Beyond Sunrise Read online

  “Patu’s not here anymore,” she said, her throat so dry, the words came out raspy, hushed.

  “I know. He’s going to stay and help with the raising of the Sea Hawk.”

  “Then who’s the donkey for?”

  He straightened his legs in the stirrups, his weight shifting in the saddle, while India held her breath. “You made something of an outlaw of yourself, by helping me escape from La Rochelle. It occurred to me you might consider you had a vested interest in knowing whether or not I was likely to be able to clear my name.”

  His words hurt, but she supposed she had them coming. She went up to him, her hands reaching high to close around his, her head falling back as she stared up at him. “Amongst all those reasons I gave down there on the beach for not marrying you . . . I never said I didn’t love you.”

  He met her gaze squarely, his eyes hard and flat, the chestnut moving restlessly beneath him. “No. You never said you did, either.”

  She looked at him, and felt her love for him swell warm and painful in her breast. She wanted to say, You were right. I am afraid, so afraid of so many things. I spend my life running from the things I fear, and I have never feared anything or anyone as much as I fear you, and the love you make me feel, and the crazy, impossible things you make me want. But she could say none of those things. So she slipped the lead from his grasp, and said, “Why do I get the donkey?”

  His lips twitched, as if he was thinking about smiling. “The planter says this chestnut, he doesn’t like women.”

  “Huh.” India tugged the bad-tempered-looking beast over to a large stone so she could mount. “Are you sure it isn’t just that you don’t like donkeys?”

  He laughed then, and she knew that things were easier between them.

  Easier, but not better.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  THEY FOLLOWED A fey trail up the valley and across the mountain divide. The trail was old, and so overgrown at times that Jack had to get down and hack at the encroaching tangle of creeper fig and wait-a-whiles and rioting, white-flowered native jasmine. But they still made better time mounted than they would have on foot, and it changed what would have been an arduous journey into something that India came to see as almost magical, an enchanted passage through a lush realm of diffused green light, where all sounds were hushed and the sun never shone.

  As they rose higher, the dripping ferns and deeply groined trunks of the maape trees gave way to the strange, horizontal paranus and the screw pines, with their cone-shaped baskets of roots and their spiky tufts of leaves lifting up to the sky. And still they climbed, up and up, until they reached the highest ridges, where only the aito, the ironwood tree, grew, scattered among the aeho reeds and thick grasses that matted the steepest inclines. From there, they could look down upon sweeping, dark-green cloaked slopes and wild gorges that plunged to a sea so vivid and blue it made her ache just to look at it.

  At the summit, Jack reined in, his hard gaze fixed on the wild southern coast below them. Pausing beside him, India studied his taut, closed face. There was about him an aura of raw tension, of strain that even now, when they were at rest, set his chestnut to sidling uneasily.

  She supposed the reason wasn’t difficult to understand. After ten years, running can seem almost easy—or at least, easier than the possible alternatives. Such as learning that the evidence a man needs to prove his innocence has been lost. Or discovering that one’s only child is dead. It was only now, as she stared down at that distant, surf-beaten shore, that it occurred to India that he must be wondering how Titana’s daughter might feel about the father who had deserted her.

  “You think she’s angry with you, don’t you?” India said softly. “Ulani, I mean. Angry with you for going away and leaving her all those years ago, and for staying away ever since.”

  His head came around, his taut, blue-eyed gaze locking with hers. “Wouldn’t you be?”

  India stared at him, at the wild, almost desperate shadows that played over his features. “You’re a fugitive, Jack. You couldn’t possibly have taken care of a baby.” Yet even as she said it, India knew the fault in her argument, for until recently, the British government had let their pursuit of him grow cold. And Ulani was no longer a baby.

  “Did you ever think,” he said, his gaze still on her face, “that your father sent you to your aunt after your mother’s death because he was afraid?”

  India let out a startled huff of what was meant to be laughter, but came out sounding bitter, and maybe just a bit defensive. “My father? Afraid? Of what?”

