Full Circle (12 page)

They bought cheese, stone-ground bread, and apples from a village shop. They ate at a stream with a rock as both table and bench. The valley was steep-sided, shielding them from the wind. Sheep supplied the entertainment, calling in cadence to the rushing water.

Adam decided it was time to ask, “Would you tell me about your project?”

Kayla stared at the water. “It all seems a million miles away right now.”

“Forget the bad stuff. Practically all I've heard so far has been about the guy and the damage. Tell me the good.”

She looked at him. The sun played upon her gaze, turning it to russet gemstone, clear as the stream that rushed beside them. “There was a lot of it. The good. A lot.”

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to do as she had done in the coffee shop. Adam reached over and took hold of her gloved hand.

Kayla stared at the two hands, one bared and the other in leather. Adam waited for her to break the moment and say they needed to be getting on. But when Kayla lifted her hand free, it was merely to slip the glove off. She settled her fingers back into his and said, “How much do you know about Oxfam?”

“The name only.”

“In the middle of the Second World War, the college chapels got together with the city churches and founded the Oxford Famine Relief Committee. Their aim was to bring food and shelter to the innocents of Greece and Netherlands who had been made homeless by the war. Other British cities set up similar groups, but Oxfam was the only one that kept going after the war. Oxfam now operates in seventy-four countries. They are often the first to bring supplies to disaster-hit regions and the last to leave. Their aim is not merely to feed and shelter the destitute, but once the crisis is under control, to help rebuild shattered lives.

“Before the drought struck East Africa, Oxfam helped start a worldwide project called the Fair Trade Initiative. In many of the poorest countries, farmers who raise the crops receive almost none of the profits. They are told what to grow by middlemen, who then pay them in seed and supplies, creating modern servitude. Oxfam sought to break this stranglehold by taking the place of the middlemen and giving all the profits back to the farmers and their villages.”

The sun touched the lip of the western slopes. Instantly the sky overhead was filled with an orchestral array. Every tree, every rocky outcropping, became a symphony of light and tone. Adam drank in the day and the brook and the country-side perfumes, knowing Kayla was no longer entirely there beside him. She had drifted away, captured by a hot and dusty realm.

“No one expected the level of success Oxfam experienced with this project. Nowadays, many of Europe's supermarket chains have entire aisles for Fair Trade products. The result has been an anchoring of entire regions. Villagers were no longer giving up on land their families had farmed for generations and migrating to the cities. Why should they, when they could remain where they were and earn a decent wage and send their children to school and preserve their way of life.” Kayla was silent for a moment before adding, “Then disaster struck.”

Adam guessed, “The drought.”

“Oxfam is now the major supplier of food and shelter to nine hundred thousand people in East Africa. The problem is, more than
four million
people are starving. Oxfam's central committees in Kenya and Tanzania and Ethiopia and Eritrea had to make a critical choice—continue to support the Fair Trade projects or feed the starving. They really had no option, not when faced with the prospect of babies dying if they didn't change directions.”

Shadows drifted east until twilight's gentle blanket slipped over their resting place. The temperature dropped with the sun. Adam saw his breath as he said, “So they gave the project to you. Smart.”

“They had just started to organize the farmers of northern Tanzania and southern Kenya when the drought hit. The areas where water remained plentiful were growing flowers that required enormous amounts of handwork. Asparagus, artichokes, some fruit trees. But the biggest crop by far was coffee. We continued where Oxfam had been forced to stop, building drying sheds, set-ting up a sorting operation and cold-storage facility for cut flowers and out-of-season vegetables.”

Adam massaged the fingers going cold in the frigid dusk. “How many people were you helping, Kayla?”

She was quiet for a time, then used the hand that was still gloved to swipe at the edges of her eyes. “Almost a hundred villages. I wish you could have seen it when we were going strong.” Her voice was not broken, not really. Just trembling hard, as though revealing the joy was only possible if she shared the sorrow as well. “We would go into the villages to deliver their quarterly paychecks. They would line the road. If you can call a dusty track through the veld a road. They sang us in, they sang us out. This region, the north of Tanzania and the south of Kenya, is mostly Kikuyu and very strong Christian. They gave us names. They called me . . .”

Adam reached over and enfolded her in his arms. She did not actually cry. Adam understood. She was strong, and the sorrow was old. She just needed a moment to collect herself. Oh, yes. He understood all too well. When she started to straighten, Adam released her, knowing she needed to rely on her own strength. After all, she was going back. She had to fight this battle to the bitter end. Alone. She was going in seven days.

