“We don’t really even know each other. Do we?”
His lips pressed hard together, flat and white, before he spoke. “I’ve never given up on anything in my life. It’s not how I do things. How would it look?”
“How would it look? Honest, for one thing. Isn’t it better to own up to things?”
He shook his head almost imperceptibly, small quick movements. “I’d be a laughing stock in town…made a fool of by a girl. My family would be horrified. Humiliated. We actually have a name to protect, you know.”
This was an obvious dig against my father and the bankruptcy scandal, but I couldn’t let it stop me from plunging ahead. “Blame it all on me then. I don’t care. I don’t have anything left to lose.”
“I’m not sure that’s true.”
When he stormed off to bed that night, I still didn’t know where we stood. I slept in front of the hearth, tossing back and forth, feeling alternately too cold and too hot. I thought we would have it out in the morning, but the row lasted for three days. Whatever he was sorting out, it seemed to have less to do with losing me than with the sullying of his reputation, and how the colony might perceive his failings. I understood that. He had married me because it was time to marry, and that was all. His family had expected it of him, to complete the picture of a settled and prosperous life. He certainly wouldn’t let them down now. He was too proud and had always managed to take control of any wayward detail in his life—deep-rooted tree stumps in the field, boulders where a garden should go. He came at every obstacle with muscle and gumption, but he couldn’t simply strong-arm me. Or could he?
On the third evening, Jock finally sat down across from me, his eyes flat as chips of flint. “This isn’t something you can bury in the sand and forget about, Beryl. Go and work for Delamere if that’s what you’re going to do, but you’ll go as my wife.”
“We’ll be pretending then? For how long?”
He shrugged. “Don’t forget you need me, too. Your father’s horses are half mine now, and you can’t care for them on a pauper’s salary.”
“You’ll hold my horses ransom? For God’s sake, Jock, you know how much they mean to me.”
“Then don’t test me. I don’t want to look like a damned fool, and you can’t afford to buy me out.” His voice was like a stranger’s, but it was possible we’d never stopped being strangers, both of us. Either way, I doubted if I would ever be able to reach him again. “You’ve been making such a stink about honesty,” he went on. “Is this honest enough for you?”
When I rode away from Jock’s farm a week later, I took nothing that I couldn’t tie onto the back of my saddle—pyjamas, a toothbrush and comb, a second pair of slacks, a man’s shirt in heavy cotton. For Pegasus I carried a thick rug and brush, several pounds of crushed oats, and a small, tarnished blacksmith’s knife. It felt wonderful to be riding out in the bush and travelling so lightly, but I was also leaving much unsettled behind me. It was a devil’s bargain I had struck with Jock. He owned my freedom, and the only way I could wrest it from him was by getting the licence. That came first, and then hard work and a chance, just a chance, at winning. Everything would have to fall into place perfectly—a terrifying thought—for me to ever be fully independent. I would have to hope for that, and give it everything I had.
Soysambu lay at the edge of the Rift’s great undulating fold, in one of the narrower regions of the highlands, between Elmenteita and Lake Nakuru, where Delamere’s stock had ten thousand acres to graze in relative comfort and safety. D had turned to sheep mostly—Masai ewes with deep brown coats so heavy and knotted they were almost unrecognizable as sheep. At Equator Ranch a decade before, his debut lambing had turned out only six surviving animals of four thousand ewes. Undaunted, he had burned through more of his inheritance (eighty thousand pounds, some claimed), replaced his stock, learned his hard lessons, and was now the most successful large-scale rancher in all of Kenya.
Not everyone admired him. In town or at the track, many people gave D a wide berth, trying to avoid an argument or a lecture about “the Indian problem.” He was louder than anyone about how we needed to sever our ties with that country once and for all. He was also land greedy and full of bluster, and impossible to argue with—but Lady D had always seen what was good in him, and I did, too. He worked harder than anyone I knew—twelve or sixteen hours a day, out with his herd along the rolling hills. He was passionate and indomitable, and in the time I’d known him—my whole life, really—he’d only ever been kind to me.
“Beryl, dear,” he barked when I arrived. He had broken down his rifle and was polishing the butt with tender precision. His long hair was a thicket. “So you want to be a trainer like Clutt, do you? I can’t imagine it will be an easy life.”