Moonflower Madness (13 page)

Even as she had asked if Zachary Cartwright was still at the inn, she had known the answer to her question. He wouldn't have stayed the night in one of those abominable open-fronted rooms. The minute he had engaged the men he needed, he would have left the town and made camp beside the river. Which was exactly what she was going to do.

With an increasing sense of
déjà-vu
, she rode out of the town at dusk, as she had ridden out of Fu-tu Kwan.

‘But this time I have a pistol with me,' she said to Ben, determining, for his sake, to camp at the earliest opportunity. ‘We'll catch Zachary Cartwright up tomorrow and …' they rounded a curve in the riverbank and her sentence remained unfinished.

There, not twenty-five yards ahead of her, was a campfire with mules, a pony and a small group of Chinese in attendance. Dominating the scene, his back towards her, was the unmistakable figure of Zachary Cartwright.

Her relief was so intense that she was ashamed of it. She crushed it as quickly as she could, telling herself it would have been no great problem if she hadn't met up with him until the next day. Then she took a deep breath to steady herself for the coming confrontation.

This time, there was no question of her galloping dramatically up into the circle of fire-light. Ben was far too tired to do any more than keep on at a steady plod. The bells around Ben's neck jingled softly and Zachary Cartwright spun around. As he did so, Gianetta slipped from the saddle, determined to give no hint of the depth of her tiredness. With an apparently carefree smile on her face she walked briskly up to him, saying gaily,

‘We're beginning to make a habit of meeting up like this, aren't we? Is there anything good for dinner?'

He uttered an expletive that in ordinary circumstances would have shocked her unutterably.

She pretended she hadn't heard it, walking past him towards the fire. ‘It has been quite a nice day's ride, hasn't it?' she said conversationally. ‘The pine forest gave wonderful shade when the sun was at its highest.'

‘Damn the pine forest! Where the devil is Charles?'

Zachary was standing feet apart, hands on hips, his face thunderous. For the first time it occured to her that he was more than capable of subjecting her to physical violence.

Defiantly she turned away from the fire and faced him, her head high, her back straight, her eyes meeting his unwaveringly.

‘Charles will be in Chung King by now. He told me he had no real need of me.'

‘Then he's a bloody fool! He should have guessed you would follow me …'

‘He didn't need to guess,' she said spiritedly, interrupting him. ‘He knew. And he approved.'

‘Then he's an even bigger fool than I've always privately thought him! Dear God in heaven! Have you any idea of the fix you have put me in?' His face hardened, and without waiting for a reply he continued harshly, ‘Of course you have, but you have grossly miscalculated, Miss Hollis. I'll be damned to hell before I act as you intend I should.'

‘And just what is it you imagine I intend?' she asked, genuinely curious.

‘You intend that out of a sense of honour I will ask you to marry me. That's what this has been all about, right from the beginning. Originally you set your cap at Charles, thinking that if you could compromise him you would secure a nice advantageous marriage for yourself. Once he opted to return to Chung King you had to reassess things a little. The two of you hadn't been along together quite long enough for your reputation to be ruined irrevocably and for there to be no other way for him to make amends to you, apart from marrying you. With Charles no longer in the running you're looking to me to save you from spinsterhood and Lincolnshire. Well, I'm going to disappoint you. I don't have a sense of honour, and nor do I have a family who will be scandalized by my behaving without it.'

Only the knowledge that he expected her to react in near-hysterical fury enabled her not to do so. When she spoke, her voice was a little unsteady, but it was also ice-cool and withering in its contempt.

‘I have heard of men with overpoweringly high opinions of themselves, Mr Cartwright, but I have never before heard of one, much less met one, with such a falsely high opinion that it warrants a strait-jacket and a lunatic asylum.'

His hands were no longer on his hips but folded across his chest as he glowered at her, the flames from the fire providing him with a suitably satanic backdrop in the near darkness.

‘Marriage to either yourself or Lord Rendlesham has never been my object,' Gianetta continued, her words vibrant with truth.

