by Maren Smith
Carefully separating it from the rest of the packing material, Levina fed the remaining leaves into the fire, and then looked at the flower. Despite having spent four years cataloging plant specimens from all over the world, she turned it over in her hands, drawing an absolute blank as to what it might be. Some kind of orchid, she thought. But even crushed and somewhat wilted around the edges, she couldn’t remember having ever seen another like it. Not back in her school days. Not in the whole of the museum.
Closing the incinerator door, she made her way back to the library and began searching through books. No. No, there was no corresponding orchid among the many drawings and classifications within any of those volumes that described the flower she held in her hand.
Despite all of her mother’s fervent ascertains that ladies did not sweat, Levina’s hands began to. They began to tremble, too. This flower was completely unknown to the world of described science.
There was a botanists’ convention taking place right upstairs. Dared she take this flower up to them and see if any of those learned scholars could identify it? Would any of them know more than she did on the subject? True, all of her knowledge came from books, but it was their published works that took up the shelves in the museum’s library. Since the orchid was listed among none of the volumes here, then that meant…
It meant that she was holding the perfect opportunity to prove herself. To Parnell and to his father and her parents and the whole of the scientific community at large that Levina Augusta Wainwright wasn’t just catastrophe incarnate wherever she went. This was her chance to make a meaningful contribution to something!
Her heart was beating fast and furious in her chest when she made her way back to her little coat-closet of an office across from the storage room. She sat down at her table, so distracted that she didn’t even wince when the still smarting welts across her bottom met the unforgiving seat of her chair. She looked at the orchid in her hands and tried to think. Parnell wouldn’t like it if she disturbed the Society’s convention. But maybe it was winding down now, and if she brought him something as marvelous as an unknown specimen—something of his own to publish and put his name on forever, so he could join the ranks of those men he so enviously rubbed elbows with, instead of just announcing another of their discoveries—why, surely he couldn’t be upset with her then, could he? He might be so pleased, maybe he’d name the flower after her.
Levina bit her bottom lip. She’d do it, she decided. She’d take the chance and risk his displeasure, because what she was holding in her hands just had to be worth bringing to his attention right away.
Hugging the wilted flower carefully to her chest, she made her way upstairs. The entire west wing had been cordoned off for the Society’s convention, and as she snuck in between the Evolution of Life in the Pacific Islands exhibit and the Inventory of Plant Groups, she glimpsed Parnell and his father talking and laughing with several older men in tuxedos over drinks and cigars. The convention was obviously over, but a few still lingered on to look over new additions to old displays or to mingle amongst peers in this, their mutual field of interest. When Parnell happened to glance her way, she separated herself from a banana bush long enough to wave, attracting his attention.
He frowned, and she quickly ducked back out of sight again. Her stomach was a rolling mass of nervous butterflies when he excused himself from the group, setting his drink and cigar both down to come over to her.
“What are you doing?” he demanded in hushed tones. He caught her arm just as soon as he drew near enough, pulling her out of the shrubbery and quickly back through the open door into the near-empty hall. “Jinxie darling, you know better than this. One would have thought two good licks in a day enough to convince you—”
“I found something,” she blurted and shoved the flower at him without grace or preamble. A wilted petal broke off and floated gently down to the floor.
Parnell drew back as if the orchid were a contagion. “What is that? And what do you mean, you found it?”
“It was mashed in amongst the packing leaves in a crate Dr. Calvin mailed back from the Amazon.”
Parnell stiffened, his whole face growing drawn and cold. “You opened a crate without permission?”
He said it in the same tone one would imagine he’d say, ‘You dipped the night watchman in tar?’ This wasn’t going at all like she thought it would.
“It w-was just the little one. The one you knocked over.”
He stiffened that much more. “I knocked over.”
“J-j-just t-to make sure nothing was broken,” she stammered. His grip on her elbow had tightened and he didn’t look at all happy. “B-but, Parnell, look!”
He interrupted his glowering stare at her only just long enough to give the plant a disinterested glance. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.” A smidgen of her earlier excitement returned when he gave the flower a second, longer glance. Some of that dark disapproval vanished when she added, “Nobody knows. It’s not in any of the books. I’ve checked.”
Letting go of her elbow, he picked up the orchid between two fingers and looked at it from a different angle. “You should check again.”
“I did.” She was smiling now. “Twice. You could publish this.” His stare snapped back to her, a cool mask, completely unreadable, but she drew strength from somewhere deep down inside herself and forged on anyway. “You’ve always wanted to see the Amazon. We could go there together, make our own exploration. If we find more of these, you can sketch it and describe it. And name it. It would be your find!”
“We?” He turned away from her, drifting a few steps as he looked at the orchid under the failing daylight that streamed in through a western window. “The Amazon is no place for a woman, Jinxie darling.”
Levina felt a coldness creep over her as some of the excitement in her died. “I…I’m the best amateur botanist in the museum. You said so yourself. I could be a help to you.”
“You’d set the entire forest on fire,” he said absently, but she could see he was thinking about making that exploration now, too. A corner of his mouth was turning upward as he tilted his head, considering the orchid and all the notoriety its simple existence might bring. “No, my dear. The Amazon is no place for you.” He turned back to her, slipping the orchid into his coat pocket and giving that pocket a pat as he fixed her with a half-smiling, knowing look. “And neither is the west wing, particular not with the Boston Botanists’ Society convened within.”
Shoulders drooping, Levina glanced back into the room where the convention was winding down. The rest of the museum looked to have closed an hour ago. Hurt, she looked back at him when he tsked and shook his head.
“I don’t know what has gotten into you, Jinxie love. Two good licks under your belt, and you’re still breaking the rules.”
“B-but…”
“No buts, my darling.” Catching her shoulders, Parnell pressed a cool kiss to her forehead and squeezed her arms. “Back down into the tombs you go. I’ll come to fetch you when it’s time to go home, and since two strokes of the cane were obviously not enough to bring you to mind, we’ll see if four good licks won’t do a better job.”
He chucked her under the chin and, whistling, went back into the west wing to rejoin his father.
Levina wilted every bit as much as the flower in Parnell’s pocket. Blinking fast to keep from crying, she went meekly back down the stairs to her tiny basement office. She sat down gingerly, knowing that in another hour or so the sensation would be so much worse that she wouldn’t be able to sit at all. Not only did she have to blink harder then to keep back the tears, but she blinked faster and bit down on her bottom lip as well.
That hadn’t gone at all the way she’d thought it would. And it wasn’t just the extra cane strokes that were making her breath catch in tiny hiccups at the back of her throat. Not entirely, anyway. She had brought him this discovery and now he was going to cut her out of the process entirely.
Disa
ster follows you.
You’ll set the entire forest on fire.
Catastrophe incarnate, that’s what she was and how he would always see her. He might love her enough to want to marry her, but he would never think of her as competent or useful. She was going to spend the rest of her life sitting in this closet or in a corner of his office—near a window but out of freckle-inducing sunlight—where he could keep an eye on her and dish out his two good licks until the day she died.
Unless she did something drastic. Something to prove herself once and for all.
Like go to the Amazon and officially discover that orchid for herself.
Levina sniffled, feeling intensely sorry for herself. As if there were any way that a lone woman could arrange a scientific exploration into the Amazon. She didn’t have the first idea where to start looking.
She still had the packing slip, a rebellious part of her mind suggested. And map after map of all the territories that had been charted and explored to date, just sitting downstairs in the research library.
Trips like this were expensive. Levina sniffed again. Very, very expensive.
She had more than enough with the money her grandfather had left her, and since she’d reached her majority and her marriage to Parnell hadn’t yet taken place, she had full control over it.
Her parents would not approve of such an unladylike venture.
She’d have to lie—her fingers fidgeted uncomfortably in her lap—and tell them she was headed somewhere else. Maybe to her Aunt Milly’s in California…but just until Parnell got back. Because absolutely, without a doubt, Parnell would never, ever approve of this either.
But did he even need to know? If she could lie to her parents—her fingers fidgeted again—then surely she could lie to him. Just a little white lie. One that wouldn’t seem so bad once she returned home again, with a scientifically-described, brand-new species of orchid in her possession.
If she could do that, than not even Parnell could continue to think of her as incompetent and useless. She might catch another two good licks for it. Although for an illicit trip into the vast wilds of the Brazilian overgrowth, Parnell might skip right over two, four, or even six licks and go straight on to twelve!
Levina squirmed on her chair, wincing as the dwindling ache and heat flared in response. Still, for the chance to prove herself, surely any quantity of cane strokes, not to mention unknown risk, had to be worth it.
Didn’t it?
CHAPTER TWO
Takura Takol was elbow-deep in engine grease and coal dust when he saw her; he and everybody else along the densely populated series of docks that made up Manaus’s river harbor. The place was packed tight with market vendors and shoppers, fishing trolleys and fishermen, riverboats and natives, and a hodge-podge of tugs like his, and yet, out of all that daily-choreographed chaos, she stood out—a slip of a little white woman, walking down the docks, skirting tribal fish venders in her elegant white gown and, of all things, lacy parasol, which lay across her shoulder to keep off the sweltering sun.
She had to be lost. That was Takura’s first thought. That she was also incredibly pretty was his second. She was slender, regal in her bearing—head up, back straight, her smile splashed firmly into place—with curling wisps of copper-red hair that had escaped the severity of the bun she wore at the back of her head and which now fluttered freely in the breeze like a fiery halo all around her face and neck. A spattering of freckles kissed her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, which the sun had already managed to pinken. It matched the pink that trimmed both her gown and that useless little parasol.
That she was a tourist from the wealthy side of town seemed obvious; how she had managed to wander this far into his section of the docks without getting robbed was anybody’s guess. It might have had something to do with the native porter who trailed two steps behind her, lugging a small mountain of suitcases and bags under his arms.
Takura stood up slowly, pulling his grease rag down off his shoulder as she paused to consult the small book she carried. He watched as she tapped Arapaho the fisherman on the shoulder and haltingly asking a question. They both bent over her book in an effort to help her gargle out a mutually coherent sentence. Arapaho spoke perfect English, but like most of the natives here (Takura most certainly included) when it came to dealing with white people, he had a queer sense of humor.
At long length, apparently finding no end to her persistent patience, Arapaho stopped playing and pointed directly across the docks at Takura.
Takura wiped the worst of the grease and coal dust off his hands. Slowly, he crossed the deck of the canal tug that was both his main source of income and his home, and propped his lean hip against the metal rail as he waited for her to make her way to him. A soft breeze tugged at the lengths of his black hair, pulling his bangs across his forehead and a quick jerk of his head tossed them back out of his eyes. Takura had no idea what she was going to want (beyond a ride down the river—that much was obvious) but he could smell her enthusiasm from here.
To his nose, it smelled a lot like trouble.
She stopped at the end of the gangplank, and though he was already staring right at her, waved one white-gloved hand. “Olá,” she called.
Takura nodded once, still wiping his hands. If she brushed up against any part of his boat, she was going to ruin that dress.
When he didn’t say anything, she looked down at her book and began flipping pages. “Uh…Eu preciso de…uh…alugar um barco?”
“I speak English,” he said wryly.
She looked up, her green eyes flashing with delight. “Oh thank goodness. How wonderful. My Portuguese is atrocious.”
“Hadn’t noticed,” he lied, a corner of his mouth curling upward, especially when she straightened, looking so inordinately pleased at the compliment.
“Really?” She smiled, biting her bottom lip as she tipped the parasol to shield her eyes from the sun and gazed up at him.
A really, really pretty slip of a white woman. Young, too. If she was more than twenty, it wouldn’t be much more.
Wiping his hands one last time, Takura draped the grease rag over his shoulder again and folded his arms across his chest. He made himself comfortable against the rail. “Can I help you?”
“I need to charter a boat to take me up the river.”
“Fishing?” he asked, giving her dress a dubious look.
“Exploration. You see, I need to go, uh…” She shuffled through the pages in her book and quickly pulled out a well-used map. Waging a brief battle with the riverside breeze, she refolded it to emphasis a specific area and then held it up for him to see. “…here.” She pointed, but with at least ten good feet between them, all he could make out was the green dip of the Amazon Basin just above the white tip of her lacy white glove.
He came down the gang plank, took the map and looked at it. Then he looked at her. “How many people?”
“One.” She smiled at him again.
He looked at her sharply. “One,” he echoed.
“Just me.” Relinquished of her map, her fingers began to tap nervously along the edge of her book.
“You want to go to the Basin. That’s a four day trip upriver.” He looked her up and down once, noticing the twin spots of color that flushed her cheeks when he did so, and then dropped his eyes back to the map. “That’s Matis and Ticuna territory. We’ll probably see Jivaro, too. You trying to get your head shrunk?”
She blinked at him, her eyes widening and her smile fading. “I beg your pardon?”
“Headhunters, Miss…”
“Wainwright.” She stuck out her hand, white glove and all. “Ji—I mean, Levina. Levina Wainwright. How do you do?”
He held up his dirty hand to show her, but she shook it anyway and never once looked at her now dirty white glove. That right there put her above just about every other spoiled little rich woman he’d ever had the dubious pleasure in his life to meet, but then, she still wanted something from him, too.
&n
bsp; “Takura Takol,” he supplied.
“Ta…Tack…”
“Takura,” he enunciated. “Takol. Just plain Takura, if you like.”
“That’s very nice, thank you.” She beamed. “Just Levina, then.”
“Mm hm,” he said, taking her measure one last time before dismissing her. “I’m not taking you up the river.”
For the second time, she blinked and lost her smile. “But…why not?”
“I prefer keeping my head firmly attached to my shoulders, even if you don’t.” Handing the map back to her, Takura turned his attention back to his boiler engine.
“Oh, but…” Shuffling to get the unruly map stuffed back into her book, she tried to follow him. “But w-wait…Mr. Takol, please!”
He felt the boat shift ever so slightly when she stepped up onto the gangplank. Turning, he glared at her offending foot. She stopped when he frowned and, eventually, looked down at the gangplank too. When his hard gaze rose back up to hers, they stared at one another in silence until she, fingers fidgeting along the edge of her book, slipped a step backwards to once more stand on the dock.
“Never board another man’s boat without permission,” he told her.
“Sorry.” It was almost a whisper. The twin spots of color had disappeared behind a uniform flush all over her face. “I won’t do that again. It’s just…Mr. Takol, I do have money. I don’t expect you to…to take me anywhere for free.”
Takura looked at his engine, wiped his hands on the rag again and then came back to the rail. He folded his arms across his broad chest once more. “How much?”
Levina bit her bottom lip, a look of intense calculation overtaking her as she no doubt ran a list of sums in her head. “Fifty dollars?”
Takura snorted and turned away again.
“Wait! I meant…per day?”
