A Candle in the Dark (19 page)

He got to his feet so quickly she stared at him in surprise. Cain raked his hand through his hair, his fingers trembling.

Ana sat up, shaking back her hair, a frown contorting her features. “Am I that repulsive to you?”

“No.” He shook his head. “God, no.”

“Then I don’t understand.”

“No deals,” he said roughly, struggling to keep from revealing just how disconcerted he was. “You made a promise, Duchess. I won’t let you out of it so easily.”

She got to her feet, brushing off her skirt, her eyes puzzled. “I don’t understand you. Knowing I don’t want to be here, why do you want me to stay?”

He said nothing for a moment, seeing curiosity in eyes that had so recently held scorn—hell, that always held scorn. She didn’t like him and never had, and he knew it would probably never change. But, in spite of everything, there was something about her he recognized, something in her that matched what was in him, and it was the belief it was there that he couldn’t turn away from, that he couldn’t let escape. He took a deep breath. “You tell me, Duchess. Why is it you want so badly to go?” he asked finally.

She jumped a little, and he saw fear flit through her eyes. Lifting her skirts, she brushed by him. “Damn you,” she said, so quietly he wasn’t sure he’d heard it.

He watched her make her way across the floor, across the sleeping bodies until she reached her hammock. She didn’t look at him again as she sank down into it.

The voices from the neighboring huts seemed to grow louder in his ears, a beckoning call that moved him almost against his will past the sleeping men on the floor, toward the moonlight slanting in the open doorway. He had to leave, had to get out of this cabin before she made him insane, before he had time to think about the fact that he wanted her almost badly enough to go over to that hammock right now and trade the ticket for her body.

But if he did that, he’d be alone, without her, without anyone, and he was desperate enough—and afraid enough—to do whatever he had to to make sure that didn’t happen. He could bear it all as long as she stayed with him. He could bear the fact that she felt nothing but contempt for him, that she was so frantic to leave she would steal the ticket without a word.

Bitterness rose in his throat. Even a whore could barely stand the sight of him. Then he remembered. She wanted Castañeras, and it wasn’t surprising that she should pick the steady, handsome Panamanian over a drunken doctor. Not surprising at all.

The thought sent a strange ache into his heart, and Cain tried to banish it. It didn’t matter.
She
didn’t matter. The Duchess was unattainable, which was just as well, since he didn’t have the strength to fight for her.

Not for her, not for anything.

They left Gatún the next morning, and though the sun had barely risen in the sky, it was already hot. The rain of yesterday steamed up from the jungle floor to form a stinking fog. It hovered over the ground, hiding the river and making everything seem muffled and quiet.

Ana stared straight ahead, watching the passing shadows in the mist and the swirling eddies created in the fog when the boatmen plunged their poles through it. The monkeys were still mercifully quiet, but the insects were rampant, and they were eating her alive.

A swarm of tiny bugs whirled around her and disappeared, and Ana irritably swatted at her neck. She felt dirty and sweaty and terrible; the heat pressed down heavily, and beneath the damp wool dress her skin itched as if it were on fire. Every strand of hair sticking to her face and neck was torturous. She dipped one of Jiméne’s handkerchiefs into the river repeatedly, swathing her sticky skin with the relatively cool river water.

“How much farther to Gorgona?” she asked no one in particular, dragging the wet cloth over her throat, wishing she could unbutton more than one or two buttons to let the air touch her skin.

In the bow, Jiméne twisted to see her. He smiled, his white teeth flashing, and she forced herself not to grimace. He was in a charitable mood; he thought he talked her out of her plan to steal the tickets and leave. He didn’t know that D’Alessandro had thwarted her, leaving her trapped and helpless—proving her theory that God didn’t wait for a person to die before he plunged them into hell.

“A small distance only,” Jiméne reassured her. He bit off a piece of the strongly flavored sausage that was the universal food of the boatmen and glanced at the man in the bow. “
Quantos leguas a Gorgona
?” When the boatman shrugged, Jiméne looked at her again. “He does not know.”

“He doesn’t know,” she mimicked, too uncomfortable to care any longer about her temper. “He’s probably made this trip a hundred times.”

