Season of Shadows Read online

  Season of Shadows

  By

  Yvonne Whittal

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  SEASON OF SHADOWS

  When Laura's sister and brother-in-law were killed her first thought was for their little daughter Sally. Sally needed a mother—well, that was no problem; Laura was more than happy to take on the job. But the child needed a father just as much—and she knew and trusted Anton DeVere, so the obvious solution was for Laura and Anton to marry. And Laura didn't like Anton one bit! For the child's sake, could she make the best of a bad job?

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  First published 1980

  Australian copyright 1980

  Philippine copyright 1980

  This edition 1980

  © Yvonne Whittal 1980

  ISBN 0 263 73408 0

  To every thing there is a season,

  and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

  Ecclesiastes III, 1

  CHAPTER ONE

  Laura Hoffmeyer's blue eyes were clouded with pain and showed signs of recent tears as she stared out of the aircraft window into the blackness beyond, and tried to come to terms with the shocking reality of what had taken place. She was winging her way from Johannesburg to Cape Town in Anton DeVere's private jet, but the plush white and gold interior of the aircraft went unnoticed as she relived the horrifying events which had taken place since her arrival at her small Hillbrow flat early that evening.

  The caretaker had delivered the telegram which had arrived earlier that afternoon, and when the thin, grey-haired woman had departed, Laura stared at the orange-coloured envelope in her hands with a growing uneasiness. Her scatterbrained sister, Elizabeth, sent her a telegram each year on her birthday, but that was still more than two months away, Laura calculated swiftly and, tearing open the envelope, she read the printed message on the official-looking paper within. An icy coldness enveloped her as she read it through several times in order to make sure that her eyes had not deceived her, but the horrifying words remained unchanged.

  'Bluebird wrecked off skeleton coast. No hope of survivors. Sally safe at Bellavista. Come at once. Will telephone travel arrangements at 19h00 sharp. DeVere.'

  As she stood pale and shivering with shock, the telegram had fluttered to the carpeted floor from her nerveless fingers, and then, fighting back the tears while she sought relief in action, she went through to her bedroom and took down a suitcase to start her packing. Later, when she was in control of herself, she telephoned her employer at his home to arrange a week's leave and, when the telephone rang at seven sharp that evening, she was ready to depart at a moment's notice.

  'A car will call for you at seven-thirty to drive you out to the Rand Airport where my plane awaits you,' Anton DeVere's deep-throated voice instructed from his home in Cape Town. 'I'll meet you here on your arrival.'

  'Sally?' she said quickly, anxious for news of Elizabeth and Robert Dean's ten-year-old daughter before Anton DeVere ended the call in his usual abrupt fashion. 'How did she take it?'

  'She was shattered, naturally,' he told her with that familiar hint of impatience in his voice. 'I've put her to bed, but I doubt if she'll sleep until she's seen you.'

  There were so many things she had still wanted to know, but she decided reluctantly that they could wait, and their conversation had ended abruptly. In the car driving her at speed to the airport, Laura had shrunk into the shadows on the back seat to give way to the tears she could no longer control, and the driver, if he had heard a suspicious-sounding sniffle coming from behind him, had kept his eyes rigidly on the road ahead.

  'Could I bring you something to drink?' a uniformed young man enquired politely, bringing Laura sharply out of her reverie and, at her hesitation, he smiled and added persuasively, 'I can make an excellent cup of tea.'

  Laura accepted, realising suddenly that the hollowness at the pit of her stomach was not entirely due to the shock of the news she had received. She had had nothing to eat, or drink, since lunch-time that day, but somehow the thought of food at that moment nauseated her. When the young man returned with her tea she smiled at him gratefully and, taking that as encouragement, he sat down on the seat opposite her and lit a cigarette which, he told her, was forbidden up front in the cabin and staff quarters.

  'Do you know Mr DeVere well?' he asked with eventual curiosity, his openly appreciative glance resting on her honey-brown hair which was coiled into a casual but elegant knot in the nape of her neck.

  'I know him well enough to know that he's a man who's so accustomed to having his own way that he could be dangerous when crossed,' she could have said, but instead she said stiffly, 'My sister was married to a very close friend of Mr DeVere's. They were killed this morning when their yacht was wrecked.'

  'Oh, I'm sorry,' he said, his sympathetic glance bringing a renewed lump to her throat. 'I'm terribly sorry.'

  Laura averted her tear-filled eyes, and the young man, realising that she wanted to be alone, remained only long enough to finish his cigarette before he took her empty cup from her and excused himself.

