Shadow Play (16 page)

A moment passed before Morgan said,' 'I don't have it."

Henry frowned and looked suspicious.

⁴
'I lost it on board the
Santos.
''

"Doing what?"

"Gambling."

Henry groaned and with a muttered expletive stalked away, leaving Morgan to look toward the village. He started walking and Henry called out, "Where are you going? We're about to leave."

"I forgot something."

As he made his way down the footpath, an eerie squeal arose beyond the trees surrounding the village. The shroud of fronds, lianas, tree trunks, and pockets of impenetrable darkness loomed around him, so that the sound of his foot- steps crashed like cymbals in his ears. The first hint of dawn's light crept into the darkness when Morgan entered Wickham's house. There he stopped abruptly.

Sarah stood in the doorway of the bedroom, her petite figure draped in a white gown with ruffled cuffs and hem.

Her glorious hair tumbled over her shoulders and brushed her hips. Her toes peeked from beneath her skirt, shining like tiny pale stones in the twilight. She was rubbing her eyes with her balled-up fists, reminding Morgan of a sleepy child. The image took his bream away.

He said her name once—
Sarah
—acutely conscious for the first time of the wealth of emotion the sound of it stirred in him. All the feelings he had denied unraveled in his chest at the sight of her. She swayed and he quickly moved toward her, then reached for her and was flooded with the sweet smell of her being. "Chere," he whispered. "What are you doing out of bed? It's early yet. You shouldn't be up."

She released a sigh and, closing her eyes, leaned against him. He looked down on her small head and felt his throat close. The warmth and softness of her body, the fast beating of her heart against him, were like a well-driven lance.

"Dreams..." she said.

"Dreams?" Smiling, he wrapped his arms around her and turned her back toward bed. "I fear you're still dreaming, '' he told her. He flung back the mosquito netting, pulled aside the sheet to expose the hollow of her form in the mattress. He urged her down on the bed, caught the sheet, and let it drift over her.

Her head lay in a tumble of coiling, shimmering hair, her face a translucent oval of innocence that stopped his breath. Asleep again, her wispy lashes a pair of crescent shadows upon her ivory skin, she looked like an angel. If he only could, he would sit here the remainder of the morning and drink in her beauty like a thirsting man. For the past weeks she had been a calm in the eye of his internal hurricane, forcing his mind from dark memories and regrets. She'd allowed him to believe that he was worth something. She had evoked a spark of true heroism from him that day in Little China, and then again the night on the
Santos.
Briefly, he had harbored the image of his battling through Japura in search of the elusive
Hevea brasiliensis,
which he would claim in her name to the rubber hungry world. She would gaze upon him with adoring eyes, turn her back on every- thing she held dear, and walk with him hand in hand into the sunset.

But he was no hero. His dread of dying was as monstrous as his fear of living. He could face neither with any modicum of dignity. That had become obvious to him while living in Japura\ King had understood about the goblins that drove men to do things against their will. He understood fear. He understood pain. He understood the self-loathing that could turn a man into a mindless animal that cared for nothing but ending its own mental torment. Morgan had been like the fox that found its foot caught in the jaws of a trap. The only escape had been to chew off its own leg in an effort to end the pain—only to cause itself such immeasurable agony that it inevitably lay down and died.

Dreams? Sweet God, he would gladly trade her dreams for a few of his. No. He wouldn't want her to experience even a small portion of the dark and dirty little secrets of his past. She would turn from him in disgust. And who would blame her? No, it was best this way. He wouldn't leave Japura alive. He knew that as surely as he knew that he had fallen under Sarah's spell the moment he'd turned his eyes up to her portrait. He had cheated death too many times to escape it again. He was just too damn tired of running anymore. Besides, by his knowing Sarah, the realization of what he wanted and needed and could never have was too staggering. He could be happy with nothing less, so why continue?

He eased down on the bed beside her and stroked her hair. Her lips parted. In her sleep she turned her face to nuzzle his palm, and he smiled. "Have a good life, Sun- shine." It was an act of aching hunger that made him bend his head to hers. As he tipped her face up to his, he paused, his breath falling upon her lips. He kissed her brow instead, stood, and left the room.

