Crimson Rapture (12 page)

"Who's
there?" Elsie asked after a frightened pause.

Only
the breeze echoed in the silence.

"Jacob?"
Hanna ventured. "Jacob, is that you teasing us?" Her realization that
it was not Jacob came as a chill up her spine. She felt it; they all felt it, a
certain wrongness... like evil. She turned frightened eyes to her friends.
"Me bones are chilled to the core like... like I've seen a—"

"Ghosts!"
Elsie put to words what she felt as she jumped to her feet and grabbed both
Christina's and Hanna's hands. They never considered it, and, acting as one,
they were suddenly running, running as though a demon from hell chased them.

The
jungle flew past them, ferns and branches grabbed at them, scratching and
cutting their bare feet and still they ran, knowing only a collective fear that
caused the instinct of flight Hanna stumbled and Christina fell into her,
recovering quickly to help Hanna up. Elsie stopped just ahead and turned. From
the dark shadows behind them came an imagined sound of laughter, mocking, echoing
with the sounds of the jungle.

Christina
froze as blood pounded in her temples. She looked at her friends to confirm her
terrified senses. And Elsie did so with a panicked, "Run!"

Looking
like madwomen, they burst on the beach and dropped to their knees, breathless
and panting. Christina could not catch her breath, but suddenly she started
laughing and laughing. Fear melting into near hysterics, the situation suddenly
tickling her funny bone to the core of her being. "I don't believe it!
Here we are, marooned on a deserted island, a thousand miles from the nearest
civilization, from the nearest person and we—we think we're being watched
by—"

"Ghosts!"
Hanna added and suddenly laughed too. "I even imagined I heard a wicked
laugh but 'twas you, Elsie." She turned an accusing finger. "You
thought it was—"

"Me?"
Elsie cried in incredulous protest. "Hanna May Haley, in all my days I've
not ever seen a soul run as fast as you, like you was chased by the very devil,
you were..."

The
men stared at the women curiously. Justin turned over a piece of fish cooking
over a fire and rose, moving quickly to them. Christina had turned onto her
back, staring up at the gray sky, simply amazed at how ridiculous she had been.
Beau, feeling their excitement and thinking it as a signal of play, half
bounced, half ran to her and lowered to his haunches, barking and licking her
face affectionately, causing more peals of giggles as she tried to fight him
off.

Justin
stared at the sight of her like that. It was not just that her dark gold hair
spread like fire around her flushed face or her figure lay before him like an
offering; the wet cotton material all but transparent. It was her laughter, the
most innocently seductive sound he had ever heard.

He
bent over and lifted her to her feet. "Christina?" he asked
curiously.

"Oh,
Justin!" She clutched her bosom dramatically. "You wouldn't believe
what happened. We were washing by the pool back there." She looked into
the forest, then back at him. "And suddenly—I don't know why—but we
thought someone was watching us through the trees—"

"Like
the devil or a ghost," Elsie added, "and then we started running,
like... like it was chasin' us!"

Justin
looked from Christina to the two others. Cajun had come behind him, and with a
nod of Justin's head, Cajun turned and disappeared into the forest.

"Did
you see anything?" he asked Christina.

His
seriousness instantly subdued her. "Well no. How could we if there's no
one on the island except us? That's what was so funny—"

"It's
not funny," he interrupted. "I've assumed the island was
uninhabited—most of these islands are— but I won't be certain until my men
report back." He stopped short of sharing the rumors of cannibalistic
savages and said instead, "Until I'm certain, none of you are to go
anywhere without someone with you. Understood?"

Christina
nodded, as did Elsie and Hanna.

"Good.
There's plenty of fruit and fish over there," he said. "I'll be back
in a while. In the meantime, see what you can do for Marianna. She's still in
shock, and if you can't get her to eat, we'll have to start force-feeding
her."

Justin
followed Cajun into the forest. Christina turned to see Marianna still lying
beneath the lifeboat. She had forgotten Marianna.

"Marianna?"
she asked as she came to her side and knelt. Marianna lay perfectly still but
with wide-open eyes that stared blankly ahead. "Marianna, can you hear
me?"

"She's
been like that since the storm," Elsie said, coming alongside Christina.
"The poor girl. I daresay 'twas from seeing her friend die. Katie was her
only friend, like a relation. So sad how many people died..."

The
two fussed over Marianna for some time, trying to get a response but to no
avail. Christina tore off a strip of her petticoat, soaked it in the stream,
and gently washed Marianna's lifeless form, talking sweetly to her all the
while, whether or not Marianna heard. Marianna's lean figure remained limp, the
wide hazel eyes stared straight ahead, seeing nothing or seeing everything. So
lost was Christina in her concern, she failed to notice Elsie had left to join
the gathering by the fire.

"Oh
my, she will get well again, won't she?" Christina asked out loud.

A
deep male voice startled her from behind. "As with all of us, she rests in
God's hands."

Christina
turned to confront Cajun. He stood with his feet apart and his hands on his
hips, an unnatural ease in his towering frame and wisdom in his dark liquid
eyes. She thought again there was something so majestic, even magical about
Cajun, a man who looked part savage, part the genie of her imagination.

"But
surely with care and in time..." She stopped and, not understanding why
she needed his confirmation of her hope, she searched his features. He remained
silent, though, incapable of answering what was not known, incapable of
condescending to lie to ease a woman's concern.

Finding
no answer, she rose to stand next to him. "Is he also not well?" she
asked, looking at a man curled up in a tight ball and still sound asleep under
the lifeboat.

"No,
he is not well."

"Is
there something we might do for him?"

"No,"
Cajun replied as a strange sadness filled his voice. "What must be done
can only be done by Justin."

She
looked at Cajun curiously, waiting for an explanation.

