The Diamond King (42 page)

She reached for one of the jugs of water Tomas had brought them and tore off a piece of her trousers. She wiped her face clean, then tore off another piece and did the same for him. Alex knew he should move away, or insist that she use all the water for herself, but her touch was so light, the gesture so tender, he could not move, could not resist, could not say nay. He was so tired. The cycle of fever, chills, and shakes had been gone for longer than at any time since its onset, but he was still infernally weak.

It was dark when Jenna finished. Mickey and the
bandeirantes
had made repeated trips to the river for water, then disappeared while she changed into a dress and washed the sailor’s clothing she’d been wearing. She hung them up on a branch and hoped they would be dry the next day. She did the same with Alex’s shirt.

She saw only shapes. They had no fire because smoke might lead any pursuers to them. Her eyes had become accustomed to the deep gloom of the forest where there was only a glimpse of a moon and a few stars directly overhead.

She’d needed to keep busy to keep from thinking about what had happened earlier. She could still feel the tightness around her body, the horror of the snake.

Jenna did not want to be alone. Physically alone. Even the presence of seven men nearby did nothing to ease the trembling despite her attempts to ignore it. She did not want anyone else to see how frightened she was. How frightened she still was. She did not think she would ever regard this forest benignly again.

She moved next to Alex. But she couldn’t reach out again. She had been rebuffed before. He had taken her in his arms, but that was in reaction. Now he’d had time to build his defenses again.

And she did not want his pity.

Still, she needed the sense of safety she always felt with him. To her
surprise, he pulled her close to him. He didn’t say anything. He just held her
close.

The trembling subsided. The horror started to fade.

She felt safe again.

But for how long?

She screamed. The snake was twisting itself around her, tightening its body and squeezing the breath out of her. She flailed out, but it just kept wrapping around her....

Her hand were seized, imprisoned. Her panic intensified until she heard soft murmurings and felt lips touching her face.

“It’s all right, love.” She heard the softness of his words, felt his protectiveness as he wrapped his arms around her. His body tightened against hers.

He was shirtless, and her hands reached out for him, touching the warmth of his skin. He was alive. She was alive, and she needed to feel every bit of that life. She was completely clothed, yet their bodies sought each other even through the layers of cloth. She felt him growing hard beneath his trousers and her body remembered how he had felt weeks ago in Martinique. Heat puddled inside her.

Despite his body being weakened by the illness, his warmth and need comforted her, even as it sparked fires inside. His lips caressed her face, then her lips, and they were clinging together, both with their own need. If she hadn’t been fully clothed ...

But she was, and he was weakened from his illness, and there were other people around and ...

The passion was there, the need was there, the celebration of being alive. He parted his lips and she parted hers, and his tongue began a lazy seduction. Her fingers played with his back and she felt him grow rigid.

She wanted him. She needed him even more.

Their kiss deepened, his lips rough and demanding and as desperate as her own. She wanted to whisper that she loved him, but she feared that would cause him to move away, and she did not want that. She wanted him with her, against her. In her. She wanted his heat and passion and power.

Her body pressed closer to his.

Then nothing mattered, not the other sleeping bodies in the clearing, nor the silent guardian who was sitting on an incline, watching the river. Not the future nor the past. Nothing mattered except Alex.

Under the rough blanket, she unbuttoned his trousers, and felt him pull up her dress and the one petticoat she wore. She wasn’t wearing a corset. She moved closer to him.

His fingers fondled and teased, and then he entered her. It wasn’t the wild, exultant joining of weeks ago, but there was an intensity as well as gentleness that bespoke of care and longing and sweetness. She swallowed her sounds of pleasure and rejoiced in the living and belonging and in the tenderness evident in his every touch. She felt his seed flowing through her, the warmth of it, and then the shudders of pleasure.

He fell back and she snuggled next to him, her head on his chest, where she heard the sound of his heartbeat as she slowly fell asleep.

* * *

The sun woke Alex. His arms were still around Jenna and she was sleeping. He wanted to brush hair from her eyes but he did not want to wake her.

She’d had a bad night. She’d awakened screaming, her hands batting at him. No, not at him. At the snake. He had calmed her, murmured soft words in her ear, comforted her. And then ... then ...

She had finally gone to sleep again. His body had continued to respond to her closeness. He swore at himself. She was too vulnerable.

So was he.

He was her refuge now. Perhaps she was his, too. He hadn’t wanted it. He had not even expected it. Yet somehow she had become more important to him than any person before. He had loved his family, doted on his younger sister, cared deeply about the children he’d found, but he’d never felt one with anyone before. Jenna had, quite simply, become part of his heart and soul.

But was that the best thing for her? It was, he knew now, the best thing for him.

He felt her stir, then she opened her eyes and gave him a sleepy smile. “Thank you,” she said quite formally, even as she stretched out and part of her body rubbed against part of his. He felt himself responding again.

He was better. No fever. No chills. He swallowed hard, afraid to really hope they might be gone for good. He knew, though, that the British were not gone, nor were they likely to be.

He had to get Jenna to safety. To the
Ami
, and then they would find a haven.

He smelled something roasting and looked around. A small fire was blazing. It was covered by a wood brace and leaves to dilute the smoke. Pieces of meat had been skewered over the flames.

He brushed hair from her face—it had worked itself loose from the braid she wore—and straightened her clothing as best he could.

He ran his hand down her arm. “You are going to be hot.”

“I planned to wear the trousers again,” she said. “Perhaps they are dry now.” Her eyes lit in a face colored by the sun. “I’m beginning to discover the advantages of being a male. I will truly hate to go back to wearing dresses and corsets and stockings and petticoats.”

She was making light of yesterday. He grinned. “You look a lot better in trousers than most men.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “Really?”

He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Really,” he confirmed.

