HEARTS AFLAME

by Nancy Morse

  “But I don’t remember anything.”

  “They don’t know that.” He turned in the seat and looked at her. Like the sky just before a storm, the blue of his eyes darkened. “I think you’re in danger. We need to call off this trip to Tanganyika.”

  Julia drew back, shaking her head. “I can’t do that. It’s my only chance of recovering the memories.”

  No, he wanted to shout. There’s another way. Let me take you in my arms and make love to you. It would quench the fire burning in the pit of his belly and sate the intense desire he had to be inside of her. It would ease the guilt of the fatal blunder he’d made when he let her out of his sight and she disappeared from his life. It would have given him something to believe in. But even as the thoughts tore through his mind, he knew there was no guarantee it would bring back the memories. He turned away.

  She sat there for a moment, watching him. His head tilted forward. Wayward locks fell across his face to shadow his features. She gazed at the sunlight dancing along each sandy strand of hair, the dark stubble spiking the strong line of his jaw, and the pulse in his neck.

  The breath caught in his throat, and he grimaced when he felt her hand on his arm.

  “Please, Jonathan. This is something I have to do.”

  He lifted his face. In the sunshine, her eyes were bright and glittering and pleading. He smiled.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  Nairobi and the terrifying experience lay behind them as they drove the rest of the way in silence.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Who are these people?”

  Julia stood beside Jonathan at the edge of the veranda watching a half dozen Kikuyu men milling about.

  “Our bearers.” He slapped a limp, colorless terai hat down upon his head. “You didn’t think we were going to Tanganyika alone, did you?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it,” she said as she followed him from the veranda out into the bright sunshine. Despite the lingering effects of her harrowing experience in Nairobi, and Jonathan’s urging that they call off the trip, she was determined to go through with it. She hadn’t come this far to turn back now.

  “This is Wakula.” He gestured to a tall, ebony-skinned native who was bare from the waist up, with a shield slung over one naked shoulder, a bow and monkey skin quiver over the other, and a spear gripped in his hand. “The best Swahili tracker in East Africa. We’ll travel light. Two bigger tents, one for you and one for me, and several pup tents for the porters and trackers. Kibbi will accompany us to the edge of the Serengeti and then return with the horses to the farm. We’ll travel the rest of the way on foot.”

  Julia turned to see the Masai approaching leading two saddled horses. “It is good to see you again,” she said. “How are your wife and new baby?”

  Kibbi smiled proudly. “We drank the blood of a bullock.”

  “That means it’s a boy,” Jonathan explained. “When it’s a girl, they drink the blood of a heifer.”

  “Memsahib!” Raj Singh rushed from the house. “You forgot this.” In his brown hand he held Julia’s pith helmet.

  She thanked him and slid her boot into Jonathan’s cupped hands.

  “He must think you’re staying on permanently,” he said, hoisting her into the saddle.

  Julia swept her hair up off her shoulders and tucked it beneath the lightweight cloth-covered helmet. “Why would he think that?”

  “Because he addressed you with a term of respect reserved for the lady of the house,” he replied as he swung into the saddle.

  The lady of the house. Julia smiled to herself. It had an appealing ring to it. She wondered if she could ever belong in a place like this, with a man like Jonathan Shane, or if she was crazy for even thinking it.

  “No, Molo!” Jonathan’s stern voice chased the foolish notion away. The hound danced around their horses’ hooves. “Not this time. Stay.”

  The dog knew by the tone of his master’s voice that he meant business. Putting his tail between his legs, he slinked away and crawled under the veranda to sulk.

  Jonathan wished it was as simple to convince Julia to stay put. But despite the residual fear he saw in her eyes, she was brave and stubborn to a fault. With a quick command to the porters, he set the party in motion.

  As the morning wore on, Julia noticed that Wakula wasn’t like the Kikuyu men who walked in single file with their cumbersome packs on their backs. From time to time he vanished into the bush and reappeared as if he’d never been gone, moving like the wind, noiseless and fast. Several times over the course of the morning he shimmied up a tree and peered out over the land before shimmying back down.

  Sometime in the afternoon, after Kibbi had returned to the farm with the horses and they were on foot, Wakula signaled for a pause. Jonathan put his hand out to halt Julia’s steps. “He can sense whatever’s out there.”

  Wakula signaled with his fingers.

  “Lion ahead,” Jonathan whispered.

  The bearers carefully laid their packs on the ground and dropped down beside them. With a finger pressed to his lips to stress silence, Jonathan placed a hand on Julia’s shoulder and pushed her down. Dropping to his belly, he crawled on ahead.

  Without his reassuring presence beside her, she felt unprotected and afraid. The memory of the lions stalking the overturned Roadster was still fresh in her mind. Her pulse began to race. It seemed that at any moment the lion would hear the frantic beating of her heart and attack.

  Jonathan crawled silently forward. Parting the tall grass, he spied a lion some fifty yards away feeding on a fresh kill, his head buried deep in his prey’s abdomen. It was a big male, tawny, black-maned, and muscular. His tail flicked back and forth, beating the grass with its knotted end.

