by Webb, Peggy
As he looked at the dusty bottoms of her feet, he almost wept.
Quietly he closed the door then stood over the sofa watching her. She’d left a lamp burning, and the light spilled over her face. He reached toward her, but stopped himself when his hand was a mere fraction of an inch away from her soft cheek.
He had no right to touch her, even in her sleep—especially in her sleep.
“Ruth.” He spoke her name softly, but she didn’t hear, didn’t stir.
It had been a very long day for both of them. He’d meant to explain to her about Malone’s sudden departure then offer to drive her back to the main compound so she could stay with Eleanor and Joseph. But he was exhausted, she was exhausted, and there was no point in taking up what little was left of the night in preserving propriety.
Besides, hadn’t Malone asked him to take care of her?
When he lifted her into his arms, she cuddled close, making soft, delicious bed sounds that almost drove him wild.
“Can you hear me, Ruth? I’m taking you to bed.”
“Hmmm.” She turned her face into his chest, and he could feel her warm breath through the front of his shirt.
How much temptation could he endure in one day?
Resolutely he set his face toward the spare bedroom. Moonlight spilled through the window, and he laid her gently in the center of the bed where the light could touch her. Sighing, she settled into the pillow. The sound of her breathing was soft and even.
He covered her with a light quilt, and as he stood watching her sleep, he saw how it would be possible to lose his mind over her. Not only his mind, but every shred of honor he possessed.
Her hair was disheveled, fanning across the pillow and tumbling across her face. Did he dare brush it out of her eyes? As he bent over her, her warm breath stirred against his cheek and her hair clung to his fingertips.
Did he have the willpower to leave her there, to walk down the hall to his own bedroom?
What would it be like to see her hair spread upon the pillow next to his?
Chapter 51
RUMANGABO
They met in a small room over a general store in the seedy part of town. Dark and hot, it seemed an appropriate place to Malone. Much the way he imagined hell.
“Did you have to kill Petey and the females?” he asked.
“We had no choice. He would have killed one of us if we hadn’t.”
The speaker was Shambu, a tall, fierce Watusi who had been bought at great cost. But he was a park guard, and necessary to Malone’s scheme. In his position of authority he could not only turn a blind eye to the activities, but coordinate the actual kidnapping so that it coincided with a time when none of the other park guards would be nearby. Not that they ventured much near the Corday compound. For years it had been known among the guards that Brett kept close watch over all the wildlife in that part of the Virungas, particularly the gorillas. He made their job much easier.
“I’ll get some tranquilizer darts for you to use,” Malone said.
“Won’t that look suspicious? Your brother will know that somebody supplied the pygmies. He might even be smart enough to connect the tranquilizers to you.”
“You’re right.” Malone felt like a fool. Furthermore, he felt as if he was losing control to the Watusi. “Next time see if you can distract the group leader and the females so you can snatch the babies without bloodshed.”
“The Batwa pygmies are hard to control.”
“I’m paying you to control them.”
“No. You’re paying me to steal gorillas.”
“Well, dammit, I’m sure not paying you to kill them.”
Shambu reached for the panga at his side then stood staring at Malone. Sweat dripped off the side of Malone’s face. Maybe Brett was willing to go after a Watusi with a knife, but Malone was a coward. He preferred to settle differences the easy way.
“Hey, look. I didn’t mean to come down on you so hard. It’s been a long day.”
Shambu gave a contemptuous smile then started toward the door.
“Wait ...”
The Watusi kept on walking. Malone jerked his billfold from his pocket and threw some money onto the table.
“Maybe that will ease the pain of dealing with a bad-mannered white man,” he said.
“The hurt hasn’t gone away.”
Malone threw another bill to the pile.
Grinning, Shambu wadded the money in his big fist. Then he jerked his head in the direction of the stairs.
“Come, I’ll take you to the gorillas.”
o0o
The captives were in small cages in the back of a covered truck. JoGina was curled into a ball fast asleep, but Maymay, sitting in a pool of her own waste, looked up at Malone with tragic eyes.
“That one’s not going to make it,” Shambu said.
“Dammit. She’s going to make it.” Malone got his bag of medicines. “Get her out of there so I can take a look at her.”
The little gorilla was seriously dehydrated and had an elevated temperature. When Malone picked her up, she laid her weak little head on his chest.
For the second time that day, he felt like a Judas. Not only had he betrayed his family, but he had betrayed the mountain gorillas. Was the money worth the price of his honor?
“What are you going to do, Doc?”
It was the first time anybody had ever called him Doc. “I’m going to stay here and take care of her until Maymay is well enough to travel.”
Malone thought how his life might have been if he were brave. He’d have turned down Chu Ling’s rubies and his money; then he’d have gone back to the hotel room where his beautiful wife waited and said, “Ruth, let’s go to Alabama and find a little town that needs a veterinarian.” They’d have gone there together and built a modest practice and raised four children and six dogs. The two of them would have been the happiest couple in America.
If only he were brave.
As he started an IV in Maymay’s arm, he made a promise to himself. If she lived, he was going to do better.
“You’re not going to die, little one,” he whispered. “I’m not going to let you die.”
Chapter 52
Something was chasing her, and Ruth was running as hard as she could, but she couldn’t get away. Hands clutched at her, pulling her back, back toward something so terrible, she couldn’t even think about it. The smell of roses was everywhere. White roses.
She was suffocating. She couldn’t get away from the roses. There was no place to run. No place to hide.
There was someone she needed, someone she wanted.
o0o
Riveted, Brett sat up in bed. What had awakened him? What had caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end?
“Brett!”
Ruth was calling his name. He bolted from the bed and raced down the hall. She cowered against the headboard, the quilt pulled high up under her chin, tears streaming down her face.
“Brett! Brett!”
She wasn’t even aware that he was in the room. He sat on the bed and cradled her in his arms, rocking her as if she were a child.
“Shhh, shhh. It’s all right. I’m here, Ruth. I’m here.”
She struggled against him.
“No. I want Brett.”
“It’s me, Ruth.” Taking her face between his hands, he forced her to look at him. “It’s Brett.” Her eyes were wide and unfocused. She looked at him, but she seemed to be seeing something beyond him. “Touch me, Ruth. Touch my face.” Still terrified, she stared through him. He took one of her hands and ran it over his face. “See. It’s me.”
Tentatively, her hands began to move. As light as angel wings, they brushed his lips, tracing the bottom, then the top. It was almost more temptation than he could bear.
“Touch my eye patch, Ruth.” He took her hands away from his lips and pressed them against the leather that guarded his blind eye. She traced the edges of the patch, the leather string that held it in place. He had never
allowed anyone that familiarity, not even Lorena in all the years they’d been intimate.
“It’s me, Ruth. I’m here for you.”
The moonlight fell across her face as she stared at him, suddenly comprehending.
“It’s really you?”
“Yes. It’s really me.”
The trembling started in her lips then spread through her body. She collapsed against his chest, holding him so hard, he could feel his skin tear where her fingernails dug in. Sobs shook her, racking sobs.
“It’s all right, Ruth,” he said, smoothing her hair, caressing her face, her arms, her back. “Cry. Cry all you want. I’ve got you.”
“Don’t . .. let ... go.”
“No. I won’t let go.”
Her face was soft against his chest, her tears hot against his skin. In the morning he would take a somber look at what had happened during the night, but for one precious moment she was his, cuddled close in the middle of her bed with the moonlight bathing them in silver and sounds of the jungle drifting through the open windows.
This was the way it should be. Trust between a man and a woman. The most important intimacy of all.
When Ruth spoke, her voice was so soft, he couldn’t hear, but something in her tone sent chills through him.
“What?” he asked.
“He raped me,” she said, clearly this time.
“Who?”
“He took me to New Orleans and put me in a white room with white silk sheets and white roses, and he raped me. I was only thirteen.”
He wanted to roar his rage, to smash furniture and kick down walls, to rip trees up by the roots and tear down buildings.
“Who did that to you?”
“My mother. She sold me like a sack of potatoes. He had me all to himself for two weeks, and she got her future secured for the rest of her life.”
“I’m so sorry, Ruth. So sorry.”
Who? he wanted to know. Who? But he didn’t dare interrupt her soul bearing with more questions. The best thing he could do for her was be sympathetic and nonjudgmental.
“I married Malone to escape, but I can’t. The past is always with me. I can’t get rid of it.”
Her shoulders shook with fresh sobs, and he gathered her close.
“You’re rid of it now, Ruth. You gave it to me. I’ve got it now, and you don’t ever have to think about it again. You don’t have to run anymore. You don’t have to have bad dreams. You don’t have to worry. I’ll take care of everything.”
Her sobs became sniffles, then hiccups. She sucked in great gulps of air, holding on to him ... holding on.
She’d married Malone to escape. The knowledge rushed through Brett like high winter winds off the snowcapped peaks of the Virungas. Late at night when he was alone in his bed and Ruth lay with his brother in the cottage down the mountainside, he would remember what she’d said, remember and take selfish comfort.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t be.”
“I shouldn’t have told you those things. They’re private.”
“Your secrets are safe with me, Ruth. No one will ever know.”
Ruth was reluctant to lift her head off his chest. The warmth of his body seeped into her, and for the first time in her life she felt safe, truly safe.
She wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and stay right where she was.
“I feel as if I could sleep for the next three days,” she said.
“Rest.” His hands smoothed her hair. “Sleep.”
She closed her eyes, content. When she startled awake, she was still in his lap, both arms wrapped around his neck, her head in the crook of his shoulder, his cheek resting against hers.
“Brett?”
“I’m here.”
She was vaguely aware of having told him things she’d never told another human being ... and acutely, stunningly aware that he was naked.
She remembered dreaming, calling his name. As she always did. And suddenly he’d been there for her. But how?
“How did I get in this bed?”
“You were asleep when I came home. I put you here.”
Her dress was tangled high around her legs, and her bare thigh rested intimately against his. She looked at him, and he at her. It was one of those moments that would later shine in her memory like a beacon. There was hunger between them, a deep, atavistic hunger that went beyond mere passion, beyond reason, beyond propriety. She felt as if she’d just been given the keys to a house she’d always wanted but then told she couldn’t go inside.
Tears eased down her cheeks, but they were no longer the tears of fear.
“Where’s Malone?”
“In Rumangabo reporting the deaths of the gorillas.”
“Oh ...”
Even talking of mundane things, they didn’t shift apart. Couldn’t shift apart. Not yet. The desire between them was a separate being, a thing with a life entirely its own.
“He left early so he could get there before dark. He asked me to take care of you.” Brett shuddered with the tightness of his control. “He’ll be back in a few days.”
She was free, free from Malone’s self-pity, his drinking, his nightly gropings.
Free to be with Brett.
“I see.” Every nerve ending in her body was tingling, responsive to the man whose body was pressed next to hers. In the bed. In the dark. On a remote mountaintop where no one would see. No one would know.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.
Neither did she. A glow appeared in the east as the first rays of sun pinked the windowsill.
“It will be daylight soon.”
“Yes.”
She couldn’t bring herself to leave his embrace, not because of desire, but because of kindness. Certainly desire was in her, a rich, ripe unfolding that surprised her with its intensity. But the most remarkable thing about being so intimately entwined with Brett was the overwhelming trust she felt—trust in his kindness and loyalty and integrity.
How could such emotions be impure? How could holding him, merely holding him, be wrong? And yet she knew that in the eyes of society what they were doing was wrong.
“I’ll go back to the cottage as soon as it’s light enough to see,” she said.
“No.”
The glow that filled the bedroom was faintly tinged with gold, like a promise. He tightened his embrace, and she knew that she would never have the courage to let him go. Daylight could pour into the bedroom, and the entire population of Africa could troop in to watch, but Ruth would not be able to say no to the man holding her now ... no matter what he wanted.
If wanting to sip briefly of joy made her weak, then she’d have to live with herself. Unexpectedly she thought of her mother, of how circumstances might have shaped her and of how she might not have been strong enough to resist.
At the moment Ruth was not strong enough. Perhaps tomorrow she would be. But not now. Not with Brett’s arms around her and the first sweet light of morning making her wish for things she knew she could never have.
She knew before Brett pulled away that he was going to let her go. There was nothing concrete, no big sigh or last-minute crushing her to his chest, only a sudden sense that he had become as solid and unshakable as the hundred-year-old oak tree that grew beside her mother’s house in Mississippi.
When he let her go, she lay very still against the covers, but she didn’t avert her eyes when he stood up. He didn’t try to cover himself, didn’t try to hide his nakedness.
Both of them might have been ashamed if he had, and they had nothing to be ashamed of. Instead he treated his nudity as a natural occurrence, something that happened because he’d been roused from his sleep in the middle of the night by her cries.
“It’s best that you stay here until Malone returns.”
“I can’t leave Miranda by herself.”
“We’ll go down tomorrow and bring her back.”
If he had been anybody except Brett Corday
, it might have struck her as funny that he was standing in her doorway naked talking about a cat. But such was his dignity and presence that he could have been on top of the Empire State Building addressing all of Manhattan in the nude, and it would have seemed not only logical but somehow the right thing to do.
“I apologize for waking you up in the middle of the night,” she said.
“You can wake me up anytime you need me. The next time I’ll grab my pants.”
“There won’t be a next time.” A look passed over his face—rage? resignation?—but it was gone as quickly as it had come. She thought how she must have sounded. Harsh. Ungrateful.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said. “I’m very grateful to you for letting me cry on your shoulder. I’ve never done that before ... cried on anyone’s shoulder.”
“I’m glad you chose mine.”
“So am I.”
“Ruth ...”
She was on the bed and he was still at the door, so close and yet so very far away. If she reached out her hand, would he take it? Could she live with herself if he did?
“I want you to know that you can cry on my shoulder anytime you need to. I care about you, not just because you are my brother’s wife, but because you are you.”
“Thank you, Brett. I value your friendship.”
“That pleases me very much, Ruth. More than you’ll ever know.”
He left suddenly, and she stared at the empty doorway. Somewhere down the hall he would climb into his bed and perhaps be as lonely as she was in hers. Only a short distance separated them, but she knew that neither of them would ever close the gap.
She was his brother’s wife.
Chapter 53
He loved her. The thought stunned him, coming to him so unexpectedly.
Brett was standing at the window drinking coffee when Ruth walked into the kitchen, barefoot, no makeup, her hair caught high with a barrette and a few tendrils resting against her slender neck like little invitations.
