They waited. In silence, barely daring to breathe.
After a while, he shifted his head, trying to find some paler slice of darkness through the enfolding leaves, but the thickness of the canopy combined with the night to defeat him.
Eventually, they heard heavy footsteps trudging toward them along the path. They held their breaths, but the footsteps continued on and past, heading toward the camp. The slavers who had rushed out to search were returning. Several deep grumbles reached them; Robert strained his ears and made out a curse directed at all monkeys.
The footsteps faded as the slavers straggled into the camp.
When silence—or what passed for it in the jungle night—once more engulfed them, Aileen shifted and looked at him. He couldn’t see her face well enough to make out her expression, but assumed she was waiting for some sign.
He leaned closer to her and whispered, “We need to wait to make sure no slaver has hung back, waiting to see if anyone emerges—if there was anyone here.”
She nodded.
He wished he could monitor the time, but there was insufficient light to read his watch face. They shouldn’t leave the safety of their leafy hideaway too precipitously, but neither could they remain overlong. If they did, that would increase the chances of them running into a group of the slavers coming from the settlement.
Finally, he decided they had to risk descending. Through the darkness, he tried to catch Aileen’s eyes. “Stay here,” he murmured. “I’m going to drop down and assess the situation. If all’s clear, I’ll tap on the bole twice.” He demonstrated. “Don’t move until I do.” He saw her head nod, but before he could move, she reached for and caught his neckerchief, tugged his face to hers, and pressed her lips to his in an almost desperate kiss.
She released him and whispered fiercely, “Take care.”
Despite all, his lips were curved in a smile as he lowered himself, branch to branch. He paused on the last, reaching with all his senses, but he detected no one close. Lightly, he dropped to the ground.
Every faculty on high alert, he moved silently around the tree, then scouted the way to the path.
He saw no one, sensed no one. The spot where they would rejoin the path was at least two bends away from the camp, out of sight of any likely sentry.
Satisfied, he returned to the tree and tapped twice on the sturdy trunk.
A minute later, Aileen sat on the lowest branch. He reached up, and she let herself fall; he caught her and smoothly swung her to the ground.
He looked around as she shook down her skirts, then he grasped her hand.
She met his gaze through the dimness and nodded.
He set off through the bushes, leading her back to the path.
Once on it, they traveled as swiftly as they could. She held up her skirts and hurried along, keeping pace with his longer strides.
They were most of the way to the inlet before he accepted that the chances of pursuit had diminished to miniscule and relaxed his vigilance—or rather, switched the focus of his attention from behind them to in front of them.
Yet even while his senses scanned the jungle all around, a part of him remained intensely aware of the woman by his side. He was quietly amazed by how resilient and determined she’d proved to be. How capable, how committed, and...well, determined again. Perhaps stubbornness fed into that trait, but most females he knew would have crumpled long before now.
Would have become a burden of one sort or another.
She hadn’t. She’d matched him more or less every step of the way.
That he found that attractive had to be some monumental trick of fate.
They reached the inlet in what he thought was good time. They made their way straight to where they’d stowed their canoe. It was something of a relief to find it still there, hidden as they’d left it. While Aileen leaned against a trunk, catching her breath, he pulled out his fob watch, opened it, and angled the face to catch the glimmer of moonlight off the water.
“What time is it?” Aileen asked.
“Nearly eight.” He shut the watch and straightened, tucking the timepiece back into his pocket. Then he bent and started brushing branches and leaves off the canoe. “We need to be past the point where the path from the settlement reaches the inlet before half past eight to be sure of escaping the notice of any incoming slavers.”
A heartbeat later, Aileen was helping him clear the canoe. He launched it, then handed her in. She scrambled to the front bench. Once she was settled, he got in, picked up his paddle, and pushed away from the bank.
They didn’t speak, simply paddled as hard as they could.
He kept them in the center of the river; along such an open stretch, there was no point in hugging the shore in the hope of escaping detection. The ripples created by their craft would give them away as surely as a direct sighting.
At least the tide had turned and was flowing downstream; although not strong enough yet to be of much help, at least there wasn’t any resistance.
“There it is.”
Aileen’s quiet words floated back to him. He glanced to his left and ahead and saw the opening in the jungle—a darker splotch against the interminable foliage that lined the edge of the thin strip of sand.
He faced forward and put his back into his strokes; they shot past the spot. Fifty yards on, he angled the craft into the shore, ultimately realigning the hull so that they were traveling parallel to the bank, about twenty yards out.
The new course would make them harder to spot from the slavers’ departure point, now well to their rear, but he prayed they wouldn’t encounter any snags.
They didn’t. Finally, they spotted the village on the shore. He brought the canoe around and allowed it to run up onto the narrow strip of beach.
He clambered out, then helped Aileen to climb out.
