Bliss River

by Thea Devine

  It would be the same for Moreton, if he escaped. More-ton would forever be looking over his shoulder, forever wondering where Charles would turn up and when he would die.

  Where was she?

  Time had never moved so slowly. The lamp wick burned down, guttering, flickering, sending eerie shadows on the walls.

  He was flat on his back, bound hand and foot, helpless, useless, with no control over his life, and a great shearing grief that his mother was dead.

  But praise the prophets, not by his hand. Of every sin he could have committed, this would have been the worst. Not by his hand. And only because when the wheel of fate turned, his plan and Moreton's greed had intersected, and the deed was otherwise done.

  He would avenge her death, now that he knew the depths of Moreton's depravity. The circle would be unbro­ken. From the heavens, she would smile upon him, re­united at last with his father, and finally at peace.

  Goddamn—where is the whore?

  He couldn't stand it; he would almost rather die than be helpless. He had to trust; he had to. She wouldn't have come to him otherwise. She needed him, and she knew he needed her.

  That was the way of conspirators. Each had a hold over the other; and maybe she was trusting a bit too much, to think he would keep his promise to get her to England.

  England. God, he loved England. His heart belonged in England—but his soul yearned for the wanderlust of the desert. Which was the truest part of him, after all these years, he still did not know.

  It would be easier to go back to Argentina. There, in the freedom of the pampas, and the elegance of society, both sides of him could coincide without conflict.

  But they would look for him there. They could find him much easier there. So all along, he had planned to decamp to England where he could lose himself on the moors and brood on his sins.

  Dear heaven, his uncle could not have known what he set in motion when he sent him to be educated in England.

  Walk among them, his uncle had told him. Learn their ways. Hide in plain sight...

  And so he had, forging an identity for himself he now did not wish to disclaim. England,..

  Where the hell was she?

  He could die now. Just will the spirit out of his body, let himself go to a place where he would be truly free ...

  He couldn't endure much more. For a man like him, this was hell. This was death.

  He needed a plan. He would concentrate on a plan be­fore he went crazy. She couldn't possibly have a plan. Her offer seemed too spur-of-the-moment, probably instigated by the fact that they were to hang him in the morning, and she needed to run away.

  So they needed a plan. They had to decide where Moreton would give pursuit, and go in the opposite direction. He would probably figure them to try for Port Elizabeth. Or Capetown. They couldn't go east, blast Moreton and his deep-in-the-middle-of-the-veldt sensibility. They could­n't go much of anywhere from here without the greatest inconvenience.

  So they needed a plan. They'd go north and west, per­haps, through the Kalahari Desert and north toward Ka-binda and Sierra Leone, a massive trip in and of itself. But someplace Moreton wasn't likely to follow.

  North and west—it would be so easy to get to Ar­gentina from Kabinda. Why not? Why not? What would she know, this unschooled, untutored trull in whose hands he had committed his life? If he said it was England, she'd probably never know the difference.

  Damn, damn, damn ...

  A scraping noise. The door opening a crack, silhouetted in the flickering light. He held his breath as a shadow slipped in the door, slight, slender, female, an implement in her hand.

  "What the hell—?!"

  "Shhhh..." She moved across the dirt floor and knelt by the makeshift cage. "I can cut through this, I think."

  "It'll take a damned long time," he growled, but she was already sawing away at the bars with a gritty determi­nation. Nothing was going to stop her now, especially not six feet of two-inch-thick wood.

  At least she'd found a fairly substantial knife. She was not stupid.

  "I left the horses for you. I got everything else over by the pens, but I couldn't handle the ponies."

  "Can you ride?"

  "Yess-s-s—got it!" as she sawed through the first bar. She shot him a triumphant look as she sidled over to the second bar on her knees. "Another five minutes ..."

  It seemed like five hours to him, but at least some of the necessary components were in place. Like the fact she'd even come.

  All he had to do was get free and get out and he'd be gone.

