Shadow Play (45 page)

"It's not a spear. It's a blowpipe. He can hit a bird at fifty yards with an arrow from it."

"What's he doing in there?"

"I'm not certain. Would you care to ask him?"

"Good God, no." Pulling a wrought-iron chair next to hers, Norman sat down. "I'll be very frank with you, Sarah. Since our return to England your behavior has left a great deal to be desired. I've been patient—"

"And very understanding," she added.

"Very."

"I can't think of anyone who would be so understanding about his fiancee falling in love with another man and giving herself to him the way I did to Morgan."

Norman sat back in his chair and arched one eyebrow. His right eye began to twitch. "Nor can I," he stated flatly.

' 'Doesn't it bother you at all that I'm no longer a virgin?''

"Keep your voice down, Sarah."

"They don't care that I'm not a virgin." She pointed to Kan, who was shimmying down a tree. He swung from a limb, then dropped to the ground and dusted off his hands. "They believed that Morgan was the
boto,
you see, so it was a great honor for me to be taken as his lover."

"Indeed.'' Norman drummed his fingers on the chair arm. "I had hoped that you could somehow get over this... infatuation with that American so we could discuss our future."

"It wasn't an infatuation, Norman. I loved Morgan very much. I still do. I simply can't understand why you wish to go through with the marriage on those terms."

"Because I love you."

"Rubbish." She stroked the marmoset's head. "I'm not so naive any longer, Norman. I suspect you've some reason for wanting so desperately to marry me that you'd ignore my behavior. I would respect you more if you'd simply confess what it is. Perhaps then we can come to some sort of enlightened understanding." She looked at him without smiling.

He reached for her hand and the marmoset bared its teeth and hissed. Kan took a stance beside Sarah and crossed his arms. As three short, skinny Indians with blowpipes came and stood behind him, Norman sat back in his chair. "Very well; you want the truth. In order to get in on this scheme of your father's, I was forced to liquidate a great deal of capital. My family knew nothing about it, but they will soon enough if Sir Joseph Hooker does not manage to propagate those damned seeds at Kew Gardens. Those seeds were my only hope of building a life away from my family—bloody bunch of meddling vultures that they are. With our marriage and the success of this venture, the two of us could control the greatest rubber empire in the world."

The marmoset jumped from Sarah's lap and scurried to the brick wall surrounding the garden, shimmied up the vines clinging to the brick, and disappeared over the top. Frowning, Sarah left her chair, thrashed her way through the undergrowth, and pulled herself to the top of the wall by the woody ropes. The monkey was running toward the town house whose property backed up to hers. "Damn monkey," she said. "Nuisance, come back here!"

"Sarah," came Norman's voice behind her. "Have you heard a blasted word I've said?"

"Of course." A light came on in an upstairs window, and Sarah's eyebrows went up in surprise. Looking over
her shoulder, she asked, "Were you aware that someone has moved into the Sunderland place?"

"By gad," Norman said, "now you're spying on your neighbors. Isn't it enough that you traipse around London looking and acting like some jungle savage? Must you also peep into windows?"

"Nuisance!" she called as the marmoset dashed toward the house, disappearing around a corner. Huffing, she threw her leg over the wall, causing Norman to gasp and curse under his breath. She dropped to the ground on the opposite side, brushed off her breeches, and strolled toward the house, hands in her pockets as she assessed the overgrown garden. When she'd moved into the St. James town house on her arrival in London, she'd learned that no one had lived next door since old Sunderland had died three years before with no heir. Obviously, the courts had at last sold the house. The new owners wouldn't be pleased to find themselves startled by a monkey, as one of Sarah's neighbors had been just after she and Norman had returned to London. The lady had suffered severely with the vapors when she'd found the marmoset sitting on the foot of her bed in the middle of
the night.

"Sarah!" Norman called. "Sarah, for the love of..."

She looked back to discover that Kan and the others had scaled the wall, and with blowpipes in their hands, were trailing behind her. The-sight, though humorous in these surroundings, reminded her of the many days these men had so faithfully followed her into the Amazon. Only one thing was missing: Morgan.

