A Candle in the Dark (16 page)

“Go to sleep,” he said quietly. “We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

“You go to sleep, D’Alessandro.” Even now, there was no softness in her voice, no forgiveness. “Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”

He woke in the middle of the night to darkness and the sounds of the jungle, and it took him a moment to realize the rain had stopped. The chattering of monkeys and the far away roars of the jungle cats mixed with the hum and clatter of insects and Jiméne’s quiet, even snores. The damp air brushed soft and cool over his skin.

Cain didn’t move, was too comfortable to move. He’d been sleeping the sleep of the righteously exhausted for a change, and he had no idea what had awakened him.

He frowned, listening to the night, waiting.

And then he heard it. A subtle movement in the darkness, the choking breaths cut off before they could become sobs. Around him, the air seemed to shiver, as if someone was shaking…

“Ana?” he whispered. The sounds stopped. The air was suddenly still. “Ana? Are you awake?”

Silence. Cain tried to tell himself that she was asleep, that everything had been his imagination and nothing more, but he couldn’t. Something was wrong, and despite himself, he felt an overwhelming urge to make it right.

He reached out. Her back was to him. She was only an arm’s length away, and when he touched her shoulder, she stiffened almost imperceptively. But it was enough to let him know she was awake.

“Ana,” he said softly.

“Leave me alone.” Her voice was raw, and again she started shaking. Cain felt the rigid control of her muscles, the tension in her body.

“What’s wrong?”

“Noth—” The word was broken by a choking breath, a sob stopped before it could begin. “Nothing.”

She tried to shrug off his hand, but Cain curled his fingers around her shoulder. He heard it again, that pain that had been in her voice earlier, when she’d turned on him before Esteban and his men had entered the clearing. The pain that warned him away, that came from someplace so deep in her past he wondered if anyone but she knew it existed.

The pain that matched his own. God, how well he understood it. He knew what it was like to hide what you felt from people, hell, to hide it from yourself. He knew, and so when she began to shake harder, when he heard her shallow, ragged breaths, he couldn’t stop himself from moving closer. Couldn’t stop himself from pressing against her back and wrapping his arms around her. Couldn’t stop himself from holding her as tightly as he could and burying his face in her hair.

She was like a piece of ice in his arms, but Cain pretended not to feel it. Instead, he closed his eyes and smelled the rainwater scent of her hair, letting her shaking move into his bones until he was shaking with her.

“Ah,
querida
,” he murmured. “I know. I know. I know.”

He whispered the words over and over, pressing his lips against her skin, chanting them like some religious litany until they took on their own rhythm, became a lullaby. He rocked back and forth in time to the words, stroking her hair with one hand, holding her with the other. Waiting.

Finally she crumpled against him, trembling violently, her sobs cracking through clenched teeth. Her fingers curled around his, and she clung to his hand so tightly her nails dug into his palm.

He held her that way until
the
shaking stopped, until her breathing calmed. Held her until the dawn broke through the trees and she had fallen into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

It wasn’t until then that he realized she hadn’t told him anything, or looked at him a single time.

He hadn’t even dented the wall.

She couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

The memory of last night was blazoned into her brain, an incident so humiliating Ana was afraid she would remember it forever. He had seen her at her most vulnerable, had seen her helpless and shaking. She couldn’t bear the thought that he knew how afraid she’d been, or how out of control.

Ana’s breath caught in her throat. The muggy air was stifling, it pressed down on her, making it hard to inhale or even move. But she kept hacking violently and impatiently at the vines blocking her way. She felt like running, fast and far. Away from the hellish jungle and the lethal river, away from this damned farce of a journey that thwarted her every step. Away from D’Alessandro.

She heard him behind her, stumbling, cursing. The sound of his voice filled her with fear. Whenever she heard his deep baritone, she heard again the ceaseless lullaby that had calmed her the night before.
I know. I know. I know
. As if he somehow understood her fear. As if he shared it.

It had been a long time since anyone had cared enough to hold her. A very long time, and it startled her—frightened her—that it had felt so good, that his warmth had seeped into her very bones.

