The Maverick's Bride

by Catherine Palmer

  He showed her his three large ponds and pointed out lion pugmarks sunk into the muddy shoreline. When Emma told him they looked like her Aunt Prue’s kitten’s paw prints—only bigger—he had to laugh. Emma seemed delighted when he introduced the hippo he had named Jojo. The creature had wandered away from its family during an exceptionally rainy year and had found his ponds. The two riders dismounted and sat on a warm rock to watch Jojo blow streams of mist into the blue sky.

  Later, they stopped at two villages, one of the Wakamba tribe and the other Samburu. Neither group had seen nor heard of a white woman or a white man wandering across the plains. In fact, they had never seen a white woman at all—as evidenced by the African children’s curious, half-frightened inspection of Emma.

  On returning to the farm complex, they went straight to Tolito. He was awake, staring listlessly at the ceiling. Adam hunkered down on the stool and took his friend’s hand. Leaning over, he spoke quiet words of encouragement.

  Emma hung back for once. Adam could see that she was transfixed by Linde, now dressed in a brilliant green gown and peacock-blue head wrap.

  “Linde,” she spoke up. “Where are the bandages you stitched together? We must rebind Tolito’s ribs.”

  The young woman glided into the adjoining room and returned with a basket filled with fabric. Linde had poured the tincture Emma mixed the day before into bottles, and they, too, lay in the basket.

  “She has an instinct for nursing,” Emma remarked to Adam. “Observe her sense of order and cleanliness.”

  “You should rest, Linde,” Adam suggested. “I’ll sit with Tolito.”

  She shook her head. “I do not rest.”

  “But you’ve been awake most of the night,” Emma reminded her. “You must be tired.”

  “No, memsahib.” Linde looked away as her lower lip started to tremble. “I will not leave Tolito. My brother saved me. I will not—”

  “Linde,” Adam cut in. He stood abruptly, knocking over the stool. “We’ll be back this afternoon. Send word to the main house if you need help.”

  The young woman nodded. Adam took Emma’s arm and started to lead her out of the room.

  “I beg your pardon, sir.” Emma tugged free of his grip. “You interrupted Linde as she was speaking to me. That was rude. And I have more to do here. I must change my patient’s bandages.”

  Adam looked from one woman to the other. It would be unwise to leave Emma alone with Linde, but he didn’t seem to have much choice.

  “I’ll be at the house,” he said abruptly, before walking out of the room and shutting the door behind him.

  Emma sat near the bed and observed Linde and Tolito speaking in earnest tones. The woman’s voice wavered to the point of breaking until Tolito reached out and touched her arm.

  “Memsahib, Linde wish to help you.” Tolito’s English was halting but clear. “She say you powerful woman from far land and she wish to be your servant.”

  “Oh, dear Linde, I am hardly powerful,” Emma replied. “I’m a nurse, that’s all. I am trained to care for sick people. I do not have need for a servant.”

  Linde lowered her eyes. “I am not anybody.”

  “But of course you’re somebody. You are Linde. You are Tolito’s sister.”

  “No, memsahib,” Tolito told her. “Linde not anybody. She mixed blood. Not Maasai. Not Somali. Not marry. Not wife. Not children. Not home.”

  To her chagrin, Emma understood all too well what Tolito was saying. She knew what it was to feel as if one didn’t belong. Linde had begun removing Tolito’s dressing. She spoke words of comfort while her careful fingers eased away the bandages. And then Emma saw it all.

  “You shall work with me, Linde,” she announced. The young woman’s dark eyes widened. “After I’ve found my sister, I shall start a clinic. My own clinic for the Maasai and the others. You must be my assistant, my helper. I’ll train you—although anyone can see you have more natural skill than most of the women at St. Thomas’s. Perhaps one day we shall bring a doctor from England and build a small hospital.”

  To Emma’s surprise, Linde was weeping. Tears rolled down the woman’s cheeks into the folds of her peacock blue scarf.

  “Come, Linde,” she said. “We shall begin even now. I can see you’re as eager as I was the day I first heard Miss Nightingale speak.”

