Shadow Play (30 page)

He did not say anything or acknowledge her presence. In every way he looked the brooding stranger he had been those many grueling days that they journeyed down the Amazon, hardly the man who had held her so passionately throughout the night—who had asked her to marry him. Hesitantly, she placed her hand on his arm. "Please don't be angry, Morgan."

He yanked his arm away and left her, swaying as if drunk, making Sarah frown and watch him guardedly. He moved toward Henry, who had begun to break down her tent. "Henry," he said, and his voice sounded dry. "We need to talk."

"I have nothing more to say to you, Morgan."

"The hell you don't. You don't beat a friend's face in, men walk away. I'm sorry if I've

upset you, but—"

"Why don't I believe you? Could it be because I happen to know you haven't uttered one truthful word the entire time I've known you? I really don't think you know the difference between reality and illusion."

Standing, Sarah moved toward them. "What's this about?" Flinging the canvas to the ground, Henry stalked
off to the far side of the clearing and began gathering up the cooking gear. Morgan stood where Henry had left him, shirt gaping open, hands on his hips. Kan appeared at that moment. Behind him hurried the five others. Breathing heavily, he announced, "We have seen the Xavante village and there is much excitement among them. They argue over whether they should attack again."

Sarah stepped forward. "Then we must leave as soon as possible."

"Stay out of this," Morgan snapped.

' 'But surely you can't mean to remain here any longer—"

'
⁴
1 said to shut up, Sarah." He rounded on her so viciously she stumbled back in surprise.

Henry leapt forward, placed himself between them, and glared up at Morgan. "Don't you dare vent your anger on her," he declared. "She's not the guilty one here."

"And just what the hell am I guilty of?" Morgan demanded. "I didn't rape her, you know. I didn't do anything more than any other man would have done if given the same chance."

The blood drained from her face as Sarah heard the words. She was shaken, not just over this breach of friendship, but over the ugliness of Morgan's tone.

"You took advantage of the situation!" Henry shouted.

Morgan watched Henry cross the clearing and begin to roll up the sleeping mats. His nose

was throbbing, and his stomach where Henry had punched him felt as if it had

been twisted into a knot. He felt like thin glass that might shatter from the least pressure.

And then he simply lost control. He vaguely realized he vas moving toward Henry, reaching for him, jerking him around so forcefully his friend's feet left the ground. Lowering his voice to a harsh whisper, he said, "Maybe you need to use those bones in your nose to clean out your ears,
runt.
Sarah isn't the wounded party here. If anyone got hurt here, it was
me.
If anyone got used here, it was
me.
I care for her, Henry, in case you haven't noticed. I care a helluva
lot, as a matter of fact, or I would've seduced her long ago. But I was the one taken this time. I asked her to marry me and she turned me down."

Henry stared up at him, his face emotionless but his eyes intense. "Morgan... are you in love with her?"

No response.

"By Jove," Henry whispered. "You are. Of course you are. Why didn't I see it sooner? My God, man, I'm sorry."

Morgan turned away, grabbed his knife and sheath off the ground, and proceeded to loop it around his hips and buckle it. "Let's get the hell out of here," he ordered.

All day long, Morgan drove them relentlessly, slashing with the machete one moment, cursing the frightened natives the next. As one of the Indians fell to his knees, Sarah threw herself on Morgan and cried, "For the love of God, what do you think you're doing? You're killing these men!"

"I don't hear them complaining."

"Because you've frightened them to death." She hurried back to the suffering Indian and, along with Kan and Henry, helped him sit up. Kan hurried to cut a
cipo de aqua
and held it to the man's lips. Soaking the tail of her shirt with the liquid, Sarah mopped his face as he mumbled to her. "What is he saying?" she asked Kan.

Frowning, Kan shook his head and responded in the Indian's language. Again the trembling man spoke to Sarah, more urgently this time, and the others moved up around him, joining in on the conversation, their voices rising in volume. They glanced toward Morgan, who, leaning against a tree, regarded them all with a dispassion Sarah found more terrifying than his earlier fury.