The internal reverberation increased to the point that his voice was almost as unsteady as hers. “We need to be going.”

chapter 13

T
he road crested a rise so high Adam caught a final teardrop of sunset gold amid the crown of trees. They descended with a tumbling river for company. A valley opened, wide enough to welcome both them and the river. Steep-sided hills brooded on all sides, bearing their cloaks of night like sentinels from an age of armor and warlocks, of seers and white-bearded kings. The sun was gone from this realm, yet the sky maintained its abundance of dusky hues. At the vale's heart rose a village of stone that glowed in the final light. The dominion of Broadway began with a sign declaring its royal charter of 1134. The central road deserved the village's name, for it was wide as a four-lane highway, yet paved in stone as ancient as the houses. At the village's heart was a coaching inn, with a domed entrance where carriages drawn by six matched steeds had once passed. Planted at the roadside was a sign declaring in Gothic script that the inn was the oldest in all England.

Kayla spoke for the first time since leaving their rocky haven. “Let's stay here.”

Kayla had not taken so much time dressing for a dinner in a long time.

Her bathroom was almost as large as her bedroom. A huge tub stood on four lion's paws beneath a window she soon frosted with steam. She used all the hotel's wide array of free gifts—herbal shampoo and bath salts and conditioner and lotion, all from the same shop that supplied Buckingham Palace. She dried her hair, combed it carefully, and held it away from her face with her mother's jeweled clip. Kayla had decided not to take the jewelry pieces she had inherited from her mother to Africa, which was the only reason she still had them in her possession. Her watch, a graduation present from her father, and the one necklace she had in Dar es Salaam were gone now. In the weeks after Geoffrey vanished, Kayla had found these small thefts the hardest to bear. It felt as though he had stolen them intentionally to rub her nose in the dust. To break her just as hard as he possibly could.

And now there was Adam.

She sat in her slip before the little makeup table and oval mirror. The table was an old-fashioned affair, with a padded top and pink lace draped around the edges and a matching padded stool. The mercury-backed mirror rested in a gilded frame, with two miniature chandeliers dangling to either side. In the mirror Kayla could see a four-poster bed so high the hotel supplied an embroidered footstool to climb in and out. Across from the bed hung a portrait of a young woman, her face almost lost to candle soot.

She knew she would remember every little item about this room and this day for a very long time.

She lined up her makeup items like little chess pieces. She had not used any of them in months. The powder compact was cracked as the parched earth of Africa. The lipstick was almost gummy. The eyelash brush was rock-hard and left her dabbing gobs instead of evenly applying the ink. But she was able to achieve the un-made-up look she preferred. She finished with a trace of perfume behind each ear. She screwed the top back on the tiny bottle. One by one she placed the containers back in the little pouch. Then she lifted her gaze.

And stared straight into the truth.

Her father was right. Adam was a good man. He deserved far better and far more than the few fractured minutes she had to give.

Kayla rose from the stool. She picked up the dress on the bed. It was a midnight blue Feraud, high-collared and long-sleeved, fashioned of merino wool so fine it floated cloudlike over her head and clung invitingly to her form. She slipped into stockings and shoes to match. She drew out her mother's pearls from her shoulder bag's side pocket, and stepped back to the oval mirror.

Kayla fumbled with the clasp, then dropped her hands and said to her reflection, “You were a fool to come.”

Even in the off-season, the two single rooms cost more than Adam paid for a month at the Oxford boardinghouse. He mused over how little this bothered him as he showered. He had never spent money easily. In his youth, there had been none to spend. When older and earning, he had always been too focused on the goal of future freedom. Adam dressed in the suit he had purchased with company money. He had felt silly packing a suit and dress shirt and new tie. Yet now, as he took the carved wooden staircase down to the main gallery, he was doubly glad, both because all the men he saw were equally well dressed, and because Kayla would no doubt have come prepared.

The hotel's main gallery was an odd juxtaposition of the antiquated and the polished. The flagstone floor still had grooves where metal-wheeled carts had brought in the packing chests used by guests arriving for the season. The front door was peaked and banded in iron, and each time one of the liveried servants opened it, Adam spotted another car from his dreams—a Bentley sports car, an Aston Martin, a vintage Rolls. The fireplace burned logs four feet long, casting a glow over the easy smiles and the dripping jewels. A giant Christmas tree draped in baubles and lights added to the festive atmosphere.

Then the glittering guests all turned in unison, the quick jerking motions of people whose attention has been drawn by the unexpected. And he knew. Even before he turned, he knew.

Kayla descended the staircase with careless ease. She wore a simple frock of understated elegance. It flowed about her, revealing both her feminine form and her strength. A string of pearls glowed softly in the firelight. A hairpin shaped like a tiny ruby butterfly looked ready to take flight. But it was not merely her beauty that captivated the guests. Kayla's presence was like a panther among caged and sheltered pets. Her tanned features were almost feral in the firelight. A distilled quality of strength and hard-earned wisdom emanated from her, stronger and far more alluring than perfume.

Adam watched her cross the gallery toward him and knew he was lost.