"I don't intend to stay that long," she re-joined.
"Who can tell what is intended for any of us ?" He glanced down at her and his eyes, though so blue, were the most enigmatic she had ever encountered. "The
yacht of your companions is under the reef, and the steamer which visits Janaleza once a month is not due for almost a month. It therefore looks as though you will have time to grow accustomed to our Janalezan ways as well as our trees."
She caught her breath sharply at what he said — that for a month almost she would be marooned on this faraway island among strangers. Even Leird Challen was comparatively unknown, though a little more civilized in looks and in outlook, she was sure, than Roque de Braz Ferro.
"Do you live on this island all the time?" she asked incredulously.
"Where else would I live, senhorinha?" There was a deep note of amusement in his voice. "What can the world offer that providence has not already supplied me with, here on Janaleza? Long ago an ancestor of mine discovered the island when his ship came to its shores searching for fresh fruit and water. He was a conquistador sailing under letter of marque for booty he shared with the crown — a piece of information which does not surprise you, eh ?"
Her eyes rested on him with a gravity almost childlike. "An ancestress of mine was a Welsh witch," she said. "She had a lover in the king's army and nearly got burned at the stake because she went to war with him, dressed as a drummer boy. The officer loved her, so they let him marry her. The king was supposed to have said she was too comely a wench for burning in fires other than those of love."
"And what was she called, this sorceress who charmed a king ?" The brilliance of the sea was in the eyes of Roque de Braz Ferro, a heritage from the man
who had roved and plundered it.
"Morvenna," she said. "My father always liked the story, so he called me Morvenna."
Her eyes grew shadowed as she mentioned her father, for a month of her search would be lost while she was marooned on Janaleza.
"Your Indians have canoes, senhor," the words broke from her. "Won't you let them help me search for my father ?"
"Where will you look, Miss Fayr ?" He spoke almost harshly. "Brazil is a continent. Its rivers are numerous, its jungles vast, and its killers range from fever to the piranha and the jaguar."
"I know all that," she said, "but something must be done."
"A search was undertaken, was it not ?"
"Yes, but I — I have to be sure."
"First you have to rest after your ordeal in the water."
He strode with her across a compound, under the shade of giant trees, and Morvenna caught her breath as the faZenda came in sight. The thatch of the high-pitched roof was a deep shade of saffron. There were wide verandas at either side of the house, reached by twin flights of steps and shaded by the overhanging eaves of the roof. Masses of purple and flame bougainvillea encrusted the walls, and doors and shutters were of carved teakwood. Its proportions were immense, due perhaps to the fact that the faZenda was one-storied.
There were two or three people on the veranda, but Morvenna had only a tired glimpse of them as she was carried into a large, cool room where a fan purred in
the ceiling. Her limbs were aching for the solace of a mattress and within seconds of being placed beneath the netting of a big bed, she was deeply, dreamlessly asleep.
CHAPTER TWO
MORVENNA stirred awake after a long time. She opened her eyes and saw moonlight streaming in a barbaric way through slatted blinds. Where on earth was she ? She sat up, the light sheet slipping from her, and gave a frightened gasp as something laughed jeeringly in the treetops outside.
A bird of the jungle, reminding her with a jerk of where she was and how she came to be here. As she grew more accustomed to the strange room, she drew aside the netting that was suspended from the bedhead and felt for the switch of the bedside lamp. The slight click and the soft blooming of light under the topaz shade made her nerves shrink and expand, as they might at a sudden pain.
The merciful numbness of sleep had ebbed away and she was fully awake once more to the painful events that had brought her to this place.
A jungle fazenda, home of a man named Roque de Braz Ferro. A Brazilian of means, judging from this room. The bed in which she had slept so soundly had a cane headboard and carved footposts. There was a dressing-table and matching cupboard of jungle mahogany, bent bamboo chairs, and a magnificent jaguar pelt spread upon the tropical inlaid wood of the
floor. The walls were colour-washed in pale green, and a screen painted with tropical birds and flowers concealed a washstand, she thought.
