Time of the Temptress

by Violet Winspear

  "Okay, but don't overload yourself. The heat in the undergrowth will be near intolerable during the daylight hours. Now we'll stow these cases in a corner, as if they were abandoned there instead of outside, and we'll be on our way."

  "Have you remembered to fill your water bottle?" [15-16] Eve felt she had to ask, and to let him know that she was aware of the dangers and discomforts as he was, despite his opinion of her as a flimsy creature of flighty pursuits and efforts that were more of a hindrance than a help.

  "Yes, the water bottle is full to the brim," he replied, that droll note in his voice.

  "I'll carry it--"

  "No, you might lose it. All set?"

  "Yes, Major."

  "And stay close to me, I don't want to lose you."

  "I rather thought it wouldn't worry you," she mumbled.

  "I beg your pardon?" He was busy guiding himself, his rifle and knapsack, now full, through the mesh door into the brilliant sunlight flooding across the compound. "What did you say?"

  "Nothing important." She followed him and blinked against the sun, still strong and strange to her even after two months. The ceiling fans had still been purring in the bungalow, left on and forgotten by the staff who had left on the final plane. It had been cool in there, and now all at once she felt the impact of the tropical heat burning against her skin and hair. She would welcome their entrance into the jungle itself, where the trees would offer shelter from that burning sun, even if at the same time the green canopy closed in the warmth and made the jungle a living greenhouse.

  "Come, we must hurry," Wade threw over his shoulder. "We've wasted precious time enough . . . are those sandals quite comfortable? I don't want you breaking an ankle."

  [16-17] She followed him towards the trees, and though the sandals were still rather loose the thongs across the instep kept them from falling off, and it was rather like walking in house slippers. "Yes, they're okay," she said, falling unaware into his laconic figure of speech.

  He reached the trees and turned to give her a sardonic glance, one that took her in from her feet to her titian hair. He was tall against the trees, the combat jacket straining against the wide bones of his shoulders. The rest of him was lean and long, topped off by a thatch of rough black hair. His very darkness had a danger to it, and the only light thing about him was the steely grey of his eyes.

  Eve and he seemed in this moment to assess one another as hostile strangers about to be guests in a strange house; two people who must learn to accept each other's foibles for a short and intimate while. Colour ran beneath her skin and settled on the heights of her cheekbones, and the slight curves of her body hardly disturbed the green silk of the shirt she wore outside the band of the grey-green slacks.

  "You could almost pass for a boy," Wade drawled, and his eyes flicked her smooth cap of titian hair. "Did you cut it yourself, or were you actually training to take vows?"

  "Don't be funny," she rejoined. "One of the Sisters cut it for me so I'd feel cooler working about the mission. I really did work, Major. I even scrubbed floors."

  "Bravo for you. Something to tell the magazine editors when you get home. Should make quite a headline: 'Debutante gets down on her knees to scrub and pray!'" And so saying he turned and entered the [17-18] jungle, and as Eve followed him, actively hating his cynical sense of humour, a bird seemed to sing high above her head: "I was a good little girl . . . I was a good little girl . . ."

  It was odd, rather like the opening bars of an old music-hall song, and Eve found herself finishing the line in her head.

  ". . . till I met you!"

  CHAPTER TWO

  A lot of the country around the mission had been cleared for plantations and livestock, but Eve now found herself in the actual jungle, where wild snaking vines bound the trees together and laid traps for unwary feet, where ropes of convolvulus hung thick as an arm and loaded with the big bell flowers that smelled so primeval. Long, broad banana leaves had to be beaten out of their path, and whiplike bamboos had to be avoided. It was exhausting, the continual avoidance and beating back of jungle growth, all so alive, somehow, as if it would gobble them up. And the heat was cloying, so that Eve could feel the perspiration running down her skin and soaking the clothes that kept her from being badly bitten around the legs and arms. The mosquitoes seemed to lurk in the lower growth, among the enormous ferns and massive leaves around the boles of the trees. All was dim and green and seething with insect noises, broken by the crunch of Wade's boots, breaking down the path as much as possible so that she wouldn't stumble in her cumbersome sandals.

