Beyond Sunrise
Page 4
He blinked down at her. “For anyone.”
“I have never been troubled by loneliness,” she said, and went back to her writing. “It is only in solitude that one finds the peace necessary for reflection and composition. I find that women companions have a regrettable tendency to chatter incessantly, while men . . .”
She paused, so that he had to prompt her. “Yes?”
“Men invariably fall into the habit of attempting to boss any female in their company—even if the female in question is paying their wages.”
Jack stared down at the rounded top of that pith helmet, and knew an unexpected and totally inexplicable rush of rage so pure and sweet that it stole his breath. He started to turn away, but took only two steps before he spun back around to point his finger at her and say, “The way I figure it, we’re even.”
Her head fell back, slowly, as she stared up at him, her eyes narrowing against the glare off the water. “And precisely how do you figure that, Mr. Ryder?”
“I might have missed picking you up at dawn, but you threw a bloody pitcher of water on me.”
Her entire body seemed to stiffen. “I see no correlation between the two events at all. If you recall, I was simply endeavoring to awaken you.”
“Huh. I recognize revenge when I see it.”
“Indeed. I didn’t expect to hear you admit that I’d been wronged.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She swung her head away to stare out over the surging waves, but not before he caught a glimpse of the intriguing smile that played about her lips. “Very well, Mr. Ryder. I accept your apology.”
Jack almost jumped. “Bloody hell. I wasn’t apologizing.”
She brought her gaze back to his face. The smile was gone. “Then we’re not even.”
They could smell the island of Takaku before they saw it, a spicy sweet tropical aroma that came to them on the stiffening breeze. Then the island itself materialized from out of the haze, a wild, impossibly beautiful place of calm turquoise lagoons and sweeping, palm-fringed beaches backed by steep, wild crags clad in a luxurious riot of tangled greenery.
Far to the north, the island tapered off into leafy dales and marshy flats where the French had established a trading village they called La Rochelle. But here, at its southern tip, Takaku was a land of near-vertical gorges and high volcanic peaks that rose twisted and menacing toward the tropical blue sky. Steam still drifted from the various cracks and craters of the smaller and southern-most of these, Mount Futapu, thrusting up from the shores of a deep round bay that was itself the flooded caldron of an old volcano. Like most of the islands in this area, Takaku was surrounded by a lagoon formed by a largely submerged fringing coral reef against which the surf crashed in an endless, spray-dashing cannonade. Which meant that the only way into the bay at the base of Mount Futapu was through a narrow break in the reef made all the more dangerous by crosscurrents and an unpredictable wind.
Idling in the rolling breakers outside the reef, Jack hauled down the staysail. Then he took the tiller again, the yacht dipping and swaying with the swell as Patu scrambled up the mast.
“Is that necessary?” asked Miss McKnight, her head tipping back as she watched the boy’s ascent.
“What’d you think?” said Jack, shouting to be heard over the roar of the surf. “That people told you the pass into the bay of Futapu was dangerous just so they could up the price of ‘conveying’ you here?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
Jack grunted and brought the yacht’s prow around until they were pointed at the passage. “And the cannibals?”
“Oh, those I believe in.”
“And they still don’t worry you?”
“They’re a necessary risk.”
Jack threw her a quick, assessing glance. The sun was shining warm and golden on the smooth skin of her even-featured face. She looked young and excited and far more attractive than he would have liked. He gave a low grunt that came out sounding like a growl. “You’re either very brave, or very foolish.”
“And which are you, Mr. Ryder?”
Jack laughed. “Me? I’m just crazy.”
After that, his attention was all for the dark blue ribbon of deep water that curled its way between the sharp, submerged shelves of rainbow-hued coral. Gulls wheeled, screeching, overhead, as Patu called down warnings and directions from his high perch. But although Jack was careful, he wasn’t particularly worried, and it wasn’t long before they reached the calm, flat safety of the inner lagoon.
