Ellie knew what she should have been feeling as she stepped forward to a roaring cheer: exultation, victory at achieving at last the recognition she deserved. But as the reporters began to shout their questions, scrambling over one another for her attention, she found her gaze wandering to the back of the assembled crowd.
She knew what she was looking for—whom she was looking for. She found the scarred woman standing alone in the center of the busy London street, the traffic moving around her as if she were a rock in a tumbling stream. Her slight figure was dressed not in the plain blouse and skirt Ellie had seen her in before, but something far more exotic. It was a gown made entirely of feathers in bright hues. Red mingled with blue, gold, and green, covering the whole of her tiny frame, making her look finer, Ellie thought, than any English aristocrat she’d ever seen.
As Ellie’s admirers began to chant in her honor, she called over them to where the scarred woman stood, solemn and silent.
“I’m dreaming again, aren’t I?”
She nodded, and the carriages, the crowd—even the Palladian facade of Burlington House—shattered and spilled to the ground, dissolving like water.
Aunt Florence was making a racket again. It tore painfully through the veil of Ellie’s sleep, an irritating screech and clattering. Ellie winced against the noise and reached, eyes still shut, for her blanket. Instead, she found herself grasping the front of her shirt—or rather, the front of Mr. Tibbord’s shirt.
Not London. Not Aunt Florence.
She sat up abruptly, opening her eyes, and the clan of monkeys in the tree overhead went quiet for a moment, looking down at her. Then they rapidly resumed their chattering and swung off through the canopy. She watched them go, then shook her head, trying to clear the last vestiges of sleep from her brain.
She had been dreaming again. It had been something good, something wonderful. She tried to grasp the memory, but the fragments of it dissolved, replaced by a far less enticing reality. Dawson and Jacobs, the map, the boat… Adam Bates. She looked around. The other hammock was empty, as was the rest of the deck. She felt a quick rush of fear.
“Mr. Bates?” she called. Only the fluttering of a few birds answered her, and for a moment her mind was flooded with images of a massive jaguar slipping on board, or an ancient crocodile emerging from the water to clap its jaws around the man’s head.
Or perhaps he’s gone to find breakfast, she ruefully corrected herself, forcibly noticing the absence of such crocodile or jaguar attack indicators as blood or severed limbs. She wondered how far he had gone.
“Mr. Bates!” she shouted as loud as she could. “Helloooo!”
Her call echoed neatly off the far bank and inspired a renewed burst of whooping from the apparently not-so-distant monkeys. But there was no answering call from the man himself. For the moment, it seemed she was on her own.
She looked down at her rumpled, stained clothing and grimaced. She suspected she was even worse off herself. After all, she hadn’t been able to do so much as wash her face since before her encounter with Jacobs and Dawson. In fact, the last time she’d had a bath had been… Her brain filled with the image of Adam Bates, his wet, mud-soaked shirt clinging to his taut, muscular chest. She pushed it aside hurriedly.
It had been long enough, anyway, and the water around her looked cool and inviting, especially in the already rising heat of the morning. If he was out of earshot, she probably had time for a quick dip.
Ellie pulled off Tibbord’s shirt and trousers, stripping down to her chemise and drawers. She hopped over the side of the boat, bringing the clothes with her as she landed in the water with a splash.
It felt even more glorious than she’d imagined, clean and refreshing. The current was slow, nothing she couldn’t overcome with a lazy paddle. She gave her clothes the best scrubbing she could, then flung them over the rails. She tried to give herself the same treatment, ducking her head back to massage her scalp with her fingers. She felt a quick burst of shock as she realized that the long locks she was used to had vanished. She had only a short, cropped mess to work through, which was admittedly a much easier task.
She was as clean as she could get in the absence of a bar of soap, but delayed climbing back onto the boat. The water felt utterly delicious. Floating in it was like a dream. On her back, she looked up at the immense trees rustling softly overhead. Bright, quick birds flitted from branch to branch, chirping cheerfully. For a moment, her thoughts drifted back to the gray, prisonlike dreariness of the Public Record Office, and she nearly laughed out loud. Why would anyone ever choose to spend their days in London when there were places like this in the world?
A thud sounded against the planks of the deck, and a shadow fell over where she floated in the water.
“Sorry to disappear.…” Adam’s voice trailed off, and Ellie looked over to see him standing on the deck, staring down at her dumbly. She realized what she must look like floating on the surface, wearing only her wet, translucent underclothes.
She might as well be naked.
She submerged herself with a splash, attempting to cover herself with her arms, sink up to her chin in the water, and still not drown.
“Turn around!” she ordered, glaring at him over her shoulder.
Adam stared at her numbly for a moment, as though the words were taking longer than usual to penetrate his brain. Abruptly he obeyed, putting his back to her.
“I heard you shout for me.”
“I was trying to see how far away you were.”
“You weren’t that specific.”
Ellie saw him peek back at her. She answered him with an irritated splash of water.
He responded with a grin.
“Now that I think of it, that looks like a great idea.”
Her eyes widened.