He was halfway back to the pier before realizing that Henry had joined him. He slowed, knowing his friend was forced to take two steps to his every one. They walked in silence until his companion said, "What do you think will happen to her, Morgan?"

"I don't know."

"If she returns to England without those seeds, she'll lose everything, even her fiance. Can you imagine that?"

"No, I can't. But what are we supposed to do about it?"

"We could get those seeds—"

"Forget it."

"So what will it cost us, Morgan? We'll be there al- ready—"

Morgan swung around to face him. "Why the hell should I help her sail off to Norman's arms?" Henry looked shocked, then puzzled. Realization dawned in his eyes. "Besides," Morgan continued, "by the sound of it, she'd be better off without him.''

"Perhaps,'* Henry replied more cautiously. "But I've lived among those people, Morgan. I've dealt with their prejudices and lofty airs. Sarah is too fragile to survive their scorn. It'll be catastrophic to her. Do you want that on your conscience?"

"I don't have a conscience."

They walked again. Just before they reached the pier, Henry put a hand on Morgan's arm. They stopped and stood in silence, Morgan looking one way down the path, Henry gazing up the other. Finally Henry asked, "Do you want to turn back? I know what an ordeal it is for you."

He shook his head. "You don't know the half of it, Henry."

"Perhaps I do."

Morgan met his friend's eyes, sensing the old panic rising, the self-disgust. "You don't know," he said, and his voice was a rasp of desperation he couldn't control.

Henry caught his arm as he started to leave. "Remember the day I pulled you from that bore tide, Morgan? You were wounded and delirious with fever. You rambled all night about the atrocities—"

"I don't want to hear this." He yanked his arm away and started down the track. Henry stopped him so roughly their feet skidded on the path.

"Morgan, I honestly believed that by facing King, per- haps destroying him, you could put the nightmare to rest and get on with your life. I was wrong. Take Sarah; go back to Georgetown."

"Forget it."

"Your killing King won't stop the memories. It won't undo what he did to you. Nothing

will. You must put it behind you or—"

"Shut up." Fists clenched, Morgan towered over the smaller man like a Goliath. "I'm gonna kill that son of a bitch," he stated. "But first I'm gonna castrate him for every man, woman, and child he's raped. He's gonna be on his knees before me, Henry; I swear it."

He hurried on to the pier, his pulse so deafening he couldn't hear the directives Wickham was giving the Indians. He was vaguely aware of someone taking his arm again and turning him. He raised his fist with the intent of striking out, as he had so many times before, and froze.

"You were going to leave me. How could you? I trusted you..."

Sarah's face came into focus. It looked very white, washed out even more by the lusterless light of morning creeping through the breaks in the trees. Her hair was loose and wild, as if windblown. But there had been no wind, no storm except the maelstrom raging inside him. Her eyes were wide and wet, the color of the aqua-green waters of the Tapaj6s. Her lips were parted, her hands raised for protection, should he strike her.

It was then he noticed the silence. Every eye was trained on them, from the Indians who sat two-by-two in rocking canoes, their oars resting upon their knees, to the English- man and Henry, who stood at the edge of the pier as if frozen. Lowering his fist, Morgan took a step toward her, noting that she made a move backward even though her face wore an expression of severe aggravation, a look too incongruent with her cherubic features to be convincing.

"Sarah." His throat was dry as dust. "Sarah," he repeated, "come here."

She did not come to him willingly. He closed his arms around her and pulled her against his chest, gritting his teeth as she beat his shoulders with her fists and cursed him for being a swindler, liar, and cheat. Finally, with tears rolling down her cheeks, she allowed him to hold her. As his hand rested upon her head and his fingers wove into her hair, his previous anger settled inside him like sand in an hourglass. He was amazed how she could bring that, the peace, when no one else ever could. "Will you let me explain?" he asked. She didn't respond, just stood as stiff as a stump in his arms. "It's too dangerous, Sarah. There are a thousand reasons why you should stay here. If something happens to us, Wickham will be able to see to it that you return to England, and your fiance?”