“There’s sails out there,” said Patu, climbing down the rigging as Jack eased the Sea Hawk into the deep, round bay. “A frigate or corvette, by the looks of her.”
Jack found his spyglass and raised it to his eye. A sleek three-masted ship hovered in the haze just off the southern tip of the island. After a long pause, he said, “If she’s flying any colors, I can’t see them.”
Miss McKnight came to stand at the rail beside him, her narrowed gaze on the distant ship. “Surely you don’t think it’s pirates, do you?”
“Pirates?” Jack lowered his glass. “No, I don’t think it’s pirates.” She gave him a puzzled look, but he saw no reason to explain. “You’ve got three hours,” he said, and turned away abruptly to set to work at lowering the Sea Hawk’s small dinghy.
She gasped. “Three hours! But that’s outrageous. I—” The rest of her protest was lost in the rattle of the dinghy’s chains. He was aware of her, gray eyes flashing, nostrils flaring as she fumed silently beside him until the rattling stopped. She began again, “If we had made an earlier start—”
“We didn’t.” The dinghy launched, Jack dangled the rope ladder over the side, and turned to face her. “The climb up to the crater’s rim shouldn’t take you more than forty-five minutes, and it’ll be quicker coming down. That gives you a good hour and a half to look around the summit, and make sketches of the Faces of Futapu or whatever it is you plan to do up there, and still be back on the beach in three hours.”
She obviously wasn’t used to being dictated to. She glared at him, her chest rising and falling with indignation, her grip on the strap of her knapsack tightening until her knuckles showed white. If she’d had his neck in her hands, he’d be dead. “And if I’m not?”
Jack gave her his meanest smile. “Then I’ll assume someone’s made you his dinner, and the Sea Hawk sails.” He let the smile fade. “Understood?”
Her lips pressed together into a thin, hard line. “Quite.”
Chapter Five
TO INDIA’S RELIEF, it was Patu and not that vile Australian who rowed her over to the stretch of gleaming white coral sand that formed the bay’s shoreline.
“There’s a path by that stream,” Patu said, helping her out onto the beach. “It’ll take you around the side of the mountain and up to the top.”
India let her head fall back, her gaze lifting above the beach’s fringing palm trees to the darkly jagged peak towering overhead. She’d read about this path, which was said to have been made by the natives of the island. The cannibal natives. As far as they were concerned, Mount Futapu was a kind of god. In times past, they had been known to throw living sacrifices into the volcano’s crater.
From the deck of the Sea Hawk, the island had looked wild and beautiful, like something from a dream. Now, as she stared up at its steep cliffs of naked rock and gorges choked with impenetrable jungle, it seemed to have acquired a darker, faintly menacing aspect. It was all this talk about cannibals, she decided. It had made her fanciful, something she heartily despised and was not normally inclined to be.
“You will be back in three hours, won’t you, miss?” said Patu.
India touched one hand to the watch she wore pinned to her bodice, and smiled. “I shall be ever vigilant of the time.” Her boots sinking in the loose sand, she turned to go, then paused to look back and ask, “Would he really leave?”
“I suspect he would, miss.”
India nodded. “I thought so.”
Farther inland, the track steepened, the palms giving way to moss-covered giant trees hung with pendant ropes of lianas and a tangle of unknown vines and creepers. The distant boom of the surf was still audible, but lessened here, even her footfalls seeming hushed. India lengthened her stride, oblivious to the whine of mosquitoes and the steamy heat that was gradually becoming more oppressive as she moved away from the shore. This was what she loved, this heady, heart-pumping sense of adventure, the excitement of experiencing the unfamiliar and the unexpected. At a turn in the path she came across a half-hidden, breathtakingly beautiful white orchid and longed to sketch it, but the weight of the watch pinned to her breast filled her with an uncomfortable awareness of the passage of time, and she kept walking.