Fresh pain hit her with a force, and as tears rose to blind her, she blinked and did her best to focus on her purpose: the retrieval of her pet.

She followed the marmoset to the front of the house just in time to see it scamper through the front doorway, but as she opened her mouth to shout out, the door slammed. Frowning, she marched up the steps and banged on the door. No reply. She knocked again. Still nothing. "Hello!" she
called. "Whoever you are, you have my monkey and I want him back!"

Kan and the Indians took up positions at the foot of the steps, staring back at the pedestrians as they paused outside the gates and gaped at them in horror. Traffic snared in the streets as drivers stopped their coaches. Two policemen ambled to the gates and peered at them from beneath their helmets.

"Would there be anything wrong, Miss St. James?" one of them asked.

She was somewhat bemused that they knew her, though she wasn't surprised. What other female would be walking the streets in khaki breeches, escorted by savages, and chasing a marmoset? Already the onlookers were mumbling, raising their eyebrows and looking down their noses at her. By the time she arrived at the Pimbertons' for dinner, word would have reached them of her latest escapade. Turning her back to her audience, she banged again on the door. "Give me my bloody monkey!" she yelled, and the ruckus from the streets intensified.

Norman appeared, elbowing his way through the crowd, face red, jaw set as he strode down the walk and up the steps, taking her by the arm and forcing her away from the door. "Excuse us," he told the bystanders. "Please pardon us. She's still upset, you see, over the death of her father. Grief has made her irrational..."

"Loony," someone said. "Nuts."

Norman walked her home, into the town house, where he slapped aside the palm and fern leaves that brushed his face, then bumped his head on a rattan cage filled with squawking blue parrots. He forced her to sit in a chair while he paced. "I'm not certain I can continue to tolerate this behavior," he said. "You are becoming a laughingstock among our friends—"

"Your friends," she corrected him.

He sighed in exasperation. "I've done my best to stop the rumors of your smoking cigars—"

"But I like cigars. I enjoy the flavor and the effect of the tobacco very much. It gives me something to do with my hands when I'm sitting in the garden and thinking about..."

"What? Or should I ask, whom? No, don't tell me. I know already. That bloody American. It can't be helped, I suppose, considering your sordid relationship, but I must insist that you cease this ridiculous behavior. My God, the servants tell me that at night you dance nude from the waist up while those savages beat drums and play flutes."

"What I do in the privacy of my home is no one's business, Norman. That includes you. I have not agreed to marry you, you know." She left her chair, walked to a box of cigars on a table, and lit one. "And something else. I am no longer the innocent, naive ninny you proposed to. You will not talk down to me ever again, not if you hope to see this merger—note I did not say marriage—come off between us. You need me, Sheffield. I don't need you. There- fore ..." She smoked and smiled. "You'd better be very nice to me, or you'll spend the rest of your life under your mother's thumb."

He stared at her with his eyes bulging.

Sarah turned and plucked the Panama off the hat rack and plopped it on her head, cocking it to one side. "I do believe we have a dinner party to attend, my lord. Shall we go?"

Sarah stood at the bowed window of Lord Pimberton's plush town house in Mayfair and gazed out at the street, seeing not so much the traffic and people as she did the reflection of those standing behind her, their heads together and their brows knitted in disapproval as they regarded her. Since her return to London she had grown accustomed to their whispers and gasps, their averted glances and uplifted eyebrows. She couldn't fault them. In their world a breeches-clad and booted female with her hair falling wildly about her face and shoulders was unacceptable, although they had done a respectable job of forgiving her, considering the tragic circumstances of her last months in South America. Rumor had it that she'd been kidnapped by a tribe of heathens and dragged down the Amazon until she was saved by Sir Henry Wickham and returned to civilization.

That, of course, was Norman's story. As everyone could see, the episode had caused her severe trauma, but in time she was certain to be her old self again. Of course, she knew she would never be the Sarah St. James who had worked so hard to conform to Norman's social circle, to be the kind of sophisticated woman he would find worthy enough to marry. That prim and proper, sheltered and naive young lady no longer existed. She had
faced destitution, danger, death, and heartbreak—so much heartbreak. She'd lost her father, her friend, her lover...

