Table of Contents
Title Page
Praise
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
MIDNIGHT CONFESSIONS
WHISPERS OF HEAVEN
THE LAST KNIGHT
Copyright Page
Praise for Candice Proctor and Midnight Confessions
“Proctor is in top form here. . . . A versatile author whose firsthand knowledge of the region and vivid descriptions infuse this story with a strong sense of place. . . . A gripping plot, arresting characters, and a thoroughly researched setting combine to make this a remarkable read.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“This haunting story plunges the reader deep into the steamy New Orleans summer. . . . The author gradually peels away the veiled layers of reality and truth, showing the true complexity of life.”
—Rendezvous
“Although this is a superbly suspenseful historical romance, the book’s real appeal is its mood, for which Proctor has an obvious gift. The reader actually feels weighed down by the heat, humidity, despair, corruption, superstition, [and] sense of foreboding. . . . Even knowing that the two lovers will commit to each other doesn’t lessen the drama leading up to the exciting ending.”
—Booklist
Prologue
THE BLAME ALL lay with India McKnight’s mother. Or at least that’s what the Reverend Hamish McKnight used to say on those rare occasions when he’d look up from his collections of sermons and theological treatises long enough to give some thought to the existence of his only child. What had Mrs. McKnight expected, he used to say, giving the girl such an outlandish, heathen name? And the books the woman used to read to her—The Arabian Nights and Marco Polo and all manner of other ungodly tales that might have been precisely calculated to inflame a child’s imagination and set her to dreaming of faraway, exotic places when she should have been practicing her stitches and learning her catechism.
But when he considered his daughter’s future—which was admittedly seldom—Hamish McKnight found consolation in the thought that, eventually, India would be forced to give up her unfeminine thirst for adventure and travel, and settle into the predictable, conformable life of a wife, preferably to some sober, sensible vicar much like the Reverend McKnight himself. Because Hamish McKnight died before this comfortable illusion was shattered by reality, he never knew how wrong he was.
Chapter One
THE TRADE WINDS blowing off the Coral Sea were warm and sweet, evocative reminders of faraway places that whistled through the rigging of the ketches and sloops riding at anchor in the sun-spangled Rabaul Harbor, and flapped the heavy skirt of Miss India McKnight’s sensible serge traveling outfit.
“Very sorry, mum,” said the middle-aged Hindu trader who stood before her, his short legs splayed wide against the weathered dock’s unpredictable pitch, “but help you I cannot.”
India McKnight, spinster, Scotswoman, and travel writer of some renown, was accustomed to meeting— and overcoming—resistance. When the trading captain made as if to go around her, India simply shifted her weight until she was once more in his path. Since the man was short and slight, and India stood five feet ten in her stockings, the maneuver brought him to a stand again. “I was told your ketch is for hire,” she said, softening the overt belligerence of her blocking tactics with a smile.
The Hindu’s head rocked back and forth on his shoulders in a motion that looked like no, but actually meant yes. “It is. But you don’t want to go to Takaku. Not to the southern bay.”
“On the contrary,” said India, her voice calm and even, “I assure you that I most definitely do.”
“It’s dangerous. Very dangerous.” The Hindu’s eyes bulged out as he leaned forward and dropped his voice in the manner of one imparting a terrible secret. “Cannibals, you know. A man from the London Missionary Society went there last year. The Takakus listened to him read his Bible, and they let him pray over them, and then they had him for dinner. As the main course.”
“I am not a missionary, and I am not asking you to accompany me on my expedition up the slopes of Mount Futapu. All you need do is anchor in the bay, convey me ashore in your dinghy, and wait some four or five hours until I return.”
“The channel through the reefs at the southern tip of the island is dangerous.” The Hindu squinted off across the brilliant azure water of the harbor. In the misty distance, far beyond Rabaul’s golden shoreline and waving coconut palms, the jagged outline of the island of Takaku, with its towering volcanic cones and dark secrets, was just visible. “Very dangerous,” he said again. “Rocky and narrow.”
India tightened her grip on her large traveling reticule in a way that drew the trader’s attention. “I’ll pay you double your normal fee.”
He licked his salt-cracked lips. “You want to go to Takaku? I take you to the northern end of the island, to the French port of La Rochelle. It’s pretty. Very pretty. And no cannibals.” An enthusiastic smile beamed, then dimmed. “Lots of French, though.”
India shook her head. “It is the Faces of Futapu I wish to study, and they are far easier to approach from the southern bay than by an overland expedition from La Rochelle.”
The Hindu stared at her, his full-cheeked, flat-nosed face becoming thoughtful. “Now I remember why I thought I had heard of you. You’re that crazy Englishwoman writing a book about the Polynesians. There are no Polynesians on Takaku. Only black men. Headhunters.” He paused. “Hungry headhunters.”
