He watched the emotions play over her features. “How far is Mopti?”
“We’ll see the lights in a few minutes. It’s just around a bend or two.”
“I still can’t believe I got away.”
“Hey, where’s your faith?”
“I almost lost it.”
No. The unspoken plea rose up inside him. Don’t let her lose her faith. Her words from a previous conversation jumped into his mind. “It’s called faith,” she had said. “Believing even though you don’t have proof.” Tillie had more faith than anyone Graeme had ever met. Her confidence in God had stunned him at first. Then it had moved him. Now it beckoned him.
Keep her strong in her faith. Help her keep on believing. Make her heart strong. Who was he talking to? God? Strange how comfortable it felt. How right. Give me faith, God. Help me know how to believe.
He fell silent, watching the water and thinking about the changes in his life. He knew Tillie had been elated to see him. The way her eyes had lit up had been clear evidence of that. But now that they were alone and safe, he noted that her smile had faded. She smoothed the gown over her legs and looked out at the river. “Any word about Hannah and Arthur?”
“No.” He searched her eyes. “You’ve had a lot of time to think in the past couple of days. Still planning to marry Arthur and move to London?”
She twisted the ring on her finger. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I’m going to do about anything. Ever since that little boy hung the amulet around my neck, I’ve just been trying to survive. Back in Bamako, I thought I knew who I was and what I wanted.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not sure.”
He knew it was a risk, but he leaned forward to take her hand. “Well, I know who I am, Tillie-girl. I know what I want. And if it’s okay, I plan to stick with you ’til you get things figured out.”
Her warm eyes and smile were more than enough reward. “I’d like that,” she said.
He leaned back again, unwound the turban from his head, and dropped it into his lap. Taking one end, he dipped it into the river. “Now, Miss Tree-Planting Woman, let’s get you back to your normal shade.”
She laughed, and the sound warmed him. “I forgot what Khatty had done. How did you ever recognize me?”
“You were the only blonde Targui in the vicinity.” He lifted her chin and dabbed off the garish paint, while she untangled chains and ribbons from her braids.
“I don’t know how you kept a straight face through that whole charade. Did you hear me mumbling along, trying to think what to say?”
“Cinderella. It was the best version I’d ever heard. I thought it kind of fit. The poor tree-planting woman taken in hand by Khatty, the Targui fairy godmother. Transported in the richest finery to the grand ahal.”
“And then swept away by a handsome prince.”
Graeme grimaced and shook his head. “I don’t know about that part.” Their glances met, and the look in her eyes sent his pulse pounding.
“I do. You’re my handsome prince.” The light in her eyes flickered, and it was as though a cloud descended. She looked away, and he had to strain to hear her say in a small voice, “I’m just not sure I’m in the right fairy tale.”
When the lights of Mopti swung into view, Tillie saw that the three small islands that comprised the town were clearly visible. The cement bridges connecting them glowed with bright electric lamps.
“I’ve got a friend in Mopti,” Graeme said. “The truck’s at his house. He told me to call from the marketplace, and he’ll come get us.”
“You know a lot of people along this river.”
“Been here awhile.” He lifted his paddle into the boat. “Research.”
She studied his expression in the moonlight. Was he telling the truth this time? Research. Somehow the word sounded artificial.
“Look,” he said, his voice rough. “I need to tell you something. There’s an airfield in Mopti. My friend tells me there’ll be a plane out to Bamako in the afternoon. I can get you on it.”
“A plane?” The idea of leaving the river seemed stranger than the thought of swimming with crocodiles again. This was her chance. She could fly back to the city and be in her PAAC compound by afternoon. She could tell the police about everything. Hand over the amulet. Be done with the whole thing. And then . . . what?
She thought of Arthur. Hannah. Khatty. Graeme.
“Just get us to Mopti,” she told him. “I’ll decide after I’ve put something in my stomach and slept on a decent bed.”
“Better think it over good. We wouldn’t want you to be impulsive now.”