Kan said, "They say this American is more of a devil than a
boto.
They say he is a dead spirit who is leading them to the place of no return." Kan looked at her, his eyes worried. "They believe Kane is no longer in his right mind.
They say a fever is eating away his brain, that he no longer knows where he is going."

"But that's not true," she argued, both to Kan and to the round-eyed Indian who gaped at Morgan in dread. Turning to Morgan, she refused to acknowledge the odd brightness of his eyes, the flush of his skin, and demanded, "Tell them, why don't you? Tell them you know where we are."

He remained still and silent, his refusal to respond making the shrieks of birds and
howlings of monkeys painfully unbearable. It was all she could do not to cover her ears and scream herself as the panic rose inside her. How many times during the past days had she questioned the reasons they had not yet reached King's domain? She moved toward Morgan, noting details that she had not noticed before. He'd lost weight. His eyes held a vacancy that had not been there even yesterday. "Tell them," she said. "Reassure them. Why don't you say something? Please."

His mouth curled in a smile.
⁴
'Chere
... I confess that I don't know what the hell I'm doing or where I'm going."

"But you said this was the way you escaped Japura."

"Did I? Well, then, I lied... again. Tell them, Henry. You seemed so damn sanctimonious this morning, perhaps you would like to inform them all that they've been had. You see,
chere,
I don't know where we are because I didn't escape Japura on foot. I hid in a supply boat until it reached Tefe then jumped overboard when the captain discovered me pilfering food. I did make it overland for two days, evading King's henchmen who were intent on gunning me in the back. Then I ran into our Xavante friends and decided to take my chances in the river. That's when I found myself swept up in a bore tide and nearly drowned. Henry saved my worthless life."

"Oh, God," she said.

He leaned harder against the tree, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. "All that crap about
botos
was our pygmy friend's idea. It came about because just before he dragged
me out of the water, he saw a pink dolphin. When he told the Indians in Georgetown about it, the rumor grew that I was blessed, magical; I was the long-awaited
boto.
They started searching me out, offering me food and other... pleasures. One thing led to another—you know how stories travel—"

Henry moved to his friend, his face pinched with remorse. "Morgan, I didn't mean the things I said this morning—"

"Shut up!" He yelled so loudly the Indians quelled and the animals' cacophony dwindled to an occasional staccato trill. "Shut up," he repeated, the sound made menacing by its sudden gentleness. "Shut up .. .just... shut up until I'm finished. I think the lady deserves the truth. After all, I was the bastard who took her innocence. She can go home to Norman and with a clear conscience confess on her wed- ding night that a black-hearted rake took advantage of a situation and ruined her. He'll forgive her for that. I'm sure he would forgive her for anything... if he's got any wits about him."

He sagged against the tree and slid down its trunk until he sat on his heels, one arm thrown over his knees, his hand gripping the machete and rolling it in his blistered fingers. "I'm very good at lying. A trait I was born with, it seems. Some children have a gift for painting, or singing, or even dancing. But God decided that deception would be

my forte. I discovered this when I was six. You see, my mother was a prostitute. One night when she was out one of her regulars happened by and decided that I was better than nothing. He raped me twice, and after my mother found me and took me to the hospital and the doctors questioned her about my condition, she told me to lie or they would take me away from her and I would neve, see her again. So I did lie by telling them I couldn't remember anything. She took me home, and a week later I found myself standing on the orphanage steps watching her walk away, and she never—
never
—looked back, no matter how loudly I screamed for
her. So I figured... what the hell use was there in telling the truth?

"And then the widows and lonely wives started searching me out, asking me to lie to them too, tell them pretty lies that made them feel good and didn't hurt anyone. Occasionally they would lie back and say I really meant some- thing to them... until they met me on the street; men they would look right through me as if I didn't exist—as if I had
never
existed.

"And of course there was Randi...king of the frauds..."

Henry moved to Morgan and dropped to his knees. ' 'Hush,'' Henry beseeched him.' 'Morgan, I fear the Indians are right. You're ill. The fever is making you delirious."

