CHAPTER SEVEN
MORVENNA'S unsettled feeling continued for several days. Nuno, his mood a sulky one, had gone off into the jungle to fish in one of the hidden streams for golden dorado. Leird was battling with his private problem in a bout of photography. He went down to the wreck in the lagoon and took a series of photographs that were so vivid and haunting when developed that Morvenna wondered how Poppy could study them with such interest.
The answer was that Poppy was a flower without a heart, and Morvenna found herself avoiding the other girl whenever possible.
In matador denims and a shirt worn outside them for coolness, she roamed the shore beyond the plantations of the fazenda, and hunted for shells and branches of coral. The Indians dragged their nets in the surf and captured small fishes that were delicious roasted over a fire on the sands. They gravely offered her some on a big banana leaf and she ate them, crisp and crunchy, in her fingers, and drowsed under a spreading banyan tree with her grass-woven hat tilted over her eyes.
Often a whole lazy morning passed in this way, Bemused by the sun, her bare toes in the warm sand, she would lose that sense of tension, that tightening of nerves somewhere under her ribs, whenever she returned to the fazenda.
The fishing craft out beyond the reef were lateen-rigged and flimsy Riding the blue ripples, misted by
the spray from the reef, the Indians were like bronzes as they stood to aim a spear at a large fish, or to haul in
a net of struggling silver minnows.
A soft breeze blew over the sun-fired water, bringing with it a tang of coral from the castellated reef. Castles and turrets of subtle colours, guarding this jungle island, the rustle of palm and breadfruit fronds mingling with the shuffling of the surf, the chants of the fishermen far out in their boats adding to Morvenna's sense of the elemental.
She pushed her toes into the warm sand and basked in peace beneath her banyan tree. Here she was undisturbed with her thoughts — until around noon one morning when a long shadow suddenly stretched across her lazy, sand-trapped figure. Her shaded glance stole up the strong, flexible figure in cool drill. Silence spun a web between her and the dark lord of the island.
While watching the coloured sails of the boats and listening to the carefree chanting of the fishermen, she had been thinking of the man who ruled over them; of the affection and loyalty which they gave to him. It had not made him a tyrant, she admitted that, yet whenever he came near her, she felt a compulsion to run away from him.
"Let me escort you back to the fazenda." He extended a brown hand, which she took reluctantly. His fingers closed around hers and as she rose out of the sand, she was caught by the blue glint of his eyes, and the gleam of his teeth in a quizzical smile. He knew that she was nervous of him and she felt him pull her closer than was necessary just out of devilment. She pulled free of him, and brushed sand from her denims. He was a man
who was a little too alarming at close quarters !
"My sandals are around here somewhere." She padded in her bare feet round one side of the wide-buttressed banyan, and he found them at the other side. They were woven out of grass, with fibre straps which crossed her small feet. After slipping into them she glanced up and saw the dents of amusement at the corners of his mouth.
"You look like an urchin out of a Mark Twain story," he said. "Here are your bits of coral and your conch shell."
"Thank you." Her cheeks grew pink as she took them. "One of the fishermen gave me the shell. It's full of sea talk."
"You like the islanders, don't you, senhorinha ?"
They mounted the shore that sloped towards the trees, and she gave him a swift, eloquent glance. "How can one help it ?" she asked. "They're so kind without question, and they take life so calmly, and enjoy small pleasures so much, that I can't help contrasting them with the people in cities, who are so ambitious and uncaring towards each other."
"You live in a city yourself, but your heart does not belong to one, eh ?" He was looking serious as he glanced down at her.
"No." She gave a sigh. "My father and I used to talk of having a little house in the Welsh hills. He would find a small pot of gold, he said, and then we would settle down in a green valley — but I mustn't think about that ! Some of our hopes must remain dreams."
"Such a resigned statement for one so young." The senhor's accent was more noticeable, as though she might have touched him.