Something like halfway up the slope, she stopped beside a rocky stream to rest and make some quick notes in her book. Before she left, she reached down cupped hands to bathe her face and found the water surprisingly warm, hot even. Continuing on her way, she wasn’t surprised when, a few minutes farther up the trail, she came upon a bubbling hot springs, and as she neared the summit, she found another spring, the water in the small pond beside it percolating as if at a low boil. The unmistakable odor of cooking meat impregnated the warm, moist air. India stopped short, her gaze riveted on the flat stones lining the water’s edge where, half obscured by the steam that floated in drifting wisps over the churning surface, someone had placed what she realized must be some kind of flesh, wrapped in leaves.
Cannibals. The word leapt immediately into her head, bringing with it a stomach-wrenching, blood-chilling, finger-tingling wave of primitive terror that swept through her body and left her winded and trembling.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she told herself out loud. One hand pressed to her heaving chest, she deliberately straightened her spine. A visitor to the South Seas was in far more danger of being gored by a wild pig than of being eaten by cannibals, and she certainly wouldn’t allow the presence of a few pigs to dissuade her from her inspection of the Faces of Futapu. In fact, it was probably nothing more than a side of pork steaming by the hot springs right now. She remembered with another sick twist of her stomach that a cooked human being was cavalierly referred to in this area as “long pork,” but she thrust that thought from her mind. She was not some fainthearted miss, forever shrieking and going into hysterics. She was India McKnight, travel writer, and it was just this sort of experience that added spice—another unfortunate word, given its associations with cooking—to her writing.
She glanced about the clearing, but it appeared peaceful and deserted, and she told herself cannibals normally roasted their victims, anyway. Reassured by this thought, India adjusted the straps of her knapsack and canteen, straightened her pith helmet, and continued on her way.
“It’s the Barracuda, all right,” said Jack, lowering his spyglass. “Of all the bloody luck.”
Patu leaned his elbows on the rail, his gaze on the brilliant white sails in the distance, and shrugged. “They should be long gone by the time we leave here.”
“They should be.” Jack raised the glass again. “Although if I didn’t know better, I’d say they were headed right this way.”
“That corvette, she’s too big to fit through the passage.”
“Mmhhmm.” Jack watched the British ship plunge through the swells, and knew a deep, disturbing sense of uneasiness. “But her jolly boat isn’t.”
Patu’s eyebrows drew together in a quick, worried frown. “Why would the Barracuda want to come here?”
“I don’t know.” Jack swung around to stare up at the steep, jungle-clad slopes of Mount Futapu, and swore under his breath. If it weren’t for that bloody writer, he would weigh anchor right now and sail away, just to be safe. But however much of a pain in the ass India McKnight might be, Jack wasn’t the kind of man to abandon a woman on a cannibal-infested island.
Swearing again, he raised the glass to his eye and watched the sails of the Barracuda grow larger, and larger, and larger.
There was no doubt about it, India decided, her heart soaring with excitement: the so-called Faces of Futapu were an entirely natural rock formation, not the work of long-vanished Polynesian stonecutters at all.
She worked her way around the massive twin pillars of stone, analyzing them from every angle and carefully studying their surfaces for signs that shapes naturally occurring in the rocks might have been exploited and exaggerated by human tools. But she could find nothing. Nothing at all. From the distance, these folded, upthrust remnants of some ancient eruption did look uncannily like two human heads, the faces long and narrow, the noses and eyes stylized and yet remarkably evocative. But the effect was entirely coincidental, like the face of the man in the moon. From certain angles, in fact, the resemblance disappeared entirely.
Buzzing with elation, India pulled out her notebook and found a flat rock on which to sit while she began making a series of quick, rough sketches. Thanks to Mr. Ryder, she would need to wait until later to make a more complete, careful rendering from her notes.
For perhaps the hundredth time, India lifted the watch on her chest and studied it carefully. She still had two hours, but India McKnight was not one to run unnecessary risks by cutting things close. She had every intention of leaving for the beach with plenty of time to spare.
