Bliss River Read online

  Bliss River

  Thea Devine

  Brava books

  2002

  Prologue

  The Bliss River Valley

  Murthagorda, South Africa

  Spring 1897

  There she comes, one of the children of Eden. Even as she walks, there's a restlessness about her, a discontent.

  And I'm not the only one who has noticed.

  No, it is obvious to those of us who know her best.

  We've talked about it; we agree: She is the snake in the garden, the thing to be most feared. We've agreed what to do.

  It won't be difficult.

  She's gorgeous. A creature to be envied, to be wor­shiped. All the men want her, even if she pretends she's not aware of it.

  But she's been part of the fabric of the Basin for all the years of her life.

  Or was that a mistake?

  Sometimes I think it was a grievous lapse in judgment to keep her in Murthagorda, but I have no proof, no proof.

  It's just that restlessness—and something in her eyes. Maybe it's something only I can see ...

  And maybe I'm imagining it.

  Everyone else sees heaven in those heavenly eyes...

  And that was the whole point. Everyone agreed. And what to do about the children, too. Inevitable whelps. Keeping a person from the kind of life that mere mortals only dream of...

  No—there's no going back.

  Once she's tethered, she'll come to understand. Every­one does. Everyone wants it, once they understand the concept.

  After all, everything's taken care of, and there's never a price to pay.

  If that isn't heaven on earth, then nothing is.

  It's so seductive, she will want it, too. She'll grab for everything she can get with both hands, just as we all did.

  And then we'll have her.

  And the threat will be no more...

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Nandina Club

  The Bliss River Valley

  Murthagorda, South Africa

  Summer 1898

  He didn't see a glint of recognition in her eyes, and it both pleased him and irritated him.

  She had no idea who he was. But there Was no reason that she should, not after all these years.

  All she needed to know was what the pleasure-seeking members of the expatriate colony lounging on the shady club veranda knew: that he was a top-ranked breeder of polo ponies who had come to display his first crop of bangtails to the newly inaugurated team on the newly built playing field at the Nandina Club in Murthagorda.

  As he had planned. Every step he had taken to bring him to this moment, with him astride his prize pony and swinging his way down the field, had been planned with excruciating attention to detail.

  It was his way. Deliberation. Penetration. Know the enemy before the attack. Lessons learned too young, too soon, and only implementable because he had moved in two worlds for so long, it was second nature now.

  But there was a ferocity in him that he held rigidly in check, the part of him that raced his ponies over the sands of Saffoud and the greensward of the Nandina playing the field with the recklessness of a sheikh.

  He was all of that and more, and a good fellow besides. He drew his pony to a thundering halt beside the ve­randa, and the admiring crowd immediately burst into ap­plause.

  One man separated himself from them, his hand out­stretched. "Charles! Fantastic beast. Excellent show."

  Charles swung down from the pony, tossed his mallet, tucked his hat under his arm, and grasped the other man's hand. "I'm gratified you're pleased."

  The man shook his head. "They're beauties. Worth any price." He clapped Charles on the shoulder. "Let's drink to it. They should be ready for us inside."

  The crowd accompanied them, including her. He made it a point to be within visual distance of her. Her. The wife of a man who had a hundred thousand pounds to spend on a string of polo ponies to while away the idle hours of the idle rich in the sultry heat of a country thousands of miles from home. He despised them.

  But he wasn't averse to taking their money. To moving in their world. To making himself indispensable to their

  pleasure.

  The heat was stultifying and it wasn't much cooler in the dim recesses of the club. But he was used to the deep bone-seeping heat of the desert, and the piercing, burning

  caress of the sun.

  This was nothing to him; this was an oasis. He accepted a drink from a passing waiter—they all did—as Moreton Estabrook led them to the rear of the gathering room to a porch overlooking a cool fountain shaded by a stand of trees.

  Perfect here. The group sank exhaustedly into a dozen or so wicker chairs arranged in a circle around a large wooden table. The women immediately pulled off their hats and gloves and summoned waiters to bring wet tow­els and someone to operate the fans.

  Charles watched the bustle with a cynical eye. Spoiled aristocrats they were, and petulant, deliberately never get­ting used to the suffocating heat, and then using it as an excuse for their dissipated, self-indulgent excesses.

  Indigent second sons could live like a sultan on the cheap here, and if there was money, a man could be king, if not God.

  What was Moreton Estabrook, with his free-handed ways? King—or desert rat?

  He had called for more drinks, and the waiters were just setting them on the table.

  "Charles," he boomed, taking a glass. "Good job. Ladies. Gentlemen. To Charles Elliott and the new polo

  club."

  They all lifted their glasses. She lifted hers tentatively.

  "Hear, hear."

  "How soon can we make the arrangements?" Moreton asked. "And can you stay on until we're properly estab­lished? We'll pay for your time, of course."

  Of course. Charles felt a spurt of anger at the assump­tion he could be bought, but he let nothing show in his face. It was going just as he had planned, but he wasn't sure he could tolerate Estabrook's smarmy condescension for more than another five minutes.

