She pretended not to look at him. Her eyes focused deftly on a cloud out in the distance, taking in its windblown shape and trying not to breathe. She held herself in a lady's posture; spine straight, knees locked. Beside her, he leaned on the railing and called her without words.
She would not look at him. She would not see him in his suit, awaiting their arrival. She would not see his open gaze or the sunned plains of his tan skin. She would not give him what he wanted now. They were far too close to the inevitable end.
Instead, she watched the simple cloud and prepared for questions that would surely come. Of course, the world would want the story and would listen as she told them. She would have to, as she had found him, not Mr. Clayton, not her father. She was the one he'd plucked from the air and saved without a thought. She was the one who'd seen those eyes, completely untouched and untold.
Jane jolted up out of the memory as a voice came skittering across the salted decks to reach them. Her father leaped over a cargo net and again threw up the call. "Janie! Janie! Come quickly!"Alarm set in like fire as she rushed towards him. Breathlessly, he grabbed her hands and danced her across the decks.
"Oh, Janie Jane! We've done it! We've made it at last!"
She swallowed the strike of panic and clapped her hands with pride. "Daddy, this is exactly the day you've been waiting for! How much longer till we dock?"
The little man leaped onto a barrel, pointing dramatically out to sea. Following his finger, she saw nothing but what they had seen for weeks of travel; sea and salt and endless sky. Tarzan gazed up and asked, "London?"
Her father nearly exploded with absolute ecstasy. "Yes, dear boy, London at last! And you- you're going to meet everyone! Everyone!" Daddy chortled and broke into a wild flailing jig, cavorting up and down the deck as if the world expected a show. A smile lit up genuinely at his excitement as the first echoes of his joy climbed through her soul. This was the moment they'd been waiting for, its origins beginning in the exact moment Tarzan agreed. From the instant the last treetops ducked and faded, she knew this was what he'd been anticipating all along. Every dark night perched on the crow's nest had been expectant of what they were about to see.
Jane studied him gently from behind the spectacle of her father, noting the tense veins in his wrists and the wary way he held his stance. She could see a struggle in the wrinkles of his forehead, marking a seasoned battlefield as he tried to figure out what to feel. Half of him wanted excitement, she could see. The other half wanted…
Her chest shuddered in exhaustion as she moved ahead to the bow. Behind her, Daddy sang and clicked his heels, rushing about with his dearest project trotting along at his side. Beyond, a land shape was appearing, boiling up from the depths of the deep as if fate had unjustly called it. For however ready her father was, Jane Porter was not prepared to release her hold on the wonders the African jungle had thrown unchangeably into her hands. However, no one aboard or ashore had the ear she needed to speak to. No one would understand the emotions that rushed in a landslide every time she met his eye.
She rubbed her brow with the butt of her hand and lowered her gaze to the waves. Within the blue abyss, white arms of foam bubbled and broke, embellishing the current that dragged them from the sea. Her father's shouts rode the wind as it filled their sails and every vibration of his steps rocked them a little closer to the harbor, to those who did not know what miracle they'd found.
She pretended she could care less about the man behind her, but to the waves she wondered if he pretended too.