Doctor's Assistant by Celine Conway

them?”
    “Yes. Listen.”
    Above the swirl of the river came a distant thundering. As they progressed the sound increased to a deafening roar and soon the spray was drifting about them like smoke. A twist in the gorge and they had to rein in, for there were the “Tumbling Waters”, gushing over a hundred-foot-wide ledge to drop three hundred feet into the black well of the gorge. It was a magnificent, frightening sight.
    Charles drew Laurette forward, away from the horses, laid an arm across her shoulder and dug his other hand into his pocket.
    “Few people come here,” he said. “Africans say it’s a place of evil spirits, and if their children wander this way they have to find their own way home, or perish.”
    She shivered. “It’s beautiful, but I wouldn’t care to come here alone. Were you alone last time you came?”
    “No, I brought a woman on that occasion, too. She wasn’t like you, though. She owned a plantation near Port Quentin and was an excellent horsewoman.”
    “Was that... long ago?”
    “About two years. She got married and went to Kenya.” The subject had a loose end, yet Laurette could think of no way of phrasing what she ached to ask. Charles must have been conscious of the sudden tension in her, for he said lazily,
    “There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s been like this for thousands of years. If you ever go back to England this will be something to remember.”
    “Don’t talk like that!”
    “Nerves!” He looked down at her and tightened his hold of her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
    Already she would have given anything to retrieve the exclamation; defensively, she threw out a hand. “A while ago you said, ‘if you ever go to Basutoland’. Now it’s ‘if you ever go back to England’. I don’t know why, but it ... it rasped.”
    “My dear Laurette,” he said reasonably, “one never stands still. You know darn well that you won’t stay in Port Quentin for the rest of your days. You’re too young; you’ve too much yet to experience. Why, this time next year...”
    She uttered a choked, “Please!”
    “Very well, if you’re determined to be an ostrich.” He let a full minute elapse, before adding quietly, “How are things with Ben? Are you going to continue working for him?”
    It took several seconds to adjust her thoughts. “Why not? He says he wants me to,”
    “It’s dangerous.”
    “How can it be?”
    “You like him and you pity him. Next thing you know you’ll be marrying him.”
    For no reason she could work out his objective attitude speared her. She knew a reckless desire to get under his skin but was too unpractised to find a way.
    “One could do worse than marry Ben,” she said. “He’s sincere and uncomplicated.”
    “Exactly. He’d hardly sweep you into ecstasy,” he replied with sarcasm. “Ben may be a good sort but his job comes first every time. That’s natural in a doctor, and in some other men, too. I have the same failing. You need someone young, for whom those grey-blue eyes of yours will hold the whole world.”
    Laurette moved slightly forward, so that his arm had to fall. A bitterness had seeped into her thoughts, and with it came a kind of fear. She had never felt like this before. Rather blindly she turned towards the horses.
    “I have something in common with the Africans,” she said. “I don’t like it here.”
    “Let’s go, then.”
    He had her up in the saddle and at once they wound along the gorge, away from the falls. Gradually the sounds receded, and in due course they climbed out of the gargantuan cleft into a land drenched in the dusty gold of late sunshine. Here, Laurette could breathe freely and call herself stupid. She had permitted her mind to be influenced by the sinister, echoing gorge, the mighty, smoky torrent. Why shouldn’t Charles have been there before, and with a woman? He must have known many women as intimately as he knew Laurette Delaney. And why should it bother her that he viewed with