She lifted her head to find a crooked smile softening his features. His dark hair was a little mussed from the turban, and she wanted to run her fingers through it. She longed to touch him, feel his arms around her, know he was real. Could she leave this man? fly away back to her old life? go on as though nothing had happened between them?
Now that would take a miracle.
The dugout glided toward the lighted pier, and Graeme maneuvered it into a berth. The sloping cobbled expanse of the deserted marketplace on the main island rose from the riverbank. They docked, tied up the boat, and climbed onto the pier.
Two ancient telephones, wires exposed, hung from a pole at the edge of the market. Graeme lifted a receiver. “This one’s dead.” He picked up the other phone and jiggled the wires. “I’ve got a dial tone. Okay, Robert ol’ pal, where’s your number?”
He reached into the pocket of his blue shirt and pulled out a small leather box the size of a cigarette pack. With one finger he flipped open the lid and riffled through a stack of cards.
“What’s that?” Tillie asked as he found the one he’d been hunting and began to dial. “Your little box. What’s in there?”
“I keep my cards in it. It’s waterproof.”
“What cards?”
“Business cards, notes for my book. I told you about that.”
“You said you kept them in that bag we lost in the river. I thought you were just—”
“Making it up? You don’t believe I’m a writer? I told you Mungo Park is my ancestor, and I’m working on his biography. You didn’t believe me?” He turned to the phone as his call was answered. “Hey, Robert. Graeme. We pulled into town a couple of minutes ago. . . . Yeah, I found her.”
He gave Tillie a thumbs-up. While he talked, she scanned the town, half expecting a camel caravan to parade over the bridge. The place was silent. Graeme hung up the receiver.
“He’s coming down to get us. Did you know it’s four in the morning?”
“He must be a good friend.”
“Robert’s with a mission here in Mopti. Comes from Scotland near Mungo Park’s birthplace. I met him in Bamako. We both hung out at the library.”
“Are you really writing a book about all this? Or are you looking for the treasure like everybody else?”
“I told you what I do.”
“There’s a lot you haven’t told me.”
“This hasn’t been a leisure cruise, Tillie. I need you to have faith in me.”
“Faith.”
“You’re good at that, remember? Believing in something you can’t quite put your finger on. Trusting someone who can’t tell you everything past, present, and future.”
She wanted to respond, but a pair of bright lights swung around and stopped in the center of the marketplace. “That’s Robert.” Graeme beckoned her toward the Land Rover, where a gray-haired man waited behind the wheel.
“Hey, Robert, sorry to get you up in the middle of the night.”
“No trouble,” he replied in a thick Scottish accent. “Mary’s waitin’ up at the mission. And this must be your young lady.”
“Robert McHugh, I’d like you to meet Matilda Thornton,” Graeme said as he climbed into the back of the Land Rover. “Tillie, this is Robert.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. McHugh.” Warming to the softness in his blue eyes, she guessed the man t
o be in his sixties. She sat down beside him. “Please, call me Tillie.”
“And I’m Robert to you.” He drove the rattling Land Rover out of the market area and into Mopti. It was a short distance to the mission, an old whitewashed building.
“The truck’s in the garage,” Robert told Graeme as they climbed back out into the night air. “But you must come inside and relax a bit.”
The door to the mission house flew open, and a tiny white-haired woman bustled down the steps. “Robert? Are you back already? Graeme, you found her! I’m so pleased. And is this your young lady, then? I’m Mrs. McHugh, dear, but you must call me Mary.”
“I’m Tillie Thornton.”
“Such a lovely name. My goodness you are thin. Have you had anything to eat lately? You look as though you’ve been through quite an ordeal. Do come inside and warm yourself. I’ve made some tea, and I just baked a cake this morning—yesterday morning. Oh, who knows which day it is? Come in, come in!”
Tillie couldn’t help but smile as she followed Robert’s wife into a warm living room. Four overstuffed chintz-covered chairs congregated around a newly built fire. A tray of teacups with tiny roses painted around their rims sat on a table nearby. A wolfhound rose from the carpet and greeted his master with a wet-nosed nudge.
