His Wicked Kiss (5 page)

The next morning, Papa and Connor set out early to visit the Waroa settlement a few miles away in hopes of finding an Indian guide who might be willing to take them into the Amazon.

Eden
prayed the Waroas had more sense than her genius father. Perhaps Papa’s friend, the shaman, might even talk him out of this mad plan, for most tribes in the region dreaded as much as the whites did the fierce Yanomami who ruled the Amazon forest. They were said to make a soup out of the enemies they killed.

The more she thought about it, the more she feared her sire was truly fixed on his own destruction, perhaps without even realizing it. Perhaps death really was his underlying plan—to be all the sooner reunited with Mama. She worried over this morbid possibility all morning as she went about her usual list of chores: managing breakfast, giving the servants their daily instructions, checking supplies, taking down the instrument readings and recording them in the logbook: temperature, barometric pressure, and lastly, the river’s current depth.

For this final item, she followed the plank-and-hemp boardwalk from their camp down to the little rickety dock that the men had constructed. Along the way, she found solace in the morning breeze that rustled gracefully through the palm fronds, and swayed the hanging vines and lianas.

Tilting her head back, she watched blue and gold and scarlet macaws swoop overhead, spiraling through the canopy like living fireworks. Three stories overhead, a spider monkey swung from branch to branch with its baby clinging to its back. Closer to earth, a large, sleek aguti dug in the soil with its long front claws, trying to pull up a root for its breakfast, and snuffling in the dirt with rodent pleasure.
Eden
watched it for a moment, rather amused, then continued on her way.

A big blue dragonfly zoomed across her path as the boardwalk rounded the giant buttressed roots of a native mahogany tree. Nearing the riverbank, she paused to scan the surrounding area before walking out onto their shaky private dock: She had no intention of becoming anything’s breakfast.

Finding the way clear, she proceeded out to where three dugout canoes were tied, bobbing in the lazy current.

Making her notations, she squinted at the marker-pole that Connor had sunk into the river mud some ten feet from the bank. It served as a huge ruler.
Twenty-five feet
. Low today, even for the dry season.

She marked the reading with her pencil in the logbook.

A sudden spray of water nearby startled her, but then she smiled, alerted to this visit from one of the mysterious pink dolphins that inhabited the river. Magical creatures, invisible in the
aqua negra
. She crouched down, scanning the murky shallows. Her smile broadened as she caught a glimpse of a coral-pink tail fin.

The Indians called these animals
Buoto
and believed they were really sorcerers in dolphin form, who dwelled in a golden kingdom that existed underneath the river. Whenever a baby was born in the village to a girl with no husband, the elders proclaimed it the work of a
Buoto
who had changed himself by enchantment into a handsome young warrior and had sneaked into the village to find a wife. The
Buoto
were infamous for their amorous ways when they transformed themselves into men. Fortunately for
Eden
’s virtue, the pink dolphin was gone again as swiftly as it had appeared.

Satisfied with her notations, she returned to camp to finish with her list of morning chores.

Upriver at Angostura, Jack received his delivery of rare tropical hardwoods from the local timber dealer and personally oversaw the laborious process of attaching the barge piled with felled trees to the wide, flat-bottomed river craft he had hired.

When all twenty crewmen from his gunship were accounted for, he shook hands on the dock with Don Eduardo.

“Safe journeys, Knight.” Montoya followed Jack’s upward stare to the balcony of the guest apartment, where the dark-haired girl, wrapped in a bedsheet, languidly waved farewell from the wrought-iron railing.

Jack blew her a kiss.

“You may take her with you if you like,” his host said in discreet amusement. “At least it would keep her out of my son’s clutches.”

“God, no.” Jack flicked him a wry look. “A woman at sea? Nothing but headaches.” With that, he jumped into the sturdy riverboat, an odd-looking hybrid of steam and sail, but serviceable.

Don Eduardo sauntered to the edge of the dock as Jack’s men tugged the ropes free from their mooring posts. He sent them a final salute as Jack gave the order to set sail.

When his men poled the craft away from the docks and out into the middle of the river’s slow but powerful current, Jack set his gaze straight ahead, not sparing one look back at the woman he had ravished so thoroughly last night.

Such was a sailor’s fate. The trick, of course, was never to stay in one place long enough to get attached. And that was just the way that Jack preferred it.

He spent the first hour of their journey keeping an eye on the local pilot he had hired to navigate them down the unfamiliar river. He knew enough about the sea to realize that a wise man treated a great river like the
Orinoco
with extreme respect. He always preferred local guides in his travels, and as the swarthy mestizo captain of the riverboat got them off to a smooth start, Jack went to check on the lumber, and got a splinter for his pains. Finally, with their downriver voyage well underway, he decided that he could relax for a while.

With Trahern leaning nearby, gazing at the wide, sun drenched river ahead, Jack settled in for the day-long ride with a copy of Angostura’s first official newspaper, recently established by Bolivar. Reclining in a battered wooden chair inside the cramped pilothouse, he put his feet up, crossed his booted heels, and chewed on an unlit cheroot.

“I still don’t see why you didn’t insist that they pay you silver,” Trahern said to him at length in English, which their pilot did not understand. “You could sell it on the currency market in
China
, and your profit is fifty percent.”

“Chris, relax. We’re already running a perfectly adequate silver trade out of
Buenos Aires
.” It was smuggled silver, of course, but why split hairs? The English Crown turned a blind eye to the flourishing business of British smugglers in
South America
; after all,
John
Bull was painfully light in the pockets these days. “You have to be patient if you want to get rich,” he advised, turning the page of the newspaper before abruptly tossing it aside. “Utter tripe.
Liberty
this, liberty that. Naught but the usual propaganda.”

