by Gaelen Foley
“What did you say?” he asked sharply.
With a sigh, she checked her vexation and lowered her hands to her lap. “Nothing, Father.”
“I daresay. You had better mind your tongue, my girl,” he advised, settling back onto his rough wooden stool and giving his waistcoat a dignified tug. “I grant you a long leash, it’s true, but I am still your father.”
“Yes, sir,” she answered, head down. “But…”
“But what, child?”
She held him in a searching stare for a moment. “You promised me last year that we’d be going back to England.”
This was, it seemed, precisely what he did not want to hear.
He immediately scowled and looked away, busying himself with his botanical finds. “England, England, why are you always on about that wretched place? You really think the world out there is all so wonderful? How would you know? I’ve kept you sheltered from it here. If you remembered it better, you’d thank me. It’s not all fine carriages and fancy balls, my girl. That world out there has a dark side, too.” He sent her a glance from over the rim of his spectacles. “Disease, crime, filth, poverty, corruption. There’s none of that here.”
“There’s no one to talk to!” she cried with a sudden threat of tears leaping into her eyes.
With a compassionate wince, Papa plopped down onto his stool again. “Nonsense, there’s me! I am exceedingly good company—and there’s Connor, too. Well, he doesn’t say much, I’ll give you that, but when he does, it is worth listening to. There, there, my pretty child,” he said, patting her hand with a worried look. “I assure you, we are far more intelligent conversation than you will ever find in the drawing rooms of London.”
“Just once, I’d like to know what normal people talk about,” she said barely audibly.
“Normal? ’Tis but another word for mediocrity!” he scoffed. “Oh, Edie, for heaven’s sake, those London chits you so admire are the silliest, most trivial creatures on God’s earth, not a thought in their heads beyond ribbons and bonnets and shoes. Why the devil should you want to be like them, anyway?”
She stifled a groan. Here comes the lecture.
“Look at the advantages you enjoy here! You dress how you want, say what you want, do as you please. You have no idea how those Society girls are forever dogged by chaperones whose sole purpose in life is to regulate their every movement. You’d go mad if you had to endure it for a day. Look at the freedoms I’ve given you—the education, for heaven’s sake!”
Freedom? she wondered. Then why do I feel like a prisoner?
“I trained you up more like a son than a daughter,” he went on, traveling well-worn paths. She nearly had it by heart. “By Jove, do you think your fine London ladies can recite every known genus in the Aracaceae family? Make a bush tea to cure yellow fever? Set a broken bone? I think not,” he declared proudly. “You, my dearest Eden, are utterly unique!”
“I don’t want to be unique, Papa,” she said wearily. “I just want to be a part of the world again. I want to belong.”
“You do belong, darling. With me!”
She looked away, suddenly feeling trapped. He understood perfectly well; he just pretended not to. “Have I not been a dutiful daughter? Have I not stuck by your side through thick and thin, and looked after you, and aided in your work, and done everything you asked of me?”
“Yes,” he admitted uncomfortably.
“Papa, they say in England that a lady is a spinster by the age of twenty-five. I know you have no head for such things, but just last month, I turned twenty-three.” He started to scoff, but she lowered her head. “Please, don’t laugh at me for once. It’s not just the ballrooms and fancy carriages that interest me. I admit, I like those things—what girl would not?—but that’s only a small part of it, and I should hope that you know me better than that by now.”
“Well, what then, Edie, my dearest?” he asked kindly. “What is eating at you so?”
She looked into his eyes, feeling so hesitantly vulnerable. “Can’t you understand? I…I want to find someone, Papa.”
“Who?” he cried impatiently.
“I don’t know yet who! Someone—someone to love.”
He sat back and looked at her in pure astonishment. “So, that’s what all of this is about!”
She lowered her head again, her cheeks aflame. Having admitted her heart’s loneliness, she now rather wished the earth would open up and swallow her.
Papa slapped his thighs with both hands in sudden enthusiasm. “Well, I daresay the perfect solution has been right under our noses all along!”
