Pride & Consequence Omnibus (7 page)

Children released from their crocodile darted up the narrow passageways, laughing to one another, whilst three young Hindu initiates passed by in their orange robes, their voices raised in chanting joy.

Several hours later, when they were in the shop of a fabric merchant, Keira had to admit that Jay had sourced his contacts well. The merchant had told them that he had cousins who owned and ran a factory in a small town, south-east of the city, a town Keira already knew was famous for its block-printed cotton. The town owed its success to the fact that a local stream possessed certain minerals in its water that set dye.

The merchant had produced pattern books, showing some classic floral and pineapple designs originating from the eigh-
teenth century, and others showing fabrics in indigo and madder, as well as assuring her that his cousins would be pleased to make up samples of fabrics for her in her own choice of colours.

The merchant’s daughter-in-law came through from the living quarters at the rear of the shop, bringing tea for them to drink, with two young children clinging to her sari. The younger of them, a little girl with huge dark-brown eyes and soft curls, was only just learning to walk, and when she lost her balance Keira reacted immediately, catching her in her arms to steady her. Was there anything quite as wonderful as holding a child? Keira wondered tenderly as the little girl looked up and smiled shyly at her. A sense of loss filled her. There wouldn’t ever be any children of her own for her.

* * *

Jay watched Keira with the fabric merchant’s grandchild, and, seeing the look on her face, wondered what had caused it. Why was he so curious about her? She meant nothing to him, and that was the way he intended things to stay.

The fabric merchant was telling Keira that if she were to let him have some drawings and details of what she wanted he could arrange to have some sample patterns made up for her. Keira handed the little girl back to her mother and reached for her notebook and the samples, swiftly selecting colours and patterns in the combinations she thought she would need, her manner now businesslike and focused.

She had an easy rapport with people and a natural way of communicating with them, Jay observed. She respected their professionalism, and he could see that they in turn respected hers.

It was very important to him that this new venture was not just a success, but that it achieved an almost iconic status as a leader in its field. His heritage and his blood demanded that from him, as much as his own nature and pride.

Jay knew that there were those who envied him his success and would like to see him fail, but they never would. He was determined about that. He never lost—at anything. And this woman was going to learn that just as his business rivals had had to learn it.

And yet, despite the fact that on a personal level Keira pushed all the wrong buttons for him, as a designer he couldn’t fault her. Somehow, without him being able to analyse just how she was doing it, she was creating an image for the properties that truly was cosmopolitan and yet at the same time very much of India. He had almost been able to see it taking shape in front of him as she talked to suppliers and merchants, her slender fingers reaching for small pots of paint and dye, or pieces of fabric, her quick mind picking up ideas and then translating them to those with whom she was dealing.

Professionally she was, as Sayeed had said, perfect for this commission.

Keira thanked the fabric merchant for his help, and got up from the cushion on which she had been seated whilst they talked with the single fluid movement she had learned from Shalini, ignoring the hand Jay had stretched out to help her. The last thing she wanted was to risk any physical contact with him, even if by doing so she was causing his mouth to tighten and earning herself a grim look. She couldn’t think of a commission she would enjoy more than the one he had given her—it was a dream come true, and all the more so now that she had met the suppliers he had already sourced—but Jay’s presence made that dream a nightmare.

He was going away tomorrow, she reminded herself, and she was going to be working so hard that she simply wouldn’t have time to think about him, much less worry about her vulnerability to him.

It had grown dark whilst they had been in the shop, and now the street outside was illuminated with pretty glass lamps. The street opened into a small square where several men sat at a table enjoying
shiska
pipes, the bright colours of their turbans glowing under the light from the lanterns.

A group of young female dancers wearing traditional dress, followed by several musicians, swirled through the square, on their way to one of the restaurants to dance for the diners, Keira guessed.

The evening air was vibrant with the scents, sights and sounds of India. They throbbed and pulsed in the warm air, taking on their own life form—a life form that was softened and gentled by the nature of the people.

