Shadow Play (4 page)

Now she was trembling in his doorway, peering up at him through the black lace barrier of mourning. For an instant he was stunned. Then confused. Then the realization of why she was there hit him like a hammer and he stiffened.

She brushed past him before he asked her to enter. Even in her mourning attire she seemed oddly out of place, the understated magnificence of her dress, her regal deportment, serving to exaggerate the shabbiness of her surroundings. The fact piqued him.

"Won't you come in," he drawled, then slammed the door.

A moment passed before she faced him, her black-gloved hands gripped together. She reminded him of a kitten on the verge of bolting. She began, "My name is—"

"I know who you are."

"Then I suppose you know why I've come to see you," came her timorous voice.

He took a step toward her; she backed away and continued. "I understand you spoke to my father shortly before he died."

"So?" he replied. "What about it?"

"He asked for your help with certain... matters."

"And I told him in no uncertain terms that I wasn't interested."

She dropped her clenched hands to her sides. That, as well as the set of her small shoulders, was evidence of her growing anger.

He walked to a chair near the open window and dropped into it, tipped back against the wall, and took up a dead cigar from the windowsill. He relit it before looking at her again. "Not interested," he repeated.

"Surely for the right price—"

"Not for any price. I like living too much, Miss St. James."

' 'But you went to Japura" before and returned unscathed.''

"That's a matter of opinion,
chere."

"But your bravery has become legend. You are a hero, sir."

Gripping the cheroot between his teeth, he laughed and narrowed his eyes. In the glow of the nearby lantern the veil could not entirely hide the fiery glint of his visitor's curls. He saw the portrait again in his mind's eye and experienced a stirring of frustration, just as he had at the church, as he tried to see beyond that frilly black gauze.

Withdrawing the cigar from his mouth, he exhaled a stream of smoke through his nose before saying, "Tell you what, Princess. Take off that hat so I can see who I'm talking to, and I might reconsider."

"Don't be absurd. I'm in mourning."

"I'm not and I don't like talkin' to a friggin' shadow."

She gasped. A silent battle was waged between them as she stubbornly refused to move and he obdurately continued to stare. Unexpectedly, with a flourish of taffeta skirts, she whirled back toward the door as if she meant to storm from his presence in fury. She'd taken no more than two steps, however, when she stopped. Hands clenched at her sides, she appeared to totter in indecision. Finally, she grabbed the bonnet from her head and flung it to the floor.

She spun around, and the caustic grin slid from his lips.

Despite the rigidity of .her slight figure in its cumbersome mourning attire, Sarah St. James painted a poignant portrait of grief and despair. This was no woman, but a child. Her small face was the color of warm ivory. Her enormous turquoise eyes were red-rimmed, their magnificent shape and color exaggerated by the slant of her light brown eye- brows. Her lionlike mane of gold hair spilled over her shoulders and back. Her face did not fit the accepted standards of Victorian beauty, for her cheekbones were too pronounced; giving her face hollows and angles. And perhaps her mouth was a touch too full and red to suit most men's idea of perfection. But to a man such as he, it was a mouth that conjured up images of passion and pulse-pounding desire. In a flash

Morgan believed the rumor of a smitten Arab sheikh, willing to forgo his entire harem of wives in order to own her.

He dropped his chair to the floor and tossed the cigar aside. Standing, he moved to the window and turned his back to Sarah to stare out over the Demerara River. He took a breath before speaking. "What your father asked me to do is against Brazilian law. More importantly, it's against Rodolfo King's law. While one may escape Brazilian officials, one does not escape King... at least not for long.-'

"But you worked for him—"

"It's common knowledge that signing on with King is like selling yourself to the devil, Miss St. James. No one simply works for Rodolfo King. He owns you, body and soul, for as long as he needs you. When he tires of you, or grows angry, you die a very unpleasant death." He leaned against the windowsill, allowing-the night air to cool his brow and clear his head of memories. "I escaped, for the time being, by leaving Brazil and coming here." He turned to face her. "Your father knew the kind of man he was dealing with, yet he risked everything he owned, and most of what his friends owned, on a gamble that was doomed from the start. I'll tell you what I told His Excellency, the Governor, to his face: He was a goddamn fool."

She flew across the room and slapped his cheek. He grabbed her wrist, twisting it behind her so that she fell against him, her breasts pressed against the sweating wall of his chest.

