“And if Captain Granger figures out where you’re going and has the Barracuda patrolling off La Rochelle when I come to pick you up?” Patu asked. “What then?”
Only two usable channels cut through Takaku’s fringing coral reef: the pass here, at Futapu Bay, and the wider break in the north that led to the harbor of the French trading post of La Rochelle. There was a third passage, a small, tortuous route barely wide enough for an outrigger canoe, that lay on the windward side of the island, but no one in their right mind would think of taking it, especially at this time of year.
“Then I guess I’ll just have to hang around La Rochelle until the Barracuda goes away.”
Patu grunted again, and ran the dinghy into the beach. “That could take a while.”
Jack swung out of the boat and splashed ashore. “It’s better than the alternative.”
“Which is what?”
“Hanging.” Gripping the sides of the dinghy, Jack made ready to push it off.
“Is it true,” Patu said suddenly, his hands slack on the oars, “what they say about the natives here? That they’ve taken to eating people again?”
“Not people. Just missionaries.” Jack gave the boat a hard shove that sent it shooting away from the beach. “Don’t worry,” he called. “No one’s going to mistake me for a missionary.”
“No.” Leaning into his oars, Patu threw a quick glance toward the reef, where the Barracuda’s jolly boat was already threading its way through the passage. “But someone might easily take Miss McKnight for one.”
Jack stood for a moment, the waves breaking at his feet, his gaze fastened on the approaching jolly boat. A blinding flash of sunlight glinted as if off the lens of a spyglass, and a shout went up to mingle with the roar of the distant surf and the buffeting of the fresh sea breeze.
Jack took off across the beach at a run, dodging through the thinly scattered coconut trees, his boots kicking up sprays of soft sand that fanned out behind him. He followed, for now, the same path India McKnight had taken, for it would lead him around to the other side of the mountain where he would find another trail he knew that would take him north.
As the trees thickened, he slowed to a steady dogtrot, but it still wasn’t long before the sweat was sticking his shirt to his back and rolling down his face and into his eyes. Bloody hell, he thought, sucking in air. Too many late nights drinking brandy or kava. There’d been a time, once, when he could run for miles and miles without giving it a thought.
At the junction of the two paths he paused, his head down, his hands braced on his thighs, his eyes closed as he gulped in air. Swiping an arm across his dripping forehead, he opened his eyes and found himself staring at footprints. Not the even, artificially rounded prints he’d seen left by Miss McKnight’s sensible lace-up shoes in the muddy stretches of the path from the beach, but big, splayed-toed, natural footprints, the kind left by bare feet. Lots and lots of bare feet. They’d come through here before Miss McKnight, but not long before.
“Bloody hell,” Jack whispered, his gaze following the footprints—one set shod, the others not—up the trail that led toward the summit. Straightening, he stood at the juncture of the two paths, torn between the driving urge to keep going north—deep into the safety of the jungle and far, far away from Simon Granger and the jolly boat full of armed British sailors who were doubtless at this very minute swarming over the Sea Hawk—and another compulsion, a compulsion that was unwelcome and crazy to the point of being suicidal.
He told himself he could be wrong, that the natives who’d left these footprints might not be cannibals—or even if they were cannibals, they might not be hungry. He told himself Miss India McKnight had known all about the danger of cannibals when she’d made up her stubborn, opinionated mind to come here and study the Faces of Futapu. He told himself she’d be down the mountain soon enough, anyway. Jack knew her type, always double-checking everything and arriving early for any appointment. And if she did run into trouble with the natives, she had the bloody British navy sitting right offshore, to rescue her.
Except, of course, that Simon Granger might not believe Patu. What if the British thought Patu was lying about the existence of a Scotswoman in a split tartan skirt and pith helmet? What if the Barracuda forced Patu to up anchor and sail away before the three hours Jack had given her were up?
What would happen to Miss India Bloody McKnight then?