On the night-table there was a plaited bowl of green-gold papayas, a couple of alligator pears, and a hand of tiny bananas called fingers-of-gold.
Morvenna realized that she was thirsty, and she took a papaya and bit into the juicy fruit. Mmm, that was good. She dropped the black stone into the fruit basket, and noticed on the palmwood table a carving of a jungle cat. She stroked a finger along the smooth tawny muscles, and was reminded vividly of her encounter on the sandbar with the man who owned this house, and possibly half the island.
He had stepped out of the bush as though out of some old pagan legend, and she remembered the shock of his eyes upon her. Arresting, almost an assault on the senses, to see eyes so blue in a face so sun-dark and autocratic. So must the Eagle Knights of the Aztecs have looked, and as she pondered the pride and strangeness of the man, she thought it possible that in his blood ran an exotic whisper from the lips of an Aztec princess, taken as wife or concubine by one of the conquistadors who invaded the Aztec kingdom long, long ago.
She was smiling faintly at her own flight of fancy when she heard footfalls outside the long windows facing the foot of her bed. She went taut, her every nerve shocked wide awake as the slatted doors were pushed open. Alarm of a primitive nature ran through her blood as Roque de Braz Ferro stepped into her bedroom. The room seemed darkly filled with the shadow of him. He towered there in the veranda doorway, wearing a white silk shirt deeply open at the
throat, and dark trousers that emphasized his lean length of leg.
Morvenna's heart seemed to beat in her throat. There was a look of wild uncertainty in her eyes as she caught at the abundant bed netting and drew its veiling about her bare shoulders. Her dress had been half ripped from her body when the Sea Panther had flung her across its decks. It had not mattered down on the beach, but right now she was unbearably aware of the bed on which she lay, and blue eyes raking the soft pallor of her skin and the thick soft fairness of her sleep-disordered hair.
Her lips, half parted because of her rapid pulse-beat, had sung often enough about "kisses sweeter than wine", but they had not yet known any.
"You really do believe that this is an island of pagans, eh ?" There was an amused curl to his lips as he came and stood beside her bed. He took hold of her wrist and checked her pulse. "You look less fatigued, but your pulse is racing. Are you afraid of me ?"
"I — I should imagine that most women are." A blush ebbed into her cheeks as she noticed the dark hair curling crisply under the white cuff of his shirt sleeve.
"Women are creatures of curiosity," he captured her gaze and held it. "What they fear, they like to investigate."
"I have no intention of investigating you," she gasped.
"Really ?" A black eyebrow quirked above a vivid blue eye. "And you such a venturesome female !"
"I had a reason for venturing out here," she said, and wondered if she dared pull free of those lean and steely fingers. "Are you a doctor, senhor?"
"I am a curandeiro, Miss Fayr. A bone-setter. It was a skill I was born with, and I undertook a few years' training in Brazil which makes it quite respectable for me to take the pulse of a young lady in bed. How did you sleep ?"
"Like a log," she said, and wondered just how many facets there were to the amazing personality of this man. "How is Mr. Challen, senhor, the man who was with me down on the beach ?"
She caught a glint of curiosity in the blue eyes of Roque de Braz Ferro and decided not to reveal how slight was her acquaintance with Leird. Janaleza was cut off from the rest of civilization, and despite the culture and medical skill of its overlord, there were elements to the man that were not entirely reassuring to a girl. He was jungle-lithe, with a definition to his features that was almost ruthless; a vibration to his voice that made it the most masterful she had ever heard.
"Leird pulled me out of the sea." She looked directly at Roque de Braz Ferro. "Is there any hope for the Tysons, senhor?"
He gazed back at her, the topaz lamplight playing over his lean face and wide shoulders. "It would seem unlikely, Miss Fayr. The only consolation is that they were together."
She gave a sad little nod, and tried not to remember Poppy's impatience with Gerald, and the way she hung
round Leird during the few days Morvenna knew her.
