“Can you fly a plane?”
“Never actually done it, but I’ve watched the procedures often enough. I reckon I could.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “A plane is pretty complicated.”
He shrugged. “You do what you have to do. I bet you never thought you’d be able to knock away a broadsword in full swing.”
She fell silent. “They’ll be following us down the river, won’t they?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the next town on the river?”
“Segou.”
“There’ll be a phone there. Police.” She met his eyes. “I’m going to the authorities, Graeme. I want this thing over.”
He leaned back in the boat and stretched out his legs. Regarding her with a look she couldn’t fail to read, he laid down the oar and let the current take them.
“Funny you should feel that way,” he said. “I’m just starting to enjoy myself.”
The sun scorched the little boat from midmorning on. Graeme forced himself to concentrate on the pied king-fishers soaring overhead and the occasional hippopotamus that surfaced to stare at them. Hunger gnawed at his stomach— growing almost unbearable as night began to fall. Mosquitoes and flies buzzed and stung them.
He knew Tillie had to be miserable, her bare arms exposed to the mosquitoes and her skin slowly flushing from pink to dusky rose. They had eaten the last of the bananas the night before, and the little river water they let themselves drink was muddy and foul.
She didn’t utter a word of complaint. Turning into herself, she fell completely silent. She bailed water. Rowed. Poled over sandbars. Slapped at mosquitoes.
Graeme found he didn’t have much to say either. Not only were the hunger, insects, and heat making him miserable, concern about their pursuers nagged at him. Often, when the boat swung around a bend in the river, he caught a glimpse of the Tuareg caravan keeping pace overland with the sluggish river. The Niger was so wide Graeme knew they were relatively safe. But they couldn’t go on much longer before they would be forced to dock, and there were too many places where the water was shallow enough to let even a sand-loving camel across.
When the sun dipped behind the treetops, Graeme pulled in the oar. “Tillie, we’ve got to stop.”
She lifted her head, her blue eyes bright in the waning sunlight. “I want to go on.”
He searched her face, wishing he could read her better. Was she afraid—as she ought to be—or was she so focused on her goal of getting help in Segou that she wanted to continue? Or could it be that what made this righteous, upright young woman so determined to continue was the prospect of being alone with him one more night?
His eyes scanned her face, and another possibility presented itself. Maybe she wanted to go on because the quest intrigued and compelled her—as though she were becoming a partner with him in adventure.
Her face radiated some of the same burning intensity he had felt within himself so often. Go. Grab life by the tail. Hang on. Maybe she did want the challenge.
Or maybe you’re just imagining things, he told himself cynically, because you want to believe you’ve found someone with a similar urge to court danger, a similar drive to see what’s waiting around the next corner.
“We don’t have a choice,” he said. “We’ve got to stop. If we get hung up on a sandbar in the dark, the Tuareg will take us like candy from a jar.”
“They’ll take us no matter where we stop. The caravan is on the bank just over there. I’ve seen them following us.”
“I know. Look, we’ll wait until it’s so dark we’re sure they can’t see us. Then we’ll find a bushy place on the other bank to land. We can eat a bite and get some sleep.”
“A nap before the moon comes up,” she clarified. “Then we’ll take off again. All right?”
“You’re the tree-planting woman. Whatever you want.”
She gave him a slight frown before taking up the oar. When darkness truly had set in, she paddled the boat to the shore opposite the Tuareg, and Graeme tied it up in a stand of thorny brake and tall reeds. Grabbing his knapsack and the basket of fish, he climbed out of the rocking boat.
“Where are you going?” Tillie whispered.
“Don’t you want some dinner?”
“They’ll see us if we light a fire.”
“Too bad. I’m hungry.”
He could hear her splashing after him, gasping as the sharp reeds jabbed at her already tender legs. If he could have picked her up and carried her, he would have. But he was sure she wouldn’t let him. He’d gone too far already with the kiss.
