The Book of True Desires

by Betina Krahn

  She froze, unable to breathe, unable to feel her heart beat.

  Seconds ticked by and the big cat didn’t charge. It started, instead, to pace back and forth, looking at her, occasionally raising its nose to sniff in her direction. Regal was the word to describe its carriage and serene air of command. Beautiful and terrifying were equally apt to describe its exquisitely muscled frame and lithe, powerful movements. Finely honed muscles rippled beneath that glorious spotted coat and those eyes. Those eyes …

  It was slowly working its way closer, investigating her, testing her. Would she put up much of a fight? How fast was she?

  Why hadn’t she at least drawn her gun?

  She was as astonished by her lack of defensive behavior as she was by the jaguar’s lack of aggression. Sliding her hand down her bare hip, she remembered with horror that she had left it hooked over a pack on one of the burros. It was the first time she hadn’t carried it in weeks.

  The jaguar halted, facing her, and stared at her with its oblate pupils contracted to slits. How could she possibly protect herself? The big cat was twice her weight, all predator instinct and responsive muscle. It could outrun and outclimb anything in its domain.

  They were eye to eye for a long, terrifying moment that she somehow sensed preceded the jaguar’s decision about her.

  Then abruptly the big cat turned away and, in a blink, melted back into the tangled foliage from which it had emerged.

  It was gone? She nearly collapsed from disbelief. It had looked her over, shredded her nerves, and then just left her there?

  “What the hell was that?” Goodnight’s voice startled her.

  She jumped with a cry and whirled. He rushed into the clearing with his face dusky and his eyes glowing like molten silver. Before she could stop herself, she ran to him and grabbed his shirt front, hanging on to it for dear life. It was a minute before she could speak.

  “D–did you see it?” she finally said. “Th—the jaguar— those teeth and ears—big yellow eyes—did you see what it did?”

  “Dear God. I saw and I still can’t believe what I saw.” He squeezed her upper arms tightly, looking her over. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “He didn’t lay a fang or a claw on me,” she said, realizing that chewing and mauling were just two of several stomach-churning possibilities she had faced. Her knees went weak. She wanted to throw her arms around his big body and feel the warmth and safety of his arms wrapped tightly around her.

  “Why didn’t you just shoot the damned thing?” Goodnight planted a hand between her shoulder blades to propel her back along the path and suddenly realized her hip was bare. His eyes widened and he halted. “Where the hell’s your gun?”

  “I…I think I…” she said, mirroring his disbelief.

  “You what? Forgot it?” He pulled his hand from her as if she’d scorched it and backed away, emotion swirling in his face. She couldn’t tell if he was disappointed, contemptuous, or just plain outraged. He stalked off down the path, stopped, then came stomping back to grab her hand. “Dammit, just when you think you can rely on a woman— she starts forgetting her bloody gun!”

  An hour later she sat on a fallen tree trunk, clutching a tin cup containing a shot of brandy. They had walked, then run back through the jungle along the path she had forged earlier. By the time they reached the vanilla grove, it was empty, and they headed straight for the jungle road and the rest of their party. Between gasps, she managed to tell the others about her encounter with the jaguar. Itza and Ruz crossed themselves and clamped their hands over Rita’s long ears. Hedda threw her arms around her niece, and the professor went straight for the medicinal brandy.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Cordelia said, her sense of adventure recovering more quickly than her nerves. “It was magnificent. Jaguars are larger than I thought. At least this one was. And it just stared at me with those big golden eyes.” She looked at Goodnight. “It was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

  “Not the word I would use for it.” He downed another shot of brandy.

  “What do you think it means?” Hedda asked, settling beside her.

  Cordelia was unsettled by the question; she had been asking herself that very thing. A jaguar. Looking her over. While she was searching for the Gift of the Jaguar. A chill went through her leaving gooseflesh in its wake, and she prayed no one noticed.

