He made her nervous. His advances, if they could even be called advances, embarrassed her. Patrick reveled in the thought. Usually, young ladies made him blush, their overzealous attempts to seduce him often more distressing than convincing. He was not ignorant of why. He knew they saw him as a title. A living, breathing pay-packet. An old house they could fix up and flaunt to their friends. An opportunity.
But not Linley Talbot-Martin. She saw him as a friend. Perhaps as something more than a friend, but never as a way to better herself. Despite what Gaynor Robeson and so many others tried to tell him, Patrick knew in his heart that he was not a vehicle to further Linley’s own ambitions.
Archie must have noticed the way he stared at her because he leaned over and hissed in Patrick’s ear. “I’ve known Linley since she was a baby,” he said. “I was there when she learned to walk. I taught her how to swim, how to drive.” He took a deep breath, letting his words settle in. “If you so much as lay a hand on her—”
Patrick snapped his head around, locking eyes with him. “You’ll do what, then?”
Archie rose to his feet and shrugged. “The jungle is a dangerous place, my friend. Especially late at night. I would hate to see you carried away by tigers.” He slapped Patrick on the back for emphasis.
***
After dinner, Linley pulled Patrick aside.
“I have something for you,” she said, reaching into her tent and pulling out a tin of talcum powder.
She handed it to him, and he read the label.
Patrick turned the tin over in his hands, and then grinned. “You are an angel.”
Linley grinned, too. “I know.” She bent down to pull off her boots. “When you spend enough time slopping around in the heat with nothing but men, you pick up a few tricks along the way.”
“Yes, I imagine you would,” Patrick said, waving the tin of powder in his hand. “And I promise I will make very good use of this.”
She crawled into her tent before he could catch her blushing. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”
Left standing out in the balmy night, Patrick grinned, almost blushing himself. He looked across the campsite at Archie, who watched his every move. Raising the tin of talcum powder, he touched it to his temple in a mock salute and climbed into his own tent.
“Patrick?” Linley whispered through the canvas that separated them.
He stretched out as best he could and situated his blanket around him. “Hmmm?”
There was a long pause. “Goodnight.”
Patrick smiled to himself. “Goodnight, Linley.”
Alone in her own tent, knowing he lay just on the other side of the canvas walls, Linley fished through one of her bags. She pulled out her stack of traveling papers and untied the knot of twine holding them all together. From between the pages, she found what she searched for—Patrick’s photograph.
She dared not fold or crease the image. Linley clutched it to her chest as carefully as she could, treasuring it. She knew it was silly, but she held the picture of him just as she would if she really held him in her arms. Knowing he was just next door made her heart ache. Linley longed to go to him, to have him hold her in his arms again, and to feel for the briefest instant like she was…his.
Pressing her lips to the photograph, she kissed Patrick goodnight and tucked him back into her papers. Linley didn’t want to risk falling asleep and crushing his image, but more importantly, she didn’t want to risk anyone stumbling into her tent and finding out her little secret. Especially not Patrick, whom she imagined would be more appalled than flattered to catch her worshipping at the altar of his person.
Linley curled herself into a tight ball, wrapping her blanket around her shoulders. She listened to the sounds of the jungle outside the thin sheet of canvas protecting her from the elements. Knowing that at any minute a man-eater could rip through the tent and kill her was not the most comforting of thoughts before drifting off to sleep, but Linley had grown so accustomed to living in danger that the notion hardly fazed her.
Patrick, however, lay wide-awake. Every sound in the jungle was new to him and potentially dangerous. He had not yet learned to tell the difference between the rustling of tree branches and the sound of a tiger’s paws against the soft, wet grass. To him, the cry of a gibbon was no different the roar of a leopard. And, although he was unafraid, Patrick was not foolish enough to believe he was safe.
CHAPTER THIRTY
If not for the heat—which was intense—and if not for the great swarms of stinging, buzzing creatures—which were innumerable—Patrick would have been blissfully happy. With one arm, he swatted the gnats, and flies, and mosquitoes drawn by the sweet scent of human sweat. With the other, he held Linley close to him.
It was no picnic sharing a howdah with her. She was greedy and took up twice as much space as she needed. But Patrick gladly crushed himself against the side of the basket to accommodate her.