Finding a dry spot, he stopped and flattened some reeds with his boot. “You want to watch out for crocs and hippos around here.” He dropped his knapsack on the ground. “Hippos come ashore to feed at night, you know. Crocodiles sleep on the bank.”
“Crocodiles? I thought you were kidding about that earlier.”
“No joke.” He set down the fish. “We’re just now coming into croc country. You’ll probably see some tomorrow.”
Her focus darted to the shoulder-high reeds, and he knew she was imagining jaws ready to clamp. Edging through the grass toward Graeme, she sat down quickly.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. They really only like to eat one thing.” He paused. “Blondes in skirts,” he said and gave her calf a squeeze.
She nearly jumped out of her skin. “Graeme! Don’t do that!”
He couldn’t hold back a laugh.
“It’s not funny.” As though the reality of their situation finally caved in on her, Tillie dropped her head to stare at her tattered skirt. “I’m burned to a crisp, my skin is on fire from these stupid mosquito bites, I’m starving and thirsty, and I wish you would just stop irritating me.”
Graeme studied the top of her head . . . her wavy hair stuck with leaves and grass seeds, the once-neat part down the center now helter-skelter, her thick braid a frayed rope. He’d asked a lot of her. After all, she was a scientist, a gardener, a lady in a skirt and sandals—not a wanderer like him on a quest for hidden treasure. He sighed. It had been such a long time since he had shared even part of his life with another human being. He’d almost forgotten what it meant to look out for anyone but himself.
What he ought to do was leave her in Segou tomorrow and finish his work alone. It would be best that way. Unfortunately, he had begun to enjoy her company a little. More than a little. She had spunk. She had chosen to take on the challenge of the trip when it would have been easier to wither in defeat. He liked that. But then, she’d made it clear that what he liked didn’t matter a whole lot.
He reached into the basket beside him and pulled out two fish. Tillie Thornton would be out of the picture soon. Her boyfriend would come along and send the government after the amenoukal. The authorities would whisk her to safety. Without the tree-planting woman, the Tuareg would be forced to abandon their search. Then what would become of the amulet?
Graeme knew he had better plan what he’d do if someone went off with the scrap of Mungo Park’s journal. He knew the basics now, but he wanted to examine the wording more closely. Something in those strange, rambling sentences had captured the imagination of the blue-veiled nomads.
Well, until he had a chance to examine the paper more closely, Tillie was just going to have to put up with sticking with him. Gutting and scaling the fish, he turned his attention to the job at hand, all the while telling himself that he wanted Tillie with him because of the journal, not because he might miss her.
Before long, Graeme had built a small fire and spitted the filets on two green sticks. A savory aroma filled the night air, and Tillie’s stomach turned over in hunger. When the fish were done, he handed her a stick.
“Better than bananas,” he said. “Eat up.”
She took a bite and savored the mouthful. Nothing had ever tasted so good.
“Hannah never cooked fish for us,” she commented. “I guess it’s the Kikuyu in her. She’s into beans and corn. Maybe a little goat meat.”
“Hannah?”
“The woman who took care of my brother and sisters and me after our mother died. She’s been living with me in Bamako.”
“She’ll be worried about you.”
“Not Hannah. Prays too hard to worry.” A smile crossed her face as she thought of the old woman’s stiff curved fingers tracing over the crinkly pages of the little Kikuyu Bible she’d been given as a child. “‘Do not seek what you shall eat, and what you shall drink, and do not keep worrying.’” The simple repetition of the Scripture Hannah had quoted so often comforted Tillie. “‘Your Father knows that you need these things.’”
“Your father?”
She nodded. “God the Father. It’s a verse out of Luke. Hannah filled our heads with Scripture for so many years that none of us can go half an hour without remembering some little scrap of a verse that fits whatever situation we’re in. It’s probably Hannah’s greatest gift to us. I doubt a real mother could have done better.”
“God the father and Hannah the mother,” Graeme said, his voice tight. “Not a bad family tree.”