  Anton DeVere's telegram had realised the fears Laura had had since Elizabeth had married Robert Dean. As sisters, with a five-year difference in their ages, they had been close since the death of their parents when Laura had been fourteen. They had been left with sufficient money to support themselves, but, when Elizabeth married Robert a year later, Laura had had no option but to become a boarder at the convent during her last two years at school.

  Robert Dean, a wealthy yacht builder from the Cape, had been almost fanatical about his love for the sea and, under his enthusiastic guidance, Elizabeth had developed a wanderlust to match her husband's. The birth of their daughter, Sally, had been almost an inconvenience, but Elizabeth had been determined that nothing would deprive her of her husband's company when he took to the sea in his favourite yacht, Bluebird, and Sally had spent her first six years accompanying her parents on their many voyages to foreign continents. She had been able to speak a nautical, seafaring language even before she had been able to speak English, but having to attend boarding school finally cu
rtailed these trips for her, and now, at the age of ten, she had grown into a fiercely independent little creature. Dark-haired, with her father's brown eyes and her mother's smile, Sally occupied a special place in Laura's heart, and it was her concern for the child which succeeded in keeping her dry-eyed and rational now despite her own personal grief.

  It was typical of Anton DeVere to take the child into his custody, but Laura had to admit that Bellavista, with its park-like gardens and its splendid view of the wine-producing Constantia valley, was an ideal setting for a child who needed sanctuary while adapting herself to the distressing news that the sea had robbed her of both her beloved parents.

  Anton DeVere. Laura shifted her position uncomfortably, almost as if she felt his dominating presence there beside her. She had met him for the first time six years ago while on a visit to her sister, and she had been left with a lasting impression of ruthless strength and raw masculinity. He was the only man who, in all her twenty-six years, somehow had the ability to make her acutely conscious of her femininity merely by being in the same room with her. Cynical and coldly dispassionate, he had treated her initial attempts at friendliness with suspicion and scorn, and through the years, whenever they had met on her frequent visits to Cape Town, she had found herself behaving towards him with a frigid politeness which stemmed from an inexplicable wariness in the company of a man who sometimes had the uncanny knack of reading her mind.

  'Please fasten your seat belt, Miss Hoffmeyer,' her thoughts were interrupted apologetically by the young man who had served her tea during the flight. 'We'll be landing in about ten minutes,' he warned.

  The two and a half hour flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town was soon at an end, and Laura found herself and her suitcase transported swiftly from the aircraft to the large chauffeur-driven limousine which had driven up moments after the pilot had cut the engines. Anton DeVere stepped from the car at her approach, but she was unaware of the flicker of interest in his hooded eyes as he observed the lithe, easy grace with which she moved. Seeing him again, after an interval of months, was an experience that needed all her self-control, for his tall, wide-shouldered presence exuded that same shattering aura of masculinity which she had encountered at their very first meeting.

  'I hope you had a pleasant flight?' he enquired once she was seated beside him in the back of the car and they were being driven from the airport grounds through a private exit.

  'The flight was very pleasant, thank you,' she replied stiffly, clasping her hands nervously in her lap as she felt those steel-grey eyes observing her intently in the darkened interior of the car. 'It was very kind of you to place your aircraft at my disposal, Mr DeVere.'

  'My concern was for the child,' he brushed aside her remark callously. 'She needs you, so I considered it imperative that I should get you here as quickly as possible.'

  That was one way of telling her that she could have gone to the devil as far as he was concerned, Laura thought wryly, but this was one occasion when she would not allow herself to be affected by his cold, autocratic unfriendliness.

  'How did it happen?' she asked at last.

  'There are plenty of theories, all of them probable, but the most likely one is that, on their way to South America, Robert and Elizabeth were caught up in that freak storm which has been ravaging the west coast during the past few days.' He spoke hurriedly, as if he wanted to get the explanation over and done with as quickly as possible. 'An Air Force helicopter spotted the wreckage early this morning, and there's no doubt that it was the Bluebird's.'

  'I don't suppose—'

  'No, there's no possibility that they could still be alive somewhere,' he interrupted impatiently, guessing her thoughts, and shattering her final shred of hope. 'The continuation of the search is now a mere formality. There will, of course, be an enquiry afterwards, and only then will their deaths be made official.'

  Laura lapsed into silence. She suspected that she had heard as much as he was prepared to tell her at that moment, and any further questions which might occur to her would have to wait until he was in a more amiable mood… if such a thing were possible.

  Table Mountain, floodlit and majestic, was ahead of them, and then the car turned off along the freeway towards Constantia, leaving the lights of the city behind them. There was no joy in her surroundings on this occasion, only a deep emptiness and sorrow at the thought that the two people she had loved so dearly would not be there at the end of her journey to welcome her.

