The Tiger's Lady (14 page)

The wind rattled the glass panes, sending eddies of snow against the frosted glass.

Inside, two figures stood staring anxiously at the white-haired man asleep on the bed.

The red-cheeked housekeeper was the first to speak. “How’s the old gentleman doing?”

Her stocky companion didn’t answer, his lips tense with worry.

“Well, Mr. Goodfellow? What did the doctor say?”

The steward sighed. “That it would be a near thing, Mrs. Harris. He’s taken a severe blow to the head and lost a good deal of blood. And—his heart might be weakened.”

The plump woman paled. “Poor old thing,” she whispered, staring at the restless man on the bed.

In his dreams he twisted and mumbled. Even now the bandage at his brow was thick with fresh blood.

His gnarled fingers clutched at empty air. Suddenly he began to shout. “Goodfellow! Bring me the carbolic acid! No, the nitrous oxide would do better. Be quick about it! We must find her before—” He shuddered then, and lapsed into a fitful silence.

The butler shook his head. “If only we could find Miss Barrett.
She
could get through to him.”

“Where is the young miss?”

Goodfellow’s forehead creased in lines of worry. “That young constable’s had no luck. He traced the pack of vermin to a public house south of here, then lost them.”

“South?” The housekeeper’s eyes widened.

“South. They were probably headed to London. The constable said he would alert an associate of his there, but…”

“But
what,
Andrew?” It was the first time the housekeeper at Cinnamon Hill had ever forgotten her place so completely that she called the steward by his Christian name.

Had the circumstances not been so harrowing, Goodfellow might have smiled.

As it was, he could only shake his head worriedly. “I don’t know, Felicity. Miss Barrett seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. I just don’t know.”

The firelight was nearly gone when Pagan awakened, still sprawled on the carpeted floor.

He grimaced. Lust and brandy left a foul taste in a man’s mouth, he discovered.

What was he doing? Why was he back in this city that he hated with such a passion?

From the smell of the horse dung and the burning coal to the incessant din of the street vendors, he cursed everything about London.

But it was
himself
he hated most of all. For the memories that kept him a stranger in his own land.

Grim-faced, he shrugged into a silk dressing gown, then went back to remove the ruby from Helene’s sleeping body. At the door he motioned to Singh, instructing him to return the gem to Sir Humphrey’s room with all secrecy.

Even Helene would find it hard to weather the scandal if her trick were discovered.

With that done, the viscount went to stand before the window.
Think about the money
, he told himself.
Think about all the acres you can turn out for tea with two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

Don’t think about Cawnpore. Don’t think about the two men who died tonight at that auction.

Above all, don’t think about a woman who smelled like spring and felt like silk.

His eyes on the restless river, Pagan tried to do just that. He might have succeeded, too, had not a door slammed somewhere down the hall. Seconds later a shattered the night silence.

“The r-ruby!” It was the young Chinese woman. “Sweet heaven—Sir Humphrey! S-someone has m-murdered Sir Humphrey. May the Lord Buddha protect me!
Someone has s-stolen the Eye of Shiva!”

When Pagan opened his door seconds later, he found a gaunt body in new boots and a frayed linen cuff sprawled lifeless across the hall. A silver dagger with a serpent on its hilt protruded from his back.

Beside his lifeless fingers lay a hundred gold guineas.

And the Eye of Shiva was gone.

He raised the crystal decanter and poured a fine, aged claret into an etched crystal chalice. He swirled the crimson spirits carefully, sniffing the delicate bouquet and savoring the wine’s fine blush.

Only then did he sip, slow and careful.

It was superlative. Just like everything else in his elaborate collection.

His sharp eyes ranged appreciatively over rows of glass-fronted cases displaying Egyptian statuary, Chinese imperial jades, and Japanese lacquers.

Yes, the claret was like everything else in this room. Superlative. He tolerated nothing less.

He swirled the crimson spirits gently and took another sip, enjoying the slow heat that unfurled into his chest and then down to his loins.

A smile played over his thin lips.

Did the stupid little man really think he could deceive James Ruxley? How laughable. From the start his greedy schemes had been pathetically obvious.

Yes, Thomas Creighton had left him no choice but to see to his untimely demise in that house of sin. But it had all been for naught. The ruby had not been upon Sir Humphrey’s body after all.