  She dared not think of all the miles they must travel until they reaached [sic] the coast. She felt dismayed by the very thought of hours, perhaps days in this living greenhouse, where like a pair of human flies they battled with the giant foliage.

  "What happens," she asked suddenly, "if the coast is in rebel hands?"

  [19-20] "We make for one of the villages. They're dotted about, and so off the beaten track that it's hard to believe there's a rebellion going on. Often the people are friendly and ready to help . . . but my advice right now is don't waste energy thinking ahead, just keep walking and keep up your spirits."

  "I'm trying, but don't you have the feeling we're being watched all the time, every step we take?"

  "Monkeys," he said laconically, "high in the trees. Curious about us but not dangerous."

  Eve smiled with relief, and wondered if there was anything on earth which could unnerve this Major of mercenaries, shatter the coolness with which he faced this journey and its hazards. Was he so hardened that nothing could make a dent in him?

  He paused and his panga gleamed as he hacked a sprawl of lianas from their path. Now and again she had seen him consult a compass so she was free of the fear that they could become lost . . . he might not be the most charming of travelling companions, but he was sure of himself, and a broad-shouldered bulwark against the menace that seemed to simmer behind her, and at every side of her.

  She stumbled nervously when a parakeet screeched in the undergrowth, and at once he shot a look over his shoulder. "Mind your step!" he ordered.

  "I'm all right--"

  "Would it help if I cut you a stick?"

  "It might."

  "Then stay just where you are and I'll cut a bamboo."

  He disappeared into the denseness at the left of them, and Eve took a rest against the trunk of a huge old tree, shutting her mind to what its foliage might be [20-21] hiding, and aware of a longing to slide down into the giant ferns and sleep. It seemed as if she had been on the move for hours, and indeed she had, for it had been some time last evening when the Major had searched the mission and found the Sisters and herself concealed in the cellar. All their patients had fled, or had been carried away by their families.

  "We must keep going a while longer." A bamboo stick cut at the joint was placed in her hand. "This should make things a bit easier."

  "Thank you." She looked defiantly into his eyes, as if to deny her weariness. He thought she lacked hardihood and she had to show him that she wouldn't be a burden on him. "I know how imperative it is that we keep on going, and I shan't fall behind, Major, or make you wish too fiercely that I were a soldier instead of a stupid society girl who should have stayed at home in her cosy bandbox."

  He grinned in that brief and diabolical way of his. "It will be something for you to remember, eh? Always supposing I get you to a boat or plane."

  "I assure you this trek will be unforgettable!"

  "And uncomfortable." He faced about and they continued on their way, one behind the other, plodding tenaciously through an endless tunnel of green and shirring forest, brightened now and again by flame blossoms or a creamy curtain of wild orchids.

  Eve thought of cool, faraway England, and the flaming quarrel she'd had with her guardian, who had been so sure that she would allow herself to become engaged to James Cecil Harringway the Third; heir to a corporation, good-natured and gangling, but not the man for Eve
. She had stood out, and then on sheer impulse [21-22] had packed a bag and flown to Tanga because she wished to help, to do something with the pampered life her guardian had made for her, only to expect in return that she marry a man she neither loved nor desired.

  She plodded on in the wake of her guide, and felt sure that had her father not been killed when she was three, she would not be here in the steaming jungle, her face hot and shiny, and clad in the shirt and slacks of a man. Not only that, but at the mercy of a jungle mercenary, and a band of rebels who might be stealthily following their trail, or lying in wait for them at the coast.

  Half an hour later they halted for a rest on a fallen tree, which Wade searched thoroughly for snakes before allowing her to sit down and relax. He handed her the water bottle and she took several grateful sips.

  "More welcome than wine, eh?" He took his own few sips and then screwed the cap firmly into place again. "Fancy a bit of chocolate?"

  She shook her head and watched him enjoy some. He seemed quite untired, with an alertness in his eyes that made her think of a prowling animal that never slept or needed to. She felt curious about him and wondered if such a man had a wife, a family, a home in which he behaved like a human being. All she was certain of was his nerve, and that he had done startling and outrageous things. His only law was that of jungle lore!