"You've helped to make me resigned, senhor." She tilted him a look from beneath the brim of her grass hat. "You've pointed out to me all the things my father was up against. Devil-fish, crocodiles, crazy water – Leird suggested that other treasure-seekers could have been after his map. Bandidos, he called them, who would stop at nothing—"
She broke off, for it was too appalling to think of her carefree, adventurous father falling into the hands of men without mercy, just for a map that was probably as worthless as most treasure maps.
"That could not have happened," the senhor spoke with crisp authority. "Such scavengers take everything; they would not leave tinned provisions behind to rot in the bush, nor a canoe that was still useful."
She drew what comfort she could from this, and walked quietly at his side as the shadows of the trees enclosed them like cool arms. Cri-cro-o! cried a bird, while the kingwoods reared up all around, and monkeys peered and chattered among the branches. A silk-winged jacamin crossed their path, and a fawn fled away on silent feet, a shadow-spotted, fairy-tale creature.
When the senhor suddenly left the path which Morvenna usually followed to the fazenda, she glanced up at him inquiringly. "I want to show you something that might appeal to your collector's instinct." He gave her a quirk of a smile and gestured at the shell and the coral which she carried. "By the way, I must remember to return the piece of coral which I confiscated – Nuno was hurt, eh ? He thinks himself in love, and he will do so several times before he grows up."
"He's the same age as Raya," Morvenna pointed out.
"She is certainly not a child."
"Miss Fayr," he said dryly, "most girls grow up more swiftly than boys. There are exceptions, of course — the girls who need a father more than they need a lover."
Protest winged sharp and painful through Morvenna, and died on her lips. Perhaps it was true ! She had never sought romance. Her loneliness had always been that of a child who longs for security, the curtains drawn against the night, the flicker of candlelight on the face of a man with protective eyes.
A honey-scent filled her nostrils as they passed beneath a tree laden with kapok blossom. He was so tall that he broke some of the blossom in passing and it showered down over both of them, clinging, scented petals which he brushed from his black hair and his wide shoulders.
They entered the cool coffee groves, full of an amber twilight, and somewhere among the trees one of the Indian workers played a bamboo flute. They passed an Indian woman carrying her baby in a shoulder-sling. The senhor paused to admire the child and exchange a few words with the mother, who smiled shyly as Morvenna petted the baby, who lay naked and glossy in his sling. His eyes were sable-dark, set at a slant in the brown face that was sticky from sugar-cane. A bee buzzed and clung to his cheek, and Morvenna brushed it off quickly. At once it flew towards her and as she hopped to, one side to avoid a possible sting, she bumped into the senhor. "It's these pink pants," she laughed in confusion. "Fly away, bee, I'm not some odd sort of blossom !"
The Indian baby chuckled and sucked his piece of sugar-cane, and was still gazing back at Morvenna
with big dark eyes as his mother continued on her way with her father's lunch, which was wrapped in a red and white bandana.
"It is the brother of that young woman who becomes a bridegroom tomorrow," Morvenna was informed by her companion. "She hopes that you will attend the ceremony. Visitors bring good luck, you see, and she is a widow and wishes her brother to have better luck in
life."
"I'm looking forward to seeing a Janalezan wedding, senhor." Their meet
ing with the Indian girl and her baby had eased the constraint between them. He aroused it almost deliberately, it seemed to Morvenna, as though he had little patience to spare for girls who were not like Raya. Lovely, exotic Raya, without inhibitions or fears for the future. The future that Leird would have no part in . . . she was to be the patrao's bride.
They were deep in the coffee groves, with the mysterious amber dusk all around them, and the chikchak of tree-lizards. Perhaps it was the intimacy of being alone with a man in a forest of growing things that caused Morvenna to wonder what sort of a husband Roque de Braz Ferro would make.
He was a Latin and bound to be possessive. His lean strength, the texture of his skin, and the dark gleam of his hair, denoted a strong virility. In his arms Raya would find all that she probably sought — but what of companionship? Did he attach no importance to that side of marriage ?
Raya was pretty beyond description, but her conversation, Morvenna had noticed, was almost dull. She liked to curl like a kitten against a man's knee, and she
loved to dance. She never argued with either Leird or the senhor.