"For
he," Cajun's gaze dropped to the pitiful sight, "is Justin's
curse."

Christina's
eyes shot to the man too, as though to see evidence of this, and when they
returned to ask another question of Cajun, he was gone. She looked back at the
sick man and felt a twinge of apprehension. What did he mean by that? Was this
ill, helpless man Justin's enemy? Had he wronged Justin in some way?

She
shivered and turned to join the gathering, suddenly not wanting an answer to
her questions. A huge pit in the sand had been dug and filled with logs and
branches and sizzling on the logs were a variety of different kinds of fish.
She had had precious few opportunities to taste fish, and had never cared much
for it, though now her mouth watered at the sight. She at once became acutely
conscious of her hunger.

Jacob,
Hanna, Elsie, and two other men, a blond-haired man named Eric and a
dark-featured man with an Arabic name she could not pronounce, all speared
pieces of the fish with twigs, plopping it sizzling into their mouths. Cajun,
at her side, handed her a twig and smiled encouragingly.

"Go
on, Christy, it's good," Hanna said.

"What
kind is it," she asked, pointing to a flat piece of whitefish.

"I
don't know," Jacob replied. "Tastes like bass, but it's not. This
here is shrimp," he pointed, "and this is what one finds on a
victor's table—it's called crab. These waters must be rich, for this is just
what had washed up on the beach. No tellin' what we'll get once we set up some
fishin' traps and nets."

It
was absolutely delicious. She would have thought so even if she had not been so
hungry but, because she was, the food was the finest fare she had ever enjoyed.
The men had also gathered these orange melons or fruit—she did not know
which—larger than a hand and sweeter and juicier than a peach. There were
smaller green fruits, too, not as delicious but just as satisfying. And
everything was washed down by the delicious coconut milk, which seemed in
abundance.

Justin,
followed always by his Beau, returned and before she could move or protest, he
swung his long legs around her and sat down, placing her possessively in front
of him. She flushed and looked down, hardly noticing how perfectly she fit
against him or the comfort of such an intimate position through her
embarrassment and a sudden acute modesty. No one else seemed to notice, or if
they did, they gave no sign.

"I
couldn't find any tracks and Beau never seemed to catch a scent of
anything," Justin told Jacob and Cajun both and added, "Though God
knows, the dog's worthless when it comes to tracking."

"
'Tis not the first time a woman's imagination led her to hysterics and, I
daresay, 'twon't be the last."

Hanna
socked Jacob so hard he fell back, chuckling into the sand. Justin laughed too
and then speared a shrimp and asked her if she had tried it yet. She shook her
head. Watching her with that ever-present amusement dancing in his eyes, he
brought it to her mouth, once again leaving her with no choice. She took a
small bite and discovered what any fisherman knows—shrimp is one of the
tastiest and succulent of the shellfishes.

The
men talked of the endless things to be done. Hopefully by tomorrow the sea
would be calm enough to begin retrieving things from the sunken ship. They
needed ropes, nets, buckets, and tools, in short anything they could get to
survive. When his men returned with information about the island parameters and
terrain, fires would be started and forever maintained on the four sides of the
island to attract any ship that might someday pass by the island. The remainder
of the day would be spent making temporary shelters in which to sleep.

Cajun
began making an unappetizing mush of mixed fruit and fish and Christina knew at
a glance it was to be used to feed Marianna. She finally had her fill, felt
ever so pleasantly full, and before she turned back to attend to Marianna, she
asked Justin for his knife.

"What
for?" he asked.

"We
have no comb or brush and my hair," she reached a hand to the tangled knot
of hair, "I have to cut it."

Justin
just laughed. "Over my dead body."

Christina
looked at him with surprise, and then hardly knowing how to respond, she
quickly lowered her eyes. Justin studied the long hair tumbling in an
attractive chaotic disarray, and the problem was immediately apparent.

"I
can carve the ladies a comb," Jacob said.

"Even
if she 'ad a comb, she couldn't get it through," Elsie said with years of
experience fixing hair. "She needs rose oil, and that doesn't grow on
trees."

"I
have to cut it," Christina said firmly.

Justin
sighed with irritation. He had enough to worry about without worrying about her
hair. He only knew he'd be damned before he'd see it cut.

"Well
now, I do believe I have a solution." Jacob chuckled mischievously.
"Justin, don't you remember those beautiful brown-skinned women with their
long black hair on Cook's Island?"

"It's
not something I'm likely to forget," Justin assured him, and the men
suddenly laughed. Even Cajun smiled at the memory of the voyage.

"No
doubt," the Arab added with a huge grin as he addressed Justin. "You
had lines of them outside your hut, waiting to take your seed and all in hopes
of having children of your skin color! A harem that would make a king in my
country green with envy." They all laughed as he added, "I never
cursed my dark skin before."

"The
hardest thing we ever did was get you off that island. You, Justin—" Jacob
laughed, "always impatient with the speed of things, nothing ever moving
fast enough, no one ever working hard enough to satisfy you and suddenly you
can't understand the rush to get off the island and around the horn before
winter hits." The men roared with good-natured laughter while Christina
blushed profusely, shocked by such a story and having no idea what it had to do
with hair. "Hell," Jacob continued, "Cajun had to knock you
out—the only man who could have done it too, and—"

"The
point, Jacob?" Justin interrupted impatiently, though he too was grinning
at the memory.

"The
point is the lasses' hair."

Justin
lifted a strand of Christina's hair. "Yes," he chuckled, "their
hair, so long and black, and always smelling of coconut."

"They
smashed up coconuts to make oil for their hair," Jacob said, tossing a
shell into the air, catching it and smiling. "We need oil for cooking
and," he looked at Hanna's pearl-white skin, skin like Christina's and
Elsie's that had never seen the sun, probably for sunburns too."