For a dangerously long moment, Jack stood at the crossroads, wavering, turning first one way, then the other. He even took three decisive steps on the trail north, away from Simon Granger and India McKnight and the men who’d left those ominously numerous footprints. Then, swearing, he swung around to start the steady climb up to the smoking summit of Mount Futapu.
Her sketches of the so-called Faces of Futapu complete, India glanced at her watch and decided she still had enough time left for a closer inspection of the rim of the volcano.
Futapu’s crater was a good three-quarters of a mile wide and about half as deep, a poisoned-looking area of bare stained rock and gray ash half obscured by hissing steam. Venturing as close as she dared, India stared down into a fiery cauldron of red and orange molten rock, and knew a moment of humbling awe. Here were the very bowels of the earth, she thought, laid bare to the eyes of man. As she watched, a fountain of orange lava shot out of one of the crater’s holes with an explosion that was like the firing of a cannon. Flaring and spitting, the fiery eruption climbed higher and higher, then suddenly plopped back to earth, blackened and spent.
It was then that India noticed what looked like a stone platform, some three or four hundred feet away, near the gurgling, glowing hole. She couldn’t be certain from this distance—if only she weren’t cursed with this blasted eyesight!—but it looked very much as if the platform might not be entirely natural. Her curiosity piqued, she glanced at her watch, and pursed her lips in indecision. By rights, she should be getting ready to head back toward the beach. If she went to investigate the platform, she’d be cutting things tighter than she’d like. But she had been planning to leave sooner than she really needed to, and it wasn’t that far to the platform. If it took her longer to reach it than she expected, she’d simply turn around and go back.
Thus reassured, India set off along the rim of the volcano, her attention divided between minding her steps in the treacherous landscape and keeping an eye on the passage of time as recorded by her watch’s slowly moving hands.
She wasn’t there.
Standing in the shadow of the Faces of Futapu, Jack turned in a slow circle, his gaze spanning the windblown expanse of pink- and white-stained rocks and vivid blue sky and tangled green jungle set against an endless sea. Not a scrap of tartan in sight. Where the hell was she?
The natives’ footprints had veered off the trail at a point near the hot springs, but Jack hadn’t been reassured. He hadn’t liked the smell of whatever it was someone had left steaming on the rocks. Even as he searched the surrounding brush for signs of the pesky Scotswoman, he was also keeping a lookout for telltale flashes of dark bare skin. The idea of ending up in a cooking pot really didn’t appeal to him.
The ground fell away here in a bare precipice toward the bay below, so that he also had to be careful to keep out of sight of any sharp-eyed mariners who might happen to be looking up—the idea of swinging from the end of a British yardarm not appealing to him any more than a native stew pot. Flattening himself on his stomach, Jack crept closer to the cliff’s edge and saw that the jolly boat had left a couple of sailors and an officer aboard the Sea Hawk and was now headed toward the beach. A familiar figure stood tall and stiff in the boat’s prow, sunlight glinting on the barrels of the well-oiled rifles that bristled among the men behind him.
So Simon had come himself. Jack had known he would.
They’d been as close as brothers once, Jack and this man who had been sent to see him brought back and hanged. When they’d first met as young midshipmen assigned to a quick-tempered, cantankerous old c
aptain named Horatio Gladstone, they’d despised each other, for their backgrounds, temperaments, and attitudes couldn’t have been more different. As the younger son of an old and proud Hampshire family, Simon had grown up in a world of neatly hedged, misty green fields, where tenant farmers pulled their forelocks and everyone who was anyone went to Eton, or Harrow, or Winchester. But Jack was a product of the Australian outback, his childhood memories of wide-open spaces and cattle musters and Aboriginal corroborees. His family might have been successful, but they were also boisterous and relaxed and peculiarly proud, in their own way, of the transported London pickpocket and Irish whore from whom they were descended. The antipathy between the two midshipmen had been instantaneous and intense, but it hadn’t stopped them from eventually forming a bond they’d once sworn would last forever.