Speeding her step, Ana pushed herself to put distance between them, ignoring her shortness of breath. The panic she’d felt yesterday was nothing compared to this fierce, unrelenting fear. How had he done it? How had he managed to so insidiously pierce her defenses? She’d spent a lifetime guarding them, a lifetime keeping anyone from getting too close.

And now here he was, with his drunken ways and clumsy doctoring. D’Alessandro, who managed to find out more about her in a few days than anyone else had in years.

She stumbled over a loose root, and a sharp pain stabbed into her side, curled tightly around her lungs. Ana clutched her waist and bit off a curse.

“Ana? Tall right?”

His voice echoed in her ears, curled warmly inside of her, and Ana winced, fighting it. She hated the way he said her name. All soft and drawn out, almost drawled. He said it the way her mother had said Anastasia, with rounded vowels and cultured
ahs
. The way it was supposed to be said.

She wished he was still calling her Duchess.

“I’m fine,” she said, moving forward even more determinedly.

But she wasn’t fine. She was tired and on edge. Her feet felt heavy; only sheer force of will kept her moving through the trees. The jungle felt oppressive, and Ana suddenly hated it more than she’d ever hated New York. Hated the beauty that hid such evil, hated the cloying opulence that made her feel helpless and small. Hated the way it fought her at every damned turn.

Vines grabbed at her shoulders, tangled in her hair, and Ana yanked them away, pushing on, fighting for breath and strength. She could hardly wait for this damn journey to end—

The pain stabbing through her was so sharp, Ana doubled over, grabbing her side. Her ears rang, the howling monkeys echoed in her brain. She couldn’t breathe; it felt as if her lungs were held by a tight iron band. Frantically she grabbed at her collar.

She was dimly aware of D’Alessandro crashing around beside her, and she thought she heard him asking questions, but the pain kept her from answering. She couldn’t get enough air. God, where was the air? It felt as if something had sucked it all away.

Ana watched through a haze as he dropped Jiméne and lunged at her, grabbing at her bodice, her throat. His voice was loud in her ears, like an echo in an empty room. The world was spinning, yet D’Alessandro didn’t seem to care. He was ripping at her dress, pulling it off, and Ana didn’t have the strength to keep it on. Violently he spun her around. She felt his fingers at her back, forcing her up when all she wanted to do was bend over and try to breathe.

Suddenly she could. The pain disappeared, and Ana gasped as air filled her lungs. She gulped deeply, tears stinging the corners of her eyes. The dizziness left, but her legs still felt like jelly, and if it hadn’t been for D’Alessandro’s steady hands on her arms, she would have fallen to the ground.

But she could breathe.

“Christ.” D’Alessandro’s voice was raw. He dropped his hands. “Christ.”

Ana straightened, realizing that her dress was down around her waist, and her corset was loose. Carefully holding the garment to her, she turned to face him.

He looked shaken and unsteady. He took a deep breath, dragging his hand through his dark hair.

“Take it off,” he said.

Ana stared at him disbelievingly. “Excuse me?”

“Take off the damn corset.”

“But—but the tear—”

“To hell with the tear. You can’t breathe with the damn thing on. Take it off.”

His words severed the iron control she’d had on her anger, and it surged through her. Anger at all his questions, anger at the fact that he’d been right when she was wrong. Anger because of last night. This time, she was too tired to control it. “You have no right to tell me—”

He moved until he was merely inches from her. In the hot, still air, she smelled the brandy on his breath, the musky scent of his sweat. His eyes were dark, cold stones in his face, and it was all Ana could do to keep from backing away.

“Listen to me,
Duchess
,” he said with a snarl. “If you don’t take the damn thing off, I’ll do it for you.” He grabbed her shoulder.

Ana wrenched away. “Let go of me, you bastard,” she spat. “Just because you touched me last night doesn’t mean—”

Awareness dawned in his dark eyes. “So that’s it. Last night.” His coldness disappeared, a small smile tugged at his lips. “What’s wrong, Duchess? What is it that bothers you most about last night? The fact that I touched you? Or the fact that you slept willingly in my arms?”