She immediately turned and, grasping the canoe’s side, helped him drag it up out of the water.
He considered, then, with a sigh, accepted that it would be wiser to line it up with all the others, leaving nothing to suggest that anyone but the villagers had been using it.
Between them, they wrestled the craft up onto the coarse grass and turned it over.
He shrugged off the water skin and tucked it underneath the overturned hull. They’d drained the skin during their rush to the canoe.
He straightened and turned.
Aileen was there. She stepped up to him, caught his lapels, and dragged his face down to hers. She kissed him—hard.
When she drew back, he blinked. “What was that for?”
Still holding his lapels, she looked into his face. Washed by moonlight, her expression looked both triumphant and fierce—his very own Boadicea. “That’s for getting us this far.” She released him and turned to look along the inlet’s bank. “Now let’s get back to The Trident and head for home.”
He found he was grinning. He caught her hand. “It’s amazing how often we think alike.”
She laughed, soft and low.
Hand in hand, they walked out of the village and onto the path that would ultimately take them to the estuary’s shores.
* * *
There was just one problem with their plan. They were exhausted.
They’d started their day before dawn—and the night before hadn’t been uneventful. Since breakfasting, they’d been on the move, and most of their hours of walking had been under fraught circumstances, under the ever-present threat of discovery and imminent danger.
Then had come the past hours of near panic and flight.
It was hardly any wonder they were both drooping.
After Aileen had stumbled for the third time—and nearly taken him to the ground, too—Robert drew her to a halt and pointed up the beach to where another village slumbered in a clearing back from the shore
. “Let’s see if they have a place we can rest. There’s no reason we can’t. No slavers are going to search for us there, and The Trident will still be waiting in the morning.”
Aileen managed to make her head move up and down in a nod. Finding the strength to move her feet through the sand was increasingly difficult, even with Robert’s help. She’d never known what it felt like to be at one’s last gasp, but she knew now.
Luckily, he was in better condition. He half carried her up the gentle slope onto the grassy bank, then let her prop against him while he spoke with the local headman who came out in response to Robert’s hail. Fortunately, the old man understood English, although he only spoke a form of pidgin.
She could barely keep her eyes open as they followed the old man to a hut at the edge of the village. Perched on stilts two steps above the ground, the hut was a simple affair with walls of the same woven panels as so many buildings in the area, a thatched roof, and a swath of heavy woven fabric for a door.
Coins changed hands, clinking in the night. Then the old man folded the fabric aside, showed them inside, then left them.
In the sliver of light the moon cast across the floor, she made out a crude pallet. She staggered to it and tried to let herself down. Robert caught her arm, then eased her to the rough sheet.
She remained awake long enough to see him walk to the doorway. For a moment, he stood outlined against the black velvet sky, then the fabric fell and darkness reigned. Her lids closed even as she heard his soft footsteps draw nearer.
She hung on to consciousness only long enough to hear the soft clatter as he set his sword belt on the floor and to feel the sag of the pallet as he lay down beside her. Then she surrendered and let sleep have her.
Robert heard her breathing slow. After a moment, he reached out and gently eased her closer, settling her within one arm.
The heat was well-nigh stifling, although a faint draft of cooler air found its way past the edges of the door covering, bringing slight—very slight—relief. Yet regardless of the warmth, he needed to have her close, near enough for him to sense if she moved.
For some reason, his instincts found that incredibly important, and he was not up to arguing with them.
Easier to give in—to them and to everything he felt for her.
He closed his eyes.
A second later, evidently dead to the world, she muttered, “We have to get the children back.”
He was glad she was asleep, because he wasn’t up to arguing that with her, either. But he knew beyond question that the best route to securing the safe rescue of all those taken was via completing his mission.
And he knew without asking that she wanted to rescue her brother and see him safe again.
Regardless...he couldn’t stop his mind from evaluating the possibilities. From considering whether it might be possible to raise a force sufficient to the task and go after the slavers, and through them, to strike directly at the operation behind...but no.
In his heart, he could argue such a course. In his head, he knew there were simply too many ways such an action could go wrong—and the price of failure would be the deaths of all those already taken. All they would find when they reached wherever the northerly track from Kale’s Homestead led would be a pile of dead bodies.
He was perfectly certain Aileen would rather next see her brother alive than dead.
But they’d succeeded in their goal—they’d learned the location of Kale’s camp. Beyond that, they needed to cling to what was increasingly sounding like a realistic hope that all those missing were still alive.
Still alive and working for a man named Dubois.
For Robert, certainly, that knowledge, combined with the unexpected bonus of having found the one woman he could imagine taking to wife—the one woman he was going to take to wife—was enough.
For now.
Enough, at least, to be going on with.
Exhaustion reared in a wave, then crashed through him and dragged him under. He sighed, and all thought faded, and he tumbled headlong into sleep.