“But you love propaganda, Jack,” Trahern said in amusement.

“Only when I’m the one using it. Bloody God, it’s hot. Open that window wider.”

Trahern obeyed. “Look!” He pointed to a group of colorful riders storming across the flat golden plains. “A band of
llaneros
.”

“T
hank
God Bolivar finally got them on his side, at least.”

“Something like a cavalry,” Trahern agreed with a shrug.

“At least they know how to fight,” Jack murmured. “They won’t run. And they know the territory.” He watched the rugged cattlemen of the plains driving their herds to fresh grazing.

After the impressive cavalcade had passed, he leaned back thoughtfully in his chair. “Think I’ll catch a bit of sleep for now. That girl wore me out.”

Trahern laughed. “Poor fellow.”

Jack grinned and tugged the brim of his straw hat down lower over his eyes; folding his arms across his chest, he stretched his long legs out before him and dozed. He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night—not that he was complaining—but he knew he’d need to be sharp when it came time to slip past the Spanish at the coast and rendezvous with his ship.
The Winds of Fortune
was hiding now in a cove near Icacos Point, a rocky peninsula that jutted southward off the
island
of
Trinidad
in the straits known as the Serpent’s Mouth.

He’d left his third-in-command, Lieutenant Peabody, in charge of the vessel, with Brody, the stalwart master-at-arms, to lend a bit of added steel to his orders. Nevertheless, being parted from his beloved vessel with the Spanish flotilla so nearby made him a tad nervous.

As soon as the
Winds
picked up Jack and his men, along with this small fortune in timber, they would set sail across the
Atlantic
, and ride the trade winds back to the
British Isles
.

It was midmorning by the time
Eden
was finished cataloguing the latest editions to her father’s ever-growing herbarium and making sure that all their recently pressed and dried botanical samples remained undamaged by the relentless humidity.

At last, finding herself at her leisure, she wasted no time in escaping up into the green Gothic cathedrals of the canopy.

From the age of ten,
Eden
had mastered the art of climbing trees using an ancient invention from the Indians called a foot-belt. Ascended to some five stories over the forest floor, she stood in the elbow of a towering mahogany for a while, staring out at the beckoning distance.

Not even Father liked climbing this high, but
Eden
did. She could see forever from up there; somehow, from that higher vantage point, it was easier to think.

Things seemed clearer, simpler. Miles upon endless miles of jungle opened up on every side around her, sprawling horizons, with a misty blue glimmer of the sea beckoning from the great beyond. As she stared into the hazy distance, restlessness churned in her veins, born of too much isolation.

Here in her fierce paradise, the loneliness whispered its ever more urgent question:
Will I always be alone
?

Jack was not sure how long he had dozed when Trahern spoke his name in an odd tone.

He opened his eyes and looked around, and could have sworn they’d traveled back in time a thousand years.

Leaving behind the golden savannahs with their blue skies and vast horizons, they had entered a mysterious, dripping, emerald world of green light and moss-colored shadows.

The miles-wide river had split into a thousand narrow fingers at the Delta, a complex maze of smaller natural canals, called
canos
, all of which led to the sea.

Jack saw that their swarthy mestizo pilot was taking them down one of these quiet arteries through dense jungle. The lush vegetation formed a tunnel over the waterway, sealing in the hothouse environment. The air was thick and moist, without a breeze.

As the boat glided deeper into pristine tropical forest, the constant birdsong and animal noises somehow did not disrupt the profound stillness of this place. Jack stared in wonder.

Even his raucous crew had gone silent.

Countless long-legged insects skated on water whose surface looked like olive-colored glass. Suddenly, an aggressive, throaty roar shattered the stillness from somewhere up in the trees. His men jumped then looked around uneasily as the roar turned into a series of staccato screams.

“What the hell was that, Cap’n?” Higgins, the foretop man, muttered, blessing himself with a hasty sign of the cross.

“Howler monkey,” Jack murmured, recalling descriptions he had read. Searching the boughs overhead for the large monkey, instead he spotted the magnificent white plumage of a harpy eagle with the noble bearing of a mythical griffon. He pointed, showing it to his men. “Look at that!”

Green parrots, orange-billed toucans, and riotous macaws fled out of the harpy eagle’s path as it pushed off the branch it had been perching on and swooped off down the clear path of the
caho
, its six-foot wingspan carrying it along at an astonishing speed. Jack stared down the river as the great eagle swooped upward again with an easy flap of its giant wings and disappeared into the canopy, but then a flash of bright motion in the dark water drew his attention lower.

“What was that?” Trahern murmured, scanning the waterway ahead alongside Jack. “Crocodile?”

“But I could swear it was… pink?”

They looked at each other in consternation, but then the creature swam by the boat and all of the men exclaimed in wonderment as the thing proved to be a pink dolphin.

“
Buoto
,” said their local pilot sagely, then he pointed over the wheel. “
Mira aqui!”

On the right bank of the river sat a primordial monster that could have been descended from fire-breathing dragons of legend.

“Holy Mother,” Higgins breathed, staring at the enormous beast.

The
Orinoco
crocodile was longer than the boat. Jack stared at the magnificent monster in awe, but Trahern took one look at it and picked up the nearest Baker rifle.

“No.” Jack stopped him, but the beast’s instincts were equally defensive, and with a wicked speed that sent a chill down all their spines, the crocodile launched into the water with silent power, barely making a splash.