He turned away, not waiting for her answer, moving back to Jiméne while she stood there, motionless. The realization came with sickening speed: He was right. She
had
slept willingly in his arms. More than that. She had
needed
his comfort.

Need was something she had never allowed herself to feel before. Loneliness, yes. But never the kind of fierce, unrelenting need that made her curl against someone, craving a touch. All this time she had been fooling herself, telling herself she was afraid because he saw through her, because he knew so much about her.

The truth was that she was afraid because she felt herself needing him.

A lump filled her throat until Ana could scarcely breathe. God, it couldn’t be happening. She knew what need did to a person, how it snuck inside and took over a life, how it molded and twisted and broke will and turned strength into weakness. It was insidious, and inescapable once it started, and long ago she had vowed never to succumb to it, never to depend on anyone. Never to become the insane shell her mother had become.

And now here she was, turning to a drunkard, for God’s sake. Turning to a man she should be running from.

She should leave. Run. Fast and far away, until D’Alessandro was only a dim and unpleasant memory. And she should do it now, before it was too late.

What she needed was a plan. Ana turned her back to him and unlaced her corset completely, drawing it off and pulling the wool gown back on over her naked skin. The plan grew in her mind quickly, so full blown she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it earlier. Once they reached Gatún, she would steal her ticket back from him and go on alone. There would be other groups resting there; perhaps she could even find the men from the ship and join up with them for the rest of the journey. And as for her promise not to leave D’Alessandro, well, promises were made to be broken. After all, she’d made that one under false pretenses—to a drunken, helpless man who was very different from the one who had saved her life and ministered to Jiméne. A man she hadn’t expected to have the intelligence or will to make such an assault on her senses. He didn’t need her, the way he’d claimed, and she most certainly didn’t need him.

She knew exactly how she’d do it. There would undoubtedly be enough liquor in Gatún to get him good and drunk. The only thing she had to do was wait. Once he was snoring contentedly, she would simply steal her ticket and go on.

The thought brought a niggling sense of wrongness and betrayal, but Ana pushed it away. She had no choice. He’d given her no choice. She owed him nothing, after all. Nothing but the money to get back home. In Gatún, she was sure he could find someone willing to take him back to Chagres.

“Ana—”

His voice cut into her thoughts, and Ana felt the flush of guilt work its way over her skin before she managed to gain control. She refused to look at him, but continued fumbling with the buttons on her dress. “What?”

“Bring me my—”

The sound of shouting on the river quieted them both. Ana glanced down at the water, eyes fastened on the bend hidden by undergrowth and trees, wondering if she’d imagined it.

D’Alessandro looked at her. “Did you hear… ?”

It came again. Laughter this time, words spoken in rapid Spanish. She heard the sound of paddles in the current, saw the tip of the bungo as it eased into sight.

“Thank God,” she breathed. She almost slid over the edge in her haste to get closer. “Hello!” She lifted her arms, waving, trying to be heard above the noise of the jungle. “Please! Please, hello!”

The boatman in the front of the bungo looked up, his paddle stilled. In that moment, Ana felt D’Alessandro beside her. He put his hands to his mouth and called out something in Spanish.

The man sitting in the boat yelled something back. From where she stood, Ana thought he looked like a native. He wore the same kind of clothing the men in Chagres town had worn—a straight, hip-length shirt made of coarse, painted cloth, and trousers cut off at the knees. His face was shadowed by a large, broad-brimmed hat.

She turned to D’Alessandro, her distress momentarily forgotten. “What did he say?”

“He’s coming up.” He didn’t look at her, merely watched as the boatman poled the bungo to the shore. “He’s going to a village a bit farther downriver, but he says they’ll take us as far as Gatún.”

“They’ll take us—” Ana felt relief rush through her, so intense it nearly left her weak. They would get to Gatún. She hadn’t realized how frightened she was that they would remain lost in the jungle forever until now. This man was the answer to a prayer. She watched as he gathered his things and started up the steep bank, then she turned back to the burlap bags and quickly slung them again over her shoulder. “At least we can get Jiméne to a village. Maybe there will be someone there who can help.”