"Just who the hell do you think you are?" he demanded. "Let's get something straight, beautiful. You may control men across five continents with a bat of those long, pretty lashes, but I'm not so easily impressed."

"Barbarian!" she hissed through her teeth. "Take your hands off me."

He shoved her away.

Her cheeks burning with color and her eyes flashing with green fire, she swept her bonnet from the floor and planted it back on her head. She stormed to the door before facing him. There was a cold determination in her voice that sounded nothing like the frail, frightened girl who had first addressed him only moments before.

"I intend to get to Rodolfo King somehow, with or with- out your help. And when I do, he will sadly regret the day he was born. Good evening, Mr. Kane, and thank you so much for your generous show of compassion over the death of my father."

Then she was gone, leaving in her wake a rush of wind that smelled of jasmine and night air.

He was still staring at the door and rubbing his cheek when Henry entered. The pygmy, dressed in a gray flannel suit with a diamond stickpin twinkling in the folds of his pristine cravat, shook his head and frowned.

"I say, Morgan, I really must teach you the finer art of wooing beautiful women."

Morgan snorted, grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the table, and uncorked it.

"My, my, Miss St. James has left you rather frazzled and... ah... red-faced. She's quite lovely, don't you think? Of course you do. I must say I'd heard stories of her somewhat fiery nature while I lived in London, but you know how rumors are. Once a sheikh imported a camel because she said she'd like to ride one. She rode the dromedary through Hyde Park on a bet—wearing a stableman's breeches, if I recall. Seems she wasn't impressed. She climbed off the woolly bugger, handed the sheikh the reins, and said, 'Sorry, your Highness, I cannot marry you.' When he asked why, she replied, 'Your mounts are uncomfortable .. .and they smell.' "

"Ah. Well, no doubt she's a spoiled bitch, no matter how beautiful she is. As my dear mother used to say, 'Pretty is as pretty does.'" He laughed in his throat and added, "What she was trying to tell me, of course, was that I was as likable as a wood-rattler with a hangover." He drank the liquor, then wrist-wiped his mouth—tried to ignore the smarting of his slapped face and the rat that was nibbling a piece of hard bread on the floor. He swigged the whiskey again before speaking. "Someone needs to bring her down a peg or two."

"Someone has. King."

Morgan looked at his companion. "That's
her
problem, my friend. Understand? I told you—I told St. James
and
his daughter—I ain't goin' back into that hellhole for any reason—not even King. That's courting death, Henry, and I've decided the last few months that I kinda like breathing.''

"Come, come, Morgan, let's be rational. Think with your brain for the moment and not your bruised ego. You want King as badly as I do. You want revenge, and you want his gold. The opportunity to get both has just been placed at your feet."

"You aren't serious, are you? You got any idea what he'll do to me if he catches me inside Brazil again?"

"Tsk, tsk, Morgan, that yellow stripe down your back is showing."

Morgan dragged the chair to the window and straddled it. He grabbed up the cigar he had earlier tossed aside and slid it into his mouth, rolling it between his lips as Henry moved up behind him. Insects hummed in the silence as he waited for his companion to speak—to take his mind off the memory of Sarah St. James's moist red mouth and the smell of her night-warm skin.

"Have you ever wondered, just for a moment, how the other half lives, Morgan?"

"Nah." He shook his head and tilted up his whiskey flask. He almost laughed at the lie. He'd fantasized about being rich all his life.

"Think of it for a moment," Henry continued. "Imagine a dining room sixty feet long and ceilings soaring twenty feet high. Think of Carrara marble, crystal chandeliers, brocade drapes, and velvet-covered walls."

"Sounds like a whore's boudoir."

Henry raised one eyebrow and scowled. "Very well.

Think of women. Beautiful, wealthy women... like Sarah St. James. There will be dozens of them. Hundreds! All clean and smelling like lavender. With sweet breath and shining hair and impeccable manners.''

Morgan closed his eyes, trying not to imagine the enticing picture. * 'They're all a lot of lushes and whores, no doubt.''

Henry's smile was kind. "Morgan, you can't compare all women to the floozies you find skulking around George- town's back alleys."

"Or N'Orleans."

"Or New Orleans. You could work the rest of your life down in that mosquito-infested wharf and bazaar and never save enough money to claw out of this poverty."

