The Diamond King (41 page)

She did not like
him
at the moment.

He closed his eyes. It was best to leave it here. She could still go back. She could still have a future.

When the priest returned, he looked at a sleeping Alex and nodded. “He is better. Good. We must go,” he said.

Jenna looked at him. “The British?”

“Aye, with Portuguese officials who are none too happy at the prospect of losing some of
their
diamonds. Tomas has been watching several miles down the trail.”

“He is not strong enough yet.”

“He must go,” the priest said again.

“He can do it,” Burke said.

“They are not far behind,” the priest warned.

She started to lean over but Burke reached Alex first. “I will get him ready,” he said curtly.

Jenna wondered why she heard hostility in his voice. She did not think he had heard their earlier conversation, or had he? Had he, too, believed she was fleeing a marriage because of the man’s children?

But now was no time to argue. If the British caught Alex, he would hang. She knew that.

She watched helplessly as he shook Alex awake, as Alex opened his eyes. His gaze went to Burke, then to her, and finally to the priest. “Something is wrong.”

“I thought we were safe,” she said.

The priest shrugged. “Someone said something they should not have said. I will find out when I return.”

David Murray was her first thought. He knew she was meeting someone. He must have guessed it was the privateer captain.

But she could not quite believe that of him. He could have stopped her then and there. He could have sent soldiers after her before she reached the forest.

Alex’s eyes were asking the same question.

“Nay,” she said.

He did not question the protest. Instead, he tried to rise. He had been cool a moment earlier, but just the effort of trying to stand made his forehead bead with perspiration. A groan ripped from his throat as he placed an arm around Burke’s shoulder. “I can ... make it,” he told the priest.

The priest nodded.

“Can they really find us in here?” Jenna asked.

“They have trackers, too, senhorita. Tomas can try to cover our tracks but we must move swiftly.”

She started to protest. Alex did not appear as if he could go two steps, much less across a dense forest.

“We can go by canoe much of the way,” the priest said. “Then we can lose them.”

Alex turned to her. “You can stay here. They will find you.”

“Along with the snakes and jaguars and other animals,” she said. “Nay.”

He looked frustrated. “You can say you escaped.”

She gave him a disgusted look, then turned around. “Father, I’m ready.”

He looked from her to Alex. “Captain?”

“Aye, I can make it,” he said.

The priest nodded, then started walking. Alex took his arm away from Burke and motioned toward a stick on the ground. Burke picked it up and handed it to him, and Alex leaned heavily on it. He took a step and stayed on his feet. Just barely but he managed. She allowed him and Burke to go first, then followed.

They reached a river within an hour. Alex saw two canoes as they approached the wide expanse of water. If they had any farther to go, he would not have made it. As it was, he was using the very last of his strength.

He was hot again. Very hot, and his face was dripping. He knew by now it was a prelude to the chills.

He also knew that when they reached the river, the danger would be great, even without his illness. There were fierce rapids, even fiercer fish that could tear a piece of meat into shreds within minutes. Alligators.

Why hadn’t she agreed to wait for their pursuers? He had hoped that his behavior would have made her do so.

There were two canoes, canoes that he remembered they had used earlier. He had lost all sense of time and place in the past several days. It seemed they had been walking forever. He leaned against a tree, but his gaze went around their small group. Their guide was as impassive as ever. Mickey was grumpy as always, and Burke ... well, he was Burke, wary and always watching both his back and Alex’s.

And then there was Jenna. When he had first seen her a month ago, he would never have conceived of her tramping through the jungle in trousers and shirt that were too large. Because of the heat, she had tied the shirt around her waist. Her face was smudged with dirt, but her eyes were as bright as he had ever seen them as they surveyed the expanse of the river.

She truly loved adventure.

But had he destroyed her life as he had destroyed his own by siding with a prince he knew could not win? His heart had lead him to fight. It had been his brain that had told him a rebellion was fruitless. He was trying to listen to his brain again. He was trying to ignore his heart.

