The Reluctant Guest by Rosalind Brett Read Free Book Online Page B

from the topic. “Did you fly to South Africa?”
    “No. Flying is expensive, and in any case, my mother needed the cruise.”
    “Haven’t you ever flown?”
    “No.”
    “I’ll take you up some time. You’ll like it.”
    “Do you come here in a plane?”
    “Mostly, though this time I used the wagon. I can land a small plane on a strip that’s about twenty miles from here. The Airways Company operates only from the Transvaal.”
    “Do you ever do the trips abroad yourself?”
    “Not now. We started seven years ago with only two planes. Theo took one and I the other. We’re running five now, and five crews, with a few spares. The venture has grown into an organization and it’s less interesting. You don’t know how good it is to be back at Groenkop.”
    Ann suppressed an urge to look at him. She hadn’t thought of him as having emotions and heartfelt preferences, and the fact that he admitted, to a stranger, that G roenkop was more to him than just the family home, somehow made him a little more normal than she had thought him.
    She put a question, impersonally. “I suppose you took up flying as a sort of reaction from Belati?”
    “Partly. It was twelve years ago and the family were here then. I still have the same foreman — an Afrikaner who knows Groenkop down to the last mealie stalk. He lived here in this house, but when Theo took over I had another built for the foreman at the other end of the lands. He rated a nice new cottage, and anyway, his family was too big for this place. He’s a great chap with sheep.” He paused and added tentatively, “Isn’t this supposed to be a holiday for you?”
    “A holiday is a change, isn’t it? This is certainly a change for me.”
    “You should get out and see the district o r are you waiting for Theo Borland to act as escort?”
    Ann was coming to loathe the expression he put into his voice whenever he mentioned Theo. After all, Theo must have been a close frie nd of his, or he wouldn’t have given him a house and land. Yet, referring to Theo, he sounded sharp and cynical and omniscient . And he made Ann feel small and innocent and rather negligible.
    She stubbed out her cigarette ad asked coolly, “Would you like some tea?”
    “It’s a bit too early, thanks. What’s the matter — do I make you feel uncomfortable?”
    “That’s what you intended, isn’t it?”
    “I believe it is. I wonder why?”
    “Maybe you don’t like English girls.”
    “No, it’s you, personally. There’s something contradictory about you that irritates me. You’re cool and have your wits about you, you keep clear of danger by pretending to be open-minded, but you never unbend. I’ve a hunch that you’re afraid of being hurt.”
    Ann tried not to be aware of the sudden acceleration of her heartbeats. “You see me as more complicated than I am. I just happen to be the cool type.”
    “With that mouth?” he scoffed. “I don’t believe it . ”
    She stared at him, and a queer shiver ran through the whole of her body. Almost, she put up her fingers to cover her lips, but something told her that that was what he was expecting, and that when she did it he would laugh. So she moved slightly and looked out of the window, said evenly,
    “For some reason you’re trying to shake me, aren’t you? I suppose it’s unexciting for you here at Groenkop and you have to provide your own amusement . ”
    For almost a minute he lounged there, against the wall beside the window, without speaking, but with his grey enigmatic stare focused on her bent head.
    Then he said non-committally, “Some time, and maybe soon, someone is going to rock you to the foundations, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that chilly upbringing you’d had lets you down. I know you must have been warm and friendly with Theo, but if you’d thought he might threaten you in some way, you’d have gone arctic on him.”
    “I suppose you know what you’re getting at,” she returned. “I don’t . ”
    “I