“Don’t you dare…”
Adam kicked off his boots. Then, with a running start, he leaped over the side of the boat and landed in the water with the impact, roughly, of a tidal wave. He surfaced a moment later and shook his head like a wet dog. Ellie gaped at him, so shocked she nearly sank.
“You can’t come in here like that!”
“We’re outside, princess,” he corrected her. Then he casually pulled off his shirt and flung it up beside hers on the rail.
The move was so shocking, Ellie almost forgot to keep swimming.
Adam had been in a state any other gentleman would have considered dishabille pretty much since the moment she had met him. The sight of him without a jacket, his shirtsleeves rolled up to expose tanned wrists, or soaked through to expose… well, many other things… had been unsettling enough. But this…
His arms, chest, and shoulders were all deeply tanned, just like the parts of him she had already seen. It didn’t surprise her, but it should have. It meant that Adam spent the better part of his time outdoors without so much as a shirt to cover all that firm, rippling muscle.
Apparently merely rolling up his sleeves had been a concession to her feminine sensitivities.
Adam drifted into a lazy backstroke, as though the situation did not disconcert him in the least.
Ellie, on the other hand, was acutely aware that she was in her underwear, sharing a river with a half-clad man.
“I’m in the middle of a bath,” she choked out, reaching for a way to get the inappropriateness of their circumstances through to him. “Not that it bloody well stopped you last time,” she acknowledged with a grumble. She decided to direct her efforts toward keeping her body as low in the water as possible.
“Trust me. You’ll be glad I did this by the end of the day.”
She shot him another glare, then began paddling toward the boat. Then she hesitated, struck with the realization that she did not have the foggiest idea how to get back on board.
The Mary Lee had a relatively shallow draft, but the top of her rail was just out of Ellie’s reach. The paddlewheels on either side of the boat looked like deceptively promising handholds, but she could only imagine how easily
they would turn should she try to grasp them—and how ridiculous she would look falling headlong back into the water.
Never mind what Adam would see of her while she made the attempt.
The bow of the boat looked far more promising. The anchor line ran from there down into the water, and might give her something to hold on to while she tried to scramble back on board.
It was also farther out of Adam’s line of sight.
She started swimming toward it.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Ellie stopped, seething, but refused to turn around.
“I’m hardly going to get back in on this side with you here,” she retorted.
“See that log?” he said. She glanced over and saw it, lying in the river near where she had planned to cross under the rope. “That’s just the sort of place you’ll find a water snake.”
“I’ll be careful,” she replied coldly.
“They don’t care how careful you are,” he drawled. “Besides, how exactly are you planning on getting up there?”
The deck seemed much higher than she had thought it would be.
She felt a brush of water against her back and realized he had swum up behind her. She jumped.
“I’ll give you a lift,” he said.
“You will not,” she countered.
He moved around her and gripped the deck. She watched the muscles in his shoulders bunch as he hauled the full length of his body up, swinging gracefully over the side. His wet trousers clung mercilessly to his physique, and Ellie felt an entirely unwelcome heat suffuse her body. He leaned over the side and extended an arm.
“I’ll look away.”
“You’d better,” she said threateningly.
“Promise.” He grinned at her.
She scowled back, then reached up and took hold of his hand with both of her own. He pulled her easily from the water, catching her around the waist when she was at his level and swinging her over the rail—an act that left her body pressed flat against his.
Her mind went numb. All that separated them was a pair of soaked trousers and the all-but-translucent silk of her chemise and drawers. She could feel every plane, every ridge of his body as though there were nothing between them at all.
The shock of it overwhelmed the possibility of response. All Ellie could do was stare at him blankly.
“See?” he said, his face inches from her own. “Not looking.”
He released her and stepped back, turning around. She took a moment to make sure her knees weren’t about to give out, then hurried over to the rail and pulled on her shirt and trousers.
When she turned back around, he was staring at her strangely, his wet shirt limp in his hands.
“Are you all right?”
He snapped out of it, pulling the shirt back over his head.
“Couldn’t be better,” he mumbled, then bent over to build up the fire.
They passed the fork in the river a few hours later. Adam glanced in her direction, raised an eyebrow, then steered them toward the smaller tributary that led to the caves. They moved up the winding path of it for several hours, passing high banks covered in lush greenery. At times the canopy overhead met from either side, covering the sky and creating a cool, dappled underworld through which they glided.
Finally they rounded a bend in the river and saw their obstacle. Arching over the water was a tall ridge of rock covered in thick jungle. The river vanished into a black hole in the heart of it.
Adam cut back the throttle, tied off the tiller, and moved to the bow beside her. He looked forward to the cave, narrow-eyed. The interior was impenetrably dark.
“What do you think?” she asked, looking over at him. She tried not to let her voice show just how much was riding on the question.
If he tried to bring them back to the city…
She watched him, heart pounding, as his sharp gaze moved from the stack of the steam engine to the dark mouth of the cave. Her heart sank as she saw him slowly shake his head.
“I don’t want to risk it. We’ll go back and get my friend’s launch. It’ll only add maybe four days to the journey.”