In the stern, D’Alessandro snorted in amusement. Ana glared at him. He sprawled indolently, sucking away at a bottle of
aguardiente
. God, she was tired of that sight. Tired of that and tired of D’Alessandro’s strange nobility. He wasn’t like other men. She remembered being relieved by his refusal to take sex as payment when she first met him, but now she felt only frustration. Frustration and an odd disappointment.

After he left the hut last night, she tossed and turned for hours, churning with anger. She couldn’t believe he’d thrown her offer back in her face, that he retreated as if he couldn’t bear the touch of her. She couldn’t believe she misjudged him so completely that she’d failed to steal the tickets and make her escape.

But mostly, she couldn’t believe the quiet little nudge of curiosity she’d felt when she decided to bargain with him.

Curiosity she was sure she’d imagined. D’Alessandro was handsome enough, but his drinking made him unattractive, and the fact that he was a doctor repulsed her. More than that, he was dangerous. Dangerous because even as he’d refused her last night, she thought he might have accepted if she’d offered something more.

That was the problem with him. He was like those other men—the ones she couldn’t abide. The ones who were never satisfied with what she was willing to offer—her body and nothing else.

She sat back, forcing D’Alessandro from her mind, listening to the gentle splash of the river against the boat. The lulling
dip slosh
of the poles moving through the water and the soft, humid heat made her lids heavy, and Ana closed her eyes and leaned back on the side of the bungo, letting exhaustion from the sleepless night creep over her.
Dip slosh, dip slosh
… The rhythm chimed in her ears, soothed her muscles.
Dip slosh, dip slosh, dip
…

She stared at the line of drops falling from the ceiling. They echoed hollowly, plopping one by one into the half-full bucket beneath the hole in the peeling plaster ceiling. Rats rustled in the dark corners, looking for something to eat, and she let them stay, too tired to kick them out, too dispirited to move. Her mother’s coughs rattled like dry wood, a death knell that rang in her ears.

When she heard the sharp rapping on the door, she jumped, even though she’d been waiting for it, and rose wearily from the chair, her feet feeling hobbled by chains as she went to the door and let him in.

He looked the same as he always did. For some reason, she’d been hoping he would look different, but that was only wishful thinking. He stood on the doorstep, a sickening grin on his face, watching her with those hungry, bloodshot

eyes. Pushing his way past her, he dropped his heavy bag on the floor and grabbed her arms as if afraid she would escape.

“I’m glad you’ve come around, Anastasia,” he said, still grinning that horrible, leering grin. “You won’t regret it—”

“I already do.”

His smile died for only a second. His gaze swept the sparsely furnished room, focusing on the rude bed in the corner spread with the grayish-white ruffled quilt her father had sent her when she was just a child. From the other room came her mother’s hacking cough.

“Anastasia? Anastasia? Is that Dr. Reynolds?”

“Yes, Mama,” she answered dully.

“I’ll be in in a moment, Katherine,” Dr. Reynolds called. He raised a dirty gray brow at Ana. “Now, my dear, time to pay the bills…”

She retreated, dragging herself back to the bed, feeling his hot, stinking breath on her face. She stopped when the backs of her knees slapped against the bedstand, and swallowed, waiting. There was still time. Still time for him to say it was all a mistake, that he wouldn’t exact this price from her, but she knew the moment he touched her shoulder that she’d been waiting in vain. He pushed her. She fell sprawling to the bed, and then he was on top of her, tearing at her bodice, pulling her skirt up around her waist, fumbling with his trousers.

He panted, writhing in impatience as he forced her legs apart. Ana said nothing and did nothing, merely lay there motionlessly, staring at the peeling ceiling, listening to the drip and the rats.

When he thrust into her, she bit her lip to keep from crying out, trying to divorce her mind from her body, trying not to feel his heavy stomach on hers, or his raw, painful thrusting. The sound of the leak
—
dip slosh, dip slosh
—
was heavy and echoing in her ears, blending with Reynolds’s obscene gasps. She concentrated on the rhythm and

blocked out the feel of his hands kneading her breasts and the stench of his breath.

