The Tiger's Lady (25 page)

Pagan tasted regret then, keener than anything he’d ever known. His hands were shaking in earnest when he finished.

She remained still and silent long after Pagan had tied off the bandage and tugged her dress back about her shoulders. As soon as he was finished, he’d left without a word.

But her pulse was still hammering.

Not because he had hurt her. It wasn’t pain that made her pulse lurch and dance like some wild, skittish creature.

No, she realized the truth. That he had touched her with infinite care.

She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the clamor of her heart, the weakness that seemed to invade her very bones. Even now her body seemed to hold the imprint of his long fingers, though he had barely touched her skin.

Was she going mad, that his slightest touch affected her so? And why had he shown such consideration, after his earlier harshness?

Slowly she sat up, frowning as the pain across her back settled to a low, dull ache. Somehow she managed to slip her corset around her and secure the long line of hooks at her chest.

She dressed not out of modesty or spite but out of habit. She desperately needed this normalcy amid the turmoil her life had become. The corset hurt her, but to dispense with habit now would have hurt her more. It was all she had left.

She listened to Pagan’s boots thunder down the hall and out across the wooden porch. He let out a bellow, then snapped out a stream of orders in a foreign tongue.

She understood not a word, of course.

For a moment she knew a choking sense of despair.
Foreign,
so foreign. What
had
brought her here?

But she would not give in. She was an enlightened woman in an enlightened age, after all.

1865
.

The date came to her, flickering brightly against the blank canvas of her mind. And that small fragment of truth anchored her against her despair.

Yes, she told herself firmly, she
would
remember. Until then she would fight.

Pagan’s face was tense with strain when he strode into the shadows of the drying shed. A quick examination had shown another section of tea seedlings succumbed to the drought. Three hundred young shrubs shriveled away to brown stems and brittle, papery leaves!

Bloody everlasting hell!

Nihal abruptly ceased berating a work team and waited respectfully for the
mahattaya’s
orders.

Grimly Pagan motioned the workers outside and sniffed the heavy air. Drying tea blanketed the room in a rich storm of green scent.

At least this much they had accomplished, Pagan decided, pinching and rolling sample after sample from each of the ten fire-fed drying pans.

Abruptly he turned to his overseer. “Have you finished the preparations I ordered, Nihal?”

The slim overseer bowed and broke into excited speech. “The team of porters are ready, Tiger
-sahib.
They are bringing twenty sacks of rice along with the dried fish, bananas, and salt you required.” The servant’s lean face tensed and he seemed to hesitate. “We are still to be leaving on the morrow?”

“Certainly. Why would you think—” Pagan caught back the rest of the question.

Of course. Because of
the Woman.
The news of her arrival must have spread like wildfire through the entire native camp. Right now every man among them would be chewing apart this latest bit of gossip about the
Angrezi-mem
swept up onto the beach.

Pagan’s eyes darkened. Now he understood why one of the worker’s children was chattering on about a
yakkini
—a beautiful but deadly spirit with hair spun of sun rays.

Pagan frowned, fingering the black patch at his eye.

“Lord?”

“Yes, Nihal. Go on.”

“The supplies have been packed. The bearers are chosen and camped on the other side of the hill. All is in readiness.”

“Excellent. See that the men are well fed and rested tonight. It will be a fortnight before they rest so well again.”

“But—” Nihal’s dark eyes widened. He did not like to correct his master, nor even to show undue curiosity, but he could not let such an important question remain unasked. “The
mahattaya
is knowing it is only a six-day march to Windhaven from here.”

“We do not go straight to the hill country this time, Nihal. There have been too many ‘accidents’ lately on the main Kandy track. No,” Pagan continued grimly, staring out at the blinding azure sweep of sea caught between the white arms of his cove, “I believe I’ll take my chances in the jungle.”

The overseer bowed, his face carefully expressionless. “Most excellent. I shall see that these things are all being done.”

Watching the servant walk away, Pagan found himself wondering what the man was thinking.
Just how much do you see and hear?
he wondered for the hundredth time since his return from London.
You work beside me every day, sharing in my triumphs and disasters. You are unfailingly courteous and respectful, even when I curse and rant. And you have eyes everywhere, wherever there are villages or estates or settlements with Tamil and Sinhalese laborers.

Yet your smooth face tells me nothing.

Do you know something that I don’t right now? Perhaps some new unrest stirring upcountry?

But Pagan knew better than to ask. The old overseer would tell him nothing, not until they faced imminent destruction.

Perhaps not even then, Pagan reminded himself bitterly as the carnage and hatred of Cawnpore flashed before his eyes.

Yes, in the end how much were these people ever to be trusted?

But perhaps one never knew whom to trust until the crisis came.

And by then, of course, it would be far too late.

