Heart of Light (32 page)

He took a deep hissing breath. “What did those men want?”

She shook her head and continued walking, minding her footing on the thorny ground.

“Did you know them?” Oldhall persisted.

After a while in silence she said, “The biggest one reminded me of my brother. Not that they look anything alike, but they have the same posture.” She turned back to look long and speculatively at the Englishman. He still seemed strange to her. Too pale, too washed out, much more like a transparent worm caught in a rainstorm than like a real human. And yet, in his pale-blue, washed-out eyes, Nassira noticed again the resemblance to Kume. The Englishman's gaze had the same velvety-soft expression, like the eyes of a calf that has strayed into the neighboring kraal and is afraid of being sent away.

Nassira blinked, telling herself it was stupid. What could this Englishman have in common with Kume? And yet . . . The posture was the same, and the way the Englishman held his head sideways, as though waiting with some trepidation for her answer. As though scared that she would reprove him or make fun of him. In the same way, the gallant effort he made not to show pain when he stepped on his mangled foot held an unmistakable resemblance to her friend.

Suddenly, she realized that Kume would be shocked at her finding such a similarity between him and this creature, and she smiled.

“What?” Nigel asked.

There would be no harm in telling the man something of what was in her thoughts, as long as she didn't describe to him the full contents of the conversation with Mokabi, including the references to the Hyena Men. And it would relieve Nassira's feelings to speak of Kume.

“I had a friend once who you remind me a great deal of,” she said. “And that man—” she gestured with her head in the direction in which Mokabi had vanished, “was his elder brother. Well, half-brother, the son of my friend's father's right-hand wife.”

“Right hand?” The Englishman sounded truly puzzled.

“The first wife,” Nassira explained. “The one a man marries for prestige or cows, for social position.” She shrugged, finding no echo of understanding in the pale blue eyes that regarded her with a puzzled expression. “Then he marries the left-hand one for love or for mutual understanding and companionship. My friend Kume's father married his mother because she was a great beauty. She gave him only Kume, and I think Kume was his favorite son. But not the most important.” She gestured with her head again. “That one was the most important. That one and his brothers. The heirs, you know, the ones that matter.”

Was it her impression, or did the Englishman take a deep, startled breath, the type of breath a man took when a sore area was touched or a wound probed?

He nodded as if he understood her, and she shrugged. “We must get back to camp,” she said. “Kitwana will be worried about you.”

“Kitwana? Why?”

“He saw you leave and was worried that you'd get lost or caught by a lion,” she said. “So he woke me and sent me after you.”

The Englishman looked at her with an odd expression, as though his features attempted to set in a rigid pattern but kept melting into a soft haze whose meaning she could not understand. “How kind,” he said. “But I should not have to be looked after by natives.”

She caught the implication in his voice that they were inferior, somehow, or perhaps childish, and said nothing.

They walked side by side in silence a long time, till they could see, shining between the trees and low brush around the camp, the soft haze of fire. The two men standing guard could be heard, too, talking to each other in a deep, guttural tongue of which Nassira understood not a word.

“I had a brother, too,” Nigel said at last. “His name was Carew and he was the important one in my family. The heir. He came to Africa and disappeared. I am, in a way, looking for him. But if I return him, I will be again the unimportant one. Perhaps loved, but unimportant. Do you . . . do you understand?”

She tried to give him a look of annoyance. But she couldn't quite feel it, because she did understand, so she simply nodded. She saw in this man such a resemblance to Kume that she felt much more loyalty to him than she dared express.

He nodded back and exhaled, as though relieved with her approval, as though that mattered. Just as they emerged into the clearing around the camp, she touched his shoulder, “Look, don't go into the brush again, all right? Nothing is so bad as that.”

He gave her a look, managing a frozen, opaque expression, but then smiled, as though despite himself. “Oh, things can be just that bad,” he said. “But I'll remember I have duties to others.”

“Do you want the poultice for your foot?” she asked.

He shook his head, and his smile turned vaguely superior. “We brought medicine,” he said. “Magic potions for healing.”

Before she had time to react to his show of superiority, the two guards sitting by the fire noticed them—their awareness perhaps slowed by the fact that they were passing a thick, earthenware jug between them. They stood up in a confusion of legs, arms and spears, making sounds that might have been a demand for identification. Then they recognized Nigel and Nassira and exchanged complicit looks and chuckled.

Nassira wasn't sure she liked the tone of those chuckles. She was afraid that, just like Mokabi, these creatures would think she was having an affair with Nigel Oldhall. But she didn't even want to mention the matter, in case she should only lend it credence.

Instead, she told Oldhall, “Well, good night, then,” and, parting from him, went back to her uncomfortable leaf bed.

This time, she fell asleep as soon as she lay down.

A BROKEN HEART AND A PLAN FOR REVENGE

Emily couldn't sleep. The night was too warm, and
she kept thinking of how strange this journey was, and how unlikely that she should be here.

She was supposed to be on her honeymoon. She was supposed to be looking around Cairo, taking in the exotic sights at places where other Englishmen wintered every year. She was supposed to be sleeping safely in Nigel's arms.