She watched her reflection in the glass and saw the tears rise to her weary eyes. Odd how often the memories still came, especially at night, when she would grip her pillow against her as if she expected it to reach out to her with long, strong arms and hold her, to stroke her hair, to kiss her and call her
"Chere."
She would wake up weeping and so empty and hurting for Morgan she thought she might die. Dear God, how hard she had tried to forget, only to find herself building a fantasy world of jungles and animals, even going so far as to smoke those disgusting cigars, pre- tending she liked them when, in truth, they made her want to throw up. She was rebelling, of course, but it was also her way of holding on to every detail that had been Morgan. She couldn't forget. Not yet, no matter what Norman believed would be for the best. She wasn't prepared to give up Morgan. She suspected she never would be.

Sighing, she blotted her eyes and turned back to the guests. Almost immediately she was approached by Lady Carleton, a buxom woman of forty who, though her mouth was smiling, was regarding her with less-than-enthusiastic approval. "My dear Sarah," she began, "Lord Sheffield
tells us mat you are still greatly grieved by your father's passing, not to mention your horrible ordeal at the hands of those savages. I cannot imagine why you surround your- self with such reminders after all you endured." She looked pointedly at Kan and the others, who were lined up against the wall wearing formal black coats, no shirts beneath— and loincloths that hung to just above their naked knees. Lady Carleton stared at them through her quizzing glass before it slid through her fingers and dangled on a ribbon between her voluptuous breasts. She cleared her throat and pursed her lips in obvious distress before addressing Sarah again. "Have you heard that Lord Hawthorn recently met a gentleman from Brazil?"

Her mind was slow to comprehend what the woman had said, which was often the case of late. No matter how she tried to concentrate, her thoughts were always wandering, until at times she felt quite insane. As she stared at the woman, her words at last echoing against some spark of awareness in her muddled mind, Sarah felt a sharp pain of consternation turn over inside her.

"I beg your pardon?" she said.

"A very wealthy man," Lady Carleton explained. "In the rubber business, I believe. He is here looking into in- vestments, or so he says. Lord Hawthorn found him rather odd."

Sarah took hold of a chair-back. "What was his name?" she asked in a dry voice.

Lady Carleton looked at her with raised eyebrows and then, taking up her quizzing glass, peered at Sarah closely. "My dear, you look absolutely dreadful. Dreadful! Perhaps I shouldn't have brought up the subject of Brazil. Oh, my, I do apologize. Of course the
matter would distress you. Perhaps I should get Lord Sheffield. Yes, yes. I'll do that immediately."

Something of Sarah's feelings must have shown in her face, because she looked up to find Kan standing beside her, his watchful eyes regarding her with concern. "I don't
feel very well," she told him. "Will you take me home?"

He nodded, took her arm, and ushered her out the door without a thought to bidding her hosts, or Norman, a proper farewell. As the coach rolled away, Sarah gazed out the window and watched the familiar landmarks go by. How dreary they all seemed, cloaked as they were with the continual rainfall. Oh, if she could only turn her face into the sun's glorious warmth, perhaps this brittle coldness in her chest might thaw at last. Then again, perhaps it wouldn't. Odd how she once believed that anything and everything was possible. Since losing Morgan, she had lost all hope and faith in herself and her future. When Morgan died in her arms, so did her dreams die in her heart.

Lady Carleton's words came back to her as she looked out at the empty streets and house fronts.

⁴
"Have you heard that Lord Hawthorn recently met a man from Brazil? A very wealthy man. In the rubber business, I believe. He is here looking into investments, or so he says. Lord Hawthorn found him rather odd."

Sarah closed her eyes, refusing to acknowledge the fear that had plagued her night after night in her dreams—visions of Rodolfo King walking toward her down the pier, his white suit covered in blood from a wound in his side, a gun in his hand, the barrel still smoking, and behind him, lying sprawled and bloody and broken beneath the lamplight... Morgan.

Of course King was not alive. She had seen him shot; watched as he tumbled over the edge of the pier to the water below. And even if he were alive, he wouldn't bother to follow her to England... Why should he? Unless he wanted revenge...