Jordan wanted to cry out to his beloved brother, to run to him and physically restrain him from the folly of turning this giant of a soul into an enemy. He had seen other men do just that, and be ruthlessly crushed.
Then with a sickening slide in the pit of his stomach, he knew which side he would cast his lot if that dreaded confrontation ever forced a choice upon him. He was Mr. Rhodes" man, beyond brotherly ties and family loyalties, to the very end of life itself, he was Mr. Rhodes" man.
He sought desperately for some plausible excuse to break the tension between the two most-important persons in his life, but relief came, from beyond the stockade, in the delighted cries of the servants, the hysterical barking of the camp dogs, the crunch of cartwheels and the excited shrieks of more than one woman. Jordan was the only one watching Ralph's face, so he caught the sly and smug expression as his brother rose.
"It seems we have more visitors," Ralph said, and the twins came into the inner stockade. Victoria came first, as Ralph had expected that she would. She came on long shapely legs, outlined beneath the whirl and boil of her thin cotton skirts, barefoot in defiance of all ladylike pretensions, carrying her shoes in one hand, and Jonathan riding on her hip. The child was squeaking like a wart hog piglet that has lost the teat.
"Vicky! Vicky, did you bring me anything?" "A kiss on the cheek and a slap on the behind." Vicky laughed, and hugged him. Her laughter was loud and gay and unaffected, her mouth was a little too large, but her lips were velvety as rose petals and sweetly shaped, her teeth were large and square and white as bone-china porcelain, and as she laughed her tongue, furry pink as that of a cat, curled between them. Her eyes were green and wide-spaced, her skin was that lustrous silky English perfection that neither sun nor massive doses of anti-malarial quinine could mar. She would have been striking, even without the dense tresses of copper-blonde hair, ruffled by the wind, and wild as the sea, that tumbled about her face and shoulders.
She riveted the attention of every man there, even Mr. Rhodes, but it was to Ralph she ran, holding his son on her hip still, and she threw her free arm around his neck. She was so tall that she had only to stand on her toes to reach his lips. The kiss was not long held, but her lips were soft and wet, the pressure of her breasts through her cotton blouse was springy and elastic and warm against his chest, and her thighs against his sent a shock up his spine, so that Ralph broke the embrace, and for an instanter green eyes mocked him, dared him to something that she did not fully understand, revelling in this heady sense of power over all mankind that she had not yet tested to its limits.
Then she tossed Jonathan to Ralph and whirled away to run barefoot down the tent and launched herself into Jordan's arms.
"Darling Jordan, oh, how we have missed you!" She forced him into a prancing jig around the stockade, shaking out her shining hair and carolling joyously.
Ralph glanced at Mr. Rhodes, and when he saw his expression of shock and unease, he grinned and released Jonathan, letting him race across to cling to Vicky's skirt and add his shrill voice to the uproar, then he turned to greet the second twin.
Elizabeth was as tall as Vicky, but darker. Her hair was polished mahogany, shot through with sparks of burgundy and her skin was sun-kindly, gilded to the colour of a tiger's eyes. She was slim as a dancer, with a narrow waist and shoulders supporting a long heron neck, and her breasts were smaller than Vicky's, yet elegantly pointed, and though her voice was soft and her laughter a throaty purr, yet there was a mischievous quirk to her lips, a jaunty tilt to her head and a measured sexual candour and awareness to the gaze of her wild honey eyes.
She and Cathy were arm in arm, but now she slipped out of her elder sister's embrace and presented herself to Ralph. "My favourite brother-in-law," she murmured, and looking into her eyes Ralph was reminded that though her voice was softer, and her manner seemingly more restrained than that of her twin, yet Elizabeth was always the instigator and prime mover in any mischief that the pair conjured up.
This close, her true beauty was apparent, less flamboyant than Vicky's perhaps, but the balance of her features and the depths beyond those golden-brown eyes were more disturbing.
She kissed Ralph, and the contact was as brief but even less sisterly than had been the elder twin's embrace, and as she drew back from it, she slanted her eyes with a pretence of innocence, that was more deadly than any brazening. Ralph broke the electric contact, and looked to Cathy, making a comical moue of resignation, and hoping that she still believed his studied avoidance of the twins was because he found them boisterous and childish.
Flushed and panting, Vicky released Jordan, placed her hands on her hips and asked Ralph, "Ralph, are you not going to present us to the company?" "Mr. Rhodes, may I present my sisters-in-law," said Ralph with relish.
"Oh, the famous Mr. Rhodes," Vicky gushed theatrically, but there were little green sparks in her eyes. "It is such an honour to meet the conqueror of the Matabele nation, because, you see, King Lobengula was a personal friend of our family." "Please excuse my sister, Mr. Rhodes." Elizabeth curtsied, and her expression was demure. "She intends no discourtesy, but our parents were the first missionaries to the Matabele, and our father sacrificed his life trying to help Lobengula while your troops were pursuing him to his death. My mother-" "Young lady, I am fully aware who your mother is," Mr. Rhodes forestalled her sharply.
"Oh good," Vicky chimed sweetly. "Then you will appreciate the gift that she asked me to present to you." Vicky reached into the deep pocket of her long skirt and brought out a thin volume. It was bound in cardboard, not morocco leather, and the quality of the yellow paper was coarse and matt. She laid it on the trestle-table in front of Mr. Rhodes, and when he saw the title his heavy jaw clamped closed. Even Ralph quailed slightly. He had counted on the twins providing an unsettling influence, but he had not expected them to be so instantly explosive.
The book was entitled Trooper Hackett of Matabeleland, by Robyn Ballantyne, for the twins" mother wrote and published under her maiden name. There was probably not a man in the stockade who had not already read the slim volume, or at least heard of its contents, and if Vicky had thrown a live mamba on the table, their consternation could not have been more intense.
The contents of the book were so dangerous that three reputable London publishers had rejected it, and finally Robyn St. John had published it privately and created an immediate sensation. In six months it had sold almost two hundred thousand copies, and had been treated to extensive reviews in almost every influential newspaper both at home in England and abroad in the colonies.
The frontispiece of the book set the tone for the text that followed. It was a murky photograph that depicted a dozen white men in BSA Company uniform standing under the spreading branches of a tall wild teak tree and looking up at the corpses of four semi-naked Matabele hanging by their necks from the topmost branches. There was no caption to the photograph, and the faces of the white men were too indistinct to be recognizable.
Now Mr. Rhodes reached out and opened the book at the gruesome illustration. "Those are four Matabele indunas who were wounded at the battle of Bembesi, and who committed suicide by hanging, rather than surrender to our forces," he growled. "They are not the victims of some atrocity as this scurrilous piece of offal implies." Mr. Rhodes closed the book with a snap, and Elizabeth exclaimed sweetly, "Oh, Mr. Rhodes, Mama will be so disappointed that you did not enjoy her little story." The book described the fictional adventures of Trooper Hackett of the BSA Company expeditionary force, and his whole-hearted participation in the slaughter of the Matabele with machine-gun fire, the pursuit and shooting down of the fleeing survivors, the burning of the kraals, the looting of Lobengula's cattle and the rape of the young Matabele girls. Then Trooper Hackett is separated from his squadron and spends the night alone on a wild kopje, and while huddled over his camp-fire a mysterious white stranger comes out of the night and joins him at the fire. Hackett remarks, "Ah, you have been in the wars, too, I see," leaning forward and inspecting the stranger's feet. "By God!