  “It means we’re definitely in the right area for jaguars, probably for ancient jaguar worship and artifacts. It means that our decision to follow this river was right on target.” She struggled to sound more sensible and objective than she felt. “It certainly means we push on. I want to see those ‘hills with the doors in them.’ I can’t help thinking one of those doors will have a carved jaguar head on top.”

  Determined to put some space between themselves and the jaguar and hoping to make the promised ruins by nightfall, they traveled through the heat of the afternoon, stopping only for water and to distribute some hardtack and jerky from their supplies. Cordelia was once again wearing her revolver on her hip, Hedda had pulled out her own pistol and loaded it, and the professor hauled out and strapped on a long-barreled Colt revolver with ivory handles. Every snap and rustle of vegetation had their trigger fingers twitching.

  As the sun set, shadows spread out over the forest and the hunters’ trail they followed faded into a tangle of undergrowth. Itza and Ruz, unsettled at the prospect of camping in the deepest part of the jungle, nervously agreed to push on. The ruins couldn’t be far now.

  Unfortunately, the burros had other ideas. As the light faded, they balked and had to be tugged, coaxed, and bribed. Goodnight finally got the stubborn Rita to move by walking ahead of her. But every time he slowed enough to come within range, she nipped at his rear. Cordelia happened to be looking when Rita finally made contact, sending Goodnight bolting into some bushes. When he climbed back onto the path, she spotted something sticking out of his back pocket and pulled out forgotten twigs and leaves that had been warmed by his body to an alluring, edible aroma.

  “She wasn’t being fresh.” Cordelia laughed, dangling the leaves before the ravenous Rita, who began to nibble them. “She was being hungry.” Hedda, the professor, and the Platanos joined her in laughter, relieved to have a lighter moment in what was becoming a dark end to a stressful day.

  Quiet descended over the party as they plunged over the final slopes, where recent rains had made footing treacherous. Every member of the party was tensed and trying to pick out sounds of a big predator’s movement from the ordinary buzz and rustle in the brush around them. Tension mounted as the vegetation thinned and they glimpsed a haze of moonlight ahead.

  The high canopy ended and they emerged into a clearing in which a number of strange, cone-shaped hillocks rose ten to twenty feet and were covered with a rolling blanket of grasses. The mounds exuded the mystery and menace of strange shapes glimpsed in a moonlight graveyard, especially so when Cordelia spotted odd-shaped shadows tucked into the sides of some of them. It struck her that if these were the “hills” the village hunters referred to, then they were part of a graveyard—one that held the remains of a civilization.

  Lacking both light and energy to begin explorations, they made a fireless camp in the middle of the mounds and agreed to start work the first thing in the morning. It wasn’t easy going to sleep in the middle of an eerie ruin that might hold the key to a great mystery, but as they found their beds, exhaustion finally took hold of them, one by one.

  Cordelia sprang up some time later in the moonlit glow of her tent with her heart pounding. Without knowing quite why, she reached for the pistol hanging on the corner of her cot and sat with her nerves taut and senses straining. It came again… from behind her… causing her blood to still in her veins.

  A sniffing, snuffling sound. Loud. Animal-like. Only a scrap of canvas away. Her hand tightened on the grip of the pistol as it came again… sniff, sniff …moving around the tent…on her side…sniffing… then panting.

&
nbsp; She clamped her free hand over her mouth to stifle her gasp. She glanced over at Hedda, who had turned on her side and was soughing softly, still very much asleep. Waking her—startling her and probably whatever was outside as well—was a bad idea.

  She pushed back the mosquito bar and slid her legs over the side of the cot. Fortunately she had gone to sleep in her breeches; all she had to do was pull a shirt over her camisole. Then she reached under her sheet for her boots, giving thanks again for the old guide who had taught her to sleep with her boots on her cot. She had taken two steps toward the flap when she saw a shadow moving on the tent wall to her left. It was low and indistinct, but substantial enough to be solid.

  It didn’t have to be a jaguar, she tried to tell herself. It could be something else.