A wry little smile tugged at Morvenna's lips. She had probably had more arguments with him in ten days than Raya had had in ten years !
"Here we are." He paused before one of the giant palm trees at the edge of the grove, and Morvenna saw sprouting from the trunk crevices a cluster of velvety lavender orchids. They were streaked with gold, and as the senhor pulled off a couple they clung round his fingers like live things. "Here they grow wild," he smiled. "In the cities men pay luxury prices for them in order to please a lady."
"You must give some to Poppy," Morvenna said. "She'll be crazy about them."
"Don't they appeal to you ?" he asked.
"My tastes are simple," she replied. "Anyway, they look rather like lavender spiders. See how they cling !"
"What a child you are !" He laughed low in his throat, the palm frond shadows obscuring the expression in his eyes as he gazed down at her. "I suppose a nosegay of wild violets would be more to your taste ?"
"With Welsh valley dew on them," she agreed. "Poppy will love the orchids."
"Then I shall certainly give them to her." He seemed amused rather than annoyed by Morvenna's dislike of the flamboyant orchids. "She will no doubt wear them tomorrow evening, when we attend the wedding festivities."
"Will Nuno be back in time for the wedding ?" she asked, as they made their way out of the groves and along a path that led to the fazenda.
"He should be." Morvenna felt a side-glance. "Remember my warning, senhorinha. Nuno is very attractive, but he is yet too young in his ways to make happy a girl like yourself."
"A girl in search of a father ?" she flashed. "There's no need to keep reminding me, senhor, that you would not approve of me as a possible sister-in-law."
"I beg your pardon ?" He stopped in his tracks and stood in front of her so that she could not proceed.
Her eyes lifted to meet his, the colour of wood smoke in her fine-boned young face. "Nuno let the cat out of the bag," she said defiantly. "He told me that you will probably marry his sister. Congratulations. She's the prettiest girl I have ever seen."
Silence followed . . . silence with the pounce of a panther in it. "I don't wish this private information to become public knowledge," he said at last, his voice as chilling as his eyes. "I trust you to keep it to yourself."
"Of course." Her reply came huskily from a dry throat. He had looked angrier than she had known a man could look, as though she trespassed on hallowed ground and was lucky to have escaped with only a vocal whiplash. "I'm sorry, senhor. I had no idea that Nuno was revealing a secret to me."
"Which will prove to you how young he is, senhorinha, to reveal to a woman something he should have kept to himself. A woman vexed will use any weapon to stab a man, or to defend herself."
"You shouldn't be so keen to vex me." She tried to speak lightly, but it was a shaky effort. "I like Nuno, but it will be a long time before I shall want to — to fall in love."
"You expect to choose the time, the place, and the man?" he said dryly. "Attraction is a strange thing. Sometimes it exerts a pull on a person quite against her will."
"I suppose so," she admitted. "But I do assure you, senhor, that what I feel for Nuno is quite innocent. I shan't make an ass of him, or myself, because I'm all alone."
"There are no relatives in England ?" His glance seemed to sharpen to steel. "You live alone there?"
"Yes, when my father's away—" She bit her lip, for Llew's homecomings had been so welcome and would be so missed. Like a rush of clean air from far places where traffic did not blare; where people did not seek wilder distractions and louder music to tame their discontent.
"I am sorry." The blue gaze grew softer. "Now I understand a little more about you. Why you came alone to a strange land, seeking the unknown which must unnerve you. Why you remind me – do you mind if I speak frankly?"
"Be my guest." Though she smiled she was disconcerted by his sudden change of mood. One moment a panther on the verge of attack, the next almost gentle. She wanted to flee from both sides of this savage, charming, unpredictable Brazilian.
"You remind me," he said, "of a chamois. Always on the verge of flight, as easily lost among people as that little animal is lost among trees and foliage. The chamois is also venturesome, and just as easily startled. She will follow a beckoning hand, but will never come too close in case that hand strikes instead of stroking. The chamois has too much heart. She guards it by
flight, and too often runs into a trap laid in another direction."