‘Then what has?' he snapped back at her. ‘You will certainly have no hopes of marriage elsewhere when news of your hare-brained escapade is made public. And it will be made public eventually. Such escapades always are.'

She reflected on his question and his subsequent remarks with a thoughtfulness that he had clearly not expected.

‘I think you are wrong,' she said at last, slowly. ‘My aunt and uncle will certainly not talk publicly of it. If anyone in Chung King should query my absence, they will simply say that I have returned unexpectedly to England.'

He snorted derisively and she continued unperturbed, ‘And if you are right in your assumptions, Mr Cartwright, I truly don't care.'

‘You'll care very much when you are back in England and socially
persona non grata
.'

‘I was never destined for high society, Mr Cartwright,' she replied, a touch of wry amusement in her voice. ‘Only if Serena had wanted a season in London would I have been able to have one. And Serena wants no such thing.'

One of the Chinese had approached them nervously, a mug of steaming tea in each hand. As Gianetta stepped towards him, gratefully accepting one of the proffered mugs, Zachary Cartwright remained silent.

She sipped the tea and then said quietly, ‘You say that my action in following yourself and Lord Rendlesham out of Chung King was thoughtless and harebrained. Perhaps it was. But it is not an action that I regret.'

Her lack of response to his anger seemed to have successfully deflated Zachary Cartwright. He took the remaining mug of tea and said tersely, ‘You seem to be wilfully skirting the only issue that is at stake here. Your reputation.'

‘I'm not skirting the issue, Mr Cartwright. I've thought about it a good deal. And I have decided that if the choice lies between living a full and interesting life – albeit one that leaves me with a falsely tarnished reputation – and a boring, stultifying life, I will choose the full and interesting one.'

‘It isn't quite so simple,' he said, and this time his still obvious anger was tightly reined. He sounded almost sympathetic. ‘In eight months time my expedition to Kansu will be at an end. Presuming I was rash enough to agree to your accompanying me, what would become of you then? Your uncle and aunt will most likely disown you. Your cousin's husband will probably refuse to allow her to consort with you. You will have no home, no way of earning a living, you will be totally ruined …'

A smile quirked the corners of her mouth. ‘My future is not quite as bleak as you imagine, Mr Cartwright. I have a certain amount of intelligence, and I intend to make the most of it.'

His eyebrows rose queryingly and her smile deepened. ‘I've thought about my future long and hard today, and I intend suggesting to my uncle that I go to Oxford, to Lady Margaret Hall. I don't think he will refuse me. An education will equip me for the kind of life I intend leading. A life that is full of interest and adventure, as yours is. A life that doesn't centre around marriage.'

For a second she didn't know if he was going to laugh derisively or explode in renewed rage. He did neither. He simply said curtly, ‘It's been a long day, Miss Hollis. Both of us are tired. I suggest we eat and get some rest and continue this bizarre conversation in the morning.'

She nodded agreeably, careful not to allow her elation to show in her eyes. She had won. She was sure she had won. He certainly wouldn't disrupt his plans by returning with her to Chung King. Neither could he possibly suggest that she return unaccompanied, and even if he did so she wouldn't comply. She was going to go to Kansu to search for blue Moonflowers, and if Zachary Cartwright chose not to take her with him, she would go alone.

Dinner was an unidentifiable stew which she ate with hungry relish. Occasionally she was aware of Zachary Cartwright looking covertly across her, a deep frown marring his brow. When the dishes had been cleared away he said curiously,

‘How did you manage to follow me with such accuracy?'

‘You had said you intended stopping at the next town to engage men and another mule. I assumed the town would be on the banks of the Kialing, so I followed the river as closely as possible.'

‘And when you reached the town?'

He was sitting in his canvas-chair, his plant-hunting box at his feet, his field-book within reach.

‘I went to the inn. An elderly Chinaman there gave me to understand that you had passed through the town earlier and that you were headed north.'

‘And just how was this conversation conducted? In Chinese or English?'

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. ‘In a little of both. What does
yang-kwei-tse
mean, by the way?'

This time it was his turn to suppress-a smile. ‘Foreign devil.'

Her amusement deepened. It really was most curious how much at ease she felt with him. If the circumstances had been different, if it had been Charles sitting next to her by the fire, she knew that, despite the friendship that had sprung up between them after his accident, she wouldn't have felt half so comfortable.

‘Then that is how the local populace regard you,' she said, not hiding the amusement she felt.

He gave a grunt that could have been dismissive or equally amused and picked up his field-book.

She glanced across at him as he worked, much in the same way as he had kept glancing at her earlier. He was extraordinarily handsome. His blue-black hair was sheened to a high gloss by the fire-light and as he bent his head over his book, it tumbled thick and low over his brow. His nose was classically straight, his jaw-line strong.

After a little while she said, ‘I found the
Potentilla Veitchii
. Charles told me how to take a correct cutting and he has taken the cutting and a soil sample with him, to Chung King.'

‘Good.' He didn't look towards her, nor did he pause in the notes he was making.

She stretched her booted feet towards the warmth of the fire. She had already tended Ben, and he was tethered nearby alongside Zachary Cartwright's sleek-looking pony. The darkness wasn't oppressive as it had been the night she had camped alone. It was velvety and caressing. Although there was no moon, the sky glistened with stars. She could smell sage and verbena, and the sound of the river surging southwards was as hypnotic as a drug.

His dark, rich voice woke her from her doze. ‘You must want to bathe and change your clothes. There is very easy access to the river about fifteen yards away, just beyond where the ponies are tethered. If you run into any problems, just give a shout.'

She felt a surge of gratitude towards him for the unembarrassing way he was helping her to solve a problem that had been preying increasingly on her mind.

‘Thank you,' she said, rising from her canvas-chair, her skin itching to be rid of the garments she had worn every day since leaving the Residency.

‘There is soap in the right-hand pouch of my saddle-bag,' he added, ‘and don't worry about the Chinese. They won't disturb your privacy.'

And neither would he. She knew it with absolute certainty. He had said he was a man without honour, but it wasn't true. She didn't doubt for a moment that he was unconventional and that polite society would often look askance at him, but he knew far more about the true meaning of honour than Charles ever would.

She found the soap and took a towel and clean underclothes from her carpetbag. There was no longer any need for her to keep wearing Chinese clothes for safety and she discarded the jacket, rolling it up and stuffing it, with the soft round hat, in the bottom of her bag. The trousers, unfortunately, were a different matter. Without wearing them she couldn't possibly ride Ben. Not unless she was able to obtain a side-saddle from somewhere. Nor could she keep wearing them without washing them. The night was warm, but whether it was warm enough to dry linen trousers she didn't know. It was a risk she would just have to take. She took a blouse and skirt from out of her bag and padded in the direction Zachary had suggested. Minutes later she was swimming, naked and blissful, in the wickedly cold waters of the Kialing.

It was heaven. Never again, she vowed, would she be constrained in polite drawing-rooms, embroidering and sketching meaninglessly to fill up the long, boring hours. She was going to become a botanist; an explorer; and adventurer. She was going to become the first European woman ever to see a blue Moonflower growing wild.

When she returned to the bright circle of firelight dressed in her blouse and skirt, her hair hanging wetly and sleekly down her back, Gianetta caught Zachary Cartwright unawares. For a moment there was almost the same look of stunned incredulity in his eyes that she had occasioned in the eyes of the Chinese at the inn. He looked, quite simply, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Then the expression vanished, to be replaced by his usual brooding taciturnity.

‘I see Charles had the sense to give you his sleeping-bag,' he said abruptly. ‘I've set it down near the fire. I'll sleep nearer the ponies. Their restlessness will wake me if we should have any four-footed nocturnal visitors.'

‘I have a pistol,' she said helpfully.

His winged brows rose almost into the tumble of his hair, ‘Have you, indeed?'

Laughter bubbled up in her throat. It was fun surprising and shocking Zachary Cartwright.