Free Brittle Bondage by Rosalind Brett

smile. That letter would always lie between them, a spear to Venetia, and a reminder to Blake that he had married for the wrong reasons.
    Venetia snapped off the bedside lamp and resolutely thought about tomorrow, and seeing Thea again.
    As it happened, Thea did not turn up. On his morning canter Blake had intercepted a native boy bearing a note from the hospital. Thea was sorry to disappoint them, but would definitely be along on Wednesday. She hoped Venetia had recovered, and sent them both her love.
    For a while Venetia was downcast, but when Blake suggested a drive towards the mountains and a picnic lunch she forgot Thea in the joy of preparing the basket and sitting beside him as they sped between plantations towards green and rocky peaks. The day stretched long and precariously happy. They fished in a stream, lunched and dozed, and strolled by the riverside beneath bending trees. The tension between them was less noticeable than at any time since Venetia had arrived at Bondolo. She did not dwell upon the fact that it came back as the distance narrowed between the car and home.
    It was cooler next morning. The wind had shifted, bringing refreshing breaths from the east, and Blake proposed to use the “cold spell”—which could not last long—for some intensive cane cutting.
    “Come along for an hour,” he said. “It’s a gay and noisy business. You’ll like it.”
    “Have I time to change?”
    “Yes, and wear your boots—not shoes. We may meet a snake among the cane. The boys know how to deal with them, but its best to play it safe.”
    “I’ll be quick,” she said, thinking how perfect everything was this morning.
    Presently they came to where the cutting was in progress. The cutters worked in a strung-out line, wielding long-handled scythes. Most of them wore bright shirts and head-covering of some sort, but the piccanins who followed them up, grouping the cane and carrying it in shoulder-loads to the ox-cart, were clad only in the scantiest of shorts. Their woolly domes and black skins were covered with dust, but they were the merriest of the lot.
    There was little here for Blake to do, but he stayed in the saddle beside Venetia till she had had enough of the scene. Then they rode on to the cross-road which separated the sugar from the timber.
    “I have to go down to see the foreman,” he said. ‘You turn left, Venetia, and make your way home.”
    “Can’t I go with you?”
    “Better not. It’ll take some time and this is your first ride for over a week. I’ll try to be back by noon.”
    “Please do, and we’ll bathe together.”
    “Off you go, then. Don’t gallop, and don’t dismount among the trees.”
    At the first bend Venetia turned and waved. Blake had waited to see her out of sight as she had hoped he would. Ginger’s hoofbeats, muted by dust and sparse turf, provided an almost imperceptible drum-beat to the wind - borne singing of the field-workers.
    The trees thinned into marulas and tho rnb ush; the sugar was left behind. Venetia had entered the outskirts of the cattle veld. Soon she would come to their own stretch of river and amble along its bank as far as the cycad palms, where a path branched and ran through the bush to join the road to the house.
    How lovely were the undulating reaches of veld, like a painted sea under the changing sky. Some time she would make straight for the horizon and perhaps peer over the edge into rainbow-land.
    Distracted by this flight of imagination, she watched with detachment the lightning passage of a small red buck across her field of vision. It was a graceful little animal, and almost soundless. The horseman who chased the creature, however, was thudding much too close to be ignored. In a reflex action she pulled swiftly from his path.
    He dragged the reins, swung back and trotted to her side.
    “I say, I’m terribly sorry. Thousands and thousands of acres of veld and yet I have to nearly unseat you. Are you all right?”
    “Perfectly.”