"She sounds rather foolish," Morvenna quipped. "I think I would sooner be a tigress. No one hurts a tigress. She's too beautiful and clever."
"A chamois has a strange, lost, fable-like attraction," he said deliberately. "Some have eyes to see it, others do not."
What was he saying — that she had attraction? Not for him, not here in this lonely place, among trees hung with leaves as long as a man ! Her eyes dwelt wide, almost a little stricken, on his Aztec face. Copper-carved, the eyes flame-blue beneath the slashing eyebrows and helmet of black hair.
A dart of fear winged through her, released from a tension as old as time and new as the moment. She retreated a step or two, then true to everything he had said about her, she fled from the path which he blocked and the next instant blundered into something that caught at her clothing like barbed wire, raking her arms as she fought to free herself.
"You little fool !" The cotton of her shirt ripped, and his eyes blazed above her frightened face as he tore his own hands in freeing her from the macca-bush into which she had run. Wait-a-bit, a bush of the tropics that will entrap a person as a spider web traps the unwary moth.
She felt the stings, and the violence in his hands as he pulled her free. Her eyes raced over his face while her mind darted down her torn shirt. There was a rip that bared her left shoulder, and another lower down, revealing her white skin to the scorching flick of his eyes.
"You are the most impulsive and infuriating young creature it has ever been my misfortune to meet !" His smile was ferocious, showing the edge of his white teeth. A lance of black hair jagged his forehead, and as he shook her, her grass hat fell off and revealed the alarm in her eyes. Near where he held her grew blossoms the same size and pallor of her face.
"You have no sense at all. You just follow your instincts, and look where they land you — in the middle of a macca-bush." His voice sank down, velvety and dangerous. "Why did you suddenly plunge off the path like that? Do you still think I bite ?"
"You aren't the most gentle man I've ever met," she rejoined, feeling the bite of his fingers into her upper arms, and the flush in her cheeks. Suppose he guessed that for a ludicrous moment she had thought he found her attractive !
"That does not answer my question." Very deliberately his eyes roved her face, raking in each feature, each angle, each winged brow above her apprehensive eyes. Her pupils expanded until they
were filled with his lean and mocking face. He knew. She could tell that he knew why she had run away from him. His lips were quirking as his blue gaze drifted to her lips.
"Answer me," he insisted.
"Y-you know the answer already." Her cheeks and her scratched arms were tingling. "I'm not used to the jungle and the odd effect it has on giddy, green newcomers."
"Tell me, Miss Fayr, just out of curiosity, how far you imagine you would get in the real jungle if you gave way to your nerves. Do you know what would happen if you got entangled in a macca-bush in the
forest ? It would hold you as a web holds a fly, until a puma scented you and came prowling after a tender meal."
"You've made your point," she said, with what dignity she had left. "I'm sufficiently convinced that I'm a nitwit and that you will breathe seven prayers of thankfulness when the steamer arrives from Manaos to take me of your hands !"
"Only seven prayers ?" he mocked. Then her left arm was free as he gestured at the orchids he had meant to give to Poppy. They lay on the ground, trampled by him when he had rescued her from the barbed bush. His gesture was eloquent, and a little tremor ran through Morvenna as his fingertips travelled to her bare shoulder, which the wait-a-bit had scratched.
"Come, we must get these attended to. Raya will do it for you in the dispensary."
"M-my conch shell." She broke free of him and ran to pick up the glossy pink shell. Her coral-fern was broken and she didn't bother with that. When she turned round, holding the shell, the senhor was brushing off the ants that had got on to her grass hat. He jammed it on her head, and she caught a glimpse of his quizzical smile just before the shaggy brim came down over her eyes.
"Come along," he said, and he marched her along as though she were a child, her wrist so firmly fettered by his fingers that she felt the pressure of his ring. The seal ring against which Raya had struck a match to light his cheroot — its twining symbol of eternal devotion pressing against Morvenna's wristbone.
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