It was over in moments. Reynolds heaved himself off her, a smug, satisfied smile on his face, and buttoned his trousers. “You did very well, Anastasia,” he congratulated her
—
as if she’d just won a prize. “Very well
.”

And then he was gone, leaving her lying on the bed while he visited her mother.

Her whole body ached, and she was freezing, but Ana clenched her jaw and refused to feel it. She pushed down her skirts, rising from the bed. But when she leaned down to straighten the covers, she saw the dark red spot of blood, marring the white quilt, growing and growing until it filled her gaze
—

Crash!

Ana’s eyes snapped open, the dream fled. She stared wildly about her, taking in the darkening air, the wild activity on the boat. The crash—where had the crash come from?

Crack!

“
La borrasca
!” the boatman in the bow shouted over his shoulder, signaling something to D’Alessandro, who ducked under the shelter beside her, fumbling beneath the seat. Behind her, Jiméne grabbed a paddle, with his good arm frantically trying to help the other man steer against the wildly rising current.

“What’s going on?” she shouted.

D’Alessandro looked up. “A storm,” he yelled, but the wind whipped the sound away, and she only saw him mouth the words.

The moment he said it, the sky opened up. Torrents of rain roared through the trees, sounded like a stampede on the leaves. The earth seemed to tremble beneath them. D’Alessandro shoved something at her hurriedly, leaving the shelter of the canopy. He joined the boatman at the bow and Ana looked down at what he’d given her. It was a folded square of India rubber cloth.

India rubber to keep her dry while he and the others worked desperately to keep the boat righted in the storm. The simple gesture of concern was made worse by the fact that D’Alessandro was still obviously drunk. Now he swayed and slipped in the bow, more a hindrance than a help—but helpful enough to make sure she was all right before he aided the others.

Ana slowly unfolded the square and wrapped the stinking cloth around her shoulders, huddling beneath it. The rain poured in sheets, graying everything in front of her, making the men swim like unfocused blobs of color before her eyes. The red sash around the boatman’s waist was the brightest of all, and glowing, just as the blood had in her dream.

The memory came flooding back to her then, and Ana shuddered and pulled the cloth closer. She’d thought the dream was lost, finally. It had been years since she’d had it. Years since she’d allowed herself to remember. Now, as always, it left a stale, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she struggled to clear her mind, to forget.

But it wouldn’t go away this time. It sat there like a vulture in the back of her brain, waiting, watching. Reminding her again of what a trick life had played on her, letting her believe—at least for a little while—that there had been a time when she was innocent and trusting. A time when the future had stretched uncertain and promising before her.

She stared at D’Alessandro’s broad back, and was surprised when he suddenly turned to stare at her through the rain, his dark hair plastered over his head and dripping into his face, his eyes intense and knowing. And with that look, she knew what it was that brought the dream back.

D’Alessandro. His disappointment at her attempt to leave him behind had made her feel worthless. The promise she’d made to him had been more important than she understood, and that realization confused her.

She didn’t understand that kind of honor. Didn’t know how to be the kind of friend whose word could be trusted.

The knowledge filled her with a sense of loss, as if she’d hurt someone she didn’t want to hurt.

As if she’d once again traded a bright future for hell.

The drums had been beating since they’d arrived in Gorgona. The slow, steady
boom boom boom
, as regular as the ringing of churchbells, echoed through the makeshift town, bouncing off the green mountains surrounding the broad savannah. Every
boom
added another layer of excitement, and the
aguardiente
vendors wandering the streets wore broad, satisfied smiles. The Americans had come, and tonight the
alcalde
had decided to hold a
fandango
in celebration. Anticipation of the dance vibrated in the air.

Ana smiled at the thought and dished some kind of savory meat pie onto her plate beside a stringy mule steak. It was completely a coincidence that they’d arrived on the steep banks of Gorgona at the same time as a large group of other Americans, but she was more than willing to join the natives in celebrating. They were only halfway to Panama City, but every step had been a challenge. If nothing else, a
fandango
would give her the chance to relax.