“Your home is lovely,” Tillie said with a laugh of disbelief. “I feel like I’m in Scotland somewhere. Like I could look out the window and see gorse and heather instead of sand.”
“I know just what you mean. I’ve been into the desert myself, and home does seem a dream when I get back to it. Now sit yourselves down, both of you. I can hear the kettle whistling. I’ll just pop into the kitchen and bring out my teapot. We’ll have a bit of tea before we trundle you off to bed.”
Tillie sank into one of the chairs and shut her eyes. An hour ago she would have sworn she would be spending this night fending off the amenoukal. Now she was waiting for a cup of hot tea served by a Scottish missionary.
What next, Lord? What next?
“So, you found her with the Tuareg, did you?” Robert McHugh was asking Graeme. “They can be a difficult lot, can’t they? Mary, did you hear that? Tillie’s just spent some time with a band of Tuareg.”
The little woman bustled into the room bearing a pot of tea and a large raisin cake. “With the Tuareg, did you say? My goodness, how did that happen? You must tell us all about it.”
As the four sipped milk-and-sugar-sweetened tea and devoured thick slabs of raisin cake with marzipan icing, Graeme and Tillie related the adventures of their journey.
“Now what about this Arthur Robinson chap?” Mary asked. “The Englishman. How does he fit in?”
“Good question.” Graeme glanced at Tillie.
Tillie stirred her tea. “Arthur’s on his way to Timbuktu. I’m supposed to meet him there.”
“Won’t you be taking the plane back to Bamako this afternoon?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But you’ll be going on to Timbuktu, won’t you, Graeme?” Robert asked. “You can’t give up your project. Finding that journal will add an important chapter to the history of the Niger. You mustn’t abandon it.”
“Sometimes I think I’m on a wild-goose chase,” Graeme said. “Maybe Mungo Park just scribbled down a few thoughts and stuck the paper in a necklace. For all I know there never was a journal.”
“There’s a journal,” Tillie said quietly. “Khatty told me about it. A book, she called it. She said it was very old, and that the paper in the amulet came from the book.”
Robert slapped Graeme on the back. “Then you must go on looking, my dear man! You can’t give up your search until you’ve exhausted every possibility. Tillie is welcome to stay here with us if she’d rather not go anywhere. She’ll be perfectly safe until you get back from Timbuktu, won’t she, Mary? Really, old man, I cannot tell you how important I believe this is.”
“Yes, Graeme. Do go on.” Mary beamed at Tillie. “We should love to have you here with us, dear.”
Graeme sat up and placed his hands on his knees. “I don’t know what Tillie wants to do, but I’m sure I’ll think better after a little sleep.”
“Of course! Here we are chattering away, Robert, and they’re nearly dead on their feet. What time is it? Half past five! It’s almost time to get up. I have the guest room all ready. Graeme, show Tillie to it, and you can sleep in Robert’s study.”
Mary bounced to her feet and scurried around the room tidying up the tea things. Graeme showed Tillie down a long hall lined with oak-framed portraits of the McHugh children. At the far end of the house was the tiny guest room. He pushed open the door.
“Mary brought the linens and rugs from Scotland years ago,” he said. “They were in the old manor house out on the moors where she grew up. The rocking chair was her mother’s. You’ll feel like you’re home.”
“You’ve visited a lot?”
“They’re good friends.” He shrugged off his burnous and draped it on a blue chintz sofa. After stepping out of his boots, he padded over to the fireplace, lifted the poker, and stirred the glowing coals.
Tillie curled onto a chair and rested her cheek on its padded wing. Strange to step from a world of tents and camels to one of tea and cake and blue chintz. Disoriented, she looked up when Graeme walked to her side and draped himself onto the neighboring chair. His physical presence seemed to fill the little room.
“Good shower in the bathroom next door. Water’s always hot.”
“I’m beat.”
“We’ve been up all night. It’s dawn outside.”