“I must look terrible. My hair ... my face. My mother said ladies always protected their faces.”

“And they look pale and unappealing,” he said.

She looked surprised. But then she always had when he’d offered a compliment. Now he wished he’d offered more. He suspected she had received very few.

But now was no time to linger. Tomas was tending the fire. The priest had piled up everything else, other than their clothing, near the clearing’s edge. They were obviously ready to go, and were lingering only to eat. Alex took his arms from her and sat up. “I think they are ready to go as soon as we eat,” he said.

She rose, her dress wrinkled and soiled, partly, he knew, because of their lovemaking last night. She looked at the meat on the fire and wrinkled her nose in a way he remembered. Snake! Nothing was wasted here. He wondered whether she could eat it.

She looked toward the forest, her eyes clouding. She needed another moment of privacy, and he understood completely. “This time I’m going with you,” he said.

She appeared to consider which would be the worst: the lack of modesty or being in the forest alone. The latter won. She nodded.

He leaned toward her, speaking so softly she knew no one else could hear. “I will never ever let anything happen to you.”

How could he do that if he abandoned her once they reached the coast and the
Ami
?

She asked no questions, though. Instead, she took the clothes hanging on a branch, investigated them thoroughly, then headed for a tree. More than a week on land, and she still had the lolling gait of a seaman.

He longed for the rolling deck of a ship, for the new, fresh breeze and skies unshielded by trees so thick you felt you could not breathe.

He followed and when she stopped, he gazed around, looking for anything that might present a danger. He saw nothing. He nodded his head, then turned around, averting his gaze. Other than a monkey jumping from one tree to another, their movements seemed to have stilled all other living creatures.

Then she was next to him and she held out her hand to him. He looked at it for a moment, then took it and held her close. She touched his cheek. “The illness has gone away.”

“For the moment,” he said. “The priest said it can come back at any time. It could even hide for years, then recur.” He heard the emptiness in his own voice.

She looked at him. “I love you,” she said simply.

He stilled. A muscle jerked in his throat. He’d known it. He knew she was not the kind of woman who would sleep with a man unless she did. Or thought she did. He’d kept telling himself it had only been the danger and adventure. He could do that no longer.

“You should despise me,” he said. “You never would have been in such danger yesterday were it not for me. You wouldn’t be in this place.”

“I came here on my own,” she said simply as she pressed her fingers to his mouth to quiet his self-condemnation. “I make my own decisions.”

“You did not make them when I took your ship.”

“Nay. But all the others were mine.”

“I am a wanderer, lass.”

“It may be that I am, too.”

“It has been only a few months. Being a fugitive becomes old. You do not make decisions. Decisions are made for you.”

“There are places to go.”

“Not now.”

“Aye. I have heard that the American colonies are a vast place. You can get easily lost.”

“You also need a sound body.”

“I think you have a very sound body,” she said with a smile.

He grinned despite himself. She kept surprising him. She would never be boring. Or predictable.

“You see what you want to see.”

“I see someone who can do whatever must be done,” she said. “Someone with honor and courage and strength. Burke said you could have escaped Scotland long before you did if you had not continued to pick up children.”

“Burke said that?”

“Aye. He told me you always got yourself in trouble and I should have nothing to do with you.”

“That sounds more like him.”

“He cares about you.”

“He cares about his own hide,” he said, surprised that Burke said anything at all. But his own words were a lie. Burke had had many opportunities to leave him, and he would probably have fared better by doing so. Burke was as loyal as any man alive. This discussion was going nowhere, though. He could not let it go anywhere.

“We should go back. They will be getting impatient.”

“That means we have to eat.”

“Aye.”

She shuddered slightly. “I am not sure that I can.”

“There is hard bread, too.”

“I like that much better.”

Any other woman would be screaming rather than looking a little smug at finding a solution to the problem. He found himself smiling again. And not just on the outside.

They paddled down the river for three more days, then the men carried the two canoes over land and started down another waterway. Even Alex helped. He’d not had a relapse since the snake episode.

Jenna thought it was willpower. She had discovered by now that he had an iron will and steely control. He was like that with her, too. Since that night when she needed him so badly, he’d very carefully drawn a line between them. She would catch him watching her, and every once in a while he would hold out a hand to help her in and out of a canoe, or when she tripped, but mostly he kept the distance he’d always tried to keep.

Not that there was time to indulge in anything other than survival. The priest was confident they had lost their pursuers, but they must know that Alex’s ship had to be somewhere along the coast. Their big problem was reaching the
Ami
before the ship was discovered by the British.

The priest knew the island pinpointed by Mickey and agreed upon by Claude. They knew that much depended on Claude. He could just return to France, reporting to their sponsor that he had been chased by a British frigate. He could then keep the captain’s share of the prize. There was that, and there was also the chance that the British would find the ship. That would leave the five of them in a country where they would be hunted by both Portuguese authorities who looked unfavorably upon smuggling, and the British who would like nothing better than to find the pirate and any of his friends.

Alex seemed to gain strength every day, although when they made camp each evening he limped badly. She knew every step was a mammoth effort. It hurt her to watch as he grimaced when he folded his legs when they took a brief rest.

They slept only during the deepest hours of night. She’d had one nightmare—again the snake—and Alex had held her until she slept. She had awakened alone.

She said no more about love. She knew he viewed the future with skepticism, but she’d said what she had to say and did not intend to inflict her hopes or needs on him. She’d almost died that day, and she was not going to leave the world without making him realize someone could— would—love him.

The only thing she could do now was try to avoid being a burden to either him or anyone else. Except for the snake, she ate what they gave her, tried never to complain, and washed their clothes when the priest said it was safe. She thought often of her life in Scotland. Servants had done everything. She had never washed a piece of clothing in her life.