The Marriage Trap

by Anne McAllister

  She glanced over at him, still asleep in the hammock, his dark hair tousled, his lips well kissed, and wondered how he would look at her when he opened his eyes. That would be the key to their future.

  That would be the sign.

  Aidan blinked. His hand went at once to his side, touching the shirt she had torn up to make a bandage for his wound, patting it, then stopping abruptly. He blinked again, then turned his head slowly, looking around, remembering.

  Courtney could almost pick out the instant he recalled exactly where he was and what had happened. It was when his hand had gone still against his ribs and reality had come rushing back.

  She had been sitting by the fire, watching him, waiting for him to awaken. Looking forward to it, and yet dreading it at the same time. And now it had come. She smiled at him. It was a soft smile, a hesitant one. She would have liked to run to him and throw her arms around him. She would have liked to be that confident of his love.

  But she wasn’t. And she didn’t. She only waited.

  For a moment it seemed as if Aidan was waiting, too. They simply looked at one another, neither moving. Only weighing, assessing. And concluding. Concluding what?

  That she didn’t know. The sign she was looking for wasn’t clear. It wasn’t even there. Aidan looked pale again. His face, gentler and younger in repose, was unreadable now. It was as if he wore a mask to disguise what he felt. The only thing alive about it was the expression in his eyes. And they seemed intent on studying her. They never left her for an instant. And yet it wasn’t love she saw in them. Nor passion. It was— God help her—worry, frustration, pain.

  She shut her own eyes, hoping it would go away. She prayed she was wrong. And when she opened her eyes a moment later, she thought she might have been. There was no expression in his at all now. They were blank, non-committal. The eyes of a stranger.

  ‘Hello, sleepyhead,’ she said.

  He grunted, shifted carefully, wincing when he put too much pressure on his side.

  She got quickly to her feet. ‘Let me help you up.’

  He moved then, even more rapidly, and she could see him gritting his teeth. ‘It’s all right,’ he said through them clenched. ‘I can manage on my own.’ And before she could get to him, he had stumbled to his feet and had gone off into the jungle by himself.

  She knew better than to follow him there. But she hovered about anxiously, the words, ‘Are you all right?’ on the tip of her tongue, though she had the good sense not to ask them.

  A few moments later he came back and reached for his trousers, tugging them on, studiously ignoring her. He tripped and almost fell, grimacing as he did so. Then finally he got them zipped up and reached for his shirt.

  ‘I washed it,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s drying down by the boat. There was… a lot of blood.’

  In the clear light of day she had almost gagged to see the three-inch rip in the fabric and the splotches of blood that were almost dried down the length of one side of his shirt. But she had washed it out carefully, removing as much of the stain as she could. She would sew it when it was dry.

  ‘Thanks,’ he muttered, then grimaced again as he bent over and fished a similar shirt out of his duffel bag.

  He had slipped it on his arms and was about to button it when her studied detachment ran out. ‘Wait. Let me see your side.’

  He glanced down at it, then proceeded to button the shirt. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Aidan…’

  ‘It’s all right.’ His voice was sharp, brooking no objection. He sounded like the man she had first seen on the dock, grimy, belligerent and hard-eyed. He looked the same way, too. There was nothing of the gentler man, nothing of the man who had said, ‘I need you,’ nothing of the lover she had known in the night.

  He stepped away before she could get to him and began to untie the hammock ropes. ‘We’d better get going.’ He glanced pointedly at his watch, as if they were late for a train or something.

  Courtney frowned. ‘We don’t have to rush, do we?’

  He turned and gave her a hard look. ‘I have a job to do. I can’t just dawdle around in the jungle to suit you, you know.’

  She stared, aghast. Then, ‘I am paying you!’ she snapped, stung.

  His eyes narrowed and he turned and slammed his fist into the tree beside him, muttering something graphic and harsh under his breath. She shook her head, unable to equate this man with the one she had come to know. A sense of shame crept up on her. Had he thought she meant she was paying him for last night, too?

  Oh, Lord. Mortified, she spun away and darted back through the jungle to the boat. She started rolling up the few pieces of wet laundry that she had done while he was sleeping, her movements all mechanical, her mind spinning out of control. When Aidan came up behind her a few minutes later, she was in no better shape, so she ignored him.

  He did the same. Stowing the gear he had carried down along the sides of the boat, he went back for another load. So much for asking her to stay with him. So much for her spending the rest of her life as his wife in the jungle. She stashed the laundry in the mesh bag and went to help him pack.

  It was a silent exercise. Aidan apparently had no inclination to speak, and Courtney had no idea what to say. What could you say to a man who was your husband for all the wrong reasons, with whom you had made love for all the right ones, and who now seemed to wish you would drop off the face of the earth?

  Miss Manners didn’t cover that.

  Courtney did ask if he would like a bit of breakfast. There was a chance, she thought, that all this morose behaviour and snappishness might simply be due to an empty stomach.

  ‘No,’ Aidan growled.

  And that was that.

  On the surface at least. Inside the turmoil was still as great as ever. Courtney sat in the bow of the boat, feeling the scorch of Aidan’s eyes on her back, and tried to figure things out.