As if sensing Jack’s eyes upon him, Simon looked up, his gaze raking the craggy heights. Jack ducked his head and pulled back, intensely aware, suddenly, of the heat of the tropical sun on his shoulders and the hard, insistent pumping of his own heart. If he hurried, he’d have just enough time to make it back down to the path heading north without meeting Simon and his boys coming up from the beach. Oh, they might try to follow him, but Jack had spent years in the jungles of the South Pacific, while Simon was, and always would be, a navy man.
A sea tern circled lazily overhead, drawing Jack’s attention to the far rim of the volcano, where a woman in a tartan skirt stood, sketchbook in hand, her attention fastened on something he couldn’t see. What the hell was she doing over there? he wondered, momentarily diverted. She should by rights be headed back down by now.
One hand on his machete to keep it from knocking noisily against a stone, Jack scooted away from the cliff’s edge and straightened carefully. He had every intention of going off and leaving Miss India McKnight to the heroics of Simon and his boys in blue, when something else caught his attention, something he realized was a man’s naked black buttocks, liberally smeared with mud and moving stealthily in her direction.
Chapter Seven
BAD EYESIGHT WAS a severe handicap to a travel writer, particularly to one without the fortitude to venture too close to a volcano’s edge. Or rather, the foolhardiness; India told herself it would definitely be foolhardy to risk sliding to such a terrifyingly hideous end.
Standing well back from the steaming rim, she balanced the edge of her notebook against her midriff and squinted at the rock ledge that jutted out precariously over the bubbling, rumbling inferno. It must be from this very rock, she thought with a thrill of illicit excitement, that the natives used to hurl sacrifices to the fiery god below. Was the ledge a natural formation, or not? Impossible to tell from here, yet impossible to get any closer to make certain. She thought wistfully of Jack Ryder’s spyglass, and decided in future to add one to the collection of necessities she carried in her knapsack.
Ever mindful of the oppressive, ticktocking passage of time, India set to work capturing the image before her in quick, bold pencil strokes. One more minute. All she needed was one more minute—
“What the bloody hell are you doing up there?”
The harsh, colonially accented voice, so unexpected and so near, broke her concentration. With a startled gasp, she swung about so quickly her boots slid on the scattering of small stones at her feet and she had to throw out her arms in a panicked and rather undignified maneuver to preserve her balance. Her fingers tightened on the edge of her notebook just in time to keep it from flying into the glowing red oblivion below. Her gaze fell on Jack Ryder, clothed, for once, in the attire considered suitable for his culture. True, his shirt hung unbuttoned halfway down his dark chest, and the sleeves had been rolled up to reveal tanned, muscular forearms. But he was wearing rugged canvas trousers and—wonder of all wonders—boots. She watched him climbing purposefully toward her up the blighted crest of bare rock that rimmed the volcano’s edge, and a surge of indignation swelled within her. “Of all the inconsiderate, unthinking—”
“Shut up and get down here, fast, or I swear to God, lady, I’ll let them eat you.”
“Them?” she repeated in a squeaky voice that was not at all like her, for what she saw in his face took her breath away.
“So far, I’ve seen three natives, all watching you.” He paused just below her, one hand on the machete at his side, his sweat-streaked features lifting into an odd, chilling smile. “And you can bet your bustle there’s more.”
All her senses brought to instant, quivering attention, India stood perfectly still, only her eyeballs moving as her gaze searched the edges of the dark tangle of rain forest surrounding the open summit.
“No, don’t look. Just get down here, now.”
Hastily stowing the notebook in her knapsack, India plunged down the rocky slope, sliding the last few feet to his side. As she reached him, his hand closed over her upper arm, his fingers digging in hard. “We’re going to walk fast, but not too fast,” he said in a low, calm voice. “We don’t want them to think we’re scared.”