  She slipped outside and turned right, holding her gun in her right hand and cupping both gun and wrist with her left. Her heart was in her throat as she rounded the opposite corner, intending to sneak around the tent and come up behind whatever—

  A gun barrel appeared right before her eyes!

  “Aghhh!” She jumped back with a cry.

  “George Almighty!”

  As Goodnight jerked his gun up, he lurched backward and tripped over a tent rope. The rifle landed nearby. As he hit the ground, with his legs tangled in the collapsed rope, he nearly took the tent down with him.

  “What are you doing skulking around my tent this time of night?” she demanded in a loud whisper, jabbing the air with her gun.

  “Will you point that bloody thing someplace else?” he demanded, still tangled but determined to rise. “My nightmare come true—nearly shot in the middle of the night while coming back from—” He made it to his feet. “Two legs. Count ’em.” He pointed toward his feet. “One, two. Not four.”

  “I heard something,” she declared defensively, still whispering.

  “Of course you did. At night this place turns into a bloody lover’s lane for the local four-, six-, and eight-legged populations.” He brushed himself off.

  “It sounded like a large animal. Sniffing.”

  He retrieved his gun and glanced at the ghostly terrain. “It’s probably just this place. It’s a little unnerving by moonlight. And after what happened—”

  “I’m serious, Goodnight. There was definitely sniffing. And panting. The same kind of panting I heard yesterday when—” She was suddenly distracted by the rifle in his hands. “You were—you’re holding a gun.”

  “So it would seem.” He looked at it as if it had somehow magically appeared there, but then rearranged his grip, claiming it. “Our benighted guides have guns, and even your aunt is packing a firearm. After yesterday, I didn’t think it fair that I was the only member of this expedition unarmed.”

  “You’re prowling around in the dark with a rifle?” She choked on the last word. “Talk about nightmares. Do you even know which end to point?”

  “I’ll have you know, I have more than a passing acquaintance with guns. I am the terror of the grouse population of the Lake District.” He raised his nose to look down it at her. “Pheasants quake at the sound of my name.”

  She erupted in a noise somewhere between a snort and a giggle.

  “Laugh if you will, but someday, you may have to depend upon my marksmanship.” He raised a lofty finger in blatant parody of himself. “And then I shall have my revenge.”

  Her giggle became laughter that released something pent up inside her. The next minute she was smiling at him, and he was smiling back. It felt good. Very good.

  Twenty-one

  “I need to check out the rest of the camp,” she said. “Are you coming?”

  “I suppose someone has to keep you from shooting at moons in the forest.”

  They walked around the tents, checking, listening. Other than the professor’s snoring, all seemed quiet and peaceful—until they got to the area where the burros were grazing. There, a ragged panting sound was coming from the far side of one of the hillocks. Guns cocked and ready, they inched their way around and found Rita standing with her back bowed and her belly contracted into an odd point, panting heavily with each breath.

  “Did your ‘panting’ sound anything like that?” Goodnight scowled.

  Suddenly, Rita brayed loudly, sank onto her knees, and rolled over onto her side. They rushed to see what was wrong and Goodnight—muttering to himself—checked her rear quarters and issued a diagnosis.

  “She’s foaling.” He laid his gun against the nearest hillock and went around to the animal’s head. “You’d better get the ‘banana boys.’”

  Minutes later, the Platanos were on their knees beside Rita, one stroking her head and the other checking the progress of her labor. Ruz declared the feet were coming…he could see a membrane bubble… which burst as a sharp little hoof emerged. But there, all progress stopped.

  “Only one leg!” Ruz called to Itza, clearly panicked. “Only one comes!”

  Cordelia knew the word for “one” and “leg” wasn’t difficult to figure out. Goodnight picked up the same information and grabbed Ruz by the shoulders.

  “The other leg is back,” he declared. “It needs to be pulled forward with the other one so she can deliver.” He made thrusting and grasping motions, then pantomimed pulling. Ruz’s eyes became the size of saucers. He began wringing his hands and rattling off a lament to Itza, a few words of which were close enough to English equivalents to let them know Ruz was wishing for a bruja, undoubtedly a midwife of some sort.

