The Orchid Hunter
Page 30
“Don’t think you are going to sleep with him tonight, either,” her father added, eyeing his rifle.
“Papa! He’s still my husband.”
“Not according to Matarengi law. You have banished yourself and told the whole village. You are on Matarenga, so you must respect the Matarengi custom. I don’t have any idea if there’s a precedent for reversing a banishment.”
“Why does the world have to be so full of rules? It is simply not fair,” she argued.
“You are the one who banished yourself,” her father reminded her.
Trevor obviously was not happy, either.
“Do something,” she urged.
He turned, took one look at her father and shrugged. “As he said earlier, it’s his island.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
It was, indeed, her father’s island.
As the hunting party journeyed home the next day, Joya noticed he had been acting very mysteriously. That morning her father had sent a runner ahead with a note to her sister to let her know that they would be back by sundown. All day long he had been far too jovial, continually whistling and smiling.
She wished Trevor were as happy. He had been in a black mood since last night when her father had adamantly refused to let them share a tent. He would, he promised, consult with Faruki, the high chief, to see if anything could be done to remedy her self-proclaimed banishment.
Trevor had told him he was being ridiculous, that once they were off the island, he could take his rules and do something unmentionable with them, but her father could not be moved. He argued that to go against Matarengi law would show disrespect and insult the natives.
He warned Trevor to be patient until the situation was resolved, if it could be resolved.
Just as she had done the last time Trevor journeyed down the mountain with them, Joya felt compelled to watch him all day.
Trevor walked beside her as they came off the hillside trail that ended on the beach. The wind had stopped and the air was thick with humidity. Parrots and monkeys kept to the highest boughs of the trees and taunted them. It was all Joya could do not to run ahead.
“Oh, Trevor, I cannot wait to see Janelle.”
“It appears that you will not have to,” he said, nodding in the direction of the shoreline.
Unable to contain her excitement, she grabbed his hand and started tugging, urging him to run. “Is that Garr Remington beside her? What is Garr doing here? And is that…it can’t be…is that Sims?”
For the first time that day, Trevor actually smiled. There was a secretive sparkle in his eyes.
“I will let your sister tell you why Garr thought he should come along. As for Sims, well, he refused to be left behind. I can see you are about to come out of your skin. Go to meet them.”
She kissed him on the cheek and ran down the beach toward her sister, who began waving. Breathless, Joya ran up to Janelle and hugged her so hard she nearly knocked off her sister’s spectacles. They were both laughing and crying at the same time. She welcomed the mysterious, innate sense of peace that always flowed through her when she and Janelle were together.
They hugged and cried awhile longer, and then, wiping away her tears, Joya remembered Sims and Garr. She kissed the old retainer on the cheek despite his obvious embarrassment, welcomed him, and thanked him for coming to Matarenga.
“I have never seen you outdoors, Sims.”
“Mandeville House was sold, madam. I’ve no longer any foyer in which to lurk.”
“You may lurk around our home for as long as you like, Sims.”
“Thank you, madam. And might I add that you have never looked lovelier?”
“You may say it,” she told him, “but I won’t believe it.”
“You are quite a sight.” Garr reminded her she had not greeted him properly yet. “I’m trying to imagine my wife in an identical ensemble.”
“Please, don’t,” Janelle laughed.
“Your wife?” Shocked, Joya watched them exchange a very intimate smile. “You two are married?”
He slipped his arm around Janelle’s waist. “Very. We were married shortly after her grandmother died.”
“Don’t stare so, Joya,” Janelle teased, then she leaned close and whispered, “I did not want you to be the only one of us to experience the heady delights of desire.”
“I…I don’t know what to say.” Joya could not stop staring at all of them. To have them all here on the island seemed like a wonderful dream.
“Just say congratulations,” Trevor advised, “and then we had best get over to the house. I see your father talking with the high chief.”
“What’s wrong, Trevor?” Janelle asked. “You look terribly angry. Oh, dear!” She quickly turned to Joya. “You two did make up, didn’t you? You must forgive him, Joya. He truly does love you.”
“Yes, I know, and I love him.” Joya reached for Trevor’s hand. He did, indeed, look very upset as he watched her father and Faruki with their heads together in the garden. “Papa is upset because I banished myself and it seems that we must appeal to Faruki to make things right again.”
“Our marriage is no longer recognized here, it seems,” Trevor clarified.
Garr laughed. “Now I know why you look so out of sorts.”
“I’m certain there is some remedy, sir,” Sims commiserated.
“Oh, there’s a restorative,” Garr laughed, “but it appears my dear brother-in-law is not allowed to get his hands on it at the moment.”
* * *
Jungle drums pounded frenetically, drowning out the sound of the sea. Torchlight wavered on evening air scented with frangipani and ginger. Trevor’s mood had gone from bad to worse all afternoon. Shortly after a riotous evening meal during which everyone insisted on talking at once, Dustin Penn had asked Joya to accompany him to Faruki’s fadu to plead her case for reversing her banishment. Janelle went with them.
