Where Dooley's unwavering confidence in Grant came from, Grant had no idea.
Ian slanted a look at Grant. "Ah, but wasn't finding her supposed to be the hard part?"
Grant swung a lowering look at his cousin, then barked to the crew, "Get some more supplies. Just enough for one night. And scavenge as much food as we can hold for the trip back."
Though Dooley appeared delighted to have a chore, for the first time his sailors hesitated at their orders. They looked up at Grant with the ever-constant fear, but now he saw confusion as well. Their emotionless captain, who worshipped logic, had bolted like an animal after a girl.
Grant decided to reassure them. "Move," he said in a tone lacking feeling or inflection of any kind. "Now."
He almost had to laugh when they spun around and fled in various directions. Most of his crew were more afraid of his controlled demeanor than of his brother Derek's infamous rants. A boisterous, lusty lot, they couldn't understand someone who behaved as he did. They reasoned that sooner or later a man as cold as Grant would simply...snap. Still waters run deep, he'd heard them whisper to each other in warning.
Ian snorted. "One day they'll realize you won't slit their throats in the night. Then where will you be?"
"Retired." Grant yanked off his sopping boots and ruined shirt, then snatched dry clothing out of his pack. After he changed, he found Ian gathering a machete and canteen from the pile of equipment. "You're gearing up as if you're going in with me. Let me make this clear--this is a jungle. There will be no revelry, no drink, and no women of your...distinct caliber."
"Understood, Cap'n." Ian shouldered the canteen. "But I'd still like to go. If, of course, my shore dress is acceptable to you," he said, a jibe no doubt referring to the time Grant had sent a sailor back to tar the ship because his shirt had been untucked.
"Nothing about you is acceptable to me."
Ian's face split into a satisfied smile before he turned to the nearest opening in the jungle wall.
Grant shouldered his own canteen and machete, then exhaled a long breath, drawing on some deep inner well of patience. As he followed, he reminded himself that though Ian was twenty-six, he was a young twenty-six. Then he wondered what would happen when the well went dry.
"So, what are we looking for?" Ian asked.
"A trail, footprints, a campsite. Anything," Grant answered curtly, hoping to stem a conversation with Ian. He didn't want to talk--he wanted to think about what had just occurred and sort through the last unbelievable hour of his life. He shook his head, still unable to grasp that he'd found her. Or that she'd turned into a wildcat.
Blindsided. Tricked, misled--literally--and attacked. By a girl.
He didn't like surprises, mainly because he'd always reacted so poorly to them. He let out a pent-up breath. Concentrate on the task at hand, Grant. And the task really was very simple when he boiled it down: Get the girl into the boat.
"Do you think the island was deserted before?"
Grant exhaled. "I have no idea. This one's bigger than the others. There could be a bloody metropolis here for all we know."
Ian slowed and turned, assuming a thoughtful expression. "Grant. You know I would never criticize you in front of the crew--"
"Yes, you would."
Ian waved an unconcerned hand. "In any case, what got into you back there? I've never seen you behave like that. It was as if you'd been possessed."
He scowled, though Ian was right. Grant did nothing without careful consideration, never acted without plodding examination. "I've waited a long time for that moment." His explanation sounded weak to his own ears. He had felt possessed. Impulses had fired in him and for the first time in memory, he'd obeyed them without question. "I wouldn't have chased if she hadn't run."
Ian eyed him shrewdly. "Maybe you're more like your brothers than you think."
Grant's whole body tensed. "I am not like my brothers. I'm staid, respectable--"
"I know, I know," Ian interrupted. "You've mastered yourself. You have limitless control and restraint." He tilted his head. "Or perhaps it's like the crew says--you've carved any lust for life from yourself until you're like a stone."
Grant slowed. "They say I'm like a stone?"
"They say worse, but that's all I'll divulge."
"Then just shut up, Ian." He marched faster.
"But you weren't like a stone today, that's for sure." Ian caught up and confessed, "I'm glad you chased her."
Grant gave him a long-suffering look. "For what possible reason?"
"You showed you're still human. For once, you weren't ruled by cold logic. And maybe the woman brought it out in you."
"My reward for finding her brought it out in me. The fact that she's a woman is incidental."
"And the fact that she's a beauty?" He raised his eyebrows. "Well, I'm sure you've scared the hell out of her. You're not a small man. Yes, she's probably huddled somewhere crying right about now." He made a tsking sound. "That's one thing you did not inherit with your Sutherland blood--a way with the ladies."
Grant willed the irritation from his face. As usual, his cousin baited him. As usual, Grant restrained himself from reaction. Ian's impulsive, volatile personality ran as opposite to his own as possible, and if Grant had been less guarded, they would have been at each other's throats for seven months now.
An uninvited passenger, Ian had run aboard minutes before they cast off in London. For the hundredth time, Grant regretted taking on his ne'er-do-well, rakehell cousin. He swore under his breath and surveyed Ian squinting up at birds, happily snagging and eating a banana. Ian, for all his faults, for his uncanny ability to irritate, for his laziness, for his--Grant stanched that interminable train of thought, admitting to himself that for all his faults, Ian was like a brother. If Grant had to do it over, he knew he'd repeat the mistake of taking him on.
During his harried race down the docks to the Keveral's berth, Ian had been looking over his shoulder, eyes wide.
He was quelling the temptation to remind Ian of his nonpaying and nonworking status on board when Ian snapped his fingers. "Just thought of something--this means Victoria's grandfather isn't mad."
"Some of us never thought he was." That was a disingenuous answer at best. Grant had wondered about the
sanity of Victoria's grandfather. Edward Dearbourne, the old earl of Belmont, was considered insane among polite society and by all connected with London shipping. What else could you call a lonely old man who longed for his lost family so fiercely that he imagined them alive and unfound for all these years? Even after he'd commissioned failed search after search throughout the South Pacific, impoverishing himself?
Grant knew what to call him. Right.
At least about Victoria. Grant remembered his first meeting with the earl. Tears had tracked from Belmont's filmy eyes as he'd explained the history of his lost family. Uncomfortable with the emotional display, Grant had offered him platitudes. The three are gone. Best to accept it and move on. They're in a better place.
Yet against all reason, the man had continued to believe. Grant frowned. Against all logic.
He gave a sharp shake of his head. The earl's intuition or "gut feeling" that his family lived wasn't what gave him hope. Grant knew the man had hope because the alternative was unendurable....
"Imagine the look on his face when we bring her back. Hell, the look on everyone's face." Ian's normally languid eyes were snapping with excitement. "And here I thought we were the fools accepting a fool's errand."
"We?"
Ian looked affronted. "I believe it is you and I out here, hence the we."
Grant glared and passed him. For the next three hours, he made good headway until another blister gave way beneath the sweat-dampened handle of his machete. He hissed in a breath through clenched teeth. When Ian trailed farther behind, Grant stopped, put a mud-coated, bloody hand against a tree, and leaned in, fatigued to his bones.
The inner island was like an oven--gone were the soothing breeze and powdery sand. Here mud and fallen plants congealed into a pulpy floor, hungry with suction and grueling to slog through. He drank water, fighting not to guzzle, and took note of himself. Lacerations crisscrossed his skin and blisters the size of crowns pocked his hands; a reddening band spanned his upper chest.
"Grant, this isn't a race." Ian wheezed as he reeled forward. "Are you trying to cover the entire island this afternoon?"
Grant had no pity for his cousin. "I warned you."