her longer to reach it than she expected, she'd simply turn around and go back.
Thus reassured, India set off along the rim of the volcano, her attention divided between minding her steps in the treacherous landscape and keeping an eye on the passage of time as recorded by her watch's slowly moving hands.
She wasn't there.
Standing in the shadow of the Faces of Futapu, Jack turned in a slow circle, his gaze spanning the windblown expanse of pink- and white-stained rocks and vivid blue sky and tangled green jungle set against an endless sea. Not a scrap of tartan in sight. Where the hell was she?
The natives' footprints had veered off the trail at a point near the hot springs, but Jack hadn't been reassured. He hadn't liked the smell of whatever it was someone had left steaming on the rocks. Even as he searched the surrounding brush for signs of the pesky Scotswoman, he was also keeping a lookout for telltale flashes of dark bare skin. The idea of ending up in a cooking pot really didn't appeal to him.
The ground fell away here in a bare precipice toward the bay below, so that he also had to be careful to keep out of sight of any sharp-eyed mariners who might happen to be looking up—the idea of swinging from the end of a British yardarm not appealing to him any more than a native stew pot. Flattening himself on his stomach, Jack crept closer to the cliff's edge and saw that the jolly boat had left a couple of sailors and an officer aboard the Sea Hawk and was now headed toward the beach. A familiar figure stood tall and stiff in the boat's prow, sunlight glinting on the barrels of the well-oiled rifles that bristled among the men behind him.
So Simon had come himself. Jack had known he would.
They'd been as close as brothers once, Jack and this man who had been sent to see him brought back and hanged. When they'd first met as young midshipmen assigned to a quick-tempered, cantankerous old captain named Horatio Gladstone, they'd despised each other, for their backgrounds, temperaments, and attitudes couldn't have been more different. As the younger son of an old and proud Hampshire family, Simon had grown up in a world of neatly hedged, misty green fields, where tenant farmers pulled their forelocks and everyone who was anyone went to Eton, or Harrow, or Winchester. But Jack was a product of the Australian outback, his childhood memories of wide-open spaces and cattle musters and Aboriginal corroborees. His family might have been successful, but they were also boisterous and relaxed and peculiarly proud, in their own way, of the transported London pickpocket and Irish whore from whom they were descended. The antipathy between the two midshipmen had been instantaneous and intense, but it hadn't stopped them from eventually forming a bond they'd once sworn would last forever.
As if sensing Jack's eyes upon him, Simon looked up, his gaze raking the craggy heights. Jack ducked his head and pulled back, intensely aware, suddenly, of the heat of the tropical sun on his shoulders and the hard, insistent pumping of his own heart. If he hurried, he'd have just enough time to make it back down to the path heading north without meeting Simon and his boys coming up from the beach. Oh, they might try to follow him, but Jack had spent years in the jungles of the South Pacific, while Simon was, and always would be, a navy man.
A sea tern circled lazily overhead, drawing Jack's attention to the far rim of the volcano, where a woman in a tartan skirt stood, sketchbook in hand, her attention fastened on something he couldn't see. What the hell was she doing over there? he wondered, momentarily diverted. She should by rights be headed back down by now.
One hand on his machete to keep it from knocking noisily against a stone, Jack scooted away from the cliff's edge and straightened carefully. He had every intention of going off and leaving Miss India McKnight to the heroics of Simon and his boys in blue, when something else caught his
Thus reassured, India set off along the rim of the volcano, her attention divided between minding her steps in the treacherous landscape and keeping an eye on the passage of time as recorded by her watch's slowly moving hands.
She wasn't there.
Standing in the shadow of the Faces of Futapu, Jack turned in a slow circle, his gaze spanning the windblown expanse of pink- and white-stained rocks and vivid blue sky and tangled green jungle set against an endless sea. Not a scrap of tartan in sight. Where the hell was she?
The natives' footprints had veered off the trail at a point near the hot springs, but Jack hadn't been reassured. He hadn't liked the smell of whatever it was someone had left steaming on the rocks. Even as he searched the surrounding brush for signs of the pesky Scotswoman, he was also keeping a lookout for telltale flashes of dark bare skin. The idea of ending up in a cooking pot really didn't appeal to him.
The ground fell away here in a bare precipice toward the bay below, so that he also had to be careful to keep out of sight of any sharp-eyed mariners who might happen to be looking up—the idea of swinging from the end of a British yardarm not appealing to him any more than a native stew pot. Flattening himself on his stomach, Jack crept closer to the cliff's edge and saw that the jolly boat had left a couple of sailors and an officer aboard the Sea Hawk and was now headed toward the beach. A familiar figure stood tall and stiff in the boat's prow, sunlight glinting on the barrels of the well-oiled rifles that bristled among the men behind him.
So Simon had come himself. Jack had known he would.
They'd been as close as brothers once, Jack and this man who had been sent to see him brought back and hanged. When they'd first met as young midshipmen assigned to a quick-tempered, cantankerous old captain named Horatio Gladstone, they'd despised each other, for their backgrounds, temperaments, and attitudes couldn't have been more different. As the younger son of an old and proud Hampshire family, Simon had grown up in a world of neatly hedged, misty green fields, where tenant farmers pulled their forelocks and everyone who was anyone went to Eton, or Harrow, or Winchester. But Jack was a product of the Australian outback, his childhood memories of wide-open spaces and cattle musters and Aboriginal corroborees. His family might have been successful, but they were also boisterous and relaxed and peculiarly proud, in their own way, of the transported London pickpocket and Irish whore from whom they were descended. The antipathy between the two midshipmen had been instantaneous and intense, but it hadn't stopped them from eventually forming a bond they'd once sworn would last forever.
As if sensing Jack's eyes upon him, Simon looked up, his gaze raking the craggy heights. Jack ducked his head and pulled back, intensely aware, suddenly, of the heat of the tropical sun on his shoulders and the hard, insistent pumping of his own heart. If he hurried, he'd have just enough time to make it back down to the path heading north without meeting Simon and his boys coming up from the beach. Oh, they might try to follow him, but Jack had spent years in the jungles of the South Pacific, while Simon was, and always would be, a navy man.
A sea tern circled lazily overhead, drawing Jack's attention to the far rim of the volcano, where a woman in a tartan skirt stood, sketchbook in hand, her attention fastened on something he couldn't see. What the hell was she doing over there? he wondered, momentarily diverted. She should by rights be headed back down by now.
One hand on his machete to keep it from knocking noisily against a stone, Jack scooted away from the cliff's edge and straightened carefully. He had every intention of going off and leaving Miss India McKnight to the heroics of Simon and his boys in blue, when something else caught his
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