  Perhaps he was embarrassed and that was what was making him so short with her. Perhaps he hadn’t expected that she was a virgin and now he didn’t know what to say. Maybe her inexperience had disappointed him, angered him. Something had, that was certain.

  She turned and glanced at his face, hoping to surprise some emotion there that would tell her what he was choosing not to say in words.

  What she saw was anguish. And anger. He was looking right at her, and yet the moment she turned, his eyes slid away to contemplate the jungle they were passing and his expression grew hard and stark with something like pain.

  Pain. And they were right back where they started— to the pain of the animal who knows he is trapped and can’t do anything about it.

  She felt her throat tighten, and swallowed hard, blinking against the tears that sprang unbidden to her eyes. In her mind she could hear her father intoning, ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’

  But she was hard pressed to believe it at the moment. She wondered if she would ever come to believe it at all. She wanted to ask Aidan what was wrong, but wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. Maybe if she waited. Maybe if she walked carefully, quietly. Maybe everything would even out.

  Aidan, frankly, didn’t seem to care. All he seemed intent on was getting back upriver as quickly as possible. Courtney wondered briefly if it was because he thought Deke and Sonny might come after them. She even ventured to ask him. But the response she got was merely a disbelieving snort. Whatever Aidan was worried about, it wasn’t another encounter with the trio of outlaws.

  The Indians were a different matter. Courtney had forgotten about them until they were almost on top of the place where she and Aidan had run into the hunting party on the voyage down river. But, when she saw that particular narrow strip of beach, remember she did, and she wished for once that Aidan would make the boat go faster.

  She was astonished to find him turning it in towards the shore and cutting the engine altogether.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, swivelling around to glare at him
.

  ‘Stopping for the night.’ He was scowling at her from beneath the hat he wore and he looked no more pleasant than he had earlier in the day.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘But why? I mean, considering the circumstances under which we left…’

  ‘I doubt anyone knows about those, except your “friend”,’ he said scathingly. ‘And I want Santos to look at my side.’

  ‘It is bothering you.’ She pursed her lips and glared at him, annoyed that he had spent the whole day in pain without telling her so.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said just as he had that morning. But she didn’t believe him any more. She just scrambled out of the boat, then waited for him to get out and tie it up before they headed inland towards the village.

  She didn’t see any of the Indians until they were almost on top of the group of huts. But the Indians had seen them and were waiting for them. The chief rushed to meet them, all smiles and broken Portuguese greetings. Obviously Aidan was right. Her amorous friend had not broadcast his failure to bed her.

  Thank heavens. But this time she wasn’t going to take any chances. Besides, this time she was Aidan’s wife.

  That he hadn’t thought of that just proved, she decided, how much pain he was really in. For when the chief embraced him, he withstood it stoically, then asked if Santos, the medicine man, would take a look at him.

  ‘Sim, sim.’ The chief nodded vigorously. ‘You hurt. You show Santos. He make you better. Come.’ And he motioned to the man called Santos and began to lead Aidan towards the hut he had occupied last time. Courtney picked up her duffel bag and followed.

  By the time she entered the hut Santos had Aidan lying on the hammock, stripped of his shirt, while he probed the wound, scowling and muttering as he did so.

  Courtney watched nervously, knowing that her stitching wasn’t the best in the world, then wondering if an Amazonian medicine man could have done it better.

  ‘Not bad,’ Santos decreed at last. ‘I make poultice for it. That help you a lot,’ he said to Aidan, then turned to nod briefly at Courtney. ‘You do a good job,’ he acknowledged.

  Aidan’s head jerked up as he noticed her for the first time. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I belong here,’ she said flatly, unwilling to let him shut her out now.

  ‘You say he not your man,’ the chief reminded her.

  ‘He wasn’t,’ Courtney agreed. ‘He is now. He’s my husband now.’

  ‘Husband?’ The chief positively beamed. ‘Oh, yes?’ He rubbed his hands together gleefully and looked to Aidan for confirmation.

  Aidan glowered at her.

  ‘…for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health,’ Courtney reminded him.

  He sank back into the hammock, unable to fight her any more.

  ‘You smart girl,’ the chief complimented her. ‘You get your man.’

  Courtney gave him a wan smile and wished it were the truth.

  Santos, meanwhile, bustled around taking small bags of herbs and mixing them with water, then heating them together and stirring them, blending them into a pungent smelling poultice that he finally carried over and placed gently against the knife wound below Aidan’s ribs. Then he beckoned to Courtney.

  ‘You wrap this on,’ he told her in halting Portuguese, his hands moving to show her what his words failed to convey. ‘Then you sit with him. You watch. Later you take more—’ he indicated the mess still simmering in the pot over the fire ‘—and do again, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Courtney said promptly.

  ‘Hey, why can’t you do it?’ Aidan protested, lifting himself on his elbows as best he could, scowling at Santos who was shaking his head.

  ‘Too mean, me. You want wife.’ Santos smiled benignly. ‘Is what wives good for.’ He nodded again at the pot bubbling away, gave Aidan a smile of encouragement, Courtney a wink, and walked out.