  “Is it serious?” Cordelia asked, pulling Goodnight aside, studying his grim expression.

  “In that position, the baby can’t fit through the canal. They could both die.”

  “Surely something can be done,” she said, glancing at the cantankerous Rita, feeling an unexpected sympathy for the struggling mother-to-be.

  “I tried to tell him—I don’t think he is up to doing what has to be done.”

  “You know about donkey births?” She looked at him in dismay.

  “Horses. I’ve been around a number of foaling horses. Assisted a few.” He looked at the brothers who were panicky and yelling at each other, and he began to roll up his sleeves. “I’ll need my medicine bag.”

  A heartbeat later, she was in motion. Soon after, she entered his tent and located the leather bag of medicinals she had seen in Havana. The professor woke up as she exited and lurched from his cot demanding to know what was happening. Grabbing his boots, he followed her to Rita’s location.

  Soon they were standing by the laboring burro, watching in astonishment as the fastidious British butler inserted a well-lubricated arm into the birth canal and managed to find the other front leg and reposition it. After some sweating, straining, and cursing, he got it to come out alongside its mate. From there, the birth of one furry little burro proceeded normally and without further assistance.

  Goodnight washed and scrubbed his arm, and sanitized it with Listerine, then sat down beside Cordelia to watch the burro inspect and nuzzle her offspring and see the foal take its first tentative steps. A male, the Platanos declared joyfully, making over their prize jennet and her wobbly infant. Goodnight was much better than a bruja, they said, and he did not charge nearly as much. So they would name the colt “Goodnight” in his honor.

  When they weren’t looking, the honoree rolled his eyes at Cordelia. A wicked taunt of “remembering forever the sight of him ‘up to his elbows in a burro’” died unspoken on her tongue. She smiled instead, and in that moment realized with a shock of intense warmth that she was falling in love with Hartford Goodnight. Totally, hopelessly, delirious—

  She choked on that last word.

  She was delirious, all right. What was she smiling for? It was a disaster in the making!

  She had no money, no home, and no reputation except that of an eccentric adventuress. He had no money, no home, and no reputation except as a failed businessman who was reduced to domestic service. If she survived the harrowing experience of declaring her love for him a
nd he somehow reciprocated her feelings—both highly unlikely—what would they be together but two ambitious people with no money and no prospects?

  The chill of reason swept through her heart. Better to stanch such feelings before they became entrenched and were too painful to root out.

  “So you helped deliver foals—ones you owned, I assume,” she said, probing a subject she knew to be tender. “And you hunted in the lake country.” She narrowed her eyes. “Smacks of the ‘gentlemanly life’ to me.”

  He wasn’t looking at her and didn’t see her expression.

  “You make a lousy fisherman, O’Keefe.” He expelled a measured breath. “My family is well off… an estate in the south, a hunting lodge in the north, and a town house in London. They sent their sons to the finest schools, never guessing that we might actually learn something and develop ideas of our own.”

  “They didn’t want you to be a doctor?” she asked, battling her curiosity.

  “They resigned themselves to the medical schooling. Medicine was a profession, after all, and a lot of well-bred men ‘dabble in careers.’ It was the chemistry they found unacceptable. ‘Smelly and appallingly industrial’ is how they put it.”

  “But you did it anyway.”

  He nodded. “At some cost.”

  “There is always a cost,” she said, speaking on several levels. She’d never seen him so cooperative; it sent a quiver of panic through her. “So you got your loan and built your laboratory, and somehow forgot all about making money.”

  “Money isn’t everything,” he said, tightly.

  “It is when you have bills to pay. Without it you’re completely at others’ mercy. Or lack thereof,” she said with an adamance she soon regretted.

  He turned and studied her carefully.

  “So.” His voice had an edge of triumph. “Who was it that held the note you couldn’t pay?”