  Innocent little bitch.

  She worked in silence and he studied her in the flicker­ing light. The queen, he'd characterized her, and she had a certain presence, a certain driving tenacity that was regal in and of itself.

  And she was beautiful, as a queen should be, with her lustrous hair and profligate body, and she was a wanton. He couldn't for a moment let himself forget that.

  It was solely and completely a bargain of convenience. He might have outwitted the noose on the morrow, but he infinitely preferred escape by night, and it didn't matter what he had to promise to achieve it.

  She made a sound as she hacked through the final half inch of wooden bar. "Now—" she took a bar in each hand and pulled against the cuts she'd made in the upper por­tion. "Not quite there ..." she muttered, and began sawing at the one and the other, this time with a kind of reckless­ness as if time was running out.

  And it was, he was certain. He had no sense of what time it was, just that it had been an achingly long night, and he'd been waiting and waiting. Now, he was inches away from freedom.

  She dropped the knife, grasped the bars and pulled.

  Cra-a-a-ack ... She grabbed the knife, dove into the cage, and onto the platform to saw through the ropes. All of four minutes it took to release him, four long harrowing minutes to give him back his life.

  And no time for anything but to get out of there.

  He grabbed the knife, and they crawled through the broken bars, he on numbed hands and legs. Out the door, running down the track hand in hand, toward the pony pen, running, running, running ... toward their fate .. . toward the unknown ...

  "Georgie? Georgie?" Olivia knocked on Georgie's bed­room door early the next morning. It was almost time to mete out justice. She could hear the sound of the stanchion being built even at this early hour.

  It remained only to see if Georgie had come home. "Georgie!" When even that tone of voice didn't rouse her daughter, Olivia thrust open the door.

  The bedroom was empty. Excellent. Georgie had kept her word, had fulfilled her promise.

  "Well?" Moreton, behind her.

  "She's not here."

  "Good. I'm delighted she finally understands."

  "It's almost time."

  "Yes. I will have the honor of escorting Charles Elliott to his death."

  "What time did you settle on?"

  "Seven. They don't have to be part of this."

  "No. Lydia wouldn't want that."

  "My thought exactly, my dear."

  They walked side by side out onto the Avenue. "Every­one's probably still asleep anyway," Olivia murmured. "They do like to sleep in."

  "They haven't our energy, our style. And they don't like things that are messy. Charles Elliott is messy. Well. We'll clean that up fast. In any event, we'll take breakfast after the disposition."

  "That's wise." They were almost to the Fawzi house. The men who had volunteered for construction duty were out on the plain just beyond the cemetery. The noise of the hammering was louder here. The ponies in the nearby pens were restive.

  "Thousands of pounds worth of horseflesh," Moreton murmured. "It does my heart good to think how much money that will bring us. You can tell Smythe to get one ready."

  Olivia went off, and Moreton went around to the shed. He didn't have a morsel of feeling for Charles Elliott.

  The man would die. Lydia was gone. He would take Olivia to England and rectify matte
rs there. And then, what a glorious future lay ahead of them, with money pouring in, and them taking their ease and living at Aling.

  God, he couldn't wait. All the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Another half hour and this piece would be done.

  He rubbed his hands together in anticipation, and opened the door of the shed.

  "OLIVIA!"

  And Georgie was gone, too. Olivia felt betrayed and she didn't know why. Yes, she did. Because Georgie had prom­ised. Georgie had agreed to everything, agreed with every­thing she had said. It was as if she'd crossed her fingers and then aligned herself with the man who could destroy all their lives.

  She'd never get over it; she'd never forgive Georgie.

  "Oh, but don't you understand, my dear?" Moreton consoled her. "This is better. This gives us a reason and the opportunity to go England sooner."

  "How do you know they've gone to England, for God's sake. Maybe he's taking her to Argentina."

  "Olivia, be sensible. We don't know the whole story. Maybe he kidnapped her and will hold her for ransom."

  "I wouldn't pay a ha'pence for her," Olivia snapped. "No. She's been acting strangely. She never wanted to par­take of the pleasures. She was ever trying to deny her nature, and she has now gone in collusion with this mur­derer. I wash my hands of her, wherever she may be."

  "Well, let's pretend she's gone to England—they've gone to England—and give ourselves this opportunity. This is the perfect excuse to leave the colony."

  Olivia thought about it for a moment. "Yes, it is, isn't it? Going searching for my wayward daughter who was kidnapped by the oh-so-clever Mr. Elliott. If you're certain this is the right thing to do. And in whose not very capable hands would you leave it all?"

  "At this point, I honestly don't give a damn. The ponies will bring us enough money to travel and set up in London, and that's all I care about right now. If we find Georgie, so much the better. If we can come to an accom­modation with Henry, we can begin our new life."

  An accommodation . . . Henry, the sanctimonious, the patronizing, the righteous, would never come to an ac­commodation with anyone, Olivia thought, but why spoil it for Moreton? He must know that as well as she. He was just refusing, in his usual way, to let obstacles stop him.

  And Henry was an obstacle, but she had no doubt that Moreton would find a way around it, just as he did every­thing else.

  It was one of the things she liked best about Moreton. He never let anything get in his way.

  In the end, things didn't work out quite as Charles had envisioned them. For one thing, the ponies had been diffi­cult to commandeer, mainly because he was weaker than he thought after twelve hours of being tied up and on his back, and the animals were fractious, spooked by shadows coming for them in the dead of night.

  And then, Georgiana's plan to get them out of the Valley involved back roads and narrow tracks out toward the mountains, no easy task by the light of a shrouded moon.

  So all his plans to overpower her and get away were knocked into a cocked hat. This part of the journey he could not accomplish by himself. They had to go slowly, both because of his condition and because the ponies were so precariously loaded with their necessities.

  But this way, Georgie pointed out, they would be aware if they'd been followed, and there were copses and crevices in which they could hide.

  By this route, they swung around the Valley, precari­ously climbing into the mountains and going west toward the coast. Georgie was positive that Moreton wouldn't think to come looking for them this way. Moreton surely would assume they'd gone south to the nearest port.

  Whether Moreton would assume they'd go to England was another story altogether, but it helped to further dis­tance him from finding them.

  They walked on slowly until dawn, barely speaking ex­cept to figure out the logistics of which way to go. How many hours that was Charles couldn't gauge. He was faint, dizzy, and hungry. They needed to rest the animals and assess where they were and what the next step was.

  They were not yet clear of Bliss River Valley. They were high up in the foothills, when they finally decided to stop.

  There, they watered the horses and removed the bundles so they could rest, and they had something to eat as well.

  "The hanging was to have happened at seven," Charles said, leaning against an outcropping of rocks and finishing off an end of bread. "Is it seven yet? They must know by now I've gone. I wonder what they'll do."

  "Moreton will be furious," Georgiana said. "But he is adaptable. If you're gone, and I'm not there, he'll be angry. Then he'll figure out where to come look for us. Or forget about the idea altogether."

  Charles slipped to the ground, suddenly unutterably weary. To this point, he couldn't have engineered his es­cape alone, but he could travel much faster from here on out were she not with him.

  In the blazing light of the emerging sun, she did not look too prepossessing. She was dressed impractically, in a light gauzy dress and flimsy slippers, again reinforcing his thought that this was pure impulse on her part. She had no idea what lay ahead, and she hadn't prepared herself for it or for what would be required of her, like restraint, mod­esty, containment...

  It was amusing to think about it, really. She was not coming farther than Sefra with him anyway.

  This was new territory for him, as far as the terrain at least. He knew nothing about South Africa; he'd come in by boat from Capetown by way of Cameroon and had traveled to the Valley by caravan from there.

  But he knew everything about survival in the desert.