  "What conclusion have you come to?" he drawled.

  "That I'm placed in the position of trusting a tiger."

  "The swift and silent brute who likes the shadows, eh?"

  "The cat who kills for pleasure."

  He didn't reply and the jungle enclosed them as if in a green and echoing bell-glass. Eve wondered at her [22-23] temerity in speaking as she had, but she didn't shrink away from him, or allow her eyes to waver from his face. He had been frank enough in his opinion of her!

  "A million orchids," he murmured. "Back in England they cost the earth, and after an evening at the dance a girl preserves the orchid she has worn on her dress. So many of them must remind you of the times you've worn one to a concert or a ball?"

  "I always preferred a rose," she said quietly. "Orchids have a clutching look about them."

  "They have no thorns."

  "True," she said with a faint smile. So she had thorns, which meant that she had pricked this man. She congratulated herself, and wriggled her toes in some ferns to cool them.

  "You'll get bitten if you don't watch out," he warned. "Mosquito welts are not only irritable, they're painful and they can lead to a fever. I think when we make camp I'll dose you with a quinine tablet."

  "When do we make camp, Major?"

  "When the sun goes down. The jungle will then be so dark as to be impenetrable, and I guess you need a night's sleep. We'll start at dawn tomorrow and make better time."

  "I hope I'm not too much of a hindrance," she said, "but I couldn't take a seat on that plane in preference to one of the Sisters. They had endured more than I . . . oh, I don't want to sound self-righteous, but they were good to me. They understood why I came out here--"

  "Were you running away of your life of luxury?"

  "Yes, in a manner of speaking. You'd have been far more contemptuous of me had you known me before I worked at the mission."

  "Was there a young man involved?"

  [23-24] She shrugged and thought of James, who would be horrified, and startled, to see any girl less than immaculate. He was really one of those who believed that girls, like dolls, were kept in boxes in pretty dresses, with not a hair out of place. Girls like herself, who were brought up by nannies, who went to finishing schools, and drank champagne with their eggs and bacon.

  "The silence of a woman always tells more than a torrent of words."

  Eve came out of her reverie as Wade spoke almost against her ear. She turned, startled, to look at him and found his eyes piercing hers and raking over the smooth, heated skin of her face, and taking in the features that had a Celtic purity to them. Her mother had been a Highland beauty, much painted by all the fashionable artists, and Eve was a true daughter of the isle of Arran, with eyes that reflected the misty lochs.

  "So it was a man who sent you running out here to scrub and pray! Did you quarrel with him?"

  "Yes," she said, for it was all too true, and it wouldn't do any harm to let this mercenary Major believe that the quarrel had been with a man she loved. In a way it had been. She was fond of her rather arrogant guardian, and when she married she wanted to marry for love's sake. It was upon that issue they had flamed into heated words. "I won't be sold in the marriage market," she had stormed. "I'd sooner work at Woolworth's!" But as it happened she had read about the plight of Tanga in the newspapers, and being impulsive she had decided to be a heroine instead of a counterhand.

  "Was he worth the predicament you now find yourself in?" Wade ran a hand down his unshaven jaw, and Eve winced at the rasp of the black bristles. The sound seemed to emphasise his maleness, and her total de-[24-25]pendence upon his skill and his grit.

  "I'm not sorry I came," she said, meaning it. "I've been of some use, even if you don't think so. I've seen suffering and courage, and I feel sure I'm a better person for knowing people such as Sister Mercy and the other nursing nuns."

  "Time will tell," he drawled. "When you find yourself in the Ritz Bar again, surrounded by admirers, you might soon forget the scent of ether and incense."

  "You're abominably cynical, Major!" She gave him a furious look. "I can't imagine you believing in anything, except the chase and the kill."

  "Then your imagination will have to be attended to, young lady." He rose to his feet, lean and supple as any tiger. "Siesta is over, so rouse yourself, and get those toes back inside those sandals."