Tillie glanced over at him. As she took another bite of fish, she wondered again at his strangeness. He was so withdrawn about himself. All she knew was that he had no mother. What had happened to her? And what had been his relationship with his father?
Her own father had been emotionally distant after his wife’s death. A lost man. Until Hannah had explained God’s loving role as parent to her, Tillie had felt empty and alone. Then “God the Father” and “Hannah the mother” had been enough. More than enough.
Studying Graeme, she thought of Arthur. Arthur had no bitter edge. No buried anger. He had not been driven to hardness the way Graeme had. On the other hand, Arthur had never allowed Tillie close enough to see into his heart. He kept her distant—not out of pain as Graeme tried to do, but out of propriety. In Arthur’s world, it wasn’t mannerly to share deep feelings, to scream in anger, to rail at the world, to cry or laugh or shout.
With Graeme, emotion seemed torn out of him in brusque, bitter tones that sliced and hurt. Or deep belly laughs. Or the slamming of a Land Rover hood. His way was unsettling—difficult maybe—but it was real. And honest.
“What was your father like?” Tillie asked.
He looked up in surprise. “My father?”
“You haven’t told me much about yourself. I thought you might tell me about your father.”
Graeme scowled. “He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t waste your tears.”
Tillie shrank from the venom in his voice. “You’re not sorry?”
“He’s dead. That’s all there is to it. What good would it do to be sorry?”
She stared at him. Clearly, he wanted no part of this conversation. But tomorrow they’d reach Segou, and he’d be gone. Not two days ago she couldn’t wait to be away from him; now she found she wasn’t ready for their separation.
She lifted her chin. “So, how did your father die?”
“What is this—twenty questions?”
“Just one.”
He hurled his stick into the air as far as he could. “Killed. Somebody killed him. No great loss.”
“You hate him.”
He hooked his elbows over his knees and looked up at the black sky. “Hate a dead man? Not much point in that.”
“Hannah says hate and love are two rivers that rise from the same spring. She would say you hate your father so deeply because you wanted to love him deeply.”
“Maybe Hannah doesn’t know as much as you think.”
“Maybe Hannah knows more than you’re willing to admit.” Tillie set aside the stick and rummaged in the knapsack until she found the comb. She unbraided her hair and began tugging the comb through the tangles. She had started to rebraid when his warm hand covered hers.
“Look at me, Tillie,” Graeme said. “See this nose? He broke it twice. Drunk, of course, but I never thought that was much of an excuse for rearranging your own kid’s face.”
She could feel his hand tremble as it tightened on hers. He moved her fingers from her braid to the bridge of his nose and traced their tips over the lump that marred its perfect line.
“This mouth.” He trailed her hand over his lips. “Busted. I was twenty-three before I saved enough money to get my teeth fixed. Jaw’s still out of whack, but I’m used to it.”
“Oh, Graeme.” She thought of the way he gritted his teeth, working his jaw as though pain and anger were knotted inside it.
“I’m not telling you this to get sympathy. You said I hate him, and I’m showing you why.” He unbuttoned the first two buttons on his shirt and drew her hand to his chest. Beneath the crisp hair, she could feel a long ridge of flesh, a curved snake reminding him of the pain and evil with which he had lived.
“Knife,” he explained. “My father’s weapon of choice.” Her eyes met his as she struggled against a wave of grief. “Graeme, I’m sorry.”
“Look, I’m not the only kid in the world who ever had a mean dad.”
“But a knife? A knife goes beyond mean. It’s wicked. How could a father use a knife on his own son?”
“That night . . .” His voice grew husky as he spoke. “That night, he’d been drinking as usual. He was beating on my mom, also as usual, and I stepped in. That was not usual. I’d never been big enough to stand up to him. But that night he was . . . his eyes . . . I’ll never forget his eyes. Red rage. But desperation, too. And agony . . . some kind of agony. He turned on me and took out the knife. My mom screamed at him, but he never heard her. That’s when he . . . when . . .”