CHAPTER 16
He woke to pitch darkness and the feel of soft fingers and an equally soft palm pressed against his lips.
The sensation of firm curves that were already familiar pressing down on his chest stopped him from overreacting.
Then he remembered where they were.
He blinked his eyes wider and made out the oval of Aileen’s face. He raised his head slightly, and she removed her hand and leaned close to breathe, “Outside. Listen!”
He sent his senses questing farther—and detected the low-voiced conversation that must have woken her. It was coming from a distance—several huts farther down and closer to the shore.
The headman from whom they’d hired the hut spoke rapidly—as if in answer to a question, and also in protest.
“See, that makes no sense, old man.” Kale’s deep, slightly raspy voice was too distinctive to mistake.
Aileen rolled away and off the pallet and quietly stood. Robert silently rose to his feet as the headman protested angrily again.
“No, no.” The pied piper’s tones were, as always, placating and soothing. “It’s like this, see.”
Robert put out a hand, located his sword belt, silently lifted and untangled it, and swiftly buckled it about his hips. By the time he had, Aileen had circled the pallet and was standing by his side, her black reticule clutched in one hand, her gaze fixed on the hanging covering the doorway.
A stiff breeze was blowing off the water; it carried the pied piper’s dulcet tones to them.
“We know some gent and a lady are out here somewhere. One of our scouts was walking out with a woman from a village upstream, and he saw the pair in a canoe heading upriver our way.”
Robert turned, walked to the rear wall, and started carefully feeling his way across it. He was sure he’d glimpsed the frame of a woven-panel window close to the corner before he’d lowered the hanging and plunged them into darkness.
“Our scout asked about and learned that the gent and lady had hired the canoe from the village back a-ways, near the path from the settlement.”
The headman said something; as no sound of immediate approach followed, presumably the headman was, for whatever reasons of his own, continuing to deny all knowledge of them.
Panic—mostly due to Aileen being with him—tapped at the back of his mind, but Robert held it at bay and methodically felt along the wall. Then his fingertips caught on the barely raised edging of the window flap.
“We don’t tolerate people pushing their noses into our territory, any more than you chiefs do.” That was Kale. He sounded impatient.
Praying that the hinges would make no sound, Robert eased the flap from its frame, pushing it out and up. He peered out—and saw the jungle a mere yard away.
“Our man rightly went to get help from our men in the settlement,” the pied piper continued. “He reasoned that the gent and lady would return the canoe and then head back to the settlement.”
“But they didn’t,” Kale growled.
Robert leaned out and looked down. Through the dimness, he could just make out that the ground outside was higher than the floor. Aileen appeared beside him and peered out, too.
Again, the headman spoke, this time at some length.
Robert put his lips to Aileen’s ear. “You first.”
To his surprise, she nodded—then she held up a hand, and he saw she was gripping her pistol. She breathed back. “I can cover you from outside.”
They didn’t have time for him even to work out what he felt about that. He gripped her waist and hoisted her up.
“But these people have to be somewhere, chief, and seems like your empty huts would be a good place to hide.” The pied piper’s voice grew fractionally clearer—fractionally near
er—yet still he didn’t seem in any hurry. “No fault of yours if they’ve slipped inside to hide, now is it?”
The headman continued to talk, but it was clear he’d bought them as much time as he could; from the sound of their voices, the pied piper and he, and presumably Kale, too, were now walking toward the huts.
Robert’s nerves leapt. Aileen’s skirts took a degree of frantic manhandling to get over the sill. Then he climbed out after her.
The instant his feet hit the ground, they both reached for the flap and excruciatingly carefully eased it down. The flap fitted snugly back into its framing.
They didn’t wait for more. His heart thumping, he grasped her hand and, ruthlessly quashing the impulse to run blindly, called on discipline honed over the years and moved slowly, steadily, and stealthily forward. Silently, they melted into the denser darkness of the jungle.
He struck directly away from the shore. When more than a hundred yards of jungle darkness lay between them and the village, he halted. They both turned to look back and listen. The telltale sounds of heavy-footed men searching through the empty huts filtered through the dense vegetation.
He bent his head close to Aileen’s ear and murmured, “They won’t be able to track us, not at night, not in this terrain. But they’ll have the path to the settlement covered—we won’t be able to escape that way.”
“What about our original plan?” she whispered. “Go along the inlet to the estuary and then around to where we can signal The Trident.”
He nodded. “That’s still our best bet. But...” He grimaced. “If I was them—if I was Kale and as determined to seize us as he seems to be—as well as blocking the way back to the settlement, I would also get some canoes or rowboats on the water, string them out along the river, and keep watch from there.”
There was, obviously, only one good option for them. He turned toward the estuary. “We need to find another canoe as quickly as we can and get on the river ahead of them.”
A Buccaneer at Heart Page 32