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."If I could win over Mathenge," Grace had said, "then I should be able to make the rain come!"James had laughed then, the sunburned skin around his eyes folding into creases.He had a beautiful voice, Grace thought.It was cultured and genteel, the sort one expected to hear on a Shakespearean stage.James.Sheba had been a gift from him.He had found the animal when he had gone hunting for a cheetah that had been killing his cattle.His bullet had made an orphan of the cub, and he had brought her to Grace as a pet.She blinked down at the page of Kikuyu grammar she was supposed to be studying and realized her mind had wandered again.Must all thoughts lead to James? she wondered.Was that how it was going to be? With Jeremy it had been so different.They had met in the operating theater of the hospital ship and had fallen in love almost on sight.Wartime did not allow for drawn-out romances or courtships.There had been no daydreaming over him.They were in love at once and within days had been making their lifetime plans together.But in the end, Grace asked herself now, just how well had she known Jeremy? On board the ship they had talked and talked, but what had they talked about?Grace frowned as she tried to remember.Even his features were growing vague in her memory.But with Sir James she recalled every word he uttered, could picture his attractive face clearly.And she knew much more about him than she ever had of Jeremy Manning.The first time Grace had visited Kilima Simba, the Donald ranch eight miles to the north, had been in May, when she had delivered Lucille's baby girl, Gretchen.Sir James had come for Grace in a cart drawn by a Somali pony, and the two boys, Ralph and Geoffrey, had come with him.Grace had discovered that morning that the Nyeri forest ended shortly beyond the Treverton Estate and gradually gave way to vast stretches of savanna that spread like a wheaten sea to the foothills of Mount Kenya.The endless lion-colored plains were dotted with broad-leafed trees and evergreen shrubs; the air was dust-dry, and the sky a darker, deeper blue.The dirt track passed small herds of native cattle being watched over by young men who leaned on long sticks and whose hair was greased into hundreds of tight braids.They wore shukas, blankets knotted over one shoulder, and their pierced earlobes were weighted down with wooden cylinder inserts.Overhead, hawks and vultures described circles; gunmetal clouds were stacked around the peaks of the greedy old mountain that refused to send the rain; and there was a silence overall.Grace had glanced frequently at the man riding by her side, his whip flicking the ears of the pony.James was cut of a rugged leanness that was very appealing; his skin was permanently tanned.He was stamped out of the pioneer mold one found in the Australian outback or American West, as African as the warriors leaning on their sticks, but with a gentleness not known to the warlike heart of the native.Kilima Simba, he had explained, meant "Lion Hill," simba meaning "lion" and kilima, "little hill." It was a Swahili place-name, and many such were found in East Africa, the most famous being that of the continent's tallest mountain, "Little Hill Njaro."The Donald ranch was even more isolated than Bella Two, which at least was near the small outpost town of Nyeri.It stood in the middle of yellow savanna, eight thousand acres of waterless ground and parched grass, with a large herd of crossbred Ayrshire and Boran cattle, three hundred imported Merino sheep, and a lonely farmhouse at the center.Lucille's hunger for the company of a white woman was evident the minute Grace stepped down from the cart.There was Lucille—actually, Lady Donald since her husband's knighthood—holding the front door open while clutching her abdomen through a contraction.Sir James came in and out of the house all afternoon, overseeing the innumerable projects on the ranch, while Grace took care of Lucille.Ralph and Geoffrey, aged four and seven respectively, played in the garden with the dogs and later came in noisily to gulp a supper of tinned ham, cornbread, and jellied preserves.Then James came in, washed and changed, and stayed by his wife's bedside until little Gretchen made her appearance at midnight.The instant the baby came into her waiting hands, Grace had thought: She will be best friends with Mona.While Lucille slept with Gretchen in the crook of her arm, Grace and James had sat in the cozy living room, where a pine log fire staved off the cold night.They had talked of many things that night, of the late rains, the shaky economics of the protectorate, problems with the natives; he had asked her about medical school, about the war, about her future plans in British East Africa and in turn had talked about his boyhood in Mombasa, safaris with his father into unexplored regions, the shock of having to go to England when he was sixteen, and the awful yearning that had been like a sickness to return.Because of the intimacy of the fire and the cold night, with the African stillness beyond the shuttered windows, Grace had wanted to ask him about his limp, the wound received in the war, and about how he had saved her brother's life.But then Grace remembered the night her ship had gone down and the hours spent adrift hearing the drowning men calling out for help in the darkness, and she had realized that just as she could never speak of that episode to anyone, so must Sir James wish to keep that chapter of his life private
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