"If you don't return, my going home to England is a moot point," she stated in a voice meant for his ears alone. "He won't have me."

"Sarah, I can't believe—"

"You don't understand!" Her fists twisted into his shirt as she attempted to control her

emotions. "I'm not one of them. I don't have a long line of pedigrees. My

grandfather worked for everything he attained, as did my father. They were merchants,

Morgan, not blue bloods. The aristocracy accepted me because of what he'd become, not because my birthright obliged them to do so." She stared off over the river, remote and sad.

He had the overpowering need to wrap her in his arms, but there was no security there, not in his embrace. There she would only find nightmares more horrible than any she could conjure in her naive dreams.

She turned to him again. "Please. Let me go. I'll stay out of your way. You won't even know I'm mere."

"That'll be the day. Wherever have you floated, fairy mine, that all of creation didn't stop to bask in your sun- shine?" He brushed a tendril of hair from her cheek. "God help us, but I'm almost tempted to say yes, black-hearted bastard that I am."

Realizing that his fingers were tracing the creamy plane of her cheek, he turned and walked to the edge of the dock, where he stared down into the murky water at his reflection. In a moment her white-clad image joined his; each wavered dreamlike in the ripple and dance of the water and light below their feet.

"We could die out there," he stated.

"But we won't. You'll be leading us, and you can do anything. Everyone knows that. You're their hero." She pointed to the Indians. "My father must have believed in you too."

He thought,
Your father believed Rodolfo King's word was good, and look where he is today.

It occurred to him then that if he allowed Sarah to ac- company him into that hell, he was as big a murderer as King. But perhaps she could accompany them to Manaos, and no further. Besides, she was onto them. Skulking away was obviously out of the question, for the moment. "How quickly can you dress?''

"Ten minutes. Five, if I have help with the buttons."

"Be back here in five or we're leaving without you."

He watched her run down the dock, the dirtied hem of her gown flapping about her dusty feet. He directed several Indians to help her with her trunks, then looked to Henry, whose own faltering resolution was as obvious as the Amazonia forest was dense.

"This is preposterous!" came Wickham's voice. "You cannot think to allow that young woman to accompany you on this journey."

"That's the young woman's decision to make," Morgan returned.

"It's too dangerous, not to mention unseemly. Her reputation will suffer."

"Only if you intend to besmirch it, in which case you'll find a hundred thousand rubber seeds sprouting from every orifice of your body." Morgan landed with a wobbling flourish in the bottom of a canoe. "I hope you're still planning on meeting us in Coari. We do have a deal."

"Yes, of course." Wickham sighed. "But I tell you again, what you're doing is insane."

Morgan smiled grimly. To Henry, he said, "Coming, Longfellow?"

Henry scurried to join him, their eyes meeting as Morgan thrust an oar into his hands. Morgan gazed out over the bright, broken pattern of the river and mentally chided him- self for allowing Sarah to manipulate him with her tears, telling himself that he always had been a sucker for weeping, desperate women, and that his decision had nothing to do with the fact that the act of telling her good-bye had been more distressful than the possibility of dying in Japan?”

He raised one eyebrow as Henry's face broke into a com- passionate and knowing smile. With an edge to his voice, he said, "Don't grin at me. Until we reach Manaos, she's your responsibility. Keep her away from me, or I might do or say something nasty."

"Such as?"

"I don't know. I'll have to think about it."

"That's your problem, Morgan. You have to work too hard at being a bastard for anyone to take you seriously."

Sarah joined them in a flurry of silk bustles and bare feet, stockings in one hand, shoes in the other. Morgan groaned inwardly at her attire, wondering whether she'd ever forget her silly inhibitions and wear the trousers he'd provided. The boat rocked as Henry helped her from the pier.

"Oh, yes," came her hesitant voice behind Morgan.

"There is something you should know, Mr. Kane." Her knees pressed into his back as he gazed up the river.

Why did he get the feeling he wasn't going to like what she had to tell him? "Yeah?" he replied. "What is it?" "I can't swim." He closed his eyes, and with a sense of resignation, shook his head. Then he dipped the paddle in the water and began their journey to the green hell.