she asked.
'Yes, miss.'
'People pocket them as souvenirs,' she explained to Kemp. 'Some of the estates charge for them and then people can take them away openly.'
Maude finished filling a jar with bread cubes for those connois
seurs who liked to cleanse their palates before moving on to taste the next wine.
'Everything all right, miss?'
Valentine ran an eye round the room, checking that die beautiful hand-crafted furniture which had survived centuries was dust-free and shining,
'Yes, thank you, Maude.'
Maude departed and Valentine looked at Kemp.
'And these?' He indicated a pile of printed diagrams.
'Maps of the production cellar illustrating the entire process from the moment the grapes go into the crusher right through to the labelling of the certified wines,' she explained. 'A lot of people prefer to wander through on their own, and diese assist them.'
'A good idea.' He seemed restless and his eyes went to the antique corking machine displayed in one corner. 'I remember that. I was with Edward when he discovered it. Ah, well, I'd better be getting over to the office as Hattingh should be arriving soon.'
The strange reluctance with which he spoke brought a new dimension to what Valentine understood of him. Here was a highly complex man whose needs and values were different to those held by other more ordinary men.
'You really do hate being here, don't you?' she ventured, following him to the door and stepping out into the sunshine again.
His eyes went to the acres of vineyards and the flower-starred lower slopes of the mountains, and she guessed that where she saw beauty, he was seeing boundaries that trapped.
'I neither expected nor wanted this burden, for that's all it amounts to.' He glanced at her. 'Strange as it probably seems to you. I can't expect you to understand.'
'I think I do.' Valentine hesitated, then continued. 'You've lived a different sort of life, one that obviously attracted you or why else would you have chosen it? I've seen most of your documentaries on television, certainly the ones exploring and exposing various facets of the human condition and the deprivations brought about by either social or political influences. I know that they can only have been made by someone totally committed to his task. Obviously you'll find Fleurmont different and probably restrictive.'
His eyes scanned her still face, seeking something, conviction perhaps.
'You're obviously an intelligent woman, Valentine.' His voice grew harsher as he went on. 'You'll have to excuse me if I'm not as appreciative as you deserve. I've a prejudice against clever, beautiful women. It's thanks to one such, a brilliant and beautiful bitch by all accounts, that I'm here today and the owner of this estate.'
There was a silent scream torturing her mind as something died in her heart. She had never felt so bereft, so hopeless.
'A woman?' she queried through stiff lips.
'A woman,' he ground out. 'I don't suppose you'll know this since people around here avoid referring to it—the whole sordid business only happened about a year ago. I
was in Mauritania at the time and only heard about it after it was all over. Edward and Reinette had a son, Philip—my cousin. He way ten years younger than me. He took his life after this . . . this super-bitch had caused him to break up his marriage with her promises and then arbitrarily changed her mind.'
'Perhaps . .. perhaps she didn't know he was married,' Valentine got out tonelessly.
He cast her a contemptuous glance. 'Women always know.'
But she hadn't, she hadn't! It was still vivid in her memory, an endless pain, that moment when Philip had uttered the words 'my wife'.
'And his wife?' she asked, keeping her face expressionless with difficulty. She had always wanted to know what had become of the woman whom she regarded as the true victim of what Kemp so rightly described as a sordid affair.
'Rose?'
Valentine knew the name before he said it. In the midst of her horror at Philip's revelation had come that moment of cruelly ironic coincidence when he had mentioned his wife's name, for Rose was also her own second name.
'Philip was a bloody fool, no woman is worth that, but it's Rose I'm sorry for,' Kemp went on. He shook his head. 'My God, it's as if a curse had been laid on the family! First that, and then six months later Edward and Reinette were killed in that accident, and here am I, left with all this which I simply do not want.'
'You could sell.' She must keep responding or he would sense something wrong. She ought to tell him now, but she couldn't. To do so would require greater courage than she had at her command at that moment.
'But could I?' Once more his restless gaze swept the vineyards. 'This, Fleurmont, meant everything to Edward and Reinette to whom I owe much of the security I had in my youth; its staying in the family meant so much to them . . . Our Chenin Blanc, Edward's greatest pride, was named for his wife, La Reine, and he and Philip used to talk about adding a Rose to our list and naming it for Rose.'
'I hadn't known dial—the origin of the Chenin Blanc's lovely name.' Valentine was responding automatically, while her mind fought the despair that rose like a flood tide, threatening to immerse her completely.
'Something for you to tell the romantics among oui visitors,' Kemp suggested with biting humour. His expression was so implacable that Valentine felt the blood freeze in her veins. 'God! Sometimes I feel I'd like to go after the woman who did that to my cousin. I'd take her and break her, destroying her the way she destroyed him. Believe me, she'd never be whole again!'