Now, alone with Garr and Sims, Trevor was growing more and more impatient for them to return.
“You do not take well to commands, I see,” Garr quipped.
Trevor rubbed the back of his neck. “No. I don’t. This whole thing is utterly ridiculous.”
“No doubt,” Sims said sagely, “as ridiculous as some of our customs must have seemed to your wife, sir.”
“No doubt,” he admitted. “What do you think they are doing out there?” he asked no one in particular.
“Quite a party from the sound of it.” Garr walked to the window and stared at the black, shimmering sea and the star-filled sky above it. “Here comes Penn. And he’s alone. What do you suppose he’s done with my wife?”
Trevor assured him, “There’s no need for you to worry. Janelle is not his daughter.”
Both of them met Dustin Penn at the door.
“You are to come with me,” Penn told them.
He was not smiling, which bothered Trevor.
“What’s going on, Penn?” Trevor looked past him. Joya was nowhere in sight.
“Follow me.” Penn was decidedly more than secretive.
Garr looked at Trevor and shrugged. “What choice do we have?”
“I should take Joya and leave,” Trevor groused.
“Joya is waiting for you with the others.”
“What others?”
“I believe, sir, that we should go.” Sims was suddenly there, standing at attention beside the door. The drummers intensified the beat. All three men were waiting for Trevor.
He looked at Garr, then Sims, then Dustin Penn.
“Why do I have the distinct feeling that there is something going on here and I am the only one who doesn’t know what it is?”
* * *
“What do you think, Janelle? How do I look?”
Joya stood perfectly still and waited for her sister to pass judgment.
“I am relieved to see that your breasts are covered. It’s not that I am embarrassed, mind you, but I am not certain I want Garr to see you exposed any more than I would want Sims to drop
dead of shock.” She adjusted her spectacles and stepped back. The dim nut-oil lamp in the native fadu made it difficult to see. “Does that paint itch? I would think there are some parts of your body they would have left undecorated.”
Joya looked down at the chalky, rose-hued body paint the native women had smeared over her arms, legs, neck, face, and every other visible part of her.
“It is beginning to harden.” When she smiled the paint around her mouth and eyes cracked.
“I cannot wait to see the expression on Trevor’s face when he sees you.”
“Do you think he will be pleased?”
“I think he’ll be…speechless. Whose idea was this?”
Joya dropped her gaze to her hands and admitted, “I have always wanted a Matarengi wedding. I cannot help but think that this time, our marriage will succeed. We’ll be blessed by Otakgi, the wise man, and the fertility ceremony will surely assure children in our future.”
“What about the marriage hut?”
“Of course we’ll have a marriage hut. Although Trevor won’t have built it.”
“So I will not see you for a month?”
Joya’s heart sank. “I never thought…oh, Janelle, you don’t have to leave yet, do you? Trevor and I haven’t had a chance to speak of plans or the future. I don’t even know if he intends to stay here on Matarenga after our month of isolation. He promised me that I did not have to live in London.”
“Joya, calm down. Garr and I have no set plans. If you get upset you will make your paint run, or melt, or something. You know, you really are the most delicate shade of rose.” Janelle reached out and straightened one of the many strategically placed strands of shells around Joya’s neck. ‘Trevor intends to devote his time to orchid hunting. His hope was that you would accompany him everywhere. He has kept two Mandeville Import ships and a seasoned crew of men. You will see the world together.”
“Could any woman ever be happier than I am?” Joya mused aloud.
“I would say I have made an equally happy match,” Janelle assured her, as one of Umbaba’s wives came to the door of the fadu.
“They are ready for us,” Joya told Janelle.
“Then let’s go. Am I to do anything?”
“Here,” Joya said, handing her a goat-hoof rattle. “Everyone must make a joyful noise.”
* * *
Standing alone, bathed in the light of a roaring bonfire on the beach, Trevor watched as a bent and wizened old man shuffled toward him. Beside him, Garr lifted one foot and tried to shake sand out of his low-cut shoe. On Trevor’s other side, Sims was paralyzed, staring at the natives surrounding them—in particular, at all the barebreasted women.
“I think, sir,” he said as an aside to Trevor, “I will remain here on Matarenga when you leave. Perhaps Mr. Penn is in need of a good butler.”
Trevor turned to Sims and shook his head. “This is only the first of many stops in a world full of various exotic and stimulating sights, Sims. Are you certain you don’t want to explore other options before you choose a place to settle down?”
“I take your point, sir, and a very good one it is.”
The diminutive, wrinkled old native was standing before Trevor now, staring up at him in silence. The intensity of his stare made Trevor look away. Unfortunately, his gaze touched upon a group of men down the beach who had just slit a goat’s throat and were letting the blood pour into a huge bowl.
Garr stopped brushing sand off his pant leg and turned Trevor around. “I am not certain, but I think that might be your wife coming toward us.”
