The Lost Hearts (22 page)

Alexis blanched, confused by the turn of events.  Alexis leaned toward Lewis, her ga
ze locked on the pair.  Her voice bristled with jealousy, “Who is that?”

Lewis smiled and nodded
, oblivious to the motive of her question.  “Oh, that there is Inkatah’s daughter, Mia.  I think they fancy each other, wouldn’t you say?” 

Alexis
’ nose flared, her chin grinding forward.  She swallowed the bubbling surge of poison in her throat.  “Mmm,” her voice croaked, pregnant with envy.  She found herself saying to Lewis, “We should think about moving onward soon, don’t you agree?”

Lewis shrugged.  “Whenever you think you’ve gotten what you need from this place.  You’re the boss, right?”

Alexis simmered, her gaze searing against Trevor’s shoulder blades.  “Yes,” she murmured.  She bit her lip, her teeth pressing so hard against the moist flesh she could almost taste blood.  In a loud voice that commanded the room, she said, “You know…I can’t believe that my colleague, Dr. Patterson, didn’t seek you out while he was in Moresby.”  She noticed with satisfaction that Trevor’s head craned at this announcement.  She continued, “He was in town for quite some time looking into reputable guides.”

Her query was met with silence, and when she turned to Lewis, saw that a faint shadow flitted across the gray of his eyes.  He laughed through his nose, a dismissive hiss.  “I would have liked to have met him.”

“Who?” Alexis asked dumbly.

“Your colleague,
Dr. Patterson.”

“Oh, yes,” Alexis stammered, toiling to keep her attention focused on Lewis rather than the coy exchange be
tween Trevor and the most beautiful woman she had ever laid eyes upon.  She nearly fainted when she saw Mia reach her delicate hand to Trevor’s curls, her mouth slightly open with unrestrained wonder.  Alexis gulped over the impossible dryness in her throat.  “Well, he was called away.  A family matter, I understand.  But he left suddenly with only Trevor’s name.” 

Lewis watched Alexis intently, reading her face.  “That’s a shame,” he replied sympath
etically.  “I’m sorry to hear bad news called him away.  But it seems like everything’s worked out well enough.”

Alexis twisted awkwardly on the woven mat, her mind convincing her that it was the hardness of the floor which prevented her from sleep.  Trevor had made no efforts to hide the obvious distance he put between them when they slept.  She cursed him, wrestling against the images of flirtatious smiling and touching she’d witnessed between Trevor and Mia.  She recalled the moment she heard laughter rise in his throat at something she said. 
How did he even communicate with her
, she wondered bitterly.  The sun seemed to rise fiercely this morning, an abusive declaration that her ambition to rest was conclusively defeated.  Alexis’ eyes rolled dry against her lids.  Trevor, of course, was already up and gone.

She stumbled from the hut
, squinted against the invasive light, and made her way to the north end of the village where the creek pooled into a tantalizing well of coolness.  Falling to the ground, her knees sunk against the doughy earth and she let her head submerge beneath the still surface of water.  She rinsed herself, scrubbing at the raw scent beneath her arms.  After she wrung her hair and twisted it into a loose bun, she turned and saw that Trevor was standing outside Inkatah’s hut, gesturing softly toward the old man with his smoothed staff. 

Just then she noticed that he had saddled his horse.  It stood just a few feet from the opening of the village, alone, its back strapped with canvas sacks, all bursting with much of the gear they had loaded onto the workhorse.  Alexis shook her head. 
Where the hell did he think he was going without informing her
, she asked imperially, to no one.  She found herself charging him, her face bursting wet with perspiration until she stood in front of them.  Alexis heaved from the exertion, and the old man ducked quietly into the hut.

“Where are you going?” s
he panted furiously. 

Tre
vor sniffed at her as though she were a trivial nuisance.  “I’m leaving,” he said, his voice dead and flat. 

The breath in her lungs flapped, and her mouth slackened in disbelief.  “What?”

“You heard me.  I’m going.” 

Alexis looked into his face, her eyes wild with hysteria.  “You can’t just go!” she raged.  “You’re my guide!”

“You’ve got Lewis.  Here,” he said, handing her a wad of pounds wrapped in a leather fold.  “I’ve only taken what’s rightfully mine.  Count it if you want.”

Alexis stared at the billfold in her hand as though he had just handed her a
fanged serpent.  She threw it to the ground.

He pushed past her, unmoved, until he stood at the horse’s hindquarters, cinching his knife tightly into a bundle.  He swung himself agilely over the animal, pulled the brown, leather hat over his crown of black curls, and without a word, dug his heels into Binda’s flanks. 