When she looked at him hopefully, he jerked a not-so-subtle nod in the direction Connor had gone.
Eden turned scarlet. “Oh, Papa, please don’t start with that again!” she whispered fiercely.
“Well, why not? If all this fuss boils down to your hankering for a husband, you needn’t look far. If it’s time for you to take a man, have Connor.”
“Father!” she cried, scandalized.
“The man worships you, if you haven’t noticed.” A smile of mingled pride and amusement tugged at his lips, as if she were still a four-year-old learning the Greek alphabet. “He has my blessing and then we could all remain together just as we are, continuing on with our work. It is the most convenient situation. Well, why not, what’s wrong with him?”
Clearly, Papa had forgotten the incident in the forest when she was sixteen.
She lowered her head, not bothering to remind him, for she was loath to speak of it herself.
“Connor cares for you, Eden. There’s no arguing that. He’s proved himself a hundred times over. Well, he’s a fine, strapping specimen for you, ain’t he? Fearless, capable, as the male of the species should be. Strong, robust bloodlines. Good instincts. Sharp mind,” Papa said, ticking off his protégé’s many virtues as Eden lifted her head again, folded her arms across her chest, and held her father in a quelling stare. “Of course, there’s no vicar in residence, but what’s a bit of paper in a place like this? You could be married by the local shaman—or have a hand-fasting like the Scots. Don’t fuss, girl. There’s no shame in it. It is but Nature’s course, my dear. All creatures take a mate upon reaching reproductive age.”
“Really, Father!” she exclaimed, finally mortified past bearing by his blunt scientist’s speech. “Is there not one atom of romance in your soul? The propagation of the species might very well serve for a frog or a monkey or a-a fish, but I, Father, am an intelligent, beautiful—well, reasonably attractive—young lady. I want roses a-and poetry before I’m past my prime, and boxes of candy, and drives in the park! Is that so much to ask? I want to be wooed by Town Corinthians in coats from Savile Row! I want courtship, Papa, and suitors—even one will do. Maybe I can recite every genus name in the Aracaceae family, but that only goes to show what sort of oddball I’ve become in this place!”
“Well, so’s Connor! A perfect match.”
“Will you please be serious?” She sat down again with a huff. “It won’t do, Father. I mean to rejoin the world someday, but Connor cares for civilization even less than you do. It’s torture for him when we visit your friends in Kingston Society. He won’t talk to anyone. He sits in a corner brooding and doesn’t even try to fit in.”
“Well, Eden, he’s shy.”
“I know. And I feel sorry for him—but I don’t want to marry someone just because I feel sorry for them,” she whispered so Connor, with his sharp senses, would not hear and be hurt.
“Well, suit yourself,” Papa concluded with a sigh. “But I’m afraid there is nothing to be done for it, in any case. We cannot afford passage now that our grant’s been cut. The voyage is too expensive.”
“Couldn’t you buy it on credit?”
“Put myself in debt for something I don’t even want? You would have me as profligate as Lord Pembrooke!”
“We can pay it back once you’re settled in your post at the college.”
“No! I am not taking the post,
Eden. Ever.” He stood abruptly, turned away, and avoided her gaze as she stared at him in shock. “I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought,” he said brusquely. “I probably should have told you sooner, but I shall not be able to fulfill the promise that you wrenched out of me last year. We’re not going back to England, and as for London Town, I’d sooner visit Hell.”
“What?” she breathed, paling.
“I’m sorry to break my oath to you, daughter, but you’re all I have left, and I’ll be damned before I’ll ever expose you again to that vile, stinking cesspool of a city that killed your mother,” he finished with a bitter vehemence that stunned her almost as much as his shocking revelation.
Dr. Farraday threw down his pen with an air of weariness, looking slightly haggard in the lantern’s glow.