"You must be feeling hungry, senhorinha. " He strode to the cupboard carved out of jungle wood and took from it a robe, which he brought to Morvenna. "You will wish to make yourself tidy while I go and fetch your supper tray. My servants are Indians, so tonight I will spare you their curiosity."
"Thank you, senhor. " Her voice was low-pitched, gravely musical. Welsh valley music, strange to hear in this room of dusky jungle woods and pelts.
She slipped out of bed and felt the velvety smoothness of the tawny pelt under her bare feet as she removed her torn dress and put on the silk robe. She rolled up the sleeves, and the heavy dark silk trailed round her ankles as she went behind the tall screen that concealed toilet facilities.
She was back in bed, looking clean and combed and small in the dark robe, when her host came in through the veranda doors carrying a bamboo tray. He stood it across her lap on little legs, and removed the cover from a plate of delicious-looking chicken on a bed of saffron rice.
"Do you like Latin food ?" he asked, flicking his eyes over her smallness in the robe that was evidently his.
"I find it very tasty," she admitted, and felt hunger stir in her as the saffron wafted its aroma to her nostrils. She bit her lips at the ruthlessness of life. Here she was about to partake of food, while poor Poppy ...
"Come, eat your food. It will make you feel better." That crisp, commanding voice made her pull herself together, and with a sigh she obeyed him. The merciless demands of the body were beyond her control, just as the forces of destiny were beyond it.
The meat was so tender that it melted in her mouth, and with a blink of her lashes she saw that the senhor was pouring wine into a pair of stemmed glasses. In the topaz light of the lamp his long fingers and the wine had a tawny gleam as he handed her one of the glasses.
"I have to drink it, of course," she said.
"Of course." A sardonic smile gleamed in his eyes. "Think of it as a medicine."
She took a sip and found the wine evasively sweet. How pagan, how dangerous, to be drinking wine in a strange bedroom, with a man who looked such a law unto himself. He lounged in one of the bent bamboo chairs, his long legs stretched across the jaguar pelt, the lamplight outlining his high cheek-bones, high-bridged Latin nose, and fleshless angle under his chin.
There was a boundless assurance and authority about the man, a teak-hard masculinity that made her wonder if he had a wife. Surely if he had one, the senhora would have appeared before now to satisfy her feminine curiosity about the girl-stranger under her roof? Also, as Morvenna felt the sleeve of the robe fall back along her bare arm, she would have been able to supply a garment less roomy.
"Your dessert is in that other dish," he said, a note of firmness in his voice.
Slices of honey-sweet pineapple and custard spiced with cinnamon. "This pineapple is delicious," she said. "Do you grow your own, senhor?"
"We have our own pineapple beds, palm-oil groves and mill, banana-tree plantation, several other varieties of fruit, and then the coffee, which is our main industry here on the island. Shall we have a little coffee now you have satisfied your hunger ?"
She poured it from the little silver pot into the cups he had provided, dark and rich. "Cream, senhor?" she asked.
"Sugar only, Muito obrigado. " He took the cup and saucer she held out to him. "A Brazilian, senhorinha, likes his coffee as black as a curse and sweet as a kiss."
"So I see." A faint, faint flush tinged her cheeks, for to talk of kisses with this man was to be aware all through her being that she had never been kissed. He looked as though nothing about life and women could offer him any more surprises.
Her eyes concealed by her lashes, she watched him drinking his coffee. Ruthless lips, she thought, somehow matched by his lean hands.
In through the partly open veranda doors crept a dusky scent of tropical trees and creepers. There were sounds alien to her; a persistent chirring, the distant cough of a prowling jaguar, now and then that jeering bird laugh.
He saw the little shiver she gave and told her that the bird was the Mae da lua, known in the Brazilian forests as the goddess of the moon.
"Our moon is a barbaric one," he added. "Here on Janaleza, Miss Fayr, you will see nature at its most awesome. The island as you guessed is a large one. There are untamed regions, and a rain forest at its heart where the Indians live almost as wildly as in the days when El Draque, my ancestor, discovered the island."