  For the remainder of the day, Linde worked alongside Emma. Teaching the essentials of nursing lifted Emma’s spirits. After the early morning ride, she struggled to turn her thoughts away from Adam. The warmth in her heart toward him now blazed even brighter, but she knew she could never be his. She must look in the crates to prove him innocent and clear his name with Nicholas Bond and the British government. And she must prepare her own future in this land.

  This was where it would unfold. Here in Africa among the ill and needy. Here with the woman she would train to be a nurse. Her future did not lie with Adam in the big house at the top of the hill. That would never be her destiny.

  Looking for Emma, Adam pushed open the front door of Soapy’s house and stopped in amazement. The living room had been transformed. The curtains had been pulled back and the windows stood wide open. His rough wood table was spread with neat rolls of clean white bandages. The bottles from the medicine chest had been removed and most of them emptied. He could hear them rattling in a vat of boiling water on Soapy’s little cookstove. Two chairs and an old board had been fashioned into another table and covered with a white cloth.

  “Oh, Adam, there you are!” Emma’s smile brightened as she bustled out of Tolito’s room. She had rolled her sleeves to the elbow and tied a white apron over her blue dress. Her hair was up in a knot and her cheeks were a pretty pink that set off the sparkle in her green eyes. Adam had never seen the woman so radiant.

  “Emma, what are you doing here?” He stepped onto scrubbed floorboards that squeaked beneath his boots. The setting sun gave the windowpanes a golden rose shine, and newly washed walls reflected the light.

  “Adam, you should just see this.” Emma caught his hand and tugged him across the room. “We’ve actually begun. Linde and I have started to prepare the clinic. I am training her, you see, and she is my assistant. I’m teaching her everything I know. She is perfect. Brilliant, in fact, and so clever.”

  As the stream of excited words poured forth, she pulled Adam into Tolito’s room.

  “Emma.” Adam stopped the rush of words by kissing her cheek.

  She caught her breath and took a step backward. “Don’t be silly now,” she whispered. “You mustn’t confuse me, because I’m content at the moment.”

  His eyes lingered on hers, then traveled down to caress the line of her nose and lips. He had wanted Emma to see his land. He had brought her here. And if God permitted, he would find a way to keep her.

  “I’ve had a message from the crew on my western boundary,” he told her. “They’ve got lion trouble. I’m riding over there and I won’t be back until late. Soapy’s going with me, but you’ll be safe here. Take a lantern when you walk up to the house. I’ve arranged for your supper.”

  “Thank you.” She took his big hand in hers and pressed it to her cheek. “You’ve made me so happy today.”

  He felt a surge of elation at her words. How it had happened, he couldn’t say, but Emma’s happiness had become more important than his own.

  “I’ve arranged to put Tolito on the train to Mombasa,” he told her. “When you think he’s feeling well enough, we’ll send him. I’ve got men asking at all the villages on my ranch for any sign of your sister.”

  “You are too good to me,” she responded.

  Even though he knew Tolito and Linde were watching, Adam couldn’t resist another peck. “I’ll be back tonight.”

  “I’ll be here.” Emma touched his sleeve. “Be careful, Adam.”

  Before he lost what little control he had in her presence, Adam bolted out the door and ran down the steps to his horse.

  The moon hung high in the sky when Emma
finally left the little house and strolled toward the stables. She had eaten with Linde, and her heart warmed to the joy of a new friend. They spoke a disjointed mixture of English and Swahili, clear enough to get across their meaning.

  Emma carried a lantern as she went into the barn. The soft call of night birds and the chirp of crickets were becoming as familiar to her as the squeak of her brass bed in London.

  She walked across the barn floor and scanned the rows of pitchforks, rakes, branding irons and other implements hanging on the wall.

  Spying an iron crowbar, she carried it to the crates stacked beneath the loft. After hanging the lantern on a nail, she inserted the tool between the hasp and the padlock of the largest crate. Leaning her body into the task, she pried with all her strength. Nothing budged.

