"I don't understand," she said faintly. The rifle slipped a notch in her hands. "That horrid creature waved his club at me. They were all armed. They even brought their own pot. I only assumed-"
"That 'horrid creature' was performing the te uero a ceremonial dance to welcome you to his country." Justin picked his way over several inert Maori and grabbed a long-handled tool topped by an innocuous blade. "What were they going to do? Hoe you to death?" He pulled an orangy-brown object out of the overturned pot and waved it at her. "A kumara. Sweet potatoes. Their gift to you."
"Oh, dear." Emily mopped her brow, feeling suddenly sicker than she had before.
Justin glided toward her with such lethal grace that she started to point the rifle at him. He plucked the weapon out of her arms, handling it with two fingers as if it were a deadly serpent, and tossed it in the sand.
"I'd like to introduce you to Witi Ahamera, their ariki, their chief."
She squared her chin, mustering her fading pluck. "I'd like to meet him, too. I've got a few things to
say about his tribe running about, terrorizing unsuspecting young Englishwomen."
"You're standing on him."
A brilliant heat flooded her cheeks. She followed Justin's mocking gaze down her calf to the foot braced against the bronze muscles of the Maori warrior. Her toes twitched nervously.
She looked to Justin for help, hoping he'd provide a graceful dismount, but he only smirked at her.
"Well, so I am," she said. "Who would have thought it?" She hopped off the man and tugged at his arm. He rose slowly, towering over her. She reached above her head to brush sand from his chest, avoiding
his stony glare. "If Mr. Witi would have bothered to tell me he was the chief, I'd never have trod upon him in such a thoughtless manner."
Biting off what sounded like a distinctly Anglo-Saxon oath, the chief shoved her hand away. She shrank against Justin without realizing it. His arm slipped around her waist, molding her to his lean frame. She
felt as if she'd flopped literally from stew pot to fire.
Taking their cue from their chief, the natives rose, shaking sand out of their raw flax skirts. An admiring murmur of "Pakeha, Pakeha" rose from their ranks. Emily looked around, but could see nothing or no one who might inspire such deference.
The chief jutted out his hand. All murmuring ceased. A fierce intelligence burned in his bright, dark
eyes. His nostrils flared as he pointed at Emily and bit off a string of guttural words that made her thankful she did not understand Maori.
She pressed herself to Justin, basking in his strength. "What is he saying?" she whispered.
His lips touched her ear. "You have offended his mana."
"His mama?"
Justin gave her a hard squeeze. "His mana. His honor. His pride. Mana is all-important to the Maori. Every slight, real or imagined, demands retribution. He wants to declare war on you."
She squirmed. "Why, that overgrown, jade-headed bully! Where's my rifle? Of all the arrogant, ridiculous-"
Justin clapped his hand over her mouth. The chief punctuated his newest accusation by leaning forward and poking her in the chest. She gulped.
"Cease!" Oddly enough, Justin's soft-spoken command stilled the irate warrior in mid-poke and threw
an unnatural hush over his men.
Justin kept one hand firmly anchored over Emily's mouth, but his other hand took eloquent wing as
Maori words spilled from his lips like song. Emily felt her body relax, lulled by the velvety timbre of his voice, hypnotized by the graceful flight of his fingers in the air. The natives hung on every word. Even
the chief cocked his head in reluctant attention. Justin's hand slid from her lips and cupped her chin,
tilting her face up for their regard.
Several of the men hopped back in fear, making signs in the air. A dreamy assurance melted through Emilys veins. He must be warning them never to trouble her again, telling them that she belonged only
to him and he would protect her even at the cost of his own life.
The chief made a disgusted gesture toward the white-haired man. He nodded and they climbed the hill, leading their men into the brush and leaving her and Justin alone in the clearing.
Justin released her. Emily locked her knees, fearful she might melt into a besotted puddle at his feet.
She grabbed his arm. "Thank you, Justin."
He shook her hand off, his lips twisted in scathing dismissal. "Don't mention it. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to meet with them as I'd planned to do before they were ambushed by Emily Scarlet, the
jungle princess."
He started up the hill, brushing dirt off his dungarees with a disgusted motion. Emily's hands clenched
into fists.
"What did you tell them?" she cried, refusing to be daunted by the note of desperation in her voice. She had to hear him say he cared. She'd waited to hear the words for almost half her life.
He picked his way over a thorny bush without slowing his pace. "I told them you were crazy. That you'd escaped from Bedlam and stowed away on a banana boat before the attendants could catch you."
He topped the crest of the hill. "I told them insanity ran rampant in your family and one of your
ancestors thought he was a kiwi bird and tried to leap from the London Tower, not realizing, of course, that kiwis don't fly."
Emily suddenly knew what it meant to be blinded by rage. Or at least by the glint of the sun off a rifle barrel. She snatched the gun, cocked it, and aimed it at the tree nearest Justin that she thought she might hit without blowing his head off. She didn't want to maim him, just scare the hell out of him.
She squeezed the trigger. The lifeless click seemed to reverberate for miles.
Justin froze, his back rigid. As he came scrambling down the hill at twice the pace he'd climbed it, Emily tried to shove the rifle behind her skirt. It was a very poor fit indeed.
His eyes blazed as he reached around her and snatched the weapon. He leaned forward until his nose touched hers. "If you think I'd leave you alone with a loaded gun, you're loonier than they think you are."
He hurled the rifle into the hut and turned away, dismissing her with contemptuous swiftness.
"Justin?"
He stopped, his shoulders braced against the sound of her voice.
"You must hate me, don't you?"
He sighed. "I wish I could, Emily. It would make life so much simpler."
An odd glow touched her. As he ducked into the bush she felt a grin steal over her face. In all the confusion he hadn't forbade her to leave the hut. She gathered her skirt to muffle its rustle and slunk
up the hill after him.
* * *
Emily darted from tree to tree, running to keep Justin in sight. As she threw herself behind the trunk
of a kauri tree, her foot came down squarely on a twig. The crack resounded through the forest. The quivering silence warned her Justin had also stopped to listen. She shrank into herself, holding her
breath until his crashing path through the underbrush resumed. She poked her head out from behind
the tree, looked both ways, then ducked after him. This might be her only chance to discover how he spent the long hours of daylight.
The trees thinned, shrinking into thick clumps of broom fragrant with masses of delicate pink amaryllis. She dropped down, forced to scramble up the slope on hands and knees to avoid being seen.
The hillside ended abruptly in a sprawling fence of stakes, their points whittled to menacing sharpness.
"At least there aren't any shrunken heads on them," she whispered to herself.
Not yet anyway.
Less than comforted by the thought, she followed the curving line of the palisade, still shielded by
tangled growth. A yawning gate divided the stakes. Emily parted the fronds of a bush and watched
Justin disappear into its maw. Seeing no guards, she dared to follow.
Hugging the palisade, she slipped through the gate to find a small village drowsing in the midday sun. Across the courtyard Justin was entering a round hut thatched with wicker. As Emily picked her way
after him, a mangy dog lifted his head from his paws. Instead of barking, he greeted her with a pant
and a lazy wag of his tail. These natives must be a trusting lot, she thought. Just as her father had been.
She inched around the walls of the windowless hut. What reasons did Justin have for meeting with the Maori? Was he buying land with her father's gold? She had read of some diabolical white men turning
the natives against other whites so they could step into the carnage and steal their land. Her stomach tightened to a nervous knot. A trickle of sweat inched down her cheek.
Her groping fingers found a weak spot in the wicker. She tore it away, then knelt and pressed her eye
to the tiny hole.
Her gaze adjusted slowly to the cavernous gloom of the meeting house. Burning torches had been spiked into the dirt floor, casting an amber glow over the gathering. Skirted natives sat cross-legged throughout the hut. A handful of women wearing feathered cloaks were sprinkled among the men. She recognized
the stern chief and his white-haired companion. They all gave the center of the hut their rapt attention, their faces glowing with a common serenity. Even the fierce chief had allowed his expression to soften
to curiosity, although the skeptical glint never completely left his dark eyes.
A smoke hole had been cut in the domed ceiling and a single shaft of sunlight cut through the gloom, illuminating the finely hewn features of the man sitting cross-legged in their midst. Emily was tempted
to believe he had planned it that way, but realized he must need the light to read from the leather-bound book spread across his thighs. Trini sat beside him, translating Justin's English into Maori each time he paused.
Puzzled, Emily strained her ears to hear. She doubted if cannibals would be that enthralled by the life
and times of Mozart or Vivaldi.
She didn't have to strain long. Justin's voice carried like the rich, sweet tolling of a cathedral bell.
" '. . . she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.' "
He paused so Trini might translate. The glowering chief shook his head as if saddened by the fate of the hapless child.
" '. . . And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round them . .
Emily had squirmed through seven interminable Christmas pageants at the seminary. Pageants where Cecille du Pardieu played Mary while she got stuck as the far end of a sheep or donkey. But as she
closed her eyes, it was as if she were hearing the power of the old, old words for the first time.
". . . And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which
shall be to all people . .
She opened her eyes, blinking away the tears caught in her lashes. The hut seemed to reel, pivoting
slowly around a man with somber gold eyes caught in a web of sunlight. It sparkled across his hair,
glinted off the gold watch case that lay against his breastbone.
Emily shoved herself away from the hut, clapping a hand over her mouth. A hysterical giggle escaped
her, them another. The dashing rogue Justin Connor a missionary? Had her father bequeathed both his gold mine and his daughter to a madman? What had he done with the gold? she wondered. Given it to
the natives to buy supplies? Or Bibles?
She doubled over, clutching her stomach as helpless laughter crippled her. How could she have let her own suspicions and the gossip of London society blind her to the man's true character? He had opened
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