  Defiance flickered through her . . . she wanted, as in the old days, to toss her Titian head and turn her back on a man. Her fingers clenched on the thick silk of the shirt he had commandeered for her, and she hated with her eyes that hard, fierce face of his. Heavens, how the tropics had browned his skin, burned his gentler feelings to a tinder, crinkled his eyes! Had he never danced to the last nostalgic waltz? Had wine never left its tears on the rim of a stemmed glass, while the petals drooped on flowers he had given a girl, and the candlelight died on the table?

  "I know your feet are hurting and your spirits are wilting," he said roughly, "but this I have to do. On your feet, deb!" He enclosed her shoulder with his sunburned hand and forced her to rise. She wrenched free of him and struggled into the sandals with their leather soles as hard as his soul!

  "Ready?"

  [25-26] "As I'll ever be, gallant Major!"

  "Attagirl." He gave a low, sardonic laugh, almost lost in the depths of his brown throat, and hoisting pack and rifle he stepped among the jungle trees, the webbing vines, the sticky spider nets, the primeval scents, and Eve followed him.

  "I feel," she said, "as if I'm training to be a squaw!"

  "Yes, you keep thinking along those lines and we'll get along fine, little one. Squaws are humble and obedient creatures."

  "Huh!"

  "Did you stumble?"

  "As if you'd care!" she snapped.

  "I might take the trouble to give you a hand."

  "The back of it?"

  Again he laughed, and a monkey leaped among the interlocking limbs of the trees and its tail seemed to whip at the trumpet flowers, showering petals like a mock confetti. A reluctant smile sprang to Eve's lips. It was good to see the monkeys, for their presence proved that she wasn't entirely alone with a human tiger.

  For brief minutes she was amused, and almost secure, and then something dropped on to her and her scream tore the transient peace to shreds. She felt a wet stickiness all down one side of her shirt, and then Wade was beside her and she was giving him a dumb, stricken look.

  "What the devil--?"

  "W-what is it?" she gasped.

  He touched her, and then gave a brief laugh. "A bird's egg, probably tossed down on you by one of those mischievous monkeys. It's made something of
a mess."

  "Ugh!"

  [26-27] "Better a broken egg on you than a palm rat, or a bird-eating spider. Stand still while I clean you up."

  She obeyed him, but couldn't quite control a contraction of her nerves as she felt him wiping her off with a khaki handkerchief large enough to cover a coffee tray. His hand brushed her body and she felt a sensation that actually frightened her more than the egg bursting against her. Their aloneness in the jungle was suddenly alive with alarming new meanings, and she was recalling some of the tales about mercenary soldiers which native girls at the mission had imparted to her.

  Eve gave Wade O'Mara a quick fearful look, which he answered curtly in words. "You can cut out what you're thinking." He gave his handkerchief a shake. "I don't go in for ravishing my hostages, not even a Titian-haired deb who has probably teased the wits out of the Champagne Charlies at the hunt balls. There, that will soon dry off. You'll feel rather sticky, but it's the best I can do, and I'm not going to waste any of our precious water."

  "Th-thanks." Eve flushed hotly at the ease with which he had read her mind. Men believed that it excited a girl, the thought of being at the mercy of a tough and ruthless character, and she didn't dare to look at Wade in case she actually felt a stirring of curiosity about what it would feel like if he suddenly flung her down in the rampant ferns and took her with all the forceful assurance with which he tackled everything.

  "What are you waiting for?" There was an edge to his voice. "To find out what it's like to tease a ruffian in jungle cloth?"

  "I don't go in for that sort of behaviour," she said indignantly.

  "I bet you don't." His eyes swept her up and down. [27-28] What else is there for someone like you, whose virginity had to be preserved for the highest bidder? There's little honesty in it, but a whole lot of tantalisation, only don't try it on with me, lady, or I'll teach you that on the rough side of the tracks we don't cheat."

  "How dare you!" Eve itched to slap his hard, cynical face.

  "I'd dare, lady."

  "I just bet you would," she retorted. "You wouldn't have come within ten miles of the ethics of a gentleman."