"Haven't you tried to change all that ?" she asked, for he looked a man who would reap great satisfaction out of seeing all the island under cultivation and its people well-fed and actively employed.
"A wise man does not interfere with nature." His glimmer of a smile informed her that he had read her mind. "Where we are able to cultivate maize, fruit, coffee and vegetables, we cultivate, but the people of the rain forest are part of the wild life of the island and I would no more try to tame them than I would attempt to tame a jaguar, or shoot the shadow-spots off a fawn."
"You feel they are happy living wild, senhor?"
"Far happier than the people of cities, senhorinha. I give them medical aid, naturally, but they are proud and independent and recognize only the authority of their own chefe. "
"But everywhere else on the island, you are the chief;" she said.
"I have that honour." He gave her a look of cool, saturnine amusement. "In all communities there must be someone in authority, Miss Fayr. Do I not meet with your approval as the patrao of most of the island ?"
"It is not for me to approve or disapprove of the feudal chief of an island I knew nothing about until fate threw me upon its shores."
"Fate is the master of us all." An oblique smile lifted one corner of his mouth as he surveyed her in the big jungle-wood bed. "In the blood of a family is written what we will be. In the stars is written what path we shall follow. You are venturesome, Miss Fayr, and follow in the footsteps of your father. Has he always followed the trail of mythical treasure ?"
"Is it always mythical, senhor?" She bristled in the large bed like a small, fey-eyed cat.
"More often than not, senhorinha." It seemed to amuse him to address her in the Latin way each time she bristled. "Diamonds can be as magnetic to some
people as love – and just as brittle should a blow befall them. In all his wanderings what has your father accomplished, or found ?"
"Freedom, adventure," she bit her lip to steady her voice. "A few beryls which enabled me to get the money to come out here. I – I can't believe that Llew is lost to me—"
"How often was he at home to be a father to you ?" The eyes of Roque de Braz Ferro were suddenly as cold as blue ice. "Are you not in search of a dream – of treasure you may never find ?"
"Is that any business of yours, Senhor de Braz Ferro ?"
"Yes, while you are a guest on the island of Janaleza." He r
ose to his feet and after placing his coffee cup on the tray she had slid on to the bedside table, he went to the veranda doors and stood tall there, looking out at the moonlit jungle night. The breeze that rustled the tamarinds and palms wafted into the room a scent that was dizzying in its sweetness. A breath of magic, poignant enough to bring the sting of tears to Morvenna's eyes. She didn't like the man to whom she must be indebted for the next few weeks. She felt him to be hard, unfeeling towards anyone whose ideas and ideals clashed with his own.
She watched him go out through the veranda doors and thought resentfully that he might have wished her good night, but a moment later he returned carrying a spray of clustering, pagoda-shaped flowers, softly pale as the skin of Morvenna's throat and arms. Their scent filled the room as he brought over the spray and handed it to a startled Morvenna.
"The flower belongs exclusively to this island," he said. "It is called Virgin's Pagoda. Strange, eh, that
flowers so delicate should flourish in our barbaric soil ?"
"They're very lovely." She touched her fingertips to the spray and could imagine it pinned among the raven dark waves of a senhora's hair. She glanced up at the man who towered, copper-skinned and jungle-lithe, beside her bed. His presence there was an assault on her nerves. What did she know about him ? Only that he was the feudal chief of the island who answered to no one for his actions....
"This man Challen — are you romantically attached to him ?"
It was a moment or two before she took in the full impact of the question, then his cool assumption that he could ask it and expect an answer set her temper alight. Pink warmth stung her throat, cheek and temple hollows. Her lips parted and she was about to tell him to mind his own business, when he leant slightly forward so that his face came out of the shadows and she saw how impersonal his eyes were.
"I ask," he said coolly, "because you are young, you are out in the world on your own, and a romantic who finds it hard to accept reality."
"You did say you were a bone-setter, didn't you, senhor?" She heard the note of defiance in her voice. "Perhaps I misunderstood you and thought you said you straightened out the minds of mixed-up females."
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