  He reined in his natural impulse to squash the fleshy bug that was Estabrook, and lifted his glass. "I am at your disposal for as long as you need me," he murmured. For as long as I need you.pose still sat across the table from him, aloof, tense, and wary. Aware of him?

  But he sensed no curiosity about him whatsoever. Rather, her attention was focused on Moreton, and the woman who sat beside them. The one who'd sent Moreton that warning look. The one who reminded him of a bird of prey, sharp, rapacious, merciless.

  Dinner was served—chunks of marinated Jamb and veg­etables on skewers over a large firepot that fit into an inset in the table. Rice bowls. Lentil salad redolent of vinegar, oil, spiced tomatoes, onions. Flat biscuits to scoop the meat and vegetables. And wines and liqueurs, free-flowing, a ser­vant assigned to refill every empty glass. Finger bowls full of cool water and floating petals. Servants to wield fans for their comfort as they ate.

  Conversation slowed and petered out into an awesome concentration on the food. Their appetites were bound­less, their enjoyment close to ecstasy. There was no such thing as moderation. "Help yourself, Charles, please," Moreton invited. "There's always more, and even more after that. And dessert is yet to come."

  So he helped himself, pacing himself to give the illusion of eating more while the others swamped themselves in gluttony.

  Dessert was an anticlimax. They were too full, yet no one turned down the small cakes, fruit, and cheese that re­moved the main meal. There was coffee and tea, and claret and brandy to accompany that.

  There was silence and complete absorption in the food, as the sun went down and twilight rose. Charles estimated they had been at dinner for close to three hours by the time Moreton rose, spread his arms, and indicated the meal was done.
"Come, Charles, let's walk."

  He had no choice but to follow. She did not give him a second glance, but he felt the interest and attention of every other woman on him as he gracefully withdrew from the table.

  There was a palpable excitement in the air as they walked through the clubhouse, and then out onto the grounds in front, where a knot of women and girls were milling around.

  Or were they?

  "So this is our little village," Moreton said. "Pennyfield vetted you so I know you're a right one. I know you like what you see."

  Ah yes, Pennyfield. The connection. The conduit. The li­centious bastard with his hints and smirks and allusions to life before the serpent struck. All too clear now what he meant. Charles was repulsed. "What exactly have I seen?" he asked finally, impassively.

  Moreton waved his hand. "Freedom. For everyone." He nodded at a group of women coming toward them. "And another night of voluptuous expectation. This is our life in Bliss River Valley, dear Charles. This is as close to heaven as a man can get. Look at those beauties trolling for a lover for tonight."

  Charles went rigid, and Moreton sensed it. "Do I shock you, Charles? Because of Lydia? But we've been married for years. This is our custom, and it is understood Lydia will find her own partner for tonight as well."

  Yes, Charles thought, his hands clenching, Lydia was very good at finding partners for the night. And she had recanted everything she had attained to be the wife of Moreton Estabrook? It was almost laughable.

  Except that Moreton was as serious as a priest as he elaborated further. "Vows and commitments mean noth­ing here. This is the Garden of Eden, my friend. This is where all things are possible, every fantasy is permissible, every desire can be met. For everyone, male and female.

  And without regrets, without recriminations. Take what you want. Candy in a shop, my friend. Choose one piece; choose three. Whatever your wont, whatever your need.

  "And surely you have needs after all the time you trav­eled to come to us, Charles. Choose one luscious morsel for your bed tonight. Look around you—the way the women are swinging their hips, the way they watch you, the way they lick their lips. They want you, the beauties. All of them with tight young bodies and hard-tipped breasts. Take one, Charles. Any one you like. Take two. They'll burrow all over you and make you feel like a king.

  "It is the way here. From age sixteen on. And we teach our children from the time they can talk that everyone be­longs to everyone, and no one belongs to just someone. It's a foolproof system. It readies them for their coming of age under the peacock fan; it primes them to participate in the daily pleasure as they come to learn what pure guiltless pleasure means. And thus we perpetuate heaven on earth, my friend.

  "But, all this talk of pleasure has stiffed me to the root. And you need a partner for tonight. You know, you need not be particular. You need not be shy. Our women are eager to spread their legs and let you nuzzle inside them. Look around at all this prime flesh, my dear Charles. You can have any woman who takes your fancy."

  Moreton was watching him closely. It was abominably clear the pasha was offering him his choice of the harem, and he had better make a selection. Moreton was no better than a whoremonger, showing off his stable.

  They were all of a piece, these women, similarly dressed, educated in lust, alike in their movements, their blandish­ments, their lewd, practiced smiles. One was no more en­ticing than the other.

  Except that one—

  Far on the edge of the crowd, he saw her, aloof and removed, her ramrod posture immutable and proud. She was not engaged in a mating dance, far from it. She seemed disdainful of it, above it. She looked like she was trying not to be noticed.

  And yet, who wouldn't notice her? She moved like a queen, her pure profile silhouetted against the waning light, her dark hair tumbling in curls down her back.

  He watched her for another moment, curious. And then she moved into the crowd, obviously lusting, as they were, for a lover. She was no different than the rest of them: a child of paradise, educated to fleshly pursuits.