  ‘Damn!’ Aidan slumped back against the hammock, his jaw working, his eyes glinting anger.

  ‘Be still,’ Courtney said. She put her duffel bag on the floor of the hut, then went out and got his and brought it in as well. Aidan watched her irritably, but he didn’t comment until she had set them side by side and was kneeling down riffling through hers.

  Then he said gruffly, ‘You don’t need to bother with me.’

  ‘No bother.’ And without giving him a chance to reply, she gathered up her things and headed for the door. ‘I’ll be back. I’m going to freshen up a bit.’

  When she came back half an hour later he was, as she had hoped, asleep. He lay on his back in the hammock, his shirt off, the bandage snug against the wound, one hand trailing alongside the hammock, the other over his eyes.

  He looked altogether dear and familiar. Asleep, of course, he would, she thought wryly. But just let him open his mouth! But he wasn’t opening his mouth now. He was snoring gently, the hard line of his mouth softened now, the implacable stares smothered by his arm.

  She tiptoed around, putting her things away, trying not to wake him, knowing full well how badly he needed his sleep. Last night he wouldn’t have had any. And he had worked hard today getting them this far upriver. The sooner to get rid of her, apparently. The thought made her sigh, and she set about hanging the second hammock with a heavy heart.

  Then she carefully changed his poultice, fearful of waking him. But he was sleeping soundly and he scarcely moved when she took off the pack that Santos had put on and replaced it with a fresh batch. The wound seen to, she bent her head and brushed a kiss across his lips.

  ‘I love you.’ She whispered the words she wouldn’t dare tax him with if he had been awake.

  The sound of him muttering woke her about midnight. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked him softly.

  ‘Wh—? Where—?’ He tried to sit up, then fell back against the hammock, groaning.

  She rolled out of hers. ‘What is it? Shall I get Santos?’

  ‘Santos?’ The one word seemed to reorientate him. ‘I remember now.’ He eased his body around gingerly, then growled, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Staying with you.’

  ‘It isn’t necessary.’

  ‘Santos said—’

  ‘I don’t care what Santos said. I don’t need you!’

  ‘Then I need you,’ she told him flatly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Surely you haven’t forgotten my local “friend”?’

  He paused. ‘Oh, yeah.’ Then, rolling on to his side, he sighed as if resigned to a terrible fate.

  Courtney felt an almost overwhelming temptation to kick him. The man who had loved her so well last night had vanished into thin air. This one was the one who had flipped her into the water the first time she had met him.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said to him starchily, ‘I won’t ravish you again.’

  His head snapped around, and she could feel him glowering at her even in the darkness. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I should think it was clear.’

  ‘As mud.’

  ‘Well, you certainly don’t seem happy about what happened between us last night.’

  ‘Forget last night.’

  She cringed. So much for the declaration of love she had fervently hoped for. Obviously it was the furthest thing from his mind. He wanted out. Desperately. Not even a night’s loving had changed his mind.

  In fact, she realised with horror, it had simply compounded his trap.

  ‘We can’t get an annulment now,’ she said dully, the realisation stunning her.

  ‘No,’ he said so grimly that she knew he had already thought of that. ‘We can’t.’ He turned his head away from her, staring into the blackness beyond. ‘But we can get a divorce.’

  Her parents should have named her Pollyanna, she thought miserably one week later. Because even despite Aidan’s pronouncement, she held out hopes.

  Even after they got back to Consuelo’s and he carried her bags in and left her with the briefest and m
ost perfunctory of farewells, even after he didn’t come around to enquire about her for the rest of the week, even after she almost ran into him in the marketplace and, seeing her coming, he ducked behind a produce stall and escaped out the other way, she still thought he might come around. She couldn’t get the night they had spent in each other’s arms, the loving and the needing that had passed between them, out of her mind. And she hoped he couldn’t, either.

  But obviously Aidan thought more about what a trap she had got him into.

  Well, it was her own fault for expecting anything else. Aidan had never lied to her. He had never told her that he was getting engaged to her or marrying her for anything more than the expedient reason that he did.

  But it didn’t stop her feeling miserable every minute of the day.

  ‘You don’t look so good,’ Aurelio told her that morning when she was listlessly packing her clothes.

  ‘Mmm.’ She didn’t feel so good.

  ‘You get a fever in the jungle, maybe?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He lounged on her bed, leaning against the wall, regarding her with the solemn curiosity of a true student of human nature. ‘I think maybe it’s catching.’

  Courtney frowned at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think Aidan got it, too.’

  ‘Aidan doesn’t look so good?’ She felt a momentary heartening at the news. She hadn’t seen Aidan close enough to tell since he had left her at Consuelo’s seven days ago.

  ‘Looks very bad,’ Aurelio said promptly. ‘All hollow under the eyes. All the time angry, too.’

  So what else is new? Courtney wanted to ask. But she just folded another shirt and placed it carefully into her duffel bag. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ She dropped the last piece of freshly laundered clothing into the bag and zipped it shut. ‘There. That’s that, then.’

  Aurelio sat up. ‘You ready to go.’

  She sighed and stared out of the window down towards the river, thinking about what might have been, about what would never be now. ‘I’m ready,’ she said.