Ruxley’s hands began to tremble. The movement sent fifty-year-old claret sloshing onto the top of the lacquer table. It was coming again. The hunger. The terrible need. How he despised it!

He jerked back as if burned, his hooded eyes glittering in fury.

Twice he had been thwarted this night, once at the auction rooms and the second at Helene’s. It was all
his
fault, that damned heathen who strode about in a king’s ransom’s worth of jewels. The cursed rajah had probably arranged to have the Eye of Shiva stolen while that fool Sir Humphrey was busy at his debaucheries.

The immaculate white fingers fondled the chalice’s cold crystal shaft.

Very well. Now he would simply have to take the game one step further. It would be a decided pleasure, in fact, considering who the players were.

He thought for a moment about the motionless figure awaiting him out in the leaden Thames. She would be frightened, helpless, pleading. He began to smile.

Yes, she would do. She would do very nicely.

Until he had the ruby.

Part
Two

Ceylon

Now I will tell you something about the island [of Ceylon]
… the king
… possesses the finest ruby that exists in all the world—the finest certainly, that was ever seen or is ever likely to be seen. It is about a palm in length and of the thickness of a man’s arm. It is the most brilliant object to behold in all the world, free from any flaw and glowing red like fire
… I tell you in all truthfulness that the Great Khan sent emissaries to this king and told him that he wished to buy this ruby and would give him the value of a city. But the king would not part with it for anything in the world, because it was an heirloom from his ancestors. For this reason the Khan could not have it at any price.

~ Marco Polo,
The Travels
(The Travels of Marco Polo, Ronald Latham, trans.
(New York: Penguin Books, 1958), p. 259)

April 1865

The southwest coast of Ceylon

Bloody everlasting hell, but it was hot!

The tall man with the black eye patch straightened from inspecting a row of tea seedlings and slapped a mosquito feeding at his wrist. In one fluid motion he stripped off his white muslin shirt and reached up to massage his aching shoulders. Sweat beaded over his neck and forearms, glistening against his powerful, sun-bronzed chest.

Yes, damnably hot it was, even for tropical Ceylon.

The jet-eyed Englishman’s scowl grew as he walked a few rows farther and bent down to examine another young tea bush. To his fury he saw the same thing he had seen on three other plants.

The upper leaves were dry and shriveled. The lower leaves were dead.

Pagan swore beneath his breath, loud and long and in three languages. Another week of this weather and the whole wretched planting would be lost!

He saw one of the Tamil workers dart him a hooded glance, half fearful, half curious, and then make a gesture meant to ward off evil.

The viscount turned away, biting down his fury.

But here he was not Viscount St. Cyr, but simply
Mahattaya
to his Sinhalese workers, and
Lat-sahib
to the rest. Here he was simply Pagan, a brash foreign devil who flaunted propriety by working in the tea fields alongside his pickers; who stripped half naked in the hot sun of midday, forgoing jacket, shirt, and pith helmet, and sometimes even donning native garb himself.

Here he was simply a hard-faced tea planter who slept restlessly or not at all, waking in the night to prowl the plantation like one of the leopards whose cries haunted the jungle darkness.

Grimly Pagan ran his fingers along the new pink skin above his cheekbone, welted and puckered still. Even now it pained him, the muscles tense after hours squinting in the sun.

But at least he still
had
his eye. That was more than the bastard who had attacked him from behind could say.

He’d come to dying that night nearly eight weeks ago. Stir-crazy from three straight months aboard ship on the voyage out from England, he had neglected to take his usual precautions when disembarking. No doubt his success at masquerading as the Rajah of Ranapore had made him cocky.

But the three men who’d jumped him in a filthy alley in Colombo had been anything but careless. Their double-bladed daggers had been honed and ready.

That attack had been Pagan’s homecoming. Hard on the heels of that had come a string of other incidents—attacks on his workers, broken equipment, and tea bushes uprooted.

All of them James Ruxley’s work, no doubt. The Merchant Prince had hated Pagan for years now, ever since they’d had a difference of opinion about the propriety of cultivating poppies in the fields near Pagan’s estate in northern India.

Pagan had won the battle that day. There had been no opium produced anywhere in his districts.

But that beautiful house and all its acreage were gone now, swept away eight years ago in the bloodlust of the Great Mutiny.