Jay had stopped to talk to a tall man in a western suit who had hailed him. Whilst they were talking Keira spotted an antique shop on the other side of the square and quickly headed towards it. Antiques and bric-a-brac were something she just couldn’t resist.

A tall boy, a teenager, dark-eyed and with the promise of handsomeness to come—was obviously minding the shop for someone else, and welcomed her in shyly. He couldn’t be more than seventeen or eighteen at the most, Keira assessed, and whilst he was looking at her with curiosity, she didn’t feel offended or threatened. He probably wasn’t used to seeing Western women, and she knew he meant no harm.

The shop contained mainly bric-a-brac, and she was on the point of leaving when she saw a box full of black and white photographs on one of the shelves. She went to pick it up but the boy beat her to it, standing very close to her as he reached for the box for her.

Taking it from him, Keira looked through the photographs, her excitement growing as she did so. The box contained a mix of postcard pictures of maharajas and palaces, and so far as she was concerned was a terrific find. Properly framed they would make wonderful and highly individual wall art for the properties.

‘How much for all of these?’ she asked the boy, gesturing to the box.

‘For you, lovely lady, is one thousand rupees,’ he told her.

Keira knew the rules of trade here, and so she shook her head and told him firmly, ‘Too much.’ Then she offered him less than half of what he had asked for.

‘No—is a good price I give you,’ the boy told her earnestly, moving closer to her as though to reinforce his point. ‘Because I like you. You are very pretty. Are you here on holiday?’ he asked her. ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

Keira’s heart sank. Oh, dear. Perhaps she should have been prepared for this, but she hadn’t been.

‘Perhaps I should come back later—’ she began, but to her consternation the boy grabbed hold of her arm.

‘No, please stay,’ he begged her. ‘I will give you the photographs if you like them.’

This was even worse, and Keira didn’t know what she would have done if a man Keira assumed must be the boy’s father and Jay hadn’t arrived in the shop at the same time, neither of them looking very pleased.

‘What’s going on?’ Jay demanded.

‘I was just trying to buy these photographs,’ Keira told him, unwilling to get the boy into trouble.

Very quickly Jay concluded the sale and handed over the necessary rupees, before hustling her out into the street, rich now with the smell of cooking food from the stalls that had been set up around the square.

Keira could tell that he was angry, but she wasn’t prepared for the storm that broke over her the minute they were back inside the palace.

‘You just can’t resist, can you?’ he challenged her savagely. ‘Not even with a boy who’s still wet behind the ears. The way you were flirting with him was—’

The lanterns illuminating the hallway threw long dark shadows across it. Keira would have given a great deal to hide herself in those shadows, and so escape from the tension between them, but she couldn’t let his accusation stand.

‘I wasn’t flirting with him,’ she told him truthfully, defending herself.

‘Of course you were. You were leading him on. Just like you—’ Jay stopped abruptly, but Keira knew what he had been about to say. He had been about to say just like she had led
him
on.

Shame burned its hot brand on her pale skin, making her cheeks sting.

She could not defend herself against that accusation. Her shame intensified.

‘I expect the people who work for me and with me to reflect a proper professional attitude.’

‘I
was
being professional,’ Keira insisted.

‘Yes, and it was perfectly obvious which profession it was you were representing.’

Keira could feel nausea burning her throat, and angry fear flooding her heart. She knew exactly what he was accusing her of being, and which profession he was alluding to: the oldest profession in the world, the profession whereby a woman sold her body to a man for his sexual gratification. Her mother’s profession. The profession she had always sworn she would rather die a virgin than risk following.

‘I was simply trying to buy the photographs, that was all,’ she told Jay fiercely.

Her teeth had started to chatter, despite the fact that it was warm. The sickening fear she had never been able to subdue surged through her, smothering logic and reason. Somewhere deep inside herself the child who had heard her mother’s words as though they were a curse on her still cowered under the burden of those words.

The present slipped away from her, leaving her vulnerable to the past and its pain. She could feel it gripping her and refusing to let her go.