  Goddamn. He didn't want to choose, not a one of them, and he would not perform on command, and so where would that leave him with his coy mistress in the morning? Probably the object of the pernicious gossip the colony loved to feed on.

  There was no way around it. Someone would share his bed tonight whether he wanted it or not.

  He shrugged. "You choose for me, Estabrook. I have no

  preferences."

  Moreton eyed him consideringly for a moment. "I know the very one," he murmured. "She is much more suited to your obviously refined tastes. She will come to you within the hour, my dear Charles." He clapped him on the shoul­der. "You have only to take yourself to your bungalow and relax, and then prepare to spend yourself until she sucks you dry."

  If there was anything Georgiana Maitland had learned in all her years in Bliss River Valley, it was the potency of her femininity. That, and the power of the word no.

  "But my dear," her mother would chide her, "there's ab­solutely no reason to deny yourself. You've been amply prepared. You know everything. You are merely fulfilling your destiny. What more could any woman desire than to be a vessel for a man's pleasure? But even better than that, any man you want. Every man you want." "They're all pigs; who would want them?"

  "They want us," her mother would say, "and that con­fers power."

  But her mother had it all wrong: submission led to de­pendence. Refusal, withholding what was most desired, gave you the power.

  She had watched for years as her mother danced a quadrille of passion with dozens of men in the Valley, yearning and hoping that Moreton would abandon his duty to her sister and come to her.

  How often had Georgiana heard about the debutante days of the wild Wyndham sisters who had had the whole of London at their feet. Olivia and Lydia, walking all over the men who wanted them, rejecting proposals and mar­riage, status and wealth, and stubbornly going their own libidinous way. And look at where they were now: stuck in a sultry swamp of lust and concupiscence, yearning for lovers they could never have and a stability and order they denied they wanted.

  And herding their children into the morass with them.

  Her own father had abandoned them his second year out in the Valley and returned to England, Aling, and the countryside that he loved, believing in his soul that her mother, Olivia, had already poisoned her.

  But it wasn't too late—it wasn't. She didn't want this life; she wanted to get out of it, to get away somehow and join her father in England. It wasn't too late. The initiation meant nothing. And she'd kept herself as pure as she could, rebelling, demanding to choose, and then making as few choices as possible, enough only to satisfy Moreton that she was conforming, that she was one of them. Never.

  She didn't often do the twilight promenade. It was a nightly ritual that everyone knew was meant to precipitate a night of voluptuous promiscuity. It was never talked about; it was just done. There wasn't a man in the Valley who wasn't up for night after night of mindless fucking. Or a woman who wasn't ready to accommodate him. The promenade was their meeting ground. She was the rare one. The one who valued her body and its pleasure. But she was twenty now, and getting too old for games. Moreton had warned her.

  Moreton, the bastard, the high priest of penetration. She shuddered whenever she thought of it. And that her mother wanted him, still. Forever. For all the years her mother had known him, for all the years she wallowed in hatred when he chose Lydia, and for all the years after she went on the rebound and married Georgiana's father.

  And then what transpired but that Lydia ran away with that Oxford-educated Bedouin prince, Ali Bakhtoum, and immured herself in the desert.

  So there was her mother, Olivia, firmly married and fuming, ensconced deep in the English countryside, and there was Moreton haring off to Africa and establishing an expatriate colony at Bliss River to feed his debauched fantasies. Because he certainly wasn't going to take on Ali Bakhtoum for the lo
ve of Lydia. At least the way her mother told the story. Olivia followed him to the Valley over her husband's objections, and never left.

  And meantime, incited by a distraught letter that Lydia had somehow smuggled out to him begging him to save her, Moreton stormed the desert stronghold of Ali Bakh­toum and rescued her, leaving Bakhtoum and his entour­age dead in the process.

  And Olivia brokenhearted once again.

  Because then Moreton went and married Lydia. And Olivia never divorced her father. And here they all lived in a haze of hedonistic harmony, educating their children to follow in their ways.

  Dear lord. She never got used to it. And her obdurate fa­ther never believed that she could be saved.

  But for the past few days, there had been a stranger in their midst, and that was the thing that compelled her to walk the twilight promenade, that gave her a smaJl surge of hope.

  A foreigner. Someone from outside who wasn't used to their ways. Someone who might revile them. Someone, she thought, she might somehow coerce into helping her get away.

  Coerce.. . She knew one way of doing that. Only one thing to barter for his help.

  So it all came down to that, she thought mordantly. It was all about sex all the time; there was no escaping it, and she was never going to get away.

  Chapter Two

  She had to try. There were so few visitors to the Valley. And those who came went through a rigorous scrutiny to be certain they were the kind of people Moreton wanted there.

  And Moreton wanted this visitor, obviously, so what hope was there, really? The man had passed the test and would be here for the foreseeable future. That meant he understood everything, and he was willing to participate in anything.

  But even with all that, she was still curious to see this man the women had been gossiping about so endlessly for the past two days.

  He would be on the promenade, of course; every man in the colony paraded there every night, hard and hot to ruck. Or they stood sometimes, lounging against a wall, their hands set low on their hips, subtly pointing toward their already bulging crotches, ready to root in the next available orifice.