The Tiger's Lady (36 page)

Barrett’s fingers stilled on the corset laces. “And what, precisely, is
that
supposