The Orchid Hunter

by Jill Marie Landis

She crossed her arms. “What about my art?”

  “There is a wonderful end room on the upper floor of the manor house with windows on three sides. It would make a perfect studio.”

  “I am a free thinker, you know. I will not be molded or tempered into a simpering, acquiescent little wife.”

  “The very idea gives me indigestion.” He sat on the settee beside her. Only a few inches separated them.

  “I will want to attend salons at Cecily’s,” she warned.

  He lowered his voice to a more intimate level. “Whenever we are in town, I would expect you to do so.”

  “My grandmother is dying. I must be here for her.”

  “As well you should be.” Garr reached up and brushed a lock of hair off the corner of the lens of her spectacles. “Family is important.”

  “And there is Joya, too. She has run off to Africa.” She was staring at his mouth, fascinated with his smile, remembering the way his lips tasted.

  “I have always wanted to see the world,” he whispered.

  From behind them, Janelle heard Trevor say, “I’m leaving, but I’m ordering Sims to come in here brandishing that old sword in three minutes, no more, no less.”

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Janelle leaned into Garr’s embrace.

  “Three minutes is not very much time,” she warned him.

  As he lowered his lips to hers he whispered, “I am counting on a lifetime.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  MATARENGA

  Three months later…

  Joya, her father, and half a dozen bearers had been living at the orchid camp for two weeks when two more of the men from the village arrived with replacement supplies and a packet for her father. She asked if there were any letters for her. He frowned, then looked away and shook his head.

  “Damn it, girl. I’m sick to death of your asking if Mandeville has written. It is time you either went back to him or let me write and tell him to take steps to divorce you.”

  When she first returned, her father had fully explained the English meaning of divorce. Matarengi banishment meant that she and Trevor simply lived apart forever. Divorced, their marriage would be forever severed according to the English laws, cast off as if it never was. That was a stark reality she could not yet face, even though she was certain that she would never go back. She was torn between being thankful and feeling hurt that neither Trevor nor Janelle had written. Anything they had to say would surely break her heart.

  She wiped the sweat off her forehead, adjusted the pudong tied around her waist, and watched billowing white clouds scud across a crisp blue sky. Since she had come back to the island she had never been as happy or as miserable in her life. What she had almost become in London was not as easy to strip away as English gowns and petticoats.

  As loath as she was to admit it, she had been forever changed by her experiences in England. Although she still loved Matarenga and its people and was more than comfortable here, she feared she would never be as free or as innocent as before she left.

  She missed Trevor and Janelle desperately and even Sims and the other servants. But during a few brief, shining moments of each day, when the island soothed her with its incredible peace, she was convinced she had made the right decision. That was enough for now.

  “What are you afraid of?” He scratched behind his ear and adjusted one of the gold rings in his earlobe.

  “Nothing. Everything.” Of severing all ties to Trevor forever.

  “I’ve never seen you run from anything in your life, girl. I can still remember when you were no higher than my knee and Umbaba and some of the others dared you to jump over the falls. You did not even hesitate to go flying off the edge of the cliff into the pool below.”

  “You made me stay out of the water for three days.”

  “You scared years off my life.”

  “We never told Mama.” She smiled with the memory of their secret.

  “You still love him, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Closing her eyes, she tried to picture Trevor’s face and remember the sound of his voice. Even Matarenga could not protect her from her own memories.

  “I am going upriver,” she told her father. “Where you found the epidendrum yesterday. There are hours of daylight left.”

  “It’s the best specimen I’ve come up with in weeks. I’m thinking of sending it on to Mandeville. Maybe he’ll consider it for the queen’s orchid.” Then he sighed and rubbed his hand over his eyes. “I don’t know why I should bother. I ought to go back and murder the man for what he did to you.”

  “Trevor did not do anything, Papa. I have tried to explain that to you. We were not meant to be together, that’s all.”

  The orchid her father had found most recently was definitely lovely. Perhaps, if Trevor had found nothing compared to it in Venezuela, he could present the Matarengan find to the queen and make amends.

  “I will return before dark,” she promised in Matarengi.

  Joya did not care to dwell on Queen Victoria, or the night she had made a fool of herself in Her Majesty’s presence. She waved to her father and signaled a halt to Umbaba when he started to follow her. She needed time to herself and started down the trail alone.

  A few miles from camp, she paused on the bank of the Terurai River. The water was stained by mud carried down from upstream, where rain clouds covered Kibatante’s mountain peak.

  She swatted at a pesky mosquito on her thigh, wiped the back of her arm across her forehead, and watched tree branches and coconuts bob their way down to the lagoon. A flash of white on one particular log riding the current caught her eye. As the rough-barked trunk floated closer, her excitement mounted. Unless she was mistaken, three huge orchid blossoms were blooming on a plant attached to the tree.

  She speared her heavy machete into the ground before she waded into the water. As the tree trunk floated nearer, she became convinced the blooms were the finest and some of the largest she had ever seen, and well worth the effort it would take to recover them.

