Salt stung her eyes, but at a tentative knock on the door she straightened, fiercely blinking the tears away. She had held up thus far, and too many people depended on her for her to give way now. She would have liked to crawl into some quiet corner and cry for hours. Instead, her voice strong and steady, she called, “Come in.”
A husky youth sauntered into the room, hands thrust into the pockets of baggy pants worn with a camouflage jacket.
“Yes, Piripi?”
“Me and the guys’re just wondrin’ if it’s okay to have a game.”
“A game?”
“Touch football.”
“You’re asking for permission?” Triss said, puzzled. “You know in free time you can play whatever you like.”
Piripi looked down at his shabby, thick-soled trainers. “Well, y’know, with Magnus, ah—” he swallowed “—you might think…” He looked up manfully. “It’s not like we don’t care, Triss…”
“I know you care,” Triss said gently. “Of course you do.”
Under their tough exteriors the boys had almost worshipped the man who had rescued them from various kinds of privation. And they treated Triss with a touching mixture of respect for her as Magnus’s wife and a sometimes bantering, sometimes confiding familiarity that they might have accorded to an older sister.
“Sitting around moping can’t help Magnus,” she told Piripi, “and he’d expect you all to get on with working hard and playing hard.”
That had been his philosophy for the school, although for himself the playing part had never come easily. “It’s been too quiet around here the last couple of days.”
Relieved, Piripi grinned, then wiped the grin away, evidently thinking it was unsuitable. He backed to the doorway and hesitated there. “You okay, Triss?”
His large brown eyes were concerned, so different from the barely concealed hostility in Steve’s inflexible gray stare. She only hoped he hadn’t known what an effort it had taken to give him back an unblinking stare of her own, concealing all sign of emotion—or weakness.
Tears threatened again at the boy’s delicacy and regard for her feelings, but she made herself smile reassuringly. “I’ll be fine, Piripi. Thank you for asking.”
The smile faded as he closed the door, but a small warming glow remained, easing a little the bleak sorrow that enveloped her. Not having any brothers or sisters of her own, at Kurakaha she’d found the closest thing to a family that she’d known since she was Piripi’s age, when her parents had been cruelly snatched from her. As she had been then, he and the others were bereft and bewildered, and probably scared. So was Triss, but she couldn’t let anyone know it.
Minutes later a whoop and a yell told her the boys were enjoying their game. It would do them good. They’d been unnaturally sober since she’d broken the news to them, and in the midst of her own sorrow her heart went out to them. Poised on the brink of manhood, in many ways they were still children.
Losing Magnus would leave a huge gap in their lives, but it was up to her to help them carry on as Magnus would have wished. Maybe his death would even strengthen their desire to live up to the standards he’d set.
As it should hers. Triss squared her shoulders and forced herself out of the chair. She didn’t have time for self-pity. There was still a lot to be done.
Three weeks later she received a short e-mail from Steve giving her a date for his return. Apparently a little over a month was enough time for him to sort out his affairs in America. Later he sent another note with his flight arrival time, adding that he should reach Kurakaha within an hour or two of touchdown.
Triss replied with an equally curt message saying she’d send Zed with the Kurakaha van to fetch him from the airport.
She had to hand it to him, he’d wasted no time taking up his new responsibilities. But her heart sank at the prospect of working with Steve, of having him in the same house. Huge though it was, they would inevitably see each other every day.
Maybe he’d get bored quickly and return to the high life he must have become accustomed to. With any luck he would soon see that he could leave the place in her care with a clear conscience. She had every intention of demonstrating just how much she and Kurakaha didn’t need him.
So it was a pity that he arrived in the middle of a crisis.
The boys had been released from their classes for the day and Triss was in what she still thought of as Magnus’s office, writing by hand necessary letters to people who had sent condolences and ignoring with a practiced ear the sounds of a rowdy game of some kind outside.
When the quality of the shouts and catcalls changed, it took a few seconds to register, but as soon as she recognized the difference she shoved her chair back and left the room at a run.
By the time she reached the grassy playing field at the rear of the house a tutor was sprinting toward the bunch of boys in the center of the field who appeared to be randomly attacking each other with fists and feet. The tutor tried to pull one from the mob and was felled by a punch to his nose. Bleeding, he crawled away from the kicking feet that threatened to trample him and sat up, fishing for a handkerchief.
Infusing her voice with as much authority as she could muster, Triss yelled at the combatants, “Stop it!”
They didn’t. The brawny seventeen-year-old Piripi had one of his slighter fellows in a headlock, and the victim’s face was going blue.
Triss grabbed at Piripi’s arm and shouted his name.
His grip eased when he recognized her, allowing the other boy to slip from his grasp. The boy rounded, wildly swinging a fist that missed its target, and Triss felt his knuckles connect with her cheekbone, sending her sprawling.
The sky seemed to revolve above her, her face had gone numb and for a moment she wasn’t sure what had happened.
Groggily she got to her knees. The tutor was on his feet, holding a bloodied handkerchief to his nose, and now offered her his other hand. “Are you all right?”
Triss shook him off impatiently. “The fire hose,” she gasped. “Piripi’s going to kill that kid!”
Piripi, in the midst of the melee, had his opponent on the ground and seemed intent on beating him to a pulp.
While the tutor ran for the hose, Triss threw herself at Piripi’s back, getting her arms around his throat from behind and screaming in his ear. “That’s enough! Stop it now!”
She felt the bunching of his shoulder muscles against her breasts, and wondered if he’d turn on her, but instead he went suddenly slack, breathing hard. Then she heard over all the grunts and yells a deep, definitely adult masculine voice demanding, “What the hell are you doing?” And strong hands grasped and pulled her away just before a hard, cold, drenching spray descended, instantly soaking her blue faux-silk blouse and linen skirt.
Piripi shot upright, squinting and raising an arm against the force of the water.
The hand about Triss’s arm jerked her aside and dragged her several yards from the still-struggling mob, leaving her there.
Wiping her eyes clear, through the spray she saw Steve haul up two wrestling boys from the ground and drive them apart, while Zed dealt with a couple of others, roaring at them to get their effing a’s out of there before he gave those same a’s the kicking their owners deserved.
Under the combined effect of two big, commanding men and the fire hose wielded by the tutor, the miniriot was quickly quelled. The tutor turned off the hose, and Zed, his brown eyes shooting fire, ordered