  Annoyed, she found a pair of wire cutters. Climbing onto the crate, she hoisted her skirts around her knees and began to snip at the iron bands encircling it. She quickly realized that method was hopeless as well.

  Emma heaved a disgusted sigh. Adam was innocent, after all. She reflected on the ridiculous accusations Nicholas had made. Adam was no slave trader. Miriam, Tolito, Linde—such loyal workers could not be slaves. Nicholas had insisted that Adam sided with the Germans and knew what had become of Cissy. True, she had seen Burkstaller and Adam together, but treason was out of the question. That Adam might be inciting Africans to rise up against the British was ludicrous. He knew the native languages and employed members of at least three different tribes, but this hardly pointed to subversion.

  Tossing the cutters onto the crate, Emma glared at it. Adam was just the sort of man she had always believed him to be, a man whose gentle nature she had witnessed again and again.

  But was she naive? People could play roles, especially if they had a great deal to gain by doing so. Money. Power. Land. These were the stakes for which men played.

  Her determination weakening, Emma searched for another tool. As she looked up, she spotted a moonlit shape above her in the loft. Its dark rectangular sides glinted with soft silver light. Curious and a little afraid now, she raised her skirts and crossed to the ladder. Lifting the lamp from its nail, she began to climb.

  Instead of hay and pitchforks, Emma discovered a tidy room with a wooden desk, chair and bookshelf. An iron bed with a patterned yellow-and-blue quilt stood against one wall. Soapy’s sleeping quarters while Tolito was in his house, no doubt. But the desk? Surely Soapy did not keep Adam’s books.

  Emma sat in the chair and studied the array of pens, inkwells and paper. Then she opened a drawer to documents of various kinds—records of cattle transportation, sales, credits, charges and invoices.

  She paused at an envelope labeled Guns. Did she want to see? Did she really want to know?

  With trepidation, she looked over shipping orders, with delivery taken in Mombasa. She scanned them, praying she would find only things a rancher might have ordered. When she came to a registry of African names, she saw that a weapon was listed beside each man—shotguns, revolvers, rifles.

  Emma blinked back sudden tears. Pushing the envelope to one side, she continued her search. Warehouse, another envelope read. She took out the documents and spread them on the desk—the deed for a building in Mombasa and a blueprint showing rooms labeled for office and storage.

  Her stomach rolling in pain, she discovered documents with the name Burkstaller on them. Through blurred eyes she read: Payment for Services Rendered and Transportation of Arms.

  Feeling faint, she scooped up the papers and tried to stuff them back into their envelopes. Unable to make her fingers cooperate, she stood, shaking. All her dreams had risen to a peak this day during her time with Linde. However, they came crashing around her ears when she opened Adam’s records.

  He would deny everything, she knew. Trusting him would be easy. Emma was too willing a victim, caught in his snare. She must escape this place at once. Find Cissy and leave. Nothing was as it seemed. What a fool she’d been.

  Grabbing the lantern, she took a last look at the condemning desk. As she started for the ladder, light fell on a familiar shape in the corner beside the bed. She took up the rifle, determined to blast open the crate.

  “Emma? Is that you up there?”

  At the sound of Adam’s deep voice, her heart stumbled. His tall form loomed in the moonlit doorway of the barn. With great care, she cocked the rifle.

  “Stay away from me, Adam King,” she warned. “If you come one step closer, I shall shoot you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Put down that gun, woman!” He stepped into the moonlit barn. “It’s me, Adam.”

  “You’re not who I thought you were.” Emma began to descend the ladder. “Move out of the way and let me pass. I’m releasing you from your contract, but I shall take a horse. Send my clothing to Delamere at Mombasa.”

  “Emma, what are you talking about?” Adam started toward her, but he stopped when she dropped down from the ladder, lifted the rifle to her shoulder and aimed it at his heart.

  He wasn’t afraid of the gun. She didn’t have a clue how to aim the thing, and he had left it unloaded. But what had happened to send the woman off half-loco like this? He had seen Emma unhappy before. He’d seen her angry, too. But never this.