Trevor swallowed. A woman covered from head to toe in rosy pink paint and a native pudong was walking slowly toward him. Her hair was woven in long, tight braids, decorated with beads and feathers. Thick strands of tiny shells hid her breasts. Dog’s-tooth anklets and bracelets chattered and clacked with her every step.
There was no mistaking his wife. She was walking toward him from the opposite side of the circle of villagers. Dustin Penn led her across the sand while Janelle walked beside them shaking a goat-hoof rattle above Joya’s head. By now all of the villagers were shaking rattles and chanting.
Joya’s smile was brilliant, even by firelight.
“I would say congratulations are in order again, sir,” Sims told him.
“Thank you, Sims.”
Dustin Penn placed Joya beside Trevor.
“This time you will do it right,” Penn said before he stepped back.
Because Joya seemed to be waiting expectantly for Trevor to say something, he said, “You look…lovely,” though he was not quite certain exactly what one should say to a bride covered in pink paint.
“Thank you, Trevor. I would kiss you but it isn’t proper,” she said softly.
“I take it we are being married by this small, very old personage standing before us?”
“We are. That is Otakgi.”
“He’s a witch doctor.” Penn chuckled.
“I would not have missed this for the world,” Garr said as he took Janelle by the hand and pulled her close.
There was much singing and then everyone began to jump up and down in time to another chant. When Joya explained it was a ceremonial dance, Trevor suddenly understood exactly why she had never mastered the quadrille.
The wise man went into a trance and mumbled for what Trevor thought was an hour before he was handed half of a small cocoanut shell tilled with something warm and thick and red that Trevor refused to dwell on.
Both his and Joya’s palms were pricked with a lethally sharp blade and drops of their blood mingled in the bowl with the goo already there. The old man made a sign instructing Trevor to drink up. When he tried to refuse, a hush fell over the crowd. Joya looked as if her heart would break if he refused, so he gave in and tried to convince himself that there were worse things, surely, than drinking goat’s blood. After he swallowed, he very much doubted it.
What felt like hours of singing and dancing and chanting went on and then the old man began to sprinkle them with a powder finer than sand that he took from a leather pouch.
Joya was beaming. “Dried flamingo heart and fruit-bat claw. It will assure everlasting love and fertility,” she explained. “Now the wedding feast will begin.”
“I cannot wait to see what is on the menu,” Garr chuckled.
Trevor squeezed Joya’s hand. Over her head, he frowned at Dustin Penn. “And then what?”
If he did not get to sleep with his wife tonight he was going to kidnap her and swim out to one of the small islands in the middle of the lagoon.
Joya’s eyes were shining. “After the feast, we will be led to the marriage hut. I hope you do not mind that we will be alone there for a month. I know that you probably have everything all planned, but Trevor…”
He put his finger over her lips, effectively silencing her.
“Actually,” he said, bending close, “I was just wondering if a month alone with you will be long enough. Perhaps we should make it two.”
* * *
Janelle leaned close to Garr, her own heart full of joy as she watched her twin smile up into Trevor’s eyes. “What are you thinking?” Garr whispered low.
She slipped her arm around his waist, just as he had done hers. “I’m just so relieved and happy that they are together again at last. What are you thinking about? It has certainly brought a wicked gleam to your eye, Garr Remington.”
“I was just wondering if we shouldn’t have a Matarengi wedding ceremony. Or perhaps we could just let the old man sprinkle some of that bat dust on us.”
“For fertility? Actually, Garr, it’s a little too late for that.”
“Are you saying what I think you are saying?”
“Mmm. We’re having a baby.”
“I hope,” said Sims, who was lurking very close behind them, “that we have twins.”
The End
* * *
Read Chapter One of Jill Marie Landis’s Past Promises
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Promises from Smashwords
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Until Tomorrow
Jade
About the Author
Jill Marie Landis’s novels have earned distinguished awards and slots on such national bestseller lists as the New York Times and the USA Today Top 50. She is a seven-time finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award in Single Title Historical and Contemporary Romance as well as a Golden Heart and RITA Award winner.
Jill Marie resides in Hawaii with her husband. When she’s not writing or sitting on the beach reading, she enjoys visiting with family and friends, raising orchids, working in her garden, occasionally quilting, but most of all dancing the hula.
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Amber House Books by Jill Marie Landis
Past Promises
Until Tomorrow
Jade
The Orchid Hunter
Past Promises by Jill Marie Landis
Sneak Peek
Chapter One
Southwestern Colorado
1890
They were watching her again.
Six Ute men. Four stood, two hunkered down into a squat. All of them kept their distance; none attempted to approach her after the one in a tall black hat asked in broken English and sign language what she was doing on the reservation. Clutching a well-worn copy of Captain William Philo Clark’s book on sign language, she tried to explain. After Tall Hat left, she had tried to hire some of the others to help, but they shook their heads and chose to watch in silence.