“I am Scots, not English.” India’s tone was rapidly becoming less calm, less controlled. Near the end of the dock, a British naval captain standing with two other officers had turned his head and was studying her intently. “I know there are no Polynesians on Takaku now,” she said, carefully lowering her voice. “But there are Polynesians on the island of Ontong Java, and on Tikopia, and if it’s true that—”
“You want to go to Ontong Java? The steamer will take you there. It stops at many islands, Neu Brenen and Ontong Java and Fiji, before going on to Samoa and the Marquesas and the Sandwich Islands.”
“I plan to visit many of those places eventually, but at the moment it is Takaku I must see.”
“Not from my ketch,” said the trader, and before India realized what he was about, he darted sideways and was around her, the intense tropical sunlight gleaming on his sweat-sheened brown cheeks as he threw a panicked look back at her and trotted toward the shore.
“Blast it,” muttered India beneath her breath, for he was the fourth trader she had approached, and she was running ou
t of options.
At the end of the dock, the British naval captain nodded to his associates and began to walk toward her. He was a tall, big-boned man who looked to be in his early thirties, with attractive, even features and pale gray eyes that crinkled at the corners. “I beg your pardon, madam,” he said, touching one hand to the brim of his hat as he came abreast of her. “But you are Miss India McKnight, aren’t you? The travel writer?”
India felt herself glow warmly with pleasure. The Hindu copra trader had heard of her, too, of course, but his opinion of her had obviously been less than flattering. “Why, yes. I am.”
An open smile spread across the captain’s suntanned face. “I’m Simon Granger. That’s my ship out there, the Barracuda.” He nodded toward a sleek corvette riding at anchor in the sun-drenched blue waters of the harbor. “I’m afraid I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation, and I must say, I don’t think you’re likely to find anyone here in Rabaul willing to put in to the southern bay of Takaku.”
India met his engaging smile with one of her own. “You’re going to tell me it’s dangerous. The pass through the reef is narrow and rocky, and the natives there have reverted to their old habit of solving their problems by eating them.”
He gave a startled laugh. “That’s about what I was going to say, yes.”
“Then I am all the more determined to go there. In my experience, the most fascinating and rewarding places to visit are always those I have been expressly warned to avoid.”
He laughed again, then sobered as he stared thoughtfully into the distance. “There is someone who might be willing to take you to Takaku, if you truly are determined to go there. His name is Ryder. Jack Ryder. He knows the reef around Takaku better than most, and he’s not afraid of cannibals.”
India looked at Captain Granger with interest. “Why not?”
“Perhaps because he lived with them for two years.”
India sucked in her breath. “He lived with cannibals? An Englishman?”
“He’s not an Englishman, exactly. He comes from Queensland, in the Australian Colonies.”
“I see,” murmured India, for it explained much. They had quite a reputation for lawlessness, the Australians. Not as bad as the island headhunters, of course, but bad.
“He has a small start-up copra plantation on Neu Brenen,” the captain was saying. “There’s a steamer leaving first thing in the morning that could drop you there.”
“He lives on Neu Brenen? But that’s a German island, isn’t it?”
The captain’s gently molded lips tightened. “The Germans think it is. And their gunboat in the harbor is the main reason Ryder settled there.”
India knew a tremor of apprehension that mingled, contradictorily, with a quiver of interest. “He’s a buccaneer, is he?”
“Not exactly. But he is a rough character. You need to understand that.”
“Not too dangerous, surely, or you wouldn’t have told me about him, now would you?” She held out her hand to him. “Our meeting was fortuitous, Captain. I appreciate your information.”
Captain Granger clasped her hand in his, but shook his head. “There are many who would say I have done you a disservice, that I should have warned you to stay far away from the likes of Jack Ryder. And that I should have tried harder to talk you out of going to Takaku.”
“That you could not have done.”
Amusement deepened the crinkled edges of his eyes. “No. I don’t think I could.” He started to turn away, then paused to glance back at her, his brows drawn together as if by a worrisome thought. “If you do decide to look up Jack Ryder, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to mention my name.”
“You are old enemies?”
He showed his teeth in a smile that struck India as cold and fierce and far from charming. “On the contrary. We were the best of friends. Once.”
Chapter Two
THE SURF BROKE on Neu Brenen’s offshore coral reef with a boom that was like a continuous, earth-shuddering volley of deadly cannon fire. Sometimes, Jack liked to climb the cliffs at the head of the bay and simply let the power of the crashing waves reverberate through him in a primitive, drumbeatlike evocation of eternity that made him feel both humble and oddly, exhilaratingly free.
But at the moment, Jack Ryder had a headache, and the endless bloody boom-boom-boom of the surf was about to drive him out of his bloody mind. Too much kava, he told himself as he staggered out onto the pandanus-roofed veranda of his bungalow. Finding the water bucket he’d left near the steps still half full, he upended its contents over his head, the breath wheezing out of him as the surprisingly cool liquid coursed down his naked chest and back, for he wore only a laplap wrapped low, native style, around his hips, leaving his legs and feet bare.