  'Sally will make up for Elizabeth and Robert's absence,' Anton remarked, sensing her thoughts in that uncanny way of his. His hand found hers briefly in the dark interior of the car, and the touch of those strong fingers gripping her own was as unexpected as it was comforting.

  The car swept through the gates of Bellavista and up the long avenue of cypress trees towards the two-storied, gabled house which was surrounded by spacious, beautifully kept gardens which were now shrouded in darkness.

  This was not Laura's first visit to Anton DeVere's impressive home. She had been there once before with Robert and Elizabeth when Anton had entertained a client on a visit from Germany. It had been an all-day affair with bathing in the marble pool, and tennis on Bellavista's two excellent courts. A typical South African braai had been arranged for that evening, and afterwards the long dining hall had been cleared for dancing. Laura had not lacked partners that evening, but Anton had never once asked her to dance, and his obvious omission had strengthened her suspicion that she had been there on sufferance because of the family tie between herself and the wife of his closest friend.

  The car drew up beside the shallow steps leading up to the double oak doors, and moments later Laura found herself in Bellavista's large entrance hall with its original black and white stone floor still in perfect, gleaming condition. Small Persian rugs lay scattered decoratively on the floor, while a carved wooden bench and an antique rosewood table were the only other objects to adorn the hall, she noticed when she cast a swift, appreciative glance about her.

  'Sally's room is this way,' Anton announced, and she was led across the hall, up the curved staircase, down a passage and along yet another before he opened a door and stood aside for her to enter. 'This is your room,' he said, not giving her the opportunity to look about her before he opened the interleading door and ushered her into the adjoining room.

  A bedside lamp illuminated the room and a child sat up eagerly in the bed the moment they entered through the door.

  'Aunty Laura?' she whimpered pathetically, her eyes red and swollen, and Laura went to her at once, seating herself on the side of the bed as she leaned forward to take the child into her arms and hold her close.

  'Sally darling!' Laura exclaimed softly, controlling her own desire to weep as she felt the small, firm body in her arms shaking with the force of her tears.

  'They're d-dead, Aunty Laura,' Sally sobbed brokenly into Laura's neck. 'M-Mummy and D-Daddy are d-dead.'

  'I know, darling, I know,' Laura whispered, brushing a strand of dark hair out of Sally's eyes and kissing the wet, flushed cheek to hide the moisture in her own eyes.

  'Why, Aunty Laura?' Sally cried. 'Why did they have to die?'

  Laura swallowed convulsively to relieve the ache in her throat and tightened her arms about her young niece. 'I can't answer that, Sally, but for all of us there's a time to live and a time to die, and we must accept that God wanted it this way.'

  'I wish I were dead too!'

  'Don't wish that, darling,' Laura cautioned swiftly with a lump in her throat. 'You're all I have now.'

  'You should go to sleep now, Sally,' Anton instructed, speaking for the first time since they had entered the room, and Laura felt almost guilty at having forgotten his existence for those few brief moments. 'It's been a long day for you,' he added sternly, 'and you must get some rest.'

  'Yes, Uncle Anton,' Sally whispered, sliding beneath the covers, but her anxious glance returned swiftly to Laura. 'You'll be here tomorrow when I wake up?'
<
br />   'I'll be here,' Laura promised, and the plea in Sally's eyes wrenched at her heart as she leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead.

  Later, in the living-room with its stone, fireplace and priceless seventeenth-century furniture, Anton poured coffee and extended a silver salver towards her.

  'Have a sandwich,' he ordered.

  'I'm not—'

  'I doubt if you had anything to eat this evening,' he observed dryly, his cold grey eyes narrowing at the look of guilt that flashed across her pale, sensitive face. 'I thought not,' he added reprovingly before she could think up a reply.

  'I wasn't very hungry,' Laura explained lamely, accepting a sandwich much against her will.

  'Neither was I,' he stated calmly, placing the salver on the low table between them and helping himself. 'I was also too busy to take time off for dinner this evening.'

  Laura bit into the tastily prepared chicken sandwich, and was surprised to discover how hungry she actually was. The sandwiches disappeared rapidly, and while they ate, she observed the man reclining in the armchair opposite her. The silver threads in his dark hair had become more pronounced since their last meeting, but the tanned, angular face with the hawklike nose still wore that mask of ruthlessness she remembered so well. There was nothing attractive about the hard set of his mouth and jaw, but there was that indefinable quality about him that reminded her of a sleek panther, always on the alert, and with those powerful muscles geared for action at a moment's notice to claim its terrified prey. Perhaps it was that quality of danger about him which had first stirred her senses and made her so aware of him that she had never quite succeeded in forgetting him, she thought ruefully.