  They weren't entirely without resources for this leg of the journey. She'd had presence of mind enough to bring food that wouldn't spoil. The skins were full. He had the knife, a useful weapon and a tool, and she'd brought a pair of boots and some sheets. Not bad thinking for some­one as sheltered as she.

  Sheltered? She? Odd thought.

  He was feeling more himself after eating. He got up and moved all the supplies to the midpoint of where they sat. It was now time to take stock.

  "Let's see where we are." He unstrapped his bedroll and spread it out, tossing off supplies and feeling for the gun. The change of clothes, the bedding, the tent and poles, the pot, the dishes and utensils, the matches—

  No gun.

  He steeled himself not to react. No gun. That lying little ... Miss Holier Than Fucking Thou ...

  "Were you looking for this?"

  He jerked his head up at the sound of her voice to find his pistol aimed dead at his heart.

  "I was," he said caustically. He picked up his oilskin pouch and opened it. Shit, Light fingers there too. "Aren't you the clever one?"

  "We're going to England, Mr. Elliott." "No doubt about it."

  "Or I could just leave you stranded on the mountain, much the same as I'm feeling you might have left me. You know, one of the reasons Moreton chose this location was the mountains. You could get lost in them for days. You think you're going one way and it turns out you're going the other. A man could die in the mountains." "A woman could die in the desert." "Indeed, I'm very aware of that. So you see, we do have something to offer each other, Mr. Elliott."

  "Oh yes, nothing to it, you'll just coast along in the Kala­hari on a couple of sheets and some dried dates."

  "It always pays to be prepared," she murmured, but she'd never been prepared for anything in her life except spreading her legs. And the one thing she would never admit to him was that she was scared. She was absolutely pulse-poundingly scared of what came next—the days and weeks alone with him in the desert with no protection but a knife, a gun, and some good will on both sides. Definitely something secured at the point of a gun. She was shocked that her hand was still steady, that she could point that thing and that her voice didn't waver and that she sounded as if she knew what she was doing.

  In reality her legs were watery and the thought of leav­ing the Valley was scarier than hell. Better the devil you know... She ought to just go back and resign hersel
f to the life. That was the simplest thing. The best for them both. And maybe, when she was too old, she would be shipped out, allowed to live in peace somewhere, a reward for time served in the Valley.

  Better to be Moreton's whore?

  There was no other choice but to go. And Charles Elliott was looking dangerously like he wanted to jump her and wrest the gun away.

  "Don't do it, Mr. Elliott. We are going to England."

  So she'd made her choice, as much as part of her wanted to run back to the Valley. The unknown was frightening, but what was known was scarier still.

  She was wrestling with it: the queen had reigned in but one country, had known only one place. Beyond the moun­tains, she'd become a commoner, subject to the rules.

  The thought was amusing. "England, then," he agreed, "but you'll have to keep your clothes on. That might be awfully difficult for you."

  The bastard. "Then I won't," she said insolently. "What else?"

  He sized up the thought. The queen, naked, sashaying through another man's manor hall, offering her breasts, her body—she would, too. She had no restraints on her moral­ity, no constraints on her soul.

  He couldn't fight her, at least on this part of the journey; her weapons, and his memory, were too potent.

  "All right, you kept your part of the bargain. And I will keep mine."

  "I expect you will, now. I hope I took all your money?"

  He looked grim. "Enough. But we have with us enough to keep going for a week or more until we can get more supplies and find our direction. My shuldari is big enough for two. There's food and drink; the horses are fleet and surefooted. We can easily make camp once we're away from the mountains. We can defend ourselves. Don't look so shocked. Did you not think there were brigands roam­ing the desert? And you leave me without a gun ..."

  "And a knife," she interpolated, holding up the object in question.

  Where, in that flimsy dress, had she concealed all that? For one tearing instant, he felt like finding out.

  And then he clamped down ruthlessly on his desire. She was counting on that; she was provoking that. It was what she knew how to do best, and it would take every ounce of resolve to resist her.