Shaking his head like a wet dog, Jack opened his eyes and squinted against the fierce tropical sun that turned the wind-whipped ripples on the lagoon below into a blinding panoply of diamond flashes. For a moment, he thought he saw a longboat striking toward his dock from the rusty old steamer riding at anchor in the bay. But then he thought, Nah, couldn’t be, and shut his eyes again.
Above the din of the distant surf, the gentle patter of footfalls on the path around the side of his bungalow was barely audible. “I was wondering when you’d make it out of bed,” said a young, cheerful voice.
Jack opened one eye, saw Patu’s shining, smiling face, and groaned. Jack thought about leaning against the wall behind him, but the problem with woven bamboo walls was that you couldn’t use them as a prop in a pinch. He went to sit at the top of the steps instead, and lowered his aching forehead to his updrawn knees.
“There’s talk about an Englishman named Granger looking for you,” said Patu. “Simon Granger, captain of the HMS Barracuda .”
“I’ve heard.”
“They say he wants to see you hanged. Him and his first lieutenant, who just happens to be a cousin of the bloody Prime Minister of England. They say he’s sworn to see you hanged.”
“I’ve heard that, too.”
“You don’t seem too worried about it.”
“You think I should be worried?” Jack looked up to find that Patu was no longer smiling.
“I would be.”
The boy had been with Jack for almost four years now. Patu said he was probably around fifteen or sixteen years old, although no one knew for certain and he was so small and slight that he looked even younger. His mother was a Polynesian from an island near Tahiti, his father one of a long line of Englishmen who had sailed through the islands and made love to a dusky-skinned, exotic beauty, and then sailed away again. Most people thought Jack had adopted the boy, perhaps as some sort of atonement for the child Jack himself had abandoned, but the truth was that Patu had adopted Jack.
“I think you’ve been around the papalagi too long,” Jack said now. “You need to go back to the lotus-eating islands of Polynesia, where the days are spent laughing and swimming, and the nights are for making soft, sweet love on palm-fringed, moonlit beaches.”
“Huh.” Patu came to sit on the step below Jack. Unlike Jack, Patu wore canvas trousers, an open-necked shirt, and shoes on his feet. “I think you musta done too much lotus-eating in your day.” It was the irony of their friendship that while Patu had attached himself to Jack in order to learn the ways of that long-vanished English officer, Jack was determined not to let the boy forget the other part of his heritage, the Polynesian part.
In the bay below, sunlight gleamed on an eddy of water turned by a flashing oar.
“What you lookin’ at?” said Patu.
Jack raised one hand to shade his eyes. “That ship that’s just dropped anchor in the harbor.”
“It’s the steamer from Rabaul.”
“Yeah. And why’s it sending a boat to my dock?”
“Did you order something?”
“Through that rat- and cockroach-infested rust bucket?” Jack made a rude noise and frowned against the glare of the sun and the bleary haze of too many
nights spent indulging in the pleasures of sin and excess. “What do you think?”
Patu climbed to the top step and peered into the distance. “I think something’s coming, whether you ordered it or not.” He grinned. “Or should I say, someone. A mail-order wife, maybe? Although from the looks of her, I’d say it’s more likely somebody has decided you need your very own missionary, to convert you to the ways of the godly and save you from the fires of hell and damnation.”
A terrible pain flashed across Jack’s temple, and he groaned and lowered his head again. “You talk too much, boy. Just go down there and tell her to go away.”
“Not me,” said Patu. “She looks bigger than me. And meaner than you.”
It was a bloody missionary, all right, Jack decided, frowning at the woman who sat ramrod straight at the prow of the longboat, her gloved hands gripping the plain handle of an austere parasol, the collar of her ugly, drab-colored gown buttoned up so high around her neck he wondered it didn’t choke her.
He was standing near the end of his dock, his bare legs straddled wide, his arms crossed at his naked chest, when her boat knocked against the rough wooden pier.
“Kaoha nui,” said the woman, evidently mistaking him for a Polynesian.
“G’day,” said Jack, giving her his nastiest smile.
She blinked up at him, her nostrils flaring on a quick, startled breath as she took in the brown, nearly naked, overtly hostile length of him. He had to give her credit: she didn’t miss a beat. “You must be Jack Ryder.” The accent surprised him: crisp, no-nonsense Scots.
“That’s right.” He shifted his hands to his hips and leaned forward. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here, but you can just tell these men to turn around and take you right back where you came from.”
He’d made no move to offer her a hand, so she simply closed her parasol with a snap and clambered unaided up onto the dock with an agility that both surprised him and gave him a quick glimpse of long, slim calves and unexpectedly neat ankles disappearing into sensible, lace-up boots. “I am India McKnight,” she said, carefully shaking out her skirts before she lifted her head and fixed him with a steady stare. “How do you do?”
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