  The great beast lifted its head. His face was scarred by battle and by experience, and his jowls were crimson and dripping blood from his meal. Every muscle in Jonathan’s body tensed as he peered through the grass. It was Black and Tan, the rogue lion he’d been hunting. What a spot of bad luck for that damn cat to be in the vicinity and him unable to take advantage of it.

  Backing away as stealthily as he could, he returned to the party and signaled that they were to remain where they were. With his rifle at the ready, they sat there and waited.

  The sun was slowly inching higher in the sky. The faces of the porters, streaked with sweat, shone like black glass in the sunlight. Julia felt the perspiration trickling down her back, matting her shirt uncomfortably to her flesh. After a while, Wakula disappeared. It felt like forever until he returned and signaled that the danger was gone.

  The afternoon was thick with heat as they continued on. No longer in the highlands, there was no respite from the heat as the day wore on.

  Shadows raced across the land and flocks of birds were winging home to the bush when Jonathan finally put his hand up and called a halt to the day’s journey. At a spot where the grass was bent down and surrounded by thorn trees, he gave the order to make camp for the night. A silence descended over the land as the porters went about the task of erecting the tents.

  Julia drew her dusty canteen up from its long leather strap, tilted her head back and took a drink of warm water. It had been a long and arduous day’s journey. She was exhausted and her nerves were on edge. Jonathan approached, those long, easy strides working in harmony with his muscular frame to compound her unease. What was it about that man that unhinged her? She wasn’t afraid of him. On the contrary, the fear came from within herself, from the undeniable attraction she felt for the blue-eyed coffee farmer. She already knew what his kiss could do, how the press of his lips stoked embers of desire that had lain dormant far too long, and secretly she wondered what it would be like to make love with him. Would it be overpowering, like the strength simmering in that taut, muscular body, or would it be filled with the tenderness she sensed him capable of?

  “Your tent is ready. Why don’t you get some rest? I’ll wake you when i
t’s time for dinner.”

  She hoped her laugh masked her thoughts. “At this point, anything in a tin can sounds good.”

  Inside the canvas tent was a camp bed spread with a chenille blanket and a small collapsible table upon which sat a lantern and a basin and ewer. The floor was covered with a mat of sisal. The accommodations, although hardly first-class, were welcome.

  Julia stripped off her dusty safari clothes. Jonathan would not allow her anywhere near the river they followed, warning of crocodiles and hippos, so she filled the basin with water and washed the dust and grime from her face, neck and shoulders, grateful for this much, at least. The camp bed creaked when she lay down upon it and pulled the blanket up over herself.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Julia.”

  The sound of her name awakened her. She blinked her eyes, unsure at first of her surroundings. And then she remembered where she was, and why she was there, and who was calling her.

  “Yes, I’m coming.”

  She got up and dressed in an ankle-length skirt, knee-high boots, and a white shirt that she cinched at the waist with a wide leather belt. Without the African sun beating down on her head, there was no need for the pith helmet, so she ran a brush through her hair and left it to fall in loose waves to her shoulders.

  In the center of camp a fire burned brightly, sending pitches of orange flame reaching toward a sky riddled with stars. Torches placed around the perimeter of the camp created a circle of light. Beyond the torchlight stretched the darkness, but within it the atmosphere was warm and inviting.

  He was waiting for her at a small wooden camp table spread with a white cloth and lit with candles. The flames danced when he rose to greet her.

  “I thought you said we were traveling light,” she said.

  “Disappointed?”

  “Not at all. I just wasn’t expecting something like this out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  And I wasn’t expecting something like you to come along twice in my life, Jonathan thought with mixed emotions as he held a canvas folding chair out for her. “I had Raj Singh prepare some food for the trip. Nothing as elaborate as what you’d get with some of the safari outfitters, but a heck of a lot tastier than a Grant’s gazelle. You practically have to burn that meat to make it edible. And I’m afraid we’ll have to make do with tin dinnerware.” He took a seat across from her, reached down, and with a sideways smile set a bottle of wine on the table. “But I never travel far without some of this.” He wedged the cork out of the wine bottle and poured the claret into their tin mugs.

  The air filled with the sounds of the African night and the smell of good food as they dined beneath the stars.

  Julia smiled, the candlelight flickering across her face. “This is quite good.”

  “Cock-a-leekie soup, an old Scottish recipe courtesy of Raj Singh.”

  “And the wine? Courtesy of Kermit, I presume?”

  “Not this time. I bought it when we were in Nairobi.”

  The reminder of her experience in the alley wiped the smile from Julia’s face.

  Instantly, he regretted it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”

  Julia dismissed his apology with a shake of the head. “I’ve been thinking about the man I saw in the white suit. I have the strangest feeling I’ve seen that white suit before. I can’t get it out of my mind.” She gave a nervous little laugh. “How absurd is that? Men wear white suits all the time. And yet—”

  From somewhere beyond the circle of light a lion roared, staunching the painful uncertainty in Julia’s voice.

  “Simba is hungry, Bwana,” one of the porters said with a laugh.

  She looked out into the darkness beyond the camp.

  “A lion’s roar can carry for miles,” Jonathan said. “Don’t worry. He’s nowhere near here. He knows the smell of man. He won’t venture this close to an armed camp. With men, you often don’t know who they really are or why they do the things they do. A lion is exactly what he is. Nothing more, nothing less. Except for this one. He’s more intelligent than most of the men I know. And clever enough to avoid capture or being shot by hunters. Some nights when I lay awake in bed, his roar carries across the plains, and in it I can hear his loneliness.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “Don’t feel too sorry for him. He’s also a killer. Your former guide isn’t the only man he’s killed.”

  “It’s Black and Tan, then? The one I heard about?”

  “I’ve been tracking him for months trying to catch him and move him deeper into the Serengeti where he won’t be a menace to humans and maybe save his life.”

  “You sound as if you admire him.”

  “He has qualities I admire. Courage, intelligence. He lives his life his own way and doesn’t answer to anyone.”

  “That sounds like someone I know,” Julia said.

  Jonathan lifted his glass. “Here’s to whoever it is.”

  She tilted her glass toward his. “It’s you, Jonathan.”

  He slowly lowered his glass. “And you know me well enough to say that?” He held his breath, pinning his hopes on her reply.

  “I don’t have to have known you all my life to know you’re a good man. What other man would undertake this journey with a woman he only just met?”

  The hope drained out of him. “Well, you are paying me five thousand dollars.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  With a strained laugh, he asked, “What other reason would there be?”

  “Pity.”

  “I don’t pity you, Julia. Maybe I just know what it’s like to lose a piece of yourself. You’re struggling to remember. There’s something I’d like to forget.”

  “A woman?”

  He could have told her everything, starting with how much he loved her then and how much he still did. Instead, he said simply, “The war.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You didn’t cause the war.” He leaned back against the canvas folding chair and stretched his legs out before him, fingers toying with the tin cup of wine. “The British set up a makeshift recruiting station in Nairobi. I joined an auxiliary unit of Somalis. We were sent to patrol a section of railway over on the Kilimanjaro frontier where the Germans were conducting bombing raids. Our job was to prevent the Germans from advancing. There was no western front here. No trenches. No parapets or barbed wire. Just marauding lions and leopards and red ants. Malaria, dysentery and tick fever raged through the camps. Dust got into everything, and the short rains that began in November turned the ground to mush. The Somalis were brilliant trackers and they loved to shoot, but they didn’t like army discipline and eventually they mutinied. The Africans found it funny that white men were shooting each other’s brains out. But it wasn’t so funny when thousands of porters on both sides were killed.”

  He lifted the cup to his lips and took a long, deep swallow as memories of war converged on him. “Sometimes at night the lions surrounded the camp. You could feel them closing in. One night, I heard a roar that shook the glasses on the officers’ table. Some of the men and I went out with torches and loaded rifles. There he was, Black and Tan, not ten yards away. It was the first time I looked into those yellow eyes. I thought for sure he was going to eat me. Just as one of the men was about to shoot, I stopped him. That lion had no part in what everyone was calling the Great War. He didn’t know the difference between German East Africa and British East Africa. He was just being a lion.”

  “It must have been terrifying,” Julia said with a shiver, recalling her own narrow escape from the jaws of lions.

  “It wasn’t the lions I was afraid of,” Jonathan replied. “Growing up in East Africa, you learn their ways. You know what they will and won’t do. No, for me the most frightening part of the war came when the Germans were retreating about a hundred miles from the border. The general’s aide-de-camp and I were driving along a rocky tract without an e
scort when snipers riddled the lorry with rifle fire. The poor guy took a bullet to the neck and died instantly. I thought I was next. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. So I did the only thing I could do. I faced them off with gunfire. They disappeared into the bush and I drove out of there like the devil was on my tail. I don’t mind telling you I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”

  For several moments he fell silent as the crackle of the campfire split the night, and when next he spoke, it was with a bitterness that went deep to the marrow of his being. “The war in East Africa was unknown to the outside world. People think of Africa and they think of safaris. They don’t know what it was like here during the war. Men marching for fifteen, sixteen hours without food. The fleas and jiggers and mosquitoes eating you up alive. Men dying from blackwater fever. The rivers infested with crocodiles. We didn’t have the terror of the trenches. We had a different kind of hell.”

  He inhaled deeply and expelled a fatalistic breath that made the candle-flame dance. “The Allied forces finally pushed the Germans out of their own territory, and I went back to the farm. But nothing was the same after that. The export of coffee was essential to the farm, but the war cut me off from my markets. Things were just beginning to turn around when the drought came.”

  He lifted the cup to his mouth and downed the rest of the wine without ceremony. “The men at the Muthaiga Club like to forget that the Great War with the Kaiser’s empire even occurred and how this land felt the brunt of those Big Berthas. A few of them even take Germans out on safari. But for some of us, it’s not something you ever forget.”

  Why was he telling her things that he had never told anybody, not even Kibbi? His efforts to remain detached from her were failing miserably. She was like a sickness in his blood, draining him of the emotional strength it took to keep from being drawn back in. And yet she was also salvation, the one thing in this world that had the power to heal his deep wounds, and she didn’t even know it.