Her mind reeling with disbelief, Eden told herself he didn’t really mean it. He was just so shattered, still, from Mama’s death. Tears filled her eyes for the pain that still haunted him and had set both their lives on this strange course. She rose and moved closer, laying her head on his shoulder. “Papa,” she whispered, “it wasn’t your fault you couldn’t save her.”
“I was her husband and her doctor, Edie. Who else am I to blame? God?” He sounded calmer now. Defeated. He put his hand atop hers on his shoulder, but did not look at her. “There, there, child. I shall be fine in a moment.”
No, you won’t. It had already been twelve years. She hugged him for a long moment around his trim middle with an ache in her heart. “Papa, we can’t stay out here forever.”
He said nothing.
“I know you’re only trying to protect me, but do you really think Mama would have wanted this—for either of us?”
“Your mother, lest you forget, is the reason we are here.” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Every cure we find exists in honor of her memory—”
“Stop punishing yourself,” she whispered, hugging him again about his shoulders. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to cut yourself off from the world this way.” She didn’t bother mentioning that he was cutting her off from the world, too. She leaned her head against the side of his, feeling so helpless to heal his hurt. “I know you seek to honor her with your work, Papa, but if you ask me, what she really would’ve wanted…was grandchildren.”
She shouldn’t have said it, she realized a second too late. Papa stiffened, shook his head, and then simply closed down as emotion threatened to overwhelm his logical brain.
He withdrew before her eyes, turned his back on her, and peered into his microscope, escaping the pain and dreadful loss inside the orderly circumference of that tiny world, just as he had for years.
“The expedition to the Amazon goes forward,” he said in a monotone. “I am sorry you are unhappy, but we must all make sacrifices, and the desires of one individual are of no consequence beside the greater good. You will accompany me just as you always have; I am your father and that is my answer. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
His bristling posture made it clear she was dismissed. Eden studied his tense profile, at a loss. She did not know what else to say, what to do. There was no reasoning with him when he fell into this black and distant mood. Any significant talk of her mother was always the catalyst for his stony withdrawal, most of all the future together that he and his wife would never have.
Eden blinked back tears and turned around without another word, walking back numbly to the palafito.
Connor looked at her in silence when she came in. He was leaning against the post from which he had removed the dead viper. Eden glanced in his direction, but could not meet his probing stare, wondering if he’d overheard Papa’s mortifying suggestion that they mate.
The Australian folded his brawny arms across his chest, watching her with a hunter’s patient, somber gaze.
Shaking her head, she went past him. “He’s mad. He’s going to kill himself and both of us in his quest to save mankind. The Amazon!”
But of course Connor was already aware of her father’s plans. For all she knew, it might have been his idea. “Whatever your father might have said, you know he’d never mean to hurt you.”
“I know.” Feeling trapped, Eden went to the railing and stood for a long moment gazing at the night-black river.
She heard Connor’s heavy footfalls approaching behind her. He came and leaned beside her at the railing. From the corner of her eye, she saw him staring at her. “It’s going to be all right, Eden. I’m not going to let anything happen to the two of you.”
“I want to go home.”
“This is your home.”
“No, Connor, it’s not. You belong here—I don’t!” she exclaimed angrily, turning to him.
His broad, strong face darkened. Did he understand at last what she was trying to tell him? He lowered his gaze and turned away in stony anger, swiftly stalking off to leave her alone again. Eden closed her eyes for a second and let out a measured exhalation. When she flicked them open again, her desperate gaze tracked the Orinoco’s inky course that led for many miles down to the sea. The great and deadly river. It was the only way into these impenetrable jungles. And the only way out.
Tall and hard, dressed all in black, Lord Jack Knight lit his cigarillo off the torch in his hand, then leaned down with an easy motion and ignited the cannon’s fuse.
One…two…three…
“Boom,” he murmured, the cheroot dangling from his unsmiling lips as the big gun’s thunder crashed across the valley. Screaming out of the iron barrel, the cannonball flew through the night like a comet, its fiery reflection flashing across the black glassy surface of the Orinoco.