With assistance, he stepped into one of the canoes and sat in its bow.

Jenna sat at the other end. Tomas and the priest took the paddles. Burke, Mickey, Marco, and the silent guide took the second canoe.

The sun was overhead as they glided into the river and headed downstream. Mosquitos and other insects were thick. His clothes had dried on him but now they were wet again and had stiffened with dirt. He looked at Jenna. Her gaze was not on him but the trees. She exclaimed as she saw something and pointed it out to him. A parrot. He’d seen many in the past days, but this must be her first. He had to smile at the sheer delight of her exclamation.

If anything happened to her, it would be his doing. He wondered whether he could live with that knowledge.

Jenna had watched as Alex settled painfully into the end of the canoe, careful not to rock it. She had taken the priest’s hand and stepped gingerly into the boat. It seemed very fragile and unsteady to her. Still, there seemed no choice.

But in moments, she lost some of her fear and looked along the banks of the river. She saw a lazing alligator, the heavy growth of trees, even chattering monkeys. Then a vividly colored bird scolded them for disturbing him.

She had noticed little on their journey from Vit�ria. The way had been difficult and it had been all she could do to keep up with the others, to bear the heat and the insects. But now she could look to her heart’s content, enchanted by what she saw.

Often she would catch Alex watching her with bemusement and something else in his eyes. He no longer had the ability to veil them as he had had when she’d first met him. She saw flashes of desire there, even though she knew she must be the worst-looking female in the world.

A tiny seed of satisfaction settled in her. He was not as indifferent as he wanted her to believe.

She turned back to gaze at the unfamiliar and exotically beautiful if often treacherous forest. She felt as if her heart was in the same forest.

Over the past hours, she had been alternately furious at and in awe of Alex. She saw the moisture gather on his brows and face, heard the hard breathing, saw the agony with which he took every step, yet he never asked to rest. It was that part of him that had so attracted her. Most of the men she’d met in her old life were dandies or officers in impeccable red coats who preened and bragged incessantly.

She did not approve of violence, but she did respect courage, and Alex had displayed it over and over again.

They traveled throughout the day until evening, then drew up to a sandy bank. The priest warned her not to go close to the water. She watched Burke help Alex step from the canoe. She wanted to give him her own hand, but she feared it would be rebuffed.

He gave her a weak yet devil-may-care smile as he leaned against a tree and watched the others establish a site, chopping down enough foliage for them to move around. No fire, though.

She felt helpless, not sure what to do. Despite his smile, she knew he was keeping distance between them as he’d done since Martinique. She did not know whether he really believed the accusation he’d made earlier about her not wanting the Englishman because he’d married a quadroon, or whether it had been one of his shields to keep from being involved.

She felt a sudden need for some privacy. She also wanted to wash the clothes she was wearing, but that would mean going toward the river. She looked at it, and saw nothing that should keep her from it.

Jenna looked at the priest, then headed outside the circle.

“Senhorita?”

“I need some privacy,” she said.

“Do not go beyond the sound of our voices,” he said.

“Aye.” She did not look at Alex as she left. Months ago, she would have been mortified to have been in this position. But after the past few weeks, she’d accepted the fact that everyone had the same needs and it made no sense to be embarrassed by it.

She went a short distance but the voices were still loud enough to be obtrusive. Too near. She took a few more steps. She could still hear voices though they were more faint. She heard the buzz of insects and felt something on her arm. She looked down and saw a leech on her arm. She’d had several before and knew she couldn’t take it off herself.

She took care of her needs, her ears straining to hear the voices. Just as she was pulling up her trousers, she felt something fall on her. Thick and huge. She screamed as a giant snake began to wrap itself around her.

The moment Alex heard Jenna scream, he struggled to his feet, pulling his knife from its sheath. Burke was on his feet also, as was Tomas and their guide. Alex grabbed the guide’s machete as he ran toward the sound.