  She moved toward him, and he could tell her arms were trembling as she struggled to maintain the heavy weapon at shoulder level. Headed for the door, she edged past him—making a valiant effort to keep one eye on him and see her way at the same time. If she hadn’t been so upset, he would have laughed out loud and swept her up in his arms.

  “I’ve seen your files,” she told him. “I know everything. The guns. Burkstaller. Your warehouse in Mombasa.”

  “Really?” In a cobra-quick move Adam reached out and snatched the rifle from her hands.

  “Oh!” She stiffened in horror. But her fear turned to rage as she squared her shoulders. “Shoot me, then, Adam King! Shoot me right now, because I am going to tell Nicholas Bond the truth about you. I am a Christian and committed to honor and justice. I am English, too, and I shall never betray my country. If you don’t kill me at once, I’ll reveal your treachery to the Crown.”

  “Treachery?”

  “Don’t pretend at innocence. I mean to inform the authorities that you have imported weapons.”

  “And assigned a rifle to each of my herdsmen,” he added, still unsure what she was implying. “Their names are listed beside the make and numbers of their weapons. Is that what’s got you riled up?”

  He flicked open the Winchester’s chamber and nodded in satisfaction. Empty.

  “Emma, I arm my foremen and guards. Delamere and every other landowner in the protectorate does the same. Bond knows that as well as he knows anything.”

  “You’re lying.” She stood rigid, her cheeks flushed. “You always have a logical answer. But Nicholas told me about the secret warehouse where you carry out illicit operations.”

  “My warehouse at the edge of Mombasa is no secret. The building sits right beside the railway station. Bond walks past it every day. I tip my hat to him when I’m in town.”

  “Stop it. Just stop it, Adam.” Emma buried her face in her hands. “Dear God, help me!”

  “Emma, honey, don’t fret about this.” He could endure almost anything but a woman’s tears. Wanting to hold her close, he settled for offering his handkerchief. She looked so forlorn standing alone in his barn, crying into her bare hands. “What made you go looking through my desk? What did you want to know about me?”

  “I read your documents, Adam.” She brushed away a tear. “I know Burkstaller brings you weapons.”

  “Of course he does. So does Delamere and anyone else coming upland from the coast. It’s a tradition among the settlers to help each other deliver goods from Mombasa. In fact, one of the crates back there is for Delamere. I’ll take it to him next time I visit Njoro. As for Burkstaller, he likes to spend his leaves on my ranch. The Germans wouldn’t take kindly to the association between us,
so we keep it quiet.”

  He paused as the situation came clearer. “Emma, who do you think I am, anyway? What kind of dirt has Bond put in your pretty head?”

  She looked up at him. Her green eyes shone in the silver light. She was sad, but even the downturn of her mouth allured Adam. The soft blue muslin dress rippled in the night breeze, and all he wanted was to hold her.

  “Look at my actions, Emma,” he said. “If you want to know what kind of man I am, don’t poke around in my desk or talk to some rattlesnake who’d just as soon put a bullet through my head.”

  He leaned the rifle against a bale of hay and took her hand, drawing her close. “I am what you see, Emma. Plain and clear. Haven’t you figured me out yet?”

  “What I hear and what I see are two different men. I can’t trust you.”

  He chuckled. “Me? What about you, honey? One minute you’re sweet as molasses, and the next you’re pulling a gun on me.”

  “I rely on God. He is my strength and my shield. I shall not allow your words to trap me. I’ll not be another of your victims.”

  “So you’d rather shoot me than believe what I say. Just what do you want me to be, Emma?”

  “I don’t know. I’m so confused.”

  “Come here, then.” He pulled her into his arms.

  “Oh, Adam. Why does this happen to me every time? Truly you must stop.”

  “Stop what, Emma?” He stepped back from her. “Do you want me to stop loving you?”

  She looked away, her eyes luminous with unshed tears. “I think you must. And I am sure I cannot go on like this.”

  At that, he left her and crossed to the barn door. “Do what you think best, Emma. If you want to leave, take old Red. She’s yours. But if you want to come back down to the house, you’re welcome. I’ll light a fire for you.”