The wind gusted up, bringing her the fresh, briny scent of the sea and the distant sound of the surf. Raising one hand to shade her eyes from the glare of the sun, India glanced down at the bay far below, and was surprised to see a ship riding at anchor just off the entrance to the passage through the reef. The sight gave her pause for a moment, but by squinting, she was able to make out the white ensign of the Royal Navy fluttering reassuringly from the ship’s mast.
She watched, surprised, as the ship’s crew went about the business of lowering the jolly boat. Then she went back to her sketching.
Chapter Six
ALEX PRESTON STOOD on the Barracuda’s deck and stared at the steaming, green-black mass of mountains rising above the palm-fringed shores of Takaku. The savage beauty of the island attracted and yet repelled him, like the seductive, dangerous call of some mythical temptress of old. He ached with a desire to both know it and tame it, as if by subduing its wild bestiality he could somehow conquer all the primitive, frightening urgings within himself.
“I’d like to be a member of the boarding party, sir,” he said as Captain Granger prepared to join the armed seamen in the jolly boat.
Simon Granger glanced up from buckling on his sword, the fierce tropical sunlight falling full on a face that was still surprisingly young for a ship’s captain. He was probably no more than thirty, Alex thought, just eight years older than Alex himself. But Granger’s clear-thinking leadership in those long, tortured weeks following the sinking of the Lady Juliana had not only made him a hero, it had also been very good for his career. Looking at him now, Alex felt a vague stirring that was part envy, part determination. It would be very good for Alex’s career if the Barracuda were to succeed in nabbing Jack Ryder—particularly if Alex himself could have a hand in the man’s capture. It would justify his being here now as first lieutenant, and quiet those who said he was too young, too inexperienced for such a posting. Those who kept whispering about his family’s connections. They didn’t understand, those people who whispered, the weight of such advancements, and the expectations that came with them.
“Very well, Mr. Preston,” said the captain. “If Ryder’s not on the Sea Hawk, you may remain on board the yacht with a small contingent while the rest of us go ashore.”
Alex swal
lowed a surge of disappointment. “I’d like to go ashore myself, sir.”
“Why?” The captain’s eyes narrowed, as if he could somehow peer into the tortured recesses of Alex’s soul. “To see the island? Or for the righteous satisfaction of being there when we capture Ryder? No, don’t answer that,” Granger added, throwing up one hand when Alex opened his mouth to do just that. “Tell me this instead: Have you never done anything wrong, Mr. Preston?”
Alex hesitated. “Nothing of great magnitude, no, sir.”
“No? Then you’ve been fortunate.” The captain turned toward the ship’s ladder. “Come along, Mr. Prescott. Let’s hope that life continues to be so kind to you.”
Jack paused with one booted, canvas-covered leg thrown over the Sea Hawk’s rail, a machete strapped to his side, and watched the British corvette in the open water on the far side of the reef launch its jolly boat with a rattle and a splash. “Bloody hell. I can’t believe this. What the blazes are they doing here?”
Oars in hand, Patu looked up glumly from the dinghy. “I did try to warn you. You said you weren’t worried.”
Jack scrambled down the rope ladder and dropped the last few feet into the yacht’s small boat. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Simon and that bloody Scotswoman set this whole thing up as a trap.”
“Huh,” Patu grunted, pulling hard on the oars. “I thought you said you and Granger were old friends.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Because if it’d been me, I wouldn’t have expected a woman like Miss McKnight to interest you.”
“What the hell are you talking about? That woman doesn’t interest me. I did this for the money, remember?” Frowning, Jack stared up the steaming summit of Mount Futapu. The way he figured it, he was looking at a two-to three-day overland trek—he refused to think of it as a flight—to the French port of La Rochelle on the northern end of the island. It would be up to Patu to deal with the British boarding party and see that Miss McKnight made it back to Neu Brenen. Damn the woman with her bloody theories of Polynesian migration and that infectious, beguilingly attractive glimmer of excitement in her eyes.