He stopped speaking and bent over his knee. His cocked arm covered his face. Tillie laid her hand on his shoulder. What did she know about horrors like these? Drunkenness, beatings, knives. Dear God! How could any child survive such brutality?
Her eyes rested on Graeme. It was as though he were a child again, caught in the pain of remembrance, his walls down and his pain open for her to see. What could she say? How could she help?
God, can anything heal scars like these?
She touched his hair, ran her fingers through the ends of it as she imagined his mother might have done. At her touch, he looked up briefly, his face stony, then turned his eyes toward the moon. The muscle in his jaw jumped, and she reached out to stroke it, wanting to erase the clenching, wanting to comfort. But he pulled away and stood up.
“We’d better get to the boat. We need some sleep, and I don’t want to sack out here with the hippos.”
“Graeme, I—”
“Forget it, okay?”
Hurt washed over her at his curt dismissal. Standing stiffly, Tillie picked up the knapsack as Graeme stamped out the ashes of the fire. Taking the bag from her, he strode off toward the boat. She worked on her braid as she followed, trying to will her mind away from his words, from his emotion-choked voice. She couldn’t let his pain draw her sympathies too far. She couldn’t save him. Couldn’t fix him. Couldn’t risk that close a tie with this man.
Tomorrow, Graeme McLeod would be out of her life. She would go on with her own plans. God’s plans. She forced her thoughts to the present . . . to tramping through the brush and finding the boat and getting some rest.
They climbed into the bobbing dugout. Tillie sighed at the cramped space. She was getting used to sleeping with no room to spare. On the damp floor, she pressed herself against the boat’s hard wooden side. Graeme wedged his large frame into the tiny space at her feet.
“Are you going to sleep like that? Sitting up?”
He lifted his head. “There’s not much room.”
“Here, we’ll sit side by side. I’ll sleep with my head on your shoulder. Arthur will just have to understand.”
“Arthur won’t understand, but I’m not going to worry about that if you don’t.”
When he settled beside her, she tucked her head into the curve of his neck, and he slipped his arm around her shoulders. His cheek drifted onto her forehe
ad. Closing her eyes, Tillie tried to sleep, but thoughts of the man beside her flowed into her mind . . . the way his hair blew back from his face, his arms bunched with muscle as he steered the boat. . . .
Squeezing her eyes tightly, she fought the desire that welled through her, a sudden urge to turn in the boat, to feel his arms caress her and let his lips find hers again.
The midnight air was filled with cries and shrieks and the quick whirring of insect wings as they flitted overhead. But all Tillie could hear was the sound of her heart thudding against the side of Graeme’s chest.
And then he moved, tightened his arm around her, turned her into him. She lifted her focus to his eyes.
“Something you said earlier,” she whispered. “It’s not true. You’re not just a basic kind of guy with no range of emotion. I don’t think you truly believe we live and then we die and that’s it. I think that’s all a mask you wear. Under it, there’s another man.” She watched shadows form and vanish in his eyes. “I’m glad God saw fit to put my safety into the hands of the man behind that mask.”
He was silent a moment, as if absorbing her words. “Good night, Tillie-girl,” he murmured at last, his gaze on her lips.
She shivered.
FIVE
“Tillie! Tillie!” An urgent voice.
“What . . . what is it?” She opened her eyes, her chest heaving with the struggle to take in air. “Where is . . . ? Don’t let them . . .” Wincing against the unseen, she peered up into the shadowed face of the man bending over her.
“It’s okay, Tillie.” Graeme’s words soothed her. “You’re here in the boat. You’re safe.”
“I saw the sword . . . the broadsword. Blood. Blood dripping . . .”
“It was a dream. The Tuareg aren’t going to get you. Look.”
She followed the line of his pointing finger across the river. On the opposite shore, pinpricks of light gleamed like the eyes of tiny devils. The caravan camp.
“Let’s get out of here, Graeme,” she whispered.
A Kiss of Adventure Page 7