Instead, here she was, mid-Africa, in the dark of night. She'd seen a dragon, once, and there were rumors of dragons all around. The roar of a lion bedeviled her and she was surrounded by men who looked more than a little wild. Could she trust any of them?

Nigel looked and seemed as lost as she felt. Indeed, he'd let her fall prey to the Hyenna Men, something no man in control of the situation would allow to happen.

With such an example of his lack of foresight and understanding, was it any surprise that Emily didn't feel safe? Instead, she had to trust Peter Farewell, and what did she know of him, other than that he was Nigel's old friend? Nigel's old friend to whom Nigel didn't seem to be speaking. And what did
that
mean? And why would Nigel shun her, also? He couldn't be that intimidated by the lack of privacy in the camp. There were shadows and silent spots aplenty. Surely Nigel knew that. Or maybe he didn't. Emily was not sure she knew Nigel anymore—or ever had. And try as she might, she couldn't fit into her mind that he suspected her—HER—of infidelity. How dared he?

She listened to the sentinels and to much coming and going outside her tent. It was white canvas and through it the diffused light of fire shone. She stared at that light and at the dark shadows of trees outside. She remembered stories her father's friends told, late at night over port, of native revolts only put down by the strong hand of the brave Englishmen. What Englishmen would save her if these natives revolted? Maybe Peter, but he was not her husband, and she could not
count
on him for her protection.

She wished Nigel would come to her and at least share his fears with her. Maybe if he admitted he wasn't in control they could at least share their feeling of being lost in this strange place. If Nigel came to her and loved her, and made her his wife in fact as well as in law, at least Emily would feel as though she belonged to him and was fit to share his perils, by his side.

At that moment, she heard Nigel's voice just outside her tent and her heart sped up in response. She couldn't understand what he was saying, but he spoke softly, and she imagined that he was calling to her, asking her if he could come in.

She sat up.

Nigel spoke again. From his tone of voice, she could tell he was hesitant and tentative.

She stood up quickly and got her dressing gown from where it lay, across her travel trunk. She hurried to the entrance of the tent and pulled back the flap. Outside, the night was moonlit, a soft light that joined with the glaring orange light of the fire. This clear lighting showed the other two tents—dark inside—and the guards by the fire, chatting and passing around the earthenware jug. But she did not see Nigel.

“Nigel?” she called softly.

He did not answer her. Instead, from her left side, where the bush grew high, she heard a woman's voice, as soft and hesitant as Nigel's.

Shocked, Emily stared at the low, thorny bushes, the thick, waist-high grass. Before her unbelieving eyes could adjust to this incongruous reality, Nigel emerged from the bush, his face ghastly pale in the moonlight. For all his paleness, though, he looked calm. Calmer than she'd seen him look in a very long time. Behind him walked the native woman he'd picked to be a cook—though she patently could not cook at all. The woman was tall and had a proud bearing that Emily had only before seen in some duchesses. She wore a colorful wrap that outlined a slim, shapely body taut with pride. She had noble, well-chiseled features that made Emily feel inadequate and small.

The woman touched Nigel's shoulder with a gentle touch and the type of gaze that could only be shared between a man and a woman who'd had a joint intimate experience. She might be a virgin herself, but she'd seen her father's renters and friends. There was communication there. A sharing and an understanding that Nigel and Emily had never had.

Emily reeled back, as though she'd been punched. With only a sliver of the tent flap open to admit a strip of firelight, she stared out at Nigel and the woman crossing the encampment together. They spoke to each other in the way that long-married couples did. As though they'd shared so many things, so full of wonder and joy and grief, that no secrets remained between them.

Feelings that couldn't quite assemble themselves into words crossed her mind in tumult. No wonder Nigel had no wish to consummate his marriage—he did have another love. And no wonder Emily's father had found no trail of this love. Such a thing would never have crossed his well-bred mind.

Emily remembered, as from a distance, the image of this woman's face in an English maid's cap. Emily knew then that her first instincts had been correct. She had seen Nassira before. This was the woman who had helped Emily to her hotel.

Emily felt her cheeks flame. She'd asked Nigel's mistress for help.

She could now see it clearly. This woman had been a maid in England, and somehow she'd conquered Nigel's affections. Nigel, being honorable, could not betray his lover with his wife. And here, in Africa—had he truly been sent on a mission, or had he offered to come?—with Nassira and with Emily, Nigel could give free rein to his love and ignore Emily, whom he'd never loved at all.

If Emily thought at all about the fact that Nigel's lover was a native, it was with wonder that Nigel did not, after all, prefer a bland and blond English miss. But then, during their courting, she'd often suspected that Nigel wanted her only for her exotic qualities. And this woman was doubtlessly more exotic than Emily.

And more beautiful, she thought as she looked at Nassira in her barbaric red wrap.

Suddenly Emily felt very tired, as though all her vital strength had leached out in that one sight. Her knees trembled, tears sprang to her eyes. She knew she would cry, but she would not cry here, where someone might look toward her and see it. She backed away into the safe darkness of her tent, letting the flap fall closed. Without noticing the harshness of the mattress, she fell upon her camp bed.

All her life, Emily had trusted those around her. At first, she'd trusted her mother. Her warm, kind mother with the happy laughter and the welcoming arms had been the center of Emily's world. But her mother had died, vanished from her life.