It streaked down from the dark skies to slam into the giant rock that jutted up from the middle of the river, the famous Piedra Media, used as a marker to record the depth of the seasonal floods—a serviceable target.
Direct hit.
On the flower-laden terrace behind him, his Creole audience burst into applause, hailing their new cannon with the same hearty zest that they applied to every area of life.
“Bravo, Capitan!”
“Well done!”
Jack ignored them.
The leading citizens of Angostura had built their elegant stuccoed villas along a well-situated ridge overlooking the river; and so, from the terrace of the Montoya home, the wealthy Creole leaders of the revolution had a fine view of the accuracy and power of the weapons he had obtained for them.
“This is a wonderful piece of artillery you have given us, Lord Jack!”
“Should help you ward off the Spanish if they come up the river,” he muttered. “So should these.” He snapped his fingers at his assistant and pointed to the several dozen crates of fine Baker rifles that he had also brought them.
It was a pity Bolivar could not be present for the demonstration, but the rebel leader was off trying to turn his rather pitiful band of half-breed peasants and illiterate farmboys into an army.
God help ’em, Jack thought, for at this very moment, fifteen thousand royal troops waited on their ships for the order to attack.
King Ferdinand of Spain, Bourbon puppet of the Hapsburgs, an all-around unpleasant fellow by most accounts, newly returned to his throne now that Welly and the boys had beat Napoleon, had decided to flex his half-forgotten power, and had sent the largest force ever to cross the Atlantic to crush the colonials’ hopes of liberty.
Jack had his reasons for getting involved. He was more cynic than idealist, but he never could tolerate a bully, and it was plain to see that if somebody didn’t help the poor sods, there was going to be a slaughter.
“Here you are, sir.” His trusty lieutenant, Christopher Trahern, handed him one of the precision rifles, already loaded.
Jack lifted the weapon to his shoulder, drawing a bead on one of the unpleasant vampire bats that flapped up and down the inky river in a swooping zigzag.
“What’s the range on that thing?” inquired Don Eduardo Montoya, the owner of the villa, and one of the rebels�
�� top financiers.
“Two hundred yards. Accurate if you are.”
Crack!
The crisp report of the rifle echoed down the hillside of the town as he shot the blood-sucking bat right out of the night sky. Pleased, he handed the Baker back to Trahern. “Reload for Mr. Montoya.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Down on the docks at the foot of the hill, his men were still unloading goods from the riverboat in which Jack had arrived less than an hour ago. Hardened as they were to close fire, even his stalwart crew looked a little nervous with all the hotheaded revolutionaries firing off their new British guns.
“Let me try one of those!” exclaimed Carlos, Montoya’s son of twenty summers.
Tearing himself away from the trio of young beauties who had been fawning on him, the handsome young hidalgo strode over to the stone balustrade that girded the pleasant, flagged terrace.
Jack sent the lad a wry, assessing glance, having already pegged the Casanova as an incorrigible seducer of the servant girls. Not that he could blame the lad. Damn, he thought with a surreptitious glance in the young beauties’ direction. South American women. Even the servant girls looked like Helen of Troy.
Jack noticed one of them watching him with wary interest. Delicious creature, with caramel skin and a veil of smooth, black hair that hung to her waist.
When his stare homed in on her, her dark eyes widened. She dropped her gaze with a wildly unsettled look and fled, disappearing back into the house, ostensibly returning to her duties.
He let out a low sigh, pursed his lips, and looked away. Ah, well. Terrified another one.
His ruthless reputation must have gone before him, as usual.
Carlos grabbed the reloaded Baker out of Trahern’s able hands and put the rifle to his shoulder, giving it a feel. “Ah, I’ll kill a hundred Spaniards with this little beauty!”
Jack snorted, resting his hands on his holstered waist as the boy took aim. “Just try not to get yourself killed.”
Carlos squeezed the trigger, hitting his target. “Ha!” With a cocky grin, he tossed the Baker to Jack and sauntered back to his harem to be admired.