She ran her fingers through the tangles in her hair. “I feel a little slaphappy. Kind of like when I was eight years old and had been to a slumber party and stayed up all night with my friends giggling and trying on makeup.”
He acknowledged the image with a sleepy grin. “Too tired to talk?”
“I don’t know if I’ll make sense.” She looked into his eyes and knew there was no escape this time. “Okay, talk.”
“Those two days we were separated. You thought things over. The amulet. Your boyfriend. Me. So what’s the verdict?”
She brushed her hand over her eyes. “I missed you, Graeme.”
“Arthur?”
“Worried about him . . . that’s all.” She paused. “Listen, Graeme, out there in the desert, I had good memories of our days together. I wanted to see you again. At the same time . . . I’m confused.”
“You don’t know who I really am. The whole writing thing. The police in Djenne. The journal.” He hooked one leg over the arm of the chair. “What’s your heart telling you?”
“I’m trying to listen to my head.”
“And?”
When she didn’t answer right away, he jumped out of the chair and knelt to stir the fire again. “I’m trying to be rational, too, but something’s happening. Something I didn’t count on. Here’s the deal. I came to Africa to do what I needed to do. I had a goal. . . .”
His voice drifted in a circle around her head. Desperate to understand who this man was and what he could mean to her, she shifted in her chair to keep awake. “Okay,” she mumbled. “You had a goal.”
“Right. I did the things I needed to do to get where I wanted to be. Research. Contacts. Travel. Set everything up.”
Her eyelids drifted down. She could listen with her eyes closed. “Mmm, you set everything up.”
“Came to Mali. Library . . . Tuareg . . . you in the marketplace. You know?”
She swirled up to consciousness. “The marketplace.”
“But then we started traveling together . . . the Land Rover . . . that night by the river . . . lost you . . . missed you . . . wanted you . . .”
His voice went around and around like bathwater down a drain, and there was nothing she could do to hold it.
When she opened her eyes, Tillie realized Graeme hadn’t moved from his chair, either. Tousled black hair had fallen over his closed eyes, and his breathing was deep and easy. He had sprout
ed a thick growth of whiskers in the days of travel, and she couldn’t resist reaching over to brush her fingers against his chin. She traced the curve of his cheek and stroked her fingers up into his hair. When she pushed aside a dark curl, his eyelids slid open. She dropped her hand.
He caught it. “Don’t stop.”
As he wove their fingers together, she let out a sigh. “Graeme . . . about last night. I’m sorry. I fell asleep while you were talking.”
“So did I.” He smiled. “Mornin’, glory. You’re beautiful.”
She touched her hair, remembering the tangles and paint and dirt. “You’re a better storyteller than I was at the ahal.”
“I never lie.”
Propping her chin on her hand, she regarded him. “But you don’t tell the whole truth, either. You’re exasperating.”
“Likewise.” He ran the side of his finger up her cheek. “Well then, what’s the plan, Cinderella? What are you going to do today?”
She looked beyond him to the open window. Late morning sunlight streamed through the branches of a frangipani tree. Outside on the street, horns honked. Someone rang a bicycle bell. The sweet perfume of tropical blossoms filled the room.
Images drifted through her mind: Hannah and their little house in Bamako, an airplane tracing the course of the Niger River southward, Arthur in his gray suit and striped tie, Khatty swirling past her tent, a brass lamp swinging in the desert breeze . . .
What should she do? Go back to the familiar, to safety? Or go on into the unknown?
Some trust in chariots and some in horses . . . or Land Rovers . . . or airplanes . . . but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
“Trust me.”
“Let’s see about that truck,” she said. “It’s high time I found the treasure of Timbuktu.”
ELEVEN
When Graeme stepped out of the bathroom, he spotted Tillie riffling through a basket she had found beside her door. She had showered before he did, and her hair hung in damp, dark gold tendrils almost to her waist. One of Mary McHugh’s terry-cloth bathrobes, pink with little white-ribbon roses, clung to her skin.
A Kiss of Adventure Page 18