The way the colour suddenly left her face and the bruised darkness of her eyes caught Jay off guard. She was looking at him as though he had tried to destroy her. Looking at him and yet somehow past him, as though he simply wasn’t there, he recognised. He had never seen such an expression of tormented anguish.

He took a step towards her, but immediately she turned and almost ran up the stairs, fleeing from him as though he was the devil incarnate. Unwanted male guilt mingled with his anger as that very maleness made it a matter of honour for him to let her go, rather than pursue her and demand an explanation for her behaviour.

CHAPTER SIX

S
HE
HAD
WORKED
like someone possessed from the minute she had closed the door of the guest wing behind her, focusing all her energy on what had to be achieved and deliberately leaving nothing to spare that might trap her with the ghosts Jay’s accusation had raised.

But they were still there, pushing against the tight lid of the coffin she had sealed them into like the undead, denied true oblivion and existing in a half world that made them desperate to escape. And it was Jay’s words to her that had fed them and given them the strength to try to overpower her.

She looked down at her laptop and at the work she had just completed. Images of room layouts lay printed off and neatly stacked to one side of the laptop—rooms with walls painted in traditionally made paint in subtly different but toning shades of white. In the main she’d opted for modern, stylish furniture in black, chrome and natural wood, accenting the rooms with fabrics in colour palettes that went from acid lemon and lime through to hot sizzling pinks and reds, and from cool greys and blues through to creams and browns. Modern lighting and the use of mirrors opened up the smaller spaces and highlighted features. It was, Keira knew, probably the most complex portfolio she had ever produced at such short notice.

It was late—nearly three o’clock in the morning. She ought to go to bed, but she knew she wasn’t relaxed enough to sleep.

Outside, the courtyard garden was bathed in the light from the almost full moon. Keira got up and opened the door that led to it.

The night air was softly warm, without the stifling heat that would come later in the year at the height of summer.

A mosaic-tiled path led to a square pool in the centre of the garden, and surrounded it, and Keira paused to look down at it, studying it more closely.

* * *

Jay couldn’t sleep.

He threw back the bedclothes and stood up. He should have followed his initial feeling and brought in another designer—preferably one who was male.

He walked over to the high-arched windows of his room, which he’d left open to the fresh air. Beyond them was an enclosed balcony that ran the whole length of the suite of rooms that had belonged to the Maharaja for whom this palace had originally been built.

This was the only place in the palace from which it was possible to look down not only into his own private courtyard garden but also into that attached to the old women’s quarters. Naturally only the Maharaja himself had been allowed to look on the beauty of his wives and concubines. For any other man to do so would have been an offence for which at one time he would have had to pay with his sight and probably his life.

Now no modern man would dream of thinking that no one else should look upon the face of a woman with whom he was involved. A woman was a human being of equal status, not a possession, and the very idea was barbaric—and yet within every man there was still a fierce need to keep to himself the woman he desired, and an equally fierce anger when that need was crossed.

As his had been earlier, when he had seen the way the young shop boy had looked at Keira and the way she had smiled back at him?

That was ridiculous. She meant nothing to him. Just because she had aroused him physically... He stepped out onto the veranda and frowned as he saw a movement in the women’s courtyard.

Keira. What was she doing out there at three o’clock in the morning? And why was she crouching on the ground?

Snakes sometimes slid into these gardens.

It only took him a handful of seconds to pull on his underwear and a pair of jeans. The tiles beneath his bare feet still held the warmth of the day’s sun as he padded down the private staircase that led into the courtyards. It wasn’t until he had opened the gate between his own courtyard and the women’s courtyard that Jay realised that what had brought him here had been an age-old in-built male protective concern, which he had not even realised he possessed until now, and which if he had known he possessed, he would not have thought would be activated by or for Keira...

* * *

The sight of Jay walking towards her through the shadows was so unexpected that it shocked Keira into immobility for a few seconds, before she struggled to her feet. His terse, ‘What are you doing?’ didn’t help.

