Sydney, Australia, the present day
In Sydney it was midnight and Lili was feeling the buzz and giddiness of one too many shots at the Manly Wharf Hotel.
With the ferries finished for the evening she had taken a bus from Manly to the city and then changed to a train that would take her to her share house in Newtown. She was regretting not taking an Uber, although her credit card was possibly already over the limit after tonight’s partying.
Lili unzipped her daypack and took out the sheaf of photocopied pages. The extra money Nick was paying her to translate came in handy for partying. Lili found the spot she was up to and started to read.
The eastern Transvaal, South Africa, 1902
Blake rode slowly, sparing Bluey, as there were once more two of them on the horse’s back, along with their meagre possessions.
Claire had dressed in her soaking clothes, and though she started off by gripping the rear of the saddle to steady herself as they rode, she eventually put her arms around his waist. It was only sensible. Her riding clothes were sodden and, as the afternoon breeze picked up, she huddled closer into his back for warmth. He found himself enjoying the heat of her body through his shirt.
‘Let’s stop,’ Blake said. ‘We’ll chance a fire.’
‘Not on my account,’ she said. ‘I know it’s risky.’
He ran a hand down his face. ‘Then on my account. I’m knackered.’
A lion called in the distance, its two-part grunt managing to sound mournful and terrifying at the same time. The bloody things were everywhere in this part of the country.
‘I’ve heard tell that sound carries for several miles,’ Claire said casually, although Blake could hear the uncertainty in her tone.
Blake dismounted, tethered Bluey to a tree and unstrapped the bedroll from the saddle. ‘Depends on the countryside. Sound doesn’t travel too far in this thick bushveld. That fella’s probably close, no more than half a mile at most.’
Claire shivered. Blake gathered some leaves and twigs and Claire fossicked for dead wood. Blake knelt, struck a flint, and coaxed a flame with his breath.
Claire set down the fuel she had collected. ‘Will the fire help?’
‘Keep him away? Maybe. It won’t hurt. Don’t stray far; you might not come back.’
‘Thank you, you’re very reassuring.’
He placed the wood on the flame and, once it caught, stood to admire his handiwork and warm his hands. ‘What we need is a bottle of rum.’
Claire wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I’m cold.’ Blake unfurled the blanket from the bedroll and tossed it to her. She caught it and wrapped it around herself. ‘I can’t . . . stop . . . shivering.’
‘Get out of those damp clothes,’ Blake ordered. ‘You’re wetting the blanket as well. You’ll never get warm that way.’ He turned around. ‘Tell me when you’re ready.’
‘I’m decent,’ she said, after a few moments.
Blake smiled for the first time since the river crossing. God, but she did look beautiful, with her hair in disarray and just a glimpse of pale shoulder showing from under the blanket she was wrapped in. Claire stared into the fire.
He was starting to feel the cold as well, his back damp and chilly from where she had been pressed against him. He rolled down his sleeves and did up his top button. He searched for some more dry wood and fed the fire.
‘That was brave of you, to dive into the river to help me,’ she said. ‘Brave, but stupid.’
‘You’re welcome. Why stupid?’
‘You don’t need me to get where you’re going.’
‘I need you to help clear my name,’ he said.
‘But you risked your life to save a virtual stranger. I don’t know that I would have done the same thing in your shoes.’
‘War makes you do some stupid things. In my army we’d rather die than run away and leave a man in danger.’
‘Ah, so that makes me an honorary man now, does it? Men. That’s why so many of you never come home from wars. Brave, but stupid. Women are smarter, you know?’
‘More ruthless, you mean?’
She pondered the comment a while. ‘Some people would think we’re too soft, the fairer sex and all that rot, but yes, I’d probably agree with you. I don’t think we do things out of some false notion of fair play. We protect our own, like a lioness would, but we keep our eye on the mission, on the way ahead. Also, we rarely get to fight in proper armies, so history hasn’t shown how we’d act in a military situation, other than the likes of Joan of Arc and Boudica, and they fared quite well by all accounts.’