“We could leave the boat. Start overland,” she suggested quickly.
He raised an eyebrow.
“You have any idea how long it takes to cut your way through virgin jungle? You’re lucky to make two or three miles a day. You’re talking about adding weeks to the trek for the sake of saving four days.”
“How do you know it would only be that long? Your friend might not be around. He might have taken his boat and gone off on an excursion.”
“The only excursions Eduardo brings his boat on are up the river for a day’s fishing. He’ll be around.”
“What about the rains? You said yourself we can’t afford to waste any time.”
“We can’t afford to take off the top of the boiler. I’d rather risk the rains than the engine.”
She felt panic rise, and with it a sense of powerlessness. But was she really powerless?
It’s my map, she reminded herself. Crossing her arms, she stared at him defiantly.
“I vote we go forward.”
“Since when is this a democracy?” Adam drawled in reply.
“Since I said it is,” she countered. “It’s my expedition, after all.”
“It’s my boat. And I’m not too keen on risking it in some cave full of God knows what kind of debris.”
Ellie felt her desperation rise.
“We can go slowly. We’ll watch for obstacles. If there’s something we can’t get past, we’ll just turn around.”
“We might not be able to turn around. The cave might be too narrow.”
She felt a flash of inspiration and assumed a sympathetic air.
“Oh, I see. You’re not sure you’ve got the skill to pilot through it.”
“Very clever,” Adam said, eyes flashing. “Challenge my manhood and you think I’ll jump, do you?” His expression shifted, becoming serious. “Why are you so set against going back?”
She felt herself on the brink of exposure and grasped at one final straw.
“I’m not against going back. It’s just that you said yourself the water is as low as you’ve ever seen it. Maybe it won’t be by the time we go to the city and come back. The rainy season could start any day now, couldn’t it?”
“If the rains hit, we’re going to have more than a flooded cave to worry about.”
“All the more reason to push forward now. This might be our only shot to get through. Honestly, I’m surprised you’re not more keen on taking it. After all, the other side of this cave is a big, blank spot on that map of yours. I’d think you’d be eager to fill it in.” She paused musingly. “Of course, I’m sure someone else will get to it eventually.”
“You’re baiting me.”
“I’m just stating the facts.”
He glared at her for another moment, then stalked to the prow. He studied the entrance to the cave silently. Some instinct told Ellie to bite back the urge to keep pushing him. Instead she waited, hiding her desperation, as he considered.
“If we take down the canopy, it’ll buy us another foot.”
She felt relief wash over her but tried not to let it show on her face.
He stopped as he moved past her and flashed her a smile.
“Can’t have someone else filling in my map, can I?”
Ellie had thought that, once decided, they would simply head forward, but Adam apparently had a few precautions in mind. The canopy of the steamer was a mere sheet of canvas suspended on steel poles. It took only a few minutes for Adam to pull it down, and Ellie could see that the change bought them a bit more clearance.
Next, he stripped down to his trousers—an act that once again filled Ellie with a distinctly uncomfortable awareness of just what years of trekking through the wilderness could do for a man’s physique. Diving from the deck, he swam to the steep banks of the river, where he cut free a slender, straight sapling with
a swipe of his machete.
With a smooth, powerful push, Adam hauled both himself and the sapling over the low rail of the Mary Lee. He stood, the water cascading down his body and soaking the deck, then began what looked to Ellie like a perfectly bizarre construction project at the prow of the boat. When he was finished, a long plank extended several feet out over the water before them. Adam’s sapling had been fitted into a notch at the end of the plank, lashed securely with rope. The top of it pointed toward the sky, stopping a few inches higher than the stack of the steam engine. The bottom disappeared into the water.
Satisfied with his efforts, Adam dived once more into the water, this time disappearing under the surface, his machete in hand. The sapling quivered dangerously as he worked at it beneath the river. Finally he emerged, treading water beneath the prow.
“Come out here,” he ordered.
“Out where?”
“Slide out onto the plank.”
She started. He wanted her to lie on that thing, suspended out over the water? She thought of the crocodiles she’d seen the day before by the mouth of the river. But surely Adam wouldn’t be swimming if there were man-eating reptiles in this water.
He was waiting for her, a bemused expression on his face, as though guessing her thoughts. Fear turned quickly to a determination not to let him see her waffling like a nervous schoolgirl.
She crawled out onto the plank, then farther as Adam continued to wave her forward.
“Good. Now grab the tree, right in the middle. That’s right. You comfortable enough?”
How comfortable was she? She was lying on an eight-inch plank off the end of a boat.
“I’m fine.”
Reaching a fist out of the river, Adam gave the sapling a sharp blow.
“Feel that?”
She nodded.
“If we do clear the entrance, there’s no telling what might be hiding under the water. If we hit something that puts a hole in the hull, it’ll be a long swim back—in the dark. And an even longer walk back to civilization. This staff should encounter it before the boat does. If you feel it shake like that again, you shout. You’re our warning system.”
The Smoke Hunter Page 15