Silence is Golden

43. Caught in Cobwebs

If I had thought the little episode on the path meant that Mr Ambrose was now fine with my new apparel (or lack thereof), I had been vastly mistaken. I had hardly time to wake up the next morning before he pounced on me. He more or less arm-wrestled me into wearing my chemise over my mud-package. It was a bit wet and sticky, but on the whole I had to admit it felt nice having something to cover my girly bits. I guess I wasn't completely cut out for life as an Amazon Indian.

That didn't mean, however, that I wasn't more than ready to forego cover in the presence of Mr Rikkard Ambrose. Not at all. The longer we travelled together, the stronger became my desire to push him to the ground and rip his clothes off. Unfortunately, Mr Ambrose didn't seem to share my desire, or at least had much better control of it than sweet little me. How could I possibly get this craving under control? How?

I tried logic. It had served me well in the past:

Men and women deserve equality. Men won't give women equality. Ergo, men are bastards.

See how well it works?

So I tried it on this situation.

I want to dance the fandango de pokum with Mr Rikkard Ambrose. I want it really, really bad. But if I do, I will probably get pregnant and have to do the unspeakable m-thing. You know the one that involves churches and priests and vows of obedience. Ergo: I can't get my hands on him.

But...I still wanted to! Blast!

Logic didn't seem to work here. Instead, I secretly started plotting ways of getting him to take his clothes off. For days and days, I brooded over dozens of plans, one less likely to succeed than the last. But it turned out that I needn't have bothered. All I had to do was wait, for fate was on my side.

*~*~**~*~*

'Take care where to step.'

Those were the first words I had heard Chandresh say for several days. He was almost as tight-lipped as Mr Ambrose. So, I had to admit, I was curious why he was speaking up now.

'Why?'

He didn't look at me. Instead, his eyes kept doing what they had been doing before: scanning the ground.

'There are dangerous animals here.'

'What kind of animals? Jaguars? Leopards?'

He pointed upwards. I followed his finger with my gaze, but all I could see were a couple of cobwebs stretched between tree branches.

'I don't see anything. What–'

Then it clicked.

'Oh.'

'Yes. As I said – take care where you step.'

I was tempted to ask whether the little fellows we should be on the lookout for were poisonous or not – but then I decided that, on the whole, I'd rather not know. Once or twice I saw something dark scuttle past underfoot, but the day passed without a major incident. It was towards evening that events took a more interesting direction.

We had made camp near a clump of tall, dark trees, just right for hanging our hammocks from. Our supplies were beginning to run low, so Chandresh posted a few guards some distance away around the camp, and then took the rest of the men hunting into the jungle. Karim went with them, but Mr Ambrose, for some reason, decided to stay behind. Maybe he wanted to lean back, relax and calculate how many millions of pounds he was going to make from this trip. Maybe he had found a stain on his tailcoat that he needed to eradicate. Most likely, though, it was fate.