  He shrugged. “Of doing something wrong. Of not having what it took to be a good parent to a young, motherless girl. Of not being what you needed.”

  She shook her head. “My father was never afraid of anything. I never knew anyone more certain of himself. Whether he was writing about the White Man’s Burden, or the divine origins of the powers exercised by a husband over his wife, Hamish McKnight knew he was right.”

  “A lot of people might think the same thing about you—those who didn’t know you too well.” He paused. “How well did you know your father?”

  “Not well enough,” she said, urging the donkey forward. “Not well enough at all.”

  Even before the row of simple bamboo-and-thatch bungalows edging the beach came into view, Jack could hear women’s voices, and the lilting trill of a child’s laughter echoing through the shadowy depths of the rain forest. At the sound, he checked involuntarily. Then he became aware of India’s gaze on him, and he urged his horse forward.

  The gorge they’d followed down the side of the mountain had long since widened out into a lush valley of parau and mango and wild papaya, of vivid red hibiscus, and yellow and white orchids hanging in exquisite, wax-like splendor from the spreading limbs of the giant trees overhead. Now, through the trunks of the palm trees, he could see the vivid blue swath of the sea, its tangy scent carrying lightly on the warm breeze.

  The crack of what sounded like a rifle shot reverberated up the valley to send the chestnut into a snorting, head-tossing terror.

  “Good heavens!” said India, reining in behind him. “What was that?”

  “A coconut.” Jack urged his horse forward to where a big coconut, still in its husk, lay in the middle of the trail ahead of them. Tipping back his head, he stared up the long, straight trunk of the nearby palm. A golden-skinned, dark-haired child of ten or twelve stared down at him.

  “Iorana,” said Jack. Hello.

  An impish smile curled the child’s mouth. “Bonjour, monsieur.”

  “You speak French.”

  “Mais oui. Don’t you?”

  “Not very well,” Jack admitted. The child laughed, her long dark hair cascading in a wave about her shoulders, and Jack knew a quickening, a wild leap of hope that he quickly suppressed. “I thought only boys climbed after drinking coconuts.”

  The child clambered halfway down the palm’s trunk. “Siti is supposed to be a boy, but he picks oranges like a girl. So why shouldn’t I climb palms, if’n I want?”

  Jack’s heart was pounding so hard he was practically shaking with it, but he still had to smile at the child’s faithful reproduction of Toby’s crusty Cornish accent. “I’m looking for Toby Jenkins. Can you take me to him?”

  The girl came down to earth in a graceful rush, her head tilting as she stared up at him, her blue eyes suddenly serious in her sun-kissed face. “Why you want Mr. Toby?”

  Jack sucked in a deep breath. He told himself the blue eyes meant nothing. The child could easily be Toby’s. After ten years, the old salt could have produced a good dozen half-native offspring. Or she might be any European adventurer’s child, perhaps even the product of one of the casual couplings that had taken place between the women of Rakaia and the Lady Juliana ’s seamen before the massacre.

  “Toby’s an old friend of mine,” Jack said. He wanted desperately to ask the child her name, but the words stuck in his throat, trapped there by the fear of what her answer might b
e.

  And so it was India who gave voice to the simple question Jack could not bring himself to form. “What’s your name?” she asked, nudging the reluctant donkey forward.

  The child’s head turned, her eyes growing wide as she stared at India’s tattered but still splendid Expedition Outfit. And Jack’s world stopped turning while he waited for the answer.

  Then his daughter said, “I’m Ulani.”

  By the time they reached the village, they had acquired a laughing, shouting circle of children. The noise brought a man to the doorway of his home, where he paused at the top of the steps, one hand coming up to shade his eyes from the bright tropical sun. He was an older man, close to fifty or maybe even sixty now, although his small, wiry frame was still lean and firm, his skin darkened by the sun to a deep copper color that contrasted strikingly with the white of his hair.

  “You took your own sweet time gettin’ back here,” said Toby Jenkins when Jack reined in at the base of the raised house’s ladderlike steps. “You’re lucky I didn’t up and die on you.”

  Jack felt a slow smile spread across his face. “Hell, you look better than you did the last time I saw you.”

  The old man scowled at him, although he couldn’t quite hide the pleased twinkle in his eyes. “That may be,” he acknowledged. “But you didn’t know that afore you see’d me, now did you?”

  “I know you’re a hard man to kill.” Jack swung out of the saddle, and went to help India.

  “Good gad.” Toby’s eyes widened as India slid stiffly from the saddle. “Don’t tell me the women in England ’ave taken to wearin’ britches!”

  “I am Scottish,” said India, smoothing her tartan.

  Jack ducked his head to hide a smile. “Allow me to introduce Toby Jenkins, formerly of Her Majesty’s navy. Toby, this is Miss India McKnight. She’s a travel writer.”

  Toby’s bushy white brows twitched together over his bulbous nose. “A what?”

  Jack let his gaze drift around the small village. His smile faded. “Is this all that’s left?”

  “Aye, you’re lookin’ at ’em. That fever, it did a better job of killin’ off the Rakaians than Cap’n Gladstone ever did.”

  “But why come here? Why leave the island?”

  Toby Jenkins tugged at his earlobe. “That was on account of the blackbirders. They musta heard from one of the traders that we was pretty-near wiped out, because I caught the sonsofbitches tryin’ to steal three young’uns right off the beach. A couple of me boys and me, we managed to scare ’em off. But I knowed they’d be back. They’re like sharks, them blackbirders. They know when you’re weak, and that’s when they comes at you.”

  “How many sons do you have?” India asked.

  “Five.” Toby’s chest swelled as he sucked in a deep breath. “And three daughters.” The old man’s proud gleam suddenly dimmed. “I had four, but I lost one, to the fever. The youngest.” He nodded to where Ulani, her interest in the new arrivals long since dissipated, was gathering shells from the line of hard-packed, wet sand left by the receding tide. “I take it you didn’t let on to her about who you are?”

  Jack shook his head. “I wasn’t sure what she’d been told.”

  “Oh, she knows about you, all right. Titana’s sisters and brothers, they used to talk about you to her all the time.”

  “Used to?” Jack said sharply.

  Toby nodded. “They’re all dead of the fever. And Ulani’s granny, too.”

  Jack stared out over the surging, purple-blue waters of the Pacific, lit now by the golden light of the fading day. A frigate bird called, wheeling high above the small bay, its call low and plaintive. Jack felt a sigh pull at his chest, a sigh that left behind a heavy ache.

  “Ya dinna ask yet about the charts and log.”

  Jack brought his gaze back to the old man’s weathered face. “Do you still have them?”

  The old seaman sat down on the top step of his house. He was no longer meeting Jack’s eye. “I wasna sure if you’d hear where we’d gone, or if I’d still be kickin’ by the time you got around to lookin’ us up. But I reckoned you’d have enough sense to figure out where we’d left ’em, if you was ever to go lookin’ for ’em.”

  “You left them?” Jack said, his voice coming harsh out of a suddenly tight throat.

  “Aye. On Rakaia.”

  After that, conversation became impossible, for news of Jack’s arrival had spread and his old friends from Rakaia came crowding around. One of Titana’s cousins looped a wreath of tiare and hibiscus and sweet ferns around Jack’s neck, while a half-grown boy with sun-kissed skin and Toby Jenkin’s sharp gray eyes ran a reverent hand along the chestnut’s flank and said, “Gore. Is this a ’orse?” Jack was lost in a sea of smiling faces and warm, pressing hands.

  Then India touched his arm and leaned in to say softly, “You need to go talk to her. Now.”

  He looked beyond her, to where Ulani sat on a spit formed by dark rocks that jutted into the bay. She stared out to sea, the breeze blowing her long hair out behind her. The graceful curve of her neck, her regal carriage— everything about her reminded Jack so much of Titana that his chest ached. But there was something indefinable about his daughter that reminded Jack of himself, as well. And it came to him as he looked at her now that it was probably the air of restlessness. And the anger.