She was just outside their small clearing, a huge snake wrapping itself around her. Her eyes were wide and terrified. More terrified than he had ever seen them. The snake’s head was close to hers. Too close. Any swing of the machete might also hurt her.

She screamed again and he knew he could not wait. He was a swordsman. The machete was more awkward, but he had no choice. He only hoped the strength he suddenly felt was true strength.

He went straight for her and, with a prayer he hadn’t uttered in years, raised the machete and took off the snake’s head with one swing. It took every ounce of strength he didn’t think he had. Only fear made it possible. The remainder of the snake fell, writhing, on the ground. He threw the machete down and grabbed Jenna, folding his arms around her shaking body.

He held her tight. Her clothes had been splattered with blood from the snake. He took her hand and led her away, back to where they had left their belongings.

Alex couldn’t even imagine the horror. It would have horrified
him
. He had seen snakes, come close to an alligator, caught a disease, but the thought of that snake, especially it wrapping around her, was more terrifying than facing Cumberland’s cannon. And she would not have undergone the experience if it were not for him.

He ran his fingers through her hair. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She leaned against him. His head lowered and he touched her face with his lips, first around her eyes, then across her cheeks. He knew his own hands were shaking and not from the disease that had so invaded his body.

His heart cracked as she looked up at him, her blue green eyes slightly glazed, her legs unsteady.

It had been involved before. He’d liked her, admired her, wanted her. Yet she hadn’t breeched the barriers he’d erected against caring and letting someone care about him. Now they were crumbling like a riverbank in a flood. She walked into trouble. She ran into danger. She waltzed into disaster. She’d done it all for him.

Dear God, how he wanted to protect her. How was he going to do that in the pitiful state he was in? The blow to the snake had been luck. Luck driven by desperation such as he’d never known before, not even the Culloden. He couldn’t do it again. Right now, he wondered how he was even keeping on his feet.

She felt so good in his arms. So right. She tasted like heaven as his lips dusted her face with featherlike kisses.

He swayed. Weakness buckled his legs, folded him to the ground, taking Jenna with him. He moved so she would land on top of him. When her gaze met his, the glazed look was gone. Instead, a trace of mischief sparkled in those startling eyes. “We are a good pair,” she said. “Neither of us can stand.”

Pair
. It had a seductive sound to it. Seductive in more ways than one. He moved slightly, turning her around.

She seemed suddenly to be aware of her own appearance, the blood and grime of the jungle on her clothing. And of his own sorry state. “Did I hurt you when I landed on you?”

“Nay, lass. Not in that way.”

She looked down at her clothes. “I should wash.”

“Aye.”

“You, too,” she said.

Only then did he realize he hadn’t escaped the blood.

“I did not know there were snakes that big.”

“I have heard of them,” he said, “but I have never seen one until now.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He shrugged. “If I hadn’t killed it, one of the others would have.” But the rawness in his voice belied his shrug. So did the hand that clasped hers. “You can still wait for the British ...”

She put a finger to his mouth. “Nay. I have cast my lot with you even if you ... do not want me.”

Do not want me
. If she only knew.

He could not let her go. He should. But he couldn’t. Dear God, she had come so close to dying.

His hand brushed her hair back from her face, resting for a moment on her cheek.

“Senhorita?” The priest had returned.

She moved then, rolling over and sitting up in one movement.

“We have brought you some water to wash,” the priest said.

“It will take a great deal.”

“
Sim
, for both you and the senhor.”

“No more snakes?” she asked.

“I think not,” he said in his broken Spanish. “Perhaps next time you should not go so far.”

“I did not go very far at all.”

“In this forest, even a few steps can be too many, senhorita.”

He stooped beside Alex, a twinkle in his eyes. “But I sense everything is now all right.”

Alex did not think so at all. He thought of the other snakes in the forest, the alligators in the river, the flesh-eating fish, the “bad air” illness he had. He did know one thing. If they ever reached the
Ami
, he would make sure he never stepped foot in Brazil again. He had aged twenty years in the last few moments.