Plantation Doctor by Kathryn Blair Read Free Book Online Page B

h eld like a prisoner at the Denton settlement.
    “Will you come?” he repeated, but without emphasis.
    “Thank you ... yes.”
    She was saved from saying more by the announcement that dinner was served. With a slight bow he offered his arm and escorted her to the dining-room.
    It was after dinner, while a gramophone emitted a popular tune and Lyn was dancing with Claud, that she felt impelled to make an enquiry.
    “Harking back to our earlier conversation,” she said hesitantly, “have you anything against Dr. Sinclair?”
    He glided round with her for a few steps before replying. “Nothing more than the natural antipathy of the impecunious for the rich.”
    “But doctors aren’t rich.”
    “Not many of them. Adrian isn’t an ordinary doctor, though. Haven’t you found that out?”
    Lyn wasn ’ t sure. “ H ow do you mean? ”
    “Besides being a medico he’s a plutocrat. He owns half the Denton estate and one day he’ll come into the rest of it. His mother was a sister of Joseph Denton, and Adrian grew up almost as Joseph’s son. His own father went down at sea while he was still young and his mother didn’t last much longer. Before he was twenty he had been out here with the old man several times and he was with him in Freetown when he died. It was watching Joseph’s illness and death that decided him to take up tropical medicine and make himself responsible for the health of the Denton employees. Great-hearted of him, wasn’t it?”
    “It was ... rather fine.”
    “I suppose that’s another reason why he and I don’t mix.”
    Mechanically, she went on dancing. Her nerves tingled unpleasantly. Her conception of Adrian had received a jar and she could not make up her mind whether she felt more or less tolerant towards him.
    “So Dr. Sinclair is a director of the Denton estate?” she asked thinly.
    “He is Denton. The aunt, Joseph’s widow, is a sleeping partner, living in London. Adrian runs the show on model lines, as you’ve no doubt noticed.” Sarcastically, he continued. “He once made me an offer — a sum that was twice the worth of my plantation and a job as an overseer. But I couldn’t see myself stuck out there at the Denton settlement. I’d sooner go to hell gaily and not take too long about it.” He glanced down at the burnished head near his chin, and his tone lowered. “You’re a darling, Lyn — the sort of girl who makes a man conscious of the waste of the passing years. I wish I’d known you sooner.”
    Lyn made an appropriately agreeable and noncommittal response. From thinking about the great rambling villa in its bed of nut-trees and tall, bushy palms, she went on to hoping, with a strangely urgent intensity, that Claud would be able to arrange a swift passage for her to Akasi.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
    It seemed to Lyn next morning that she had been living for a very long time at Denton. She knew every scarlet blossom in the flower-bed beyond the veranda, the shape of the sky from her wicker chair and the outline from her window of her neighbor’s house, two hundred yards away. He was of the scholar l y few and seldom visible. Adrian’s house, over on the other side of the compound, remained shrouded in green mystery, but she had grown as accustomed to the picture it made as if she had been established here for weeks instead of days.
    In fact, this was her first Saturday on the Coast. She remembered it incredulously, remembered also that apart from the cable she had sent from Freetown advising him of her arrival in Africa, she had not communicated with Mr. Latimer. He wouldn’t worry; the old pet dwelt most of the time among his treasures. In any case, it was pointless to write till she and his sister-in-law had come together. What with the heat and uncertainty Lyn did not feel capable of corresponding with people in England.
    She was glad that Melia Ducros had charge of the housekeeping. Melia, with her mixture of Latin blood and African upbringing, suffered the climate