Scared? She was so scared, her fingers were tingling, but she forced herself to walk beside him with calm dignity. “The death grip on my arm is unnecessary,” she said after a moment when he continued to hold on to her as they crossed the bare stretch of poisoned rocks that yawned between them and the path back down to the beach. “I understand the gravity of the situation. If you had explained yourself more clearly at the outset, then I—”
“Save your breath. We might need to run.”
India saved her breath. Her long legs in their split skirt easily matched his man’s stride, but the pace he set was brutal.
Leaving the sun-blasted bare rock face of the summit behind, they plunged again into the dark thickness of the rain forest, the tall, creeper-hung mass of beeches and laurels and pandanus instantly cutting off sight of the shimmering sea and the cooling trade winds that blew across it. Here all was shadow and steamy, smothering heat and the heavy smell of damp, fecund earth. Plunging down the steep, rocky hillside, they passed the bubbling thermal pond with its faintly lingering odor of cooked meat, and then the first hot springs India had seen. And still the primeval forest yawned around them, seemingly empty and silent except for the furtive rustling of small unseen creatures, and the loudly screeched complaint of a vivid-hued parrot.
“Are they following us?” she finally asked, when she could bear the suspense no longer.
The man beside her didn’t slacken his pace, although he did throw her an amused look. “Shall we linger for a while and see what happens?”
She lapsed into silence again. The path here ran through an area of rocky outcroppings beside sheer, unexpected drop-offs, and she was finding it difficult at such a pace to keep her footing on the steep, muddy path. Once, her foot slid in an unexpected patch of muck and shot off into space, and she found she was grateful for the tight grip he’d continued to hold on her arm, even though he almost dislocated her shoulder pulling her back up beside him onto the trail.
She grabbed a handful of the loose cotton shirt at his chest and held on to it as she swayed slightly, her breath coming in ragged gasps. He gripped her other shoulder to steady her, his straight dark brows drawing together as he studied her. “You doing all right?”
She nodded, determined. “Yes. Thank you. I simply needed a moment to catch my breath. I—”
The crack of a rifle shot echoed through the jungle. Bark flew from a tree just feet from India’s face, and she let out a startled yelp.
“Bloody hell,” swore Jack Ryder, and yanked her down behind the nearest boulder.
India pressed her back against the moss-covered rock. Her heart was pounding so hard, it hurt. “Those aren’t cannibals,” she said in a strangled whisper. “Who—”
“Hold your fire, you fool,” shouted a crisp, vaguely familiar English voice from below, a voice India had last heard on the docks of Rabaul Harbor. “You could have hit Miss McKnight.”
“Good heavens,” said India. “It’s Captain Gran
ger.”
She was aware of the man beside her stiffening, his head whipping around to pin her with a deadly blue stare. “Friend of yours?” he asked in an unpleasant drawl.
India shook her head, confused and more afraid, suddenly, than she had been up there at the summit, surrounded by cannibals.
Jack Ryder’s hands descended on her shoulders, jerking her forward so that she fell into him, one hand splayed against an intimidatingly hard chest, her head forced back at an awkward angle as she stared up at him. She knew a fission of fear that took what was left of her breath and left her shaky and cold. “You bloody well set me up, didn’t you?” he said, his words low and even, his lips curling back from his teeth in a fierce smile. “You bloody bitch.”
India’s mouth went dry. She’d thought him easygoing and lazy, an annoying but essentially harmless degenerate. Now she stared into eyes that were glittering and dangerous, and knew how wrong she’d been. She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You might as well give it up, Jack,” called the English voice from below. “I’ve six armed seamen with me. You so much as stick your head around that boulder, and you’ll lose it. This is checkmate, Jack.”
He seized her wrist, spinning her around in an elbow-wrenching maneuver she didn’t even comprehend until she felt her back slam against his chest and heard the bare blade of his machete whip through the air to come to rest a whisper below her chin. “You got me into this,” Jack Ryder hissed in her ear, his hard arm crushing her breasts as he pinned her back against him in a deadly parody of a lover’s embrace. “You can bloody well get me out of it.”
“But I didn’t—”
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