Chapter
Nineteen

The world seemed to collapse into a rigid compressed tunnel of light, and Alexis’ lungs squeezed under the pressure.  She heard strange whimpering noises gush from her mouth, and she groped at the air as though it might offer her a substantial thread of rope to cling to.  By now the sound of Binda’s hooves beating against the terrain diminished, and Alexis found herself flying to her horse’s side.  She didn’t seem to notice that its bare back flashed gold in the sun.  Her hands clutched the coarse mane.  In a single fluid movement, she hoisted herself over the warm expanse of the animal’s back and dug her heels into its hindquarters.  The horse responded, and she moved seamlessly, almost suspended in air as its massive legs catapulted across the valley into the green labyrinth of the forest.

Her mind pitched and tumbled into a
free fall, and then all at once, grasped the fluttering tendrils of her heart’s desire with the clarity of a spiritual epiphany.  She loved him, the universe seemed to say.  There were no stirrings of resistance now.  No sharp, irksome voices to contradict the impulse of her every atom.  She raced through the narrow tube of gently trodden path.  The earth seemed to open, the trees seemed to step back, drawing back thick curtains of green until she saw him.  Her mouth opened, and from her lips she felt the roundness of his name shoot like an arrow into the air between them.

Trevor was negotiating the rising swell of the hill at a trot, his body taut with residual stiffness.  He heard his name, turned, saw the golden horse on which sat a wild looking creature.  For a moment, his heart soared at the sight of her flaming red hair streaking toward him.  Her eyes were indigo saucers, the full buds of her lips open as she gulped wildly at the air.  The horse stumbled to a flurried stop, the mud blasting in wet chunks around its hooves. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” she screamed at him, the sharpness of her anger barely disguising the pathetic plea.

Trevor watched her silently, his face twitching above his clenched jaw.  “I told you, woman,” he sneered at her
. “I’m leaving.”  He turned his back to her, clucked his tongue and started forward. 

Alexis could feel the searing heat of her breath shoot through her nose.  She swung her leg over th
e rear of the horse and slid over its side, her boots sinking deeply into the mud.  “Goddamn it, Trevor.  Get off your horse and talk to me!” 

She stood facing his back squarely now, her balled fists stiff at her side.  She felt the adrenaline of war, though confused by whom or what she was fighting.  She saw the broad expanse of his shoulders widen as he pulled at the reins.  He moved slowly, as though he were alone and beholden to no one.  Finally, he di
smounted, and for a moment he stood staring at the saddle on Binda’s backside.

When he turned, Alexis met his gaze, an inscrutable black storm.  As though to remind her of the minor inconvenience that she was to him, he pulled a tooth pick from his pocket, and popped it between his teeth, spinning it whimsically with his tongue as though he were casually waiting to hear someone tell a joke.  “Well,” he said, his eyebrow arched.  “What is it?”

Alexis was dizzy.  Had she made all this up?  Had she imagined that Trevor felt something beyond lust for her?  The way he looked at her now, the leisure in his tone, it made her crazy with second guessing.  She buried her face in her hands, shaking her head back and forth.  “I get that you’re leaving,” she said finally, her voice cracking beneath the effort at composure.  “I just don’t understand why.” 

Trevor propped a foot atop a fallen log and rested his forearms against his thigh.  His face had the infuriating patience of a man about to explain a simple idea to a thick mind.  “Well, now, let’s see.”  He scratched his chin.  “I told you I did what I said I’d do.  I took you up here in the mountains.  I found your lost civilization.  And I’ve put you in the hands of a better guide.  You won’t have any trouble getting back.”

Alexis laughed maniacally.  “Yes, well I hired you.  Not Lewis.”

Trevor studied
her, the barely controlled movements of her hands.  She looked half mad.  She was small but fierce, and he strained against the violent urge to gather her into him.  Trevor turned the wood pick over in his mouth and wiped his upper lip, which was dark with stubble.  “You hired me for my expert knowledge and I delivered you someone more capable of getting what you want.”  Trevor remembered the night before in the chief’s hut, the jabbing praise that Alexis had lavished over his partner.  “You said it yourself,” he sniffed, his jaw rising indignantly in the air.

“What?”
Alexis hissed.  “What are you talking about?”

Trevor guffawed, feigning delighted amusement at her amnesia.  “Not that I give a damn, but I seem to recall you fawning over Lewis last night.  You couldn’t believe you’d overlooked such an amazing guide in Moresby.”  Trevor knew he revealed too much in this observation, that he had given away the fact that her words had lingered with him through the night, coiling around his brain. 

Alexis groaned, staring hard at the ground.  ‘Trevor…” she stammered.  “I…I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have said those things.”  She took a step toward him, but he stiffened, folding his arms tightly across his chest.  Her eyes traveled fearfully toward his.  “I didn’t mean it.”

