Love Stories: Tag – Ranulph Moore
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Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 4
By the time Daniel fetched up on the white sand of the shore he was buffeted, cut and bleeding from being scraped against rock and sea-floor. His clothes were lacerated, there was a long, open gash in his left thigh, but he hugged that sand in the falling blackness with the fervour of a man reborn.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 5
His companions fanned out in a shell-formation behind him. The young warrior’s eyes were fixed at a point on Daniel’s chest just over the heart. He drew back his stabbing arm … and stopped. His eyes slowly raised and stared over Daniel’s shoulder, with growing terror, at a sight behind him.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 6
Into the silence, the king barked something, and a man hurried forward from the crowd. He had been the leader of the group that had taken Daniel captive. On the long walk, he had been tall and regal - kinglike himself - but now he threw himself to the floor, pressed his forehead to the dirt, and grovelled like a washerwoman.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 7
When he thought back on it, Daniel was surprised at how the months flew by. It was not enjoyable exactly – seldom did he wake of a morning with a smile on his lips and a song in his heart – but he was folded into the Annuba tribe with an instant acceptance and was welcomed into the daily rituals and customs of the people with such ease and grace, that soon it felt as though he had long been there, years and years, like the weathered old translator, Tregoning.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 8
Preparation took most of the night. In the company of the ten initiates – young men of nearly twenty – and following their example, Daniel bathed in cold water, rubbed himself dry with fragrant bark from a local tree, then massaged his skin and muscles with animal fat until his arms, legs and torso gleamed in the firelight.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 9
The beast gave a deafening bellow and rose up on its hind legs as the first men drew near. One of the boys drew back his arm and flung his spear. It buried itself, deep enough to hide the metal spearhead, in the grey flank of the creature.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 10
Later, when he thought about it at leisure and could piece together those hot, fractured moments, Daniel would come to the conclusion that the first creature, as it ran from the sound of the drum, had issued a trumpeting that was not merely one of anger and pain and confusion, but was also a call for help.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 11
It took them the better part of an hour to make their way down the side of that cliff. The King swung himself around to another shower of vine and creeper and, using the foliage and the fissures in the rock wall that allowed wedge-spaces for hands and feet, they managed to ease themselves painfully to the safety of the floor.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 12
The Princess walked past the two guards without deigning to glance in their direction. They stood to greater attention and focused their eyes at a point an inch above her head - the custom of the Annuba lower castes in the presence of royalty.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 13
It was only days later, as the Royal camp up-staked again and set off on its strange perambulations northward, following some unseen path, some unstated direction, that Daniel had the opportunity to learn more about the green Bird.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 14
For a while after that it seemed there was nothing to cause Daniel any great concern. But by degrees he became aware that things were changing for him – attitudes were changing. Even as he became more warmly embraced into the circle of the Royals, as he ate with them and spent time in their presence, as he tried out on them odd snatches of words and phrases he was learning, so he became increasingly more uncomfortable in the company of the ordinary people.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 15
But for the next few days, stretching into long, hot weeks, Daniel had no opportunity to see Tregoning. And so the time passed and they trekked further and further into that enormous, signless wilderness. The trees and hillocks, the rivers and valleys and plains, seemed to meld together. Daniel knew they were moving essentially northwards, sometimes zigging and zagging east and west by the dictates of a non-existent compass.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 16
They were trying to kill him. Daniel was certain of that, but he puzzled it out over the next days, trying to make sense of it all. They were trying to kill him, but obviously they couldn’t do it openly, or it could have happened at any time, at any moment, a thousand times over.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 17
Tregoning was mad, Daniel decided, as he walked away from that slumped heap of bone and withered flesh beneath the shade tree. Too many years of fever and hardship and loneliness among the heathen had broken his mind. But Daniel saw, in that sad, frail old shadow of a man, his own future, and he knew that something would have to be done.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 18
Was it a madness that possessed him? It could be nothing else. He didn’t think – they were not decisions that he made. He acted as though he were moved by some force greater than himself, working through his limbs, over which he had no control.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Chapter 19
It was a blur to Daniel, that night and the next day and the next night, walking, walking, leaving no trace, unsleeping. He walked with an energy and a strength that came from elsewhere, and he walked with none of the fear that accompanied every previous excursion beyond the safety of the camp.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Part 2 Chapter 1
A funeral at this hour on a Monday morning!
The thought invaded Esson Connor’s subconscious as she awoke to the sound of the funeral bell in the street below.
Oh please God, no, she thought, don’t let it be. She sat up in bed, briefly paralysed, before reaching up to open the window of her lodgings on the first floor of Mayfair Building.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Part 2 Chapter2
“Miss Connor. I have orders to place this envelope in your hands.” A butler, judging by his dress, he passed Esson a crisp white envelope. “My madam said I should wait for a reply.”
Back in her room, she sat at her writing desk and opened the letter. “Frances Shaw!” she exclaimed. Frances Shaw was inviting her to tea! What on earth could have possessed her?
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Part 2 Chapter 3
“There was champagne flowing from the fountain, Miss. Real champagne! And half-naked dancers from Persia. The Baghdad troupe, they were called. All singing and dancing and jumping around the fountain. I saw them with my own eyes, Miss …”
Fortunately for Esson’s curiosity, the driver of the carriage Frances Shaw had arranged was a thorough gossip.
Book Excerpts
Blood Diamond Part 2 Chapter 4
The Moulin d’Afrique was thick with cigars and satin. The vivid pinks and reds of the ladies’ figure-caressing dresses punctured the swirling smoke.
It was Saturday night and Esson and William Hume had joined the merry crowd gathered there. William stood to get them both a drink.
“I seek the green muse,” Esson said.
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