  She stretched and dove beneath the surface of the river and began swimming with strong, sure strokes toward the log.

  * * *

  LONDON

  A few weeks later…

  “Sign here, Mandeville. Here. And here.” Lord Howard’s solicitor dipped the nib of a pen into an ink pot and handed it to Trevor, who nodded in understanding. “Lord Howard instructed me to tell you that we are most happy you changed your mind and decided to sell. We plan to take possession of the warehouse in a week. Will that give you enough time to have your personal things moved?”

  Trevor nodded and glanced around the office. The sale agreements lay on his great-great-grandfather’s desk. He looked down at the scarred wood used by generations of Mandevilles and, oddly enough, felt not a shred of remorse. In fact, for the first time in his life, he found himself excited by the prospect of the future.

  The last of the documents was signed when one of his stevedores poked his head around the edge of the open door.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but a shipment from Matarenga just arrived, sir. Ye said ye wanted t’ know the minute one ever came in.”

  “Thank you, Bart.” Trevor laid the pen down, blotted the last of his signatures, and then handed the page over to the solicitor. “If that’s all for now, I have pressing business on the dock.”

  The solicitor stood, tugging on the hem of his coat. “In two weeks, the amount agreed upon will be transferred into your account.”

  “I don’t need to be here?”

  “No, Mr. Mandeville, you do not. If you don’t mind my asking, what are you going to do now that you will no longer be working?”

  Trevor looked through the open door, out toward the shipping bay where loaded wagons arrived full and left empty. There was a shipment from Matarenga on the dock. He prayed that it would contain a letter from Joya, or at the very least her father, for there had been no word from her since the night she disappeared.

  Had she even
received any of the letters he and Janelle had written? If not, she had no way of knowing that Adelaide had fallen ill and had died two weeks later.

  Letters be damned. His greatest fear was that perhaps Joya had never safely returned to Matarenga at all.

  “Mr. Mandeville?”

  Trevor remembered he was not alone. “What did you ask?”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I am going to do something I have long wanted to do. I am going to hunt orchids.”

  And my wife.

  * * *

  The crate, stained with watermarks and muddy handprints, had been set off to one side of the loading bay. He could imagine Joya supervising the packing and

  Penn’s bearers carrying it over the mountain trail and across the beach to the sailing canoes.

  Bart handed him a hammer to pry up the lid. Trevor noticed his own hands were shaking.

  “Orchids?” His new accountant came strolling over with a handful of bills of lading. Trevor was tempted to tell all the men gathered around to go away and leave him alone. They were intruding upon a private moment.

  What a pitiful creature he had become, coveting the arrival of a crate, but it was all he had of Joya now.

  He took off the lid. Even touching the dried husks and moss seemed part of an intimate ritual that he should be undertaking alone.

  “Just orchids,” Trevor said, chastising himself for his fantasies.

  “Do you think it’s the one you have been waiting for?” Bart asked. Trevor looked up. Three more men were hovering nearby. Everyone at the warehouse had been waiting for Penn to find an orchid that would win Prince Albert’s competition. They all hoped to play a part, no matter how small, in the discovery of the queen’s orchid.

  Excitement mounted as Trevor pulled out the last of the husk material then carefully lifted a piece of burlap wrapped around the first plant. Once the material was folded back, the others crowded in.

  A Phalaenopis, it was a bicolor plant with a spray of blossoms, each one as huge as a man’s hand, each one gold in the center tapering to the purest ivory at its ruffled edges. It was indeed an orchid worthy of a queen’s name.

  “There is a letter here, sir.” His accountant reached into the crate.

  “Do you think that could really be it, sir? The queen’s orchid?” one of the young men asked.

  “It’s a wonderful find,” Trevor admitted. “The loveliest I’ve ever seen.”

  The accountant handed him the folded letter. When Trevor recognized the uneven script, his heart jumped. He refused to read it in front of the others. He had no inkling how he would react to whatever Joya might have written.

  Balancing the orchid in one hand and the letter in the other, he told them, “I’m going to keep this orchid under lock and key.”

  Unable to wait, he went straight to his office, pulled out the chair, and sat down at Great-Great-Grandfather Mandeville’s desk. He carefully put the blooming orchid aside and opened the letter.

  Relief swept through him when he saw the brief, unsigned note in Joya’s childish hand. She was safe.

  Dearest Trevor,

  This one is fit for a queen. I hope that it brings you everything you desire. Tell Janelle that I miss her and that I love her.

  J.

  When the letters blurred and ran together, he laid the letter aside and picked up the gold and ivory orchid. All he could think of was his own bright, precious flower, one he had possessed for such a short time. Throughout the weeks that Adelaide hovered near death, Trevor had spent his days putting together the sale that would rid him of his responsibilities to the Mandeville holdings. He spent his nights missing his wife.

  Despite the fact that Janelle had married Garr Remington and they had taken up residence at Mandeville House until everything was settled, the house had become nothing more than a tomb for him. He felt like a man who had never seen the sun and so he did not miss it—until Joya left and took the sunlight with her. He found himself thinking about her and wondering how he had ever existed without her.