CHAPTER THREE
SITTING down to lunch with Kemp after, a busy morning, Valentine knew she was living on borrowed time—no, stolen time. Because she ought to have told him the truth this morning. Self-disgust made her taunt herself with accusations of cowardice. Tonight, she promised silently, after James and Sylvie had gone; then she would tell him..
Sipping her Riesling, which was the product of another estate, not their own, she thought to ask, 'Will you decide what wine you want for tonight . . . Incidentally, I am assuming that I'll be joining you, or is that presumptuous?'
'You live here as well, don't you?' he dismissed the question. 'You'd be an asset to any social occasion as you're probably aware. I'll have to ask Salome what the menu is.'
'We've a number of wines from other estates in our private stock,' she ventured.
Kemp smiled. 'I think we'd better make use of Fleurmont's, since it's our own cellarmaster we'll be entertaining. Incidentally, which' of our wines are most popular among the visitors who come to taste and buy?'
'All of them,' Valentine stated promptly.
'Ah! A loyal employee,' he laughed. 'Relax, Valentine, I'm not thinking of firing you.'
But after he heard what she had to say tonight, he might do so, she thought bitterly. She could hardly blame him eidier.
'Seriously, though,' she continued, 'obviously the Chenin Blanc leads the field, but the Tinta Barocca and Cabernet Sauvignon are equally famous, having been awarded prizes both locally and overseas. But the Shiraz sells well too, and the Cinsaut is very popular, especially with women and the younger men who haven't yet acquired a taste for the heavier reds. It's my personal favourite, along with La Reine.'
Adam Ducaine arrived before they had finished the light meal which they were eating out of doors.
'Too early, am I?' he asked casually as he bent to kiss the satiny cheek Valentine offered to him. 'Are you coming to watch polo?'
She gave him a small smile, thinking tiredly that since she would never be anything in Kemp's life, she might as well continue to project a frivolous attitude towards Adam. 'Need you ask, darling? Don't I always watch? The only unpredictable bit about it all is who'll get here first to invite me.' She turned to Kemp, catching his amused glance. T'm off duty, or are you changing my hours?'
'I'm playing polo myself,' he informed her. 'Adam's father arranged it last night. He and Adam and me and— who else?'
'Gary or his father, I expect, and the opposing team is from the same crowd,' Adam supplied. His eyes returned to Valentine with flattering rapidity. 'Edward's ponies have remained stabled at the club, as I think you know. Only the best players have been allowed to ride them, Kemp. That doesn't include me, I'm afr
aid.'
'Are you a good player, Kemp?' Valentine asked guilelessly, and wondered painfully what punishment was in store for her when he knew the truth and remembered her attitude now.
'Yes,' he said simply, looking entertained by her manner.
'Best handicap around here,' Adam added reluctantly. 'We're all dreading being shown up this afternoon.'
Adam left his car at Fleurmont and they drove to the club in Kemp's new silver Porsche which he was still running in. When they arrived at the club, people stared
at them as they strolled to the pavilion and not just because Kemp was newly returned to the district. They made a startlingly attractive and elegant pair, the man almost fair-haired, but tanned and very tall, and the girl, not quite as tall, a fragile, willowy creature whose beauty was almost shocking even with dark glasses concealing her eyes.
A gentle breeze moulded the soft skirt of her dress against her long legs and she walked beside Kemp with unselfconscious grace, her red lips curved into a lovely smile which blended delight and amusement and completely hid her inner misery. She felt proud to be seen with him, quite forgetting Adam at her other side. She would have liked to tuck her hand through Kemp's arm, just to reinforce everyone's awareness that they were together, but an inherent instinct for the natural perimeters of public behaviour made her refrain. Anyway, she had no right to do it, she thought sadly.
Kemp must have been aware of the attention they were attracting as well, because he glanced at her, read the meaning of her smile and murmured, 'You're enjoying yourself, aren't you?'
'Yes,' she agreed candidly, and her smile became even more meltingly lovely, though without the dark glasses she might have seemed wistful. 'Everyone is looking at us.'
'Exhibitionist!' he taunted. For a moment his eyes rested on her face, hardening slightly, then he spoke across her, addressing Adam. 'Will Emma be here?'
'I imagine she'll be over just as soon as she can,' Adam assured him. 'But she was late getting back . . . For some obscure reason she suddenly took it into her head to go down to Cape Town this morning, a spur-of-the-moment decision. I was left to take over her job and handle our visitors. Did that party of Americans come to Fleurmont as well, Valentine?'