He didn't appear to hear. His eyes remained fixed on Sarah, who watched him with tears running down her face. She turned and walked away, and coming to a pile of brush, sat upon it, ignoring the scuttle of lizards and God only knew what else that shimmied in the leaves beneath her. She covered her face with her hands and tried to make sense of this madness.

Dear God, how gullible she had been to believe all the fanciful tales of heroes and
botos.
Oh, yes, she had believed even that, to some extent. Morgan had been the epitome of every young, naive girl's dreams. Now not only were her hopes of success shattered, so were her fantasies.

"Sarah." It was Henry, stooping beside her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Sarah, Kan feels we should make camp here. It's up to you."

"Why ask me?"

"Because ..." His voice broke, making Sarah look up. "Morgan's not... capable right now," he finished.

Some fear must have shown in her face; Henry rushed on. "He's not himself. I should've realized he was ill. It's been coming on for days. It may be some infection from the broken hand. I pray that's all it is, but we won't know for sure for a few days."

Squeezing closed her eyes, she asked, "Is he rational?"

"He's very tired, Sarah."

"That doesn't answer my question, Henry. Is he cognizant enough to know what he's saying and doing?"

⁴
'At this moment, I don't think so." He smiled and added, "But he seemed fine last night, if that's what's worrying you."

She turned her face away, ashamed that he should guess the cause of her disquietude. For the love of God, she had just been informed that they were lost in the jungle, that the likelihood of their coming through this travesty was virtually nil. And all she could think of was whether or not Morgan had been in his right mind when he had held her in his arms and made her feel so wonderful, when he had asked her to marry him.

"Tell the others to make camp." She dried her eyes. "We all need to rest."

She lay in the darkness in her tent, too exhausted and hot to sleep. In desperation she had removed her clothes, but that only added to the misery. Insects crawled over her skin, forcing her to claw and swat and further curse her stupidity for coming here.

When she wasn't fending off bugs, she was crying for her father and the dispirited men huddled amid the trees, sleeping. Occasionally she cried for herself, for the death of her innocence and her dreams. But mostly she cried for Morgan. She'd been too stunned and upset earlier to fully comprehend all he had told her. But as she lay in the dark, the haunting words came back to her, the nightmares of a little boy who had been abused by a stranger and deserted by his mother. He had never had anyone, or anything, and here she'd been acting like a ninny all these weeks, desperate with the fear that she might find herself cast out of that damned, stupid London Society.

She felt like a fool. She felt brokenhearted for Morgan,
and angered over his lies. She wanted to scream at him and hold him all at once.

Morgan came at her so suddenly she had little time to do more than gasp. When his hand clamped over her mouth, her heart seemed to hesitate in its beating. He whispered, "It's only me."

She closed her eyes as he settled his body next to hers. "They wouldn't let me near you. Did you tell them not tor- She nodded. As his hand bit into her face, she whimpered.

"They're talking about turning back. We've come too far to turn back. We've sacrificed too much. But they won't listen to me anymore. They think I'm sick, or crazy. You've got to tell them no. They'll listen to you. I can find King's plantation. I know I can. We'll get your seeds, and.. .'Why are you crying? Ah, Christ, I've disappointed you. I knew you

would be if you learned the truth. But I tried to tell you. I tried a million times, but you wouldn't listen. You saw only what you wanted to see and heard what you wanted to hear."

She shoved his hand from her mouth. "You lied about everything!"

"Not everything."

She stared through the darkness at his face and felt the angry tears rise again. "You must think I'm little better than those women—"

He grabbed her and shook her. "I never thought that. Never!"

"All those things you said last night—"

"I meant them. I swear!"

She tried to roll away. He caught her and pinned her down.

"Get away from me!"

"Not until we've come to some understanding."

"The only understanding we're coming to is that I want you out of my tent."

"That wasn't how you felt last night."

"That was before I knew the truth about you."

"Which is? Sorry, sweetheart, but I'm the same man who crawled between your lovely legs last night."