“I don’t care-“

“Trevor, I was jealous.”

“What?” h
e spat, hissing through his nose.

“I…You’ve been so cold to me…after everything we’ve been through.
  And then I saw you with Mia, and I…”

Trevor knew he should have let go the memory of the letter he found
, that it was a gutless excuse to hide behind.  He knew that this was the precise moment to drop his arms, to take her hand, to kiss her.  Instead, he took the path he knew well, the easy, plightless road of self-defense.  He lifted his gaze to her, his lids pulled tight across black pools of ire. 

“This again,” he sneered
.  “You think because we spent a couple of nights together means a goddamn thing to me?  Go on now, Red.  Get back to your important work and your indispensable guide.  I’ve got better things to do.”  He pulled down the wide leather brim of his hat until it peeled from his head and the coil of black curls tumbled freely around his ears.  He looked at her, this time an almost imperceptible flicker of remorse in his eyes.  He opened his mouth to speak, but his jaw pulled tightly and he only nodded his head in a quick jerk before he started toward Binda. 

Alexis flew at him, her hands clutching the damp fabric at the arch of his back.  “No,” she wailed.  For an instant which obeyed no human conception of time, Alexis saw herself crippled in the humiliation of true love.  She thought from some corner of her mind that her former self might shudder at the image of this wild-eyed woman pleading with a stone-hearted man. 

Trevor spun around, his hands coiling around the smallness of her wrists.  “Alexis, I mean it.  Get away from here.  Go back!” 

“I’m not a dog yo
u can shoo away!” Alexis cried.  She shook her head, as though finally sober with the realization that she was dealing with an unwilling lover.  “If it meant nothing to you, Trevor…If I mean nothing to you, then why are you so angry?”

Trevor’s eyes jerked toward her, flashing momentarily with the vulnerability of exposure.  He huffed, his shoulders lifting in sardonic laughter.  “Y
ou’ve got it all mixed up, Red.”  He wagged his head back and forth at her, his eyes suddenly daggers toying with her.  “You seem to think you have something to offer me.  A good time, for sure.  I enjoyed myself, and I thank you.  But other than that, you’ve been nothing but a thorn in my side since the night you walked into the parlor.  Now if you’ll please let me put this enormous waste of my time behind me, I’d be much obliged.”  He tipped his hat, spit out the toothpick and started toward the horse again. 

The blood stilled in her veins.  “You’re a coward, Trevor M
cFadden,” she said, her voice dense as clay. 

Her words seized him like a barb.  His body fro
ze and he felt his heart mushroom in his chest.  He turned his head and when he met her gaze, she saw that his eyes were lifeless.  The lines of his mouth plunged into a sickening arc of disdain.  He mounted Binda without a noise, and Alexis was sure that he would leave this place with his back turned to her. 

Clutching the reins with one hand, he reached into the pocket of his trousers, his tan fingers squeezing a mangled ball of white paper.  He brought Binda close to Alexis, towered above her, his hand suspended in air.  “You’re a cur
se, woman.”  His fingers opened and the compressed leaf of paper fell to the ground.  Binda jerked sideways, and he pressed his heels deep so that Alexis stood in the thunderous wake of the horse’s flight.

Alexis collapsed
to the ground, the knees of her khaki skirt sinking into the muddy trail and she keeled forward, the wind gone from her body.  The world spun, and she clutched the earth in her hands as though to steady herself against the tumult.  She sobbed with defeat, with delusion.  Through watery, swollen lids, Alexis scanned the ground, her fingers raking the forest floor for the crumbled ball of white. 

As
she loosened the paper, she recognized it as a leaf of her personal stationary.  It fell over her hand like wilted tissue and her eyes seized upon the recipient’s name. 
Oh no,
she thought.  Her eyes raced furiously over the words she had long forgotten and she winced with chagrin as she imagined Trevor reading her despicable impressions and sentimental overtures of love toward Philip. 

Seeing the feathery sweep of her writing spell out his name sent an odd jolt through her.  It was the first time she had thought of Philip since her conversation with Trevor by the fireside.  His name did not incite even a flutter of emotion, simply a shock that he was dead to her, a ghost which had no place in a heart occupied by the spirit of another.  Alexis shook her head miserably, staring dumbly at the ground until her horse nickered behind her. 

Everything made sense now.  She replayed the past weeks since they had arrived to the village.  She had been so preoccupied with the surreal experience of integrating into a foreign culture that she missed the coolness of his demeanor, misinterpreted the curt tones and imperial commands.  She wept for the place of darkness from which his slights arose, and for the fact that she had put him there.  He loved her, she knew now.  But she had lost him.  She saw it in the way he had looked at her before he spun around and left her there.  She was dead to him now.