It was hopeless. Far,
far
worse than she’d thought.

On three sides the jungle stretched away from her, unbroken and sullen. Its shadowed depths were alien and unforgiving. The shrubs were six feet high, the trees ten times that, and everywhere in between grew a solid wall of underbrush in a hundred shades of green. Against that lush wall of emerald blazed colors she didn’t even know the names for.

Blossoms of blinding red and orange grew where there should have been cool pink tea roses. Spiky purple blooms spread two feet across, where there should have been delicate, pastel buds.

And the smells. Sweet heaven, they were dense enough to touch, rich and sultry with orchid, frangipani, and jasmine.

Impossibly strange, all of it. And not the remotest hope of escape in sight.

But she refused to give way to fear. Lifting her chin, she pushed open the woven bamboo door and walked out into the heat.

Silver light flooded down from a cloudless sky. To her right acres of cleared-out jungle stretched up an incline. Rows of shrubs ran all the way to the dark green wall where the jungle began. Far beyond, floating like a dream over the sea of trees, rose a line of dim, haze-veiled mountains.

Ten days to the hill country.
Wasn’t that what he’d said?

She caught back a sigh of despair and walked across the veranda. Her foot was on the top step when she heard the thick leaves of a nearby shrub begin to heave and tremble.

She jumped back, gasping.

Could it be a leopard? Maybe even a
tiger?

She sank back toward the bungalow, her eyes fixed on the thrashing branches.

With her next wild heartbeat, she walked straight into a rock-hard wall of muscle.

Taut muscle.

Naked and warm and faintly damp.

Her breath fled in a sharp rush. Below her a low growl erupted from the tossing shrubbery.

“Trying to sneak away already?” Pagan murmured, his mouth at her ear.

She whirled about, anger warring with her fear. Dimly she noted the rifle slung casually over his shoulder. “Let go of me,” she snapped, prying at the hand circling her waist. “Go stalk some other poor creature—like the thing growling in those bushes, for a start.”

His hand tightened on her waist, hauling her back until she felt every one of his ribs. Dear heaven, he was hot and hard and impossibly big.

And as much as she hated him, she felt blindly reassured by the strength pouring from his powerful body. She looked down, fascinated by the contrast of his strong bronze fingers against her peach damask gown, fascinated by the rippling lines of his bare forearms. For one wild moment she felt an urge to run her fingertips over those muscular arms, through the dense mat of black hair at his chest.

She caught herself with a breathless little gasp and shoved furiously instead, twisting away so that her back was to him.

His warm breath feathered over her ear. “If you need my help, all you have to do is ask for it.”

Her heart lurched at that low, intimate sound. “It will be a cold day in hell before I ask you for
anything,
Mr. Pagan!”

Suddenly the man at her back went totally still. His eyes narrowed, staring at the bushes. “Don’t move,” he whispered.

His fingers tightened at her waist, locking her close until she felt the rigid outline of corded thighs.

Her breath came in quick, jerky gasps. She started to speak, but instantly his fingers splayed open, warning her to silence.

She could feel the pounding of his heart through her damask dress. Her own was drumming just as loudly.

Without a sound he inched his hand free and lowered his rifle. Carefully he drew back the trigger.

The thrashing in the foliage grew louder. Around them all other sounds seemed to vanish, until it seemed they were the only two people left in the world. She felt Pagan’s forearm tense, his thighs lock.

Around them the tension grew. She began to think she would scream, faint, or go mad if he didn’t do something very soon.

When she could stand it no longer, she opened her mouth to speak, but he stilled her with a brush of lips at her ear. The sparks leaped all the way down her spine. “How dare—”

“
Shhhhhh.”

She could have sworn his tongue grazed her ear. She could not have spoken even had she wanted to. She was fighting a losing battle with the searing nearness of the man, with the overpowering heat of his hard body.

Dangerous.
She was not thinking of the unseen animal in the shrubbery, but the predator at her back, who was far more lethal.

The bush shook and pitched, emerald leaves scattered to the ocher soil.

“A savage predator. Yes, it’s lucky you stopped when you did.” His breath was hot, his lips feather light. Power emanated from him in dizzying waves.

She swallowed unsteadily. Only from fear, she told herself. Only because they might be eaten at any second.

A small branch tore free from the shrub and went flying onto the veranda.

“Come out of there,” Pagan growled.
“Now,
damn it!”

The woman beside him stiffened. “But how…”

Even as she spoke, the dense boughs parted, and a slender simian form peered up from the foliage.

Two inquisitive eyes fixed on her face.

“A—a monkey?” she stammered incredulously. “All of this was about a
monkey
?” Furious with the realization of how Pagan had tricked her, she flailed out wildly. But he anchored her belly, holding her captive before him.