  Detaching himself gently from his old friends, Jack worked his way out onto the rocks. Gulls wheeled, screeching, overhead, their outstretched wings white against a vivid blue sky. Waves crashed at his feet, the trades flinging the spray cool and damp against his cheeks. He kept his gaze fixed on the girl child perched at the edge of the rocks. She did not turn to look at him, although he knew she was aware of his coming.

  It was a scene that had played itself out a thousand times in his imagination. The temptation to come back had been with him every day these last ten years. There’d been times when he’d wanted to see her, to be with her so badly, he would gladly have died just to touch her cheek, to watch a smile spread across her face, to hold her close and breathe in the sweet scent of her.

  And now here he was, and though his throat swelled up with love for her, he was a stranger to her. And all the anger, all the resentment he’d always feared she might feel for him was there to read, in the stiff set of her shoulders, the hard line of her jaw.

  She waited until he had almost reached her. Then she said, her gaze still on the distant swell of the sea, “You’re him, aren’t you?”

  He hesitated, wanting to go closer, wanting—needing, desperately, to reach out to her, to touch her, yet knowing he must not. “Yes,” he said simply.

  Her features remained impassive, not even a flutter of an eyelid betraying a suggestion of a reaction. “You came for the charts and log from that wreck, the Lady Juliana.”

  Jack felt a sigh lift his chest. He wanted to be able to say, I love you. I have always loved you, more even than life itself. When I sailed away and left you all those years ago, it tore a hole in my heart, a gaping wound that never healed and that has always, always ached.

  It was true, all true, and more. Yet he knew how false it would sound, were he to say such things now. So instead he said, “The morning I left Rakaia, you and I walked together down to the beach, just the two of us, hand in hand. The sun was spilling the first rays of light over the sea, and I picked you up and held you while we watched the sunrise. We watched the sea turn from gray to yellow to gold, and then to blue, and I thought about leaving you, about never seeing another sunrise with you, about never being able to hold you like that again. I thought about what it would be like, to never again be able to trace the curve of your cheek, or breathe in the sweet smell of your skin, or hear you laugh, and I almost couldn’t do it. I almost couldn’t leave.”

  “But you did,” she said, her voice hard.

  He nodded, his throat so tight it throbbed. “Your mother’s people had already lost . . . so many. I was afraid of what else might happen to them if I stayed, if
the British navy came and found me there. I was afraid of what would happen to you. So I walked back up to the village, and I handed you to one of your mother’s sisters, and I left.”

  “My mother’s sisters are all dead.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  It was a damned inadequate thing to say, and he wasn’t surprised when she continued to stare silently out to sea. After a moment, he went to sit on one of the rocks near her, his gaze, like hers, on the purple-blue swells of the waves rolling inexorably into shore. “I didn’t expect to ever see you again. I thought the navy would catch up with me in a couple of months. A year at the most.”

  The shells she’d been collecting lay in a jumble at their feet, gleaming leopard and turban shells, and one small but beautifully flawless chambered nautilus. Reaching down, he picked one up, a brilliantly hued abalone shell. “I kept running, moving from one place to the next. Then one day it came to me how many years had passed, and I started thinking maybe I might have a future, after all. I started thinking about coming back for you.”

  He saw her slender throat work as she swallowed. “But you didn’t.”

  “No.” He bounced the shell up and down in his palm for a moment, then closed his fist around it. “You were so little when I left . . . I knew you couldn’t possibly remember me. The only family you’d ever known were your mother’s people, and Rakaia was your home. I didn’t feel I had the right to take you away from everything and everyone you knew and loved.”

  She turned her head to look directly at him, her eyes wide and dark in a still, pale face. In that moment she looked less like a child and more like a woman, and it came to him that she was almost twelve. At twelve, many of the women in this culture were taking lovers. “You could have come to see me.”

  “I know.” An ache settled heavily on his chest as he thought about all the years of this child’s life he had missed, all her growing-up years. “I was afraid.”

  She shook her head, not understanding him, not believing him. “Of what?”