Blake stared into the fire and nodded. It was an interesting choice of words – mission – that she had just referred to. ‘So, are you a fighter, Miss Martin?’
‘If I fight, it’s for peace.’
‘Doesn’t sound like those two words go together too easy.’
‘Of course they do. Like love and hate, fire and ice, night and day. You can’t have one without the other. God, I could use some brandy right now, I’m still freezing.’
Blake stoked the fire, but he, too, was shivering now. ‘We can’t keep this going all night, you know, there are Boer and Brit patrols all through this valley. We’re too close to Komatipoort.’
Claire reached across to the rock where she had draped her wet clothes. In doing so she exposed a slender arm and the swell of the top of her right breast. ‘The clothes are still cold. They’re starting to get a dew on them, as well.’
‘Best roll up in that blanket and get some sleep, then.’
‘What about you?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Claire lay down and rolled onto one side so she was facing away from Blake, then flicked one side of the blanket away from her.
He stared at the smoothness of her back, the skin glowing pale gold in the firelight; his gaze followed the swell of her hips and the top of the cleft of her buttocks. ‘Hurry, Mr Blake, it’s cold, but don’t get any ideas. Keep your clothes on and we shall both survive the night.’
He lowered himself to the blanket and now that he was there Blake didn’t want to move away from the warmth of her back, nor put his arm between them. Instead, he slowly reached over her body, drawing her into an embrace.
She shivered against his body. ‘I’m still cold.’
‘You can wear my shirt.’
His desire for her was growing, literally, as he lay there, and he didn’t want her having to slap him when she felt him. He rolled onto his back and started unbuttoning his shirt.
‘Well, if you’re not going to hold me then I’ll take you up on your offer of another layer.’ She turned over and looked at him. He fumbled with one of the buttons. ‘Let me do that.’
He lowered his hands and felt her fingers brush the hair on his chest as she undid it. She moved on to the next button, unbidden, looking at what she was doing, not at his eyes.
‘You would have died for me, Blake, in the river?’ she said in a low voice.
‘Right now, I reckon I’d do just about anything for you,’ he said. He reached out, slowly, with his hand, like he might to a wild creature, not wanting to spook it. She didn’t flinch and as the back of his hand, his fingers, caressed her cheek, she kept her eyes on him, but didn’t move. ‘So soft,’ he said. She gave an almost imperceptible nod, so he continued. ‘This place, Africa, it can fill your head with visions of natural beauty that you wouldn’t think possible and then the next minute you’ll come across a burning farm or the bloody aftermath of a gunfight. What’s missing is this, something tender.’
‘You may be talking to the wrong woman if it’s tenderness you’re after, Sergeant Blake.’
She smiled, but she licked her lips as well, betraying her nerves. He wondered if she could hear his heart. Blake moved his hand, slowly again, so as not to startle her or break the moment, until his fingers were behind her neck. He started to draw her to him and she shifted. For a moment he thought he’d gone too far, but then she was on him.
Blake rolled with her and their mouths came together. She ran her fingers under his shirt, up and down his back as he drew her to him, no longer embarrassed by his lust. She pressed her naked body against him then reached between them to unbutton his trousers. The night air was so cold that she pulled the blanket over them, so that not even the firelight could guide them. It was fingers and palms, mouths and lips that did the exploring as she helped him slide out of his pants. They laughed as they fumbled until he found the place that was as slick as moss on a polished river rock and as hot and wet as a Transvaal summer.
The lion called again in the distance and the excitement of it seemed to spur her on, rather than make her look about. They were lost to the sensations as he entered her, as she grabbed him, as he drove and she rode. Her body was lean and strong beneath that soft pale skin and she met his strength with a force of her own. At one point she bit him, as he’d once seen a lioness do to her mate, and the short sharp jolt sent him over the edge.
Blake looked up at her, red hair glowing like the flames behind her, the stars framing her face as she gasped for air.
He drew her to him and wrapped his arms around her.
‘Yes,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘I would die for you.’