Morgan stared out at the river, feeling his cheek throb. He rubbed it with his knuckles and recalled how the St. James girl had looked while tearing off her hat, hair flying and eyes flashing at him in contempt. Who would have guessed that beneath that porcelain veneer and angelic facade hid the heart of a young tigress?

He laughed to himself, then blotted the sweat from his forehead with his wrist. He cursed the stifling heat. Ordinarily it wouldn't have bothered him; he'd grown used to the sultry South American nights long ago. But for the past week he'd been disquieted by a lot of things—ever since he'd visited the Governor's house, but he hadn't been able to place the reason for his restlessness until tonight.

"At least think about her offer," Henry said. "Just for tonight, imagine what kind of comfort and pleasure King's treasure could buy you. You could live in a palace. You could have any woman you ever dreamed of possessing... and perhaps you could at last put the demons inside you to rest. At last you could sleep at night without the fear of King finding you."

"I'll think about it," Morgan told him.

In a quieter voice, Henry said, "Think hard, my friend, because I've heard from reliable sources that you've had visitors lately."

"I
always have visitors. People just don't know when the hell to leave me alone." He

pinned the pygmy with his eyes as if to make his point.

"I'm not referring to the bevy of lovelies who are constantly lined up outside your door, Morgan. I've heard from a few of your neighbors that two men have come here several times, asking if this is the residence of 'the Americano.'"

Morgan didn't blink as he stared at his friend. "That's a cheap trick, trying to scare me into accepting Sarah's offer.''

"My intention is not to scare you. My purpose is to warn you."

"It might have been anyone."

"Perhaps. Or it could have been King's men. Tell me, Morgan, do you intend to ran again? You have said yourself that King will stop at nothing to destroy you."

' 'So what's your point?''

"Would it not be better to meet him face-to-face, as we have often discussed, and end this cat-and-mouse game once and for all?"

"Easy for you to say. He's not after your little brown butt."

"Ah, but I'm well aware of the atrocities he is capable of inflicting on innocent people. Don't forget, thanks to him, I no longer have a family. Thanks to him, the few remaining Putumayo pygmies of Japura have been wiped from the very face of the earth. Do you know what it is like to be the last living specimen of a race, Morgan? It is a little like being Gulliver stranded for eternity in Brob-dingnag, land of the giants. There is never a hope of going home again. Ever."

Morgan stared down at his whiskey flask. "You don't have to be the last of your race to be lost, Henry."

A dog barked and a boat whistle boomed out in the stillness.

"King has to be stopped." Henry walked to the door, paused, and looked back, the frustration on his face easing into the softer lines of fondness. "Morgan," he said, "you know I wouldn't let anything happen to you out there. I have faith that we can win this confrontation. I haven't let you down before, have I? I saved you from the
Pororoca,
the bore tide. I brought you to Georgetown and found you those jobs at the dock and market. I made you a hero to everyone in Guiana. I've supported you in everything you've done, haven't I?"

Morgan said nothing, recalling the past months that he had sweated the nightmarish memories of Japura from his system, or tried to. Henry had always been there as friend and supporter.

"Please think about it. For me."

"All right."

"Good-bye then," Henry said.

Morgan drank his whiskey and cursed his ability to hold his liquor. He'd been roaring drunk only two times in his life. Both times he'd been attempting to kill thoughts of his past, only to find, upon sobering, that there was no solution in a bottle to the ugly realities of life. One coped or one didn't. Burying one's head in the sand might delay trouble for the time being, but eventually it had to be faced. Henry was right about that.

But there was such a thing as pushing one's luck too far, which was exactly what he'd be doing if he confronted King again. He'd witnessed the
patrao's
vengeance too many times to naively believe he could walk away from another meeting with the man unscathed. He knew from personal experience: the man was a monster. Flogging was the mildest form of punishment King inflicted on his workers, but it was often fatal. The whips he used were made of tapir hide, five strands twisted into one whip. It wasn't as deadly as the infamous hippo hide used in the Congo, but in the hands of a man who knew what he was doing, and whose blood was as cold as King's, it could cut deeply. Ninety percent of King's workers—women and children as well as men—bore the scars of the lash. Hell, he bore them himself. Now and again the stocks were used along with the lash,