‘I wanted a closer look at the pattern on these tiles,’ she told him, indicating the tiles forming the narrow footpath. ‘And if you’ve come to find out if I’ve finished the layouts you wanted, then the answer is yes. At least in draft form. They’ll be on your desk before you leave tomorrow.’

The words were a staccato burst of edgy defensiveness that fell away into sharp silence when Jay stepped out of the shadows. Automatically she looked at him, and then couldn’t look away, her breath locking in her throat, her stomach tightening in response to what she could see. His torso and his feet were bare, as though... as though he had been in bed. Naked? Why was she thinking that? He could just have been relaxing. But something told her that Jay wasn’t the kind of man who relaxed by taking off his clothes and lounging around semi-nude.

‘If they’re ready I may as well have them now,’ Jay told her.

‘I was going to polish them a bit more.’

‘There’s no need. It’s understood that these are preliminary drafts. If I have them now it will give me more time to consider them. I’ll walk back with you and collect them.’

Keira wished she hadn’t said anything about the layouts. She’d wanted to look them over again before handing them to him, but now if she refused to let him take them he was bound to think that she’d been boasting, and that they weren’t finished at all.

‘Very well,’ she agreed.

She’d closed her door when she came out. As they approached it Jay stepped in front of her—intending, she realised too late, to open the door for her. But the practical whys and wherefores of how she had come to be touching him hardly mattered. Because when she’d reached out to stop herself from colliding with him he had reached out too, and now his hand was on her shoulder, and her senses were filled by the feel of his warm flesh beneath her hand and the scent of his skin in her nostrils.

She could have moved away. She certainly should have done so. But instead she was looking up at him, and he was looking back at her. A dangerous tension stretched the silence. Her fingers curled into his arm, the breath shuddering from her lungs.

Danger crackled through her senses like static electricity. Abruptly she removed her hand from his arm, but it was too late. Without knowing that she was doing so she had moved closer to him, as though in mute invitation, and he had responded to that invitation.

She had thought that people only kissed like this in films—briefly, testing, tasting. Two people who were both trying desperately not to give in to the fierce undertow of a desire that neither of them really wanted, only to be swamped by it as their lips met and they were overwhelmed by a hunger that leapt from nerve-ending to nerve-ending, binding them together as their mouths and hands and bodies meshed, plundered and pleaded.

It was like being possessed by a universal force that could not be controlled, Keira thought dizzily, her lips clinging to Jay’s. His hand was spread across the back of her head beneath her hair, keeping her mouth close to his own whilst his tongue probed the soft willingness of her mouth, possessing it in the same way that her desire for him was possessing her.

Each intimacy between them only fed her desire for more, as though some powerful spell had been cast upon her ability to resist what was happening to her.

The hunger he had unleashed within her was enslaving her. He was enslaving her, Keira realised as she tried desperately to pull back from the chasm awaiting her and the darkness she knew it held. Only to fail when Jay touched her breast, cupping it within the hold of his hand so that her nipple rose tightly and eagerly to press against his flesh. Keira knew that it was her own response that had incited the explicitly erotic pluck of his fingertips against her nipple as he teased it into an even more blatantly hungry demand for more.

It was like being savaged by two opposing forces. No—it was like being fought over by them, Keira thought frantically. The one surging through her, taking her up to the heights of sexual excitement and need, and the other dragging her down to that place when the demons of her childhood lay in wait for her. Between them they could so easily tear her apart and destroy her. She must stop this. But she couldn’t.

Jay was kissing the side of her neck, sending wild, wanton shivers of irreversible arousal racking her. She could hear herself moaning as she collapsed into him, letting him take the weight of her body, letting him know without words of her need for him to possess it and her completely.

He was hard and ready against her softness. Automatically she reached down between them to touch him, driven now by nature, which guided her movements so that her fingertips fluttered helplessly against the thick hard ridge of his erection.

His smothered groan into her skin followed by the sharply sexual nip of his teeth would have been enough to melt any resistance she might have had, even without the sudden fierce sweep of his free hand down the length of her body, pressing her into him before closing on the soft curve of her buttock.

She was lost, Keira admitted to herself. There could be no going back from this.

In the moonlight she could see the darkness of Jay’s hand against her top. As though it was happening in slow motion she watched as his fingers curled into the fabric and pulled it away from her breast. Her heart was thumping slowly and heavily as she silently willed him not to stop, but instead to hurry, hurry... Because the need inside her could not be contained for much longer.

As though he had sensed that need Jay bent his head, taking her nipple into his mouth with fierce impatience and drawing on it, so that she could feel the sharp pangs of her own desire seizing her whole body, causing it to convulse with longing.

She was his. Jay could sense her body open to his, could already imagine what it would be like when she closed down on him as her orgasm possessed her and took him to his own pleasure. Just thinking about it made him ache so badly. Jay’s hand went to the fastening of his jeans. He wanted her so much, was so out of control with longing for her that he doubted he would have time to make it to the bed, never mind anything else.

Anything else? What the hell was happening to him? Jay never allowed himself to be out of control, and he certainly never had unprotected sex. But he had been about to do so.

Had been.

At first when Jay pushed her away Keira couldn’t understand or accept what was happening. She cried out in protest, her eyes wild with longing and incomprehension, until she was jerked back to reality by the stillness of Jay’s stance and the look she saw in his eyes before he turned on his heel and walked away from her.

Shame, her familiar and hated companion, slid its dark shadow next to her and smiled its mocking triumph at her.

Somehow Keira managed to stumble inside her room, where she showered in darkness, unable to bear the sight of her own body. Her mother and her great-aunt had been right about her after all.

After an hour of lying rigidly in her bed, unable to sleep, she got up and switched on her laptop. But for once her work did not bring its normal comfort, pushing everything and everyone else out of her thoughts. Instead images of Jay—his face, his eyes, his hands—came between her and the screen to torment her.

It was close to dawn when she eventually fell into an exhausted and troubled sleep.

* * *

It was just gone six in the morning. Jay was showered and dressed and drinking the tea his manservant had brought him. The morning sun was bathing everything in primrose-gold light, the clear blue of the sky on the horizon turning darker where it met the pink walls of the buildings.

He could admire the city’s beauty, but he could not feel entirely a part of it, Jay acknowledged. His self-imposed exile had broadened his horizons too much. The city would always hold a very special place in his heart, but he did not envy his elder brother his inheritance or his position. The status of second son—second best, as his father’s mistress had so often taunted him in the past—brought with it a freedom Rao could never have, and in a variety of different ways. He had lost count of the number of approaches he had received in recent years from families desperate to secure him as a husband for their daughters, but unlike Rao he did not have to marry and secure the succession. He was free to remain free, and that was exactly what he intended to do.

He would be leaving within the hour by helicopter to his private jet and his journey to Mumbai.

On the table in front of him were Keira’s plans. He had ordered a servant to retrieve them from her room. There were a couple of points he wanted to query with her before he left. The excellence of what she had done had caught him off guard. Like his loss of control and his reaction to her last night?

He had not lost control. Maybe not completely, but the extent to which he had come dangerously close to doing so had been a first for him. Irritated by the mocking tone of his inner voice, Jay put down his teacup.

The courtyard beneath his window looked so tranquil this morning it was hard to imagine that last night it had contained so much dark passion. A passion instigated by her, when she had taken that inviting step towards him. Maybe—but it was an invitation he could have refused.

He looked at his watch. It was still early, but there were a couple of questions he needed to ask Keira about her plans before he left.

As he stepped outside, the morning sunlight burnished the olive warmth of his skin, throwing into relief the strength of his facial bone structure.

The door to Keira’s quarters opened easily. Jay could hear the quiet hum of her laptop and smell the scent of her sleep and her skin. Through the open doorway he could see the bed, and Keira herself, lying on top of it and quite obviously still asleep.