  He lifted the orchid. That it had a heady fragrance made it even more precious. Unwilling to leave it unguarded, he rewrapped it carefully in the burlap to keep the plant from freezing as he made his way home across London.

  * * *

  “This is all she wrote?” Janelle turned her sister’s letter over in her hand and wished there had been more. Upon his return, Trevor had come directly to her studio to show her the beautiful orchid that even she could appreciate—and Joya’s note.

  For months she had waited for some word from her sister in answer to her own letters. Every time Trevor had written to her, Janelle had included a letter of her own in the packet.

  “Are you crying?” Trevor moved closer and put his arm around her.

  “Oh, Trevor. I was convinced she hated me. If I had only been here to take her place at the reception, if I had only spent more time with her instead of being so wrapped up in my own little world, then she might still be here with us.”

  He sighed and walked across the room. “I have tortured myself with ‘if only’, too. I never realized how much she meant to me until it was too late.”

  “There is so much I still want to share with her, Trevor.” Not the least of which was news of Adelaide’s death, and the announcement of her own hasty yet completely wonderful marriage to Garr.

  Joya was suffering, of that Janelle was certain, but she was hesitant to tell Trevor of her unfounded intuition. If he did believe her, he would only torture himself with worry. Until he had rid himself of Mandeville Imports and the rest of his responsibilities here, there was no way he could go after Joya.

  Although her own future with Garr and their good fortune seemed assured, a continual sadness inhabited her heart.

  “The fire has gone out. It’s freezing up here.” Trevor looked over at the small coal stove in the corner of the room. The skylights in the ceiling were covered with snow, the glass a thin protection from the cold.

  “Garr should be home from his uncle’s soon. I was just going downstairs for tea.”

  Before they reached the second floor, Garr met them on the stairs. Unmindful of Trevor, he greeted her with a kiss and then asked, “What’s wrong, darling?”

  “Trevor has received a letter from Joya. She is on Matarenga, which is a relief, but she did not mention having received any of our letters. And she sent a wonderful orchid.”

  “At least now you know she reached the island safely. Oh, before I forget, there is a footman in royal livery in the foyer. It seems he has a letter for you, Trevor, and since he was commanded to wait for a reply, Sims has him sequestered on a chair and is standing sentry over him.”

  * * *

  For the second time in his life, Trevor was ushered into Queen Victoria’s presence, this time for a private interview. He had been commanded to bring the orchid with him and realized the instant he had read the queen’s summons that news of its arrival had certainly traveled fast.

  “Mr. Mandeville,” the queen said, “thank you for coming. We must say that you appear a bit surprised to be here again.”

  He nodded. “I am, Your Majesty. The orchid arrived not three hours ago.”

  “You are wondering how We heard of it?”

  “To be honest, yes, Your Majesty.”

  She smiled. “There are no secrets in England, most especially where something to do with Us is concerned. Now, let Us see this precious bloom.”

  Trevor carefully unwrapped the orchid and held it out so that Victoria might view the wonderful cattleya.

  “Have you named it?” she asked expectantly.

  “I have, Your Majesty.” What he was about to do would cost him a royal appointment and perhaps the Queen’s censure, but his heart had been dictating to him ever since he set eyes on the orchid.

  “I have named it for my wife, Your Majesty.”

  The queen frowned, pursed her lips, and sat in thoughtful silence as Trevor counted his heartbeats. Th
en, slowly, her expression changed and she smiled. “Your lovely island girl. How does she fare?”

  “Your Majesty, I honestly do not know. She went home to Africa weeks ago.”

  The queen looked enviously at the orchid in his hands, touched the ruffled petals with her fingertip. Then she looked into his eyes.

  “We are a bit disappointed, and I’m certain the prince will be, too, but there will always be more orchids. Your wife is a rare treasure. Go after her, Mandeville. Do not let her get away.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  MATARENGA ISLAND

  One month later…

  Through hand signs, the Matarengi on the beach made it known to Trevor that Joya and her father were at the orchid camp. He wasted no time starting out after them.

  As anxious as he was to see his wife again, the beauty of the island often distracted him. Each time he rounded another bend in the road or reached the top of a rise, he stopped to take in the panoramic views of the turquoise lagoon, the waves breaking on the outer reef, the sunset on the far horizon.

  During one such stop, Trevor closed his eyes, took a deep breath and made a swift and silent prayer for his grandmother, hoping that she was at peace, hoping she knew he had forgiven her. Then he shouldered his pack and moved on.

  The afternoon of his second day on the trail, at a point where he could see the river rushing through an open section of bottomland in the valley below, the lilting sound of Joya’s laughter floated to him on the Kusi trades. At first he thought he was hallucinating. He let the sound infuse him and sing through every pore.

  He pictured Joya as he had first seen her, with her blond hair a wild halo about her head, her skin sun-kissed and glowing, so vibrant, so free, so much a part of the island.