19.

Before the sky turned light, Tolliver kissed her once more and left her.

By the time Vera was fully awake, the camp was bustling, and Muiri had folded her shawl and put her few things in her rucksack.

Standing near the fire, Tolliver bid her a proper good morning and went to fetch her a mug of tea.

She let their hands touch momentarily as he handed it to her. She was careful not to look in his eyes. The skin of her arms drank in his nearness. He stayed close. That was enough for her.

Richard Newland and Denys Finch Hatton were splitting off with Cole toward his farm on the Naro Moru River. Kinuthia would go with them. Vera’s and Tolliver’s party would follow the plain trail back to Nyeri.

“We had best then cross the hills from Nyeri back to Naivasha,” Vera said. “I must visit Ngethe’s wives and children and tell them what has befallen him.” For a second she allowed herself to glance into Justin’s eyes. She found the understanding she was looking for in them.

“Is that the way you came?” Finch Hatton asked.

“Yes,” Vera said. She was solemn, but he laughed.

“What a girl, you are,” he said.

And Justin thought, If you only knew. And it satisfied him deeply that Finch Hatton never would really know her. “We can take the train back to Athi River from Naivasha,” he said. “And I’ll send a telegram to the district commissioner.”

“And to my parents,” Vera said.

“We had better get underway, then,” Tolliver said, taking charge, as was right under the circumstances.

They bid their good-byes, and Tolliver took his group south along the river, while Newland and Cole took their party east.

Vera and Tolliver camped twice more before they reached Nyeri. And each night when all was quiet and Kwai and the other boys were organized on their guard duties, Tolliver found his way to Vera’s arms. Their separateness evaporated the minute they embraced. During those nights, Vera learned why the Kikuyu girls giggled when they spoke of sex. With all her sadness still upon her, she could not yet laugh with their lovemaking, but she felt the heaviness in her heart lift when her arms were around Justin and her lips on his.

On the third night, crossing the hills between Nyeri and Naivasha, before darkness fell they stopped in a forest clearing. The boys needed to keep a bonfire going all night to repel any prowling predators. Its light and that of the half moon made their camp brighter than on the previous nights. Justin should not have cared what the askaris and porters thought of him, but he still felt he had to protect Vera from their knowing he was with her in the night. Nonetheless, after barely an hour’s hesitation, he gave in to his need for her and made his way to her tent.

When he opened the flap, enough light entered with him to reveal her—beautiful in her white nightdress, sitting cross-legged on her cot.

She leapt up and into his arms with that incredible grace of hers. And the power of his love for her held all his misgivings at bay.

Afterward, as they lay on her little narrow cot, with her body on his, her head on his shoulder, the scent of her enveloping him, he had to talk about the coming days, about how he would shield her from the world’s knowledge of their love.

“Tomorrow,” he whispered, “we will arrive in Naivasha and we will have to— We cannot let anyone see— We cannot continue to—”

She jumped up, jamming her knee into his hip in the process. “Continue to what? See what? That I am a hussy? That you are not a gentleman? What do we have to hide from the world? Our sin?”

He sat up and reached for her. She was talking much too loudly. He did not want her to hurt. He just wanted to protect her. “Vera, please. Don’t—”

“Don’t what?” She beat off his hands and stepped back, upsetting the folding washstand in the corner. The metal basin clattered to the ground in the darkness. “Just get out of here, Mr. Proper English Gentleman.”

“Oh, Vera, you mustn’t interpret what I said that way? What has happened is my fault.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew they were entirely the wrong ones.

“Please, just go.” Her voice was quiet now, and cold.

“I do not want the world to think—”

“I know exactly what you don’t want the world to think. You don’t want anyone to know that you have behaved in an ungentlemanlike fashion. And that I have done what no proper lady would do. Very well. We will tell no one. Now, just go.”

“Vera, please, I said it badly. I think—” He tried to take her in his arms, but she pushed him off.

“I know what you think I am.”

“I think you are the most wonderful of girls. I love you.”

“Very nice,” she said completely without warmth. “Now, just go. I have a difficult day tomorrow.”

*   *   *

They did not speak to one another at all during the three-hour trek to Naivasha the next morning. Only in silence, in their own minds, which were far from quiet, did they formulate the words to express their remorse, their fear, their longing. They both looked back on those four days and nights as idyllic: walking side by side through the vast wilderness, the colors, the scents, the birds whose names she had told him, the shadows of the clouds on the sea of grass that stretched out for miles, the chants of the porters as they tramped along, the English songs the two of them had sung to keep themselves going. The grazing antelope. The long line of elephants silhouetted against sunset. And then, after dark, the brilliance of the stars as they sat together and dined by lamplight. The delicious nights in one another’s arms, the fun of working out who should be where on her impossibly small camp bed. The ecstasy they learned to produce in one another. They both wanted it all back, and they both feared they would never again have it.

His guilt had spoiled it for her. But she held her head high as she walked along those final miles. She refused to see herself as a sinner. If God had made her body, He must have wanted girls to long for love the way she did. The Commandments said she must not commit adultery, but that was only if they were already married and she wanted to lay with someone other than him. But she wanted no one else. She refused to accept what he probably thought. That somehow, by accepting his love, she had condemned herself to his rejection. She wished she could hate him for what he had said. Wished her anger were strong enough to make her stop wanting to have him the way she’d had, in her arms, inside her body in the night.

He hated himself as much as she wished she could hate him. He had said all the wrong things. All he had wanted was to let her know how sorry he was that it would have to stop. That once they reached the railroad, the freedom given to them in the wilderness would be forbidden until they were man and wife. He had imagined a straight line from where they were to their wedding and a lifetime of loving. But he had not said that. He had not remembered that he should say it. It seemed the only possible outcome. He had focused instead on the pain of having to give her up even for a few weeks or months, and he had vowed to himself that not one person would ever think the least wrong thought about her for having given herself to him. He had blundered. Instead of asking her to marry him, he had spoken of what they had to give up. How could he have been so dense? He did not care a fig for all he had been taught of how a girl must defend her virginity to the death. She had given him hers. He did feel like a rotter for letting himself take it. But his intentions were honorable, whatever else anyone would say. And what now could he ever say to erase the insult and the anger his words had created? Having no answer, sometimes despairing that there was an answer, he said nothing.

*   *   *

They arrived in Naivasha at midday. At the station they found out that the down train would leave at 3:38 in the morning. Vera announced to Kwai Libazo, but in Tolliver’s presence, that she and Muiri would return in time to take the train. Then she marched off, her back straight and her step determined, to tell her dreadful news to Ngethe Meru’s family—that their husband and father would never return. Tolliver loved her as much for her courage as he did for the softness and warmth of her skin and the sparkle of life in her eyes.

He went to the telegrapher and sent a message to D.C. Cranford telling him that he had discovered who had killed Josiah Pennyman and that he should release Gichinga Mbura. Vera had said that she wanted to telegraph her parents, but she had not stopped to do so. He sent a separate cable to Clement McIntosh, from himself, telling him that he had Vera under his protection, that she would arrive at the Athi River Station at 12:25 the next day.

There was no police boma in Naivasha, so he went to the local collector and begged a second breakfast and a bath. By the time he returned to the station, he had two telegrams. The first, from Cranford, sank his heart: RETURN AT ONCE STOP YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF ALL RULES STOP YOUR POSITION IN JEOPARDY STOP WITCH DOCTOR EXECUTED TWO DAYS AGO STOP.

The second, from the Reverend McIntosh, crushed his soul: VERA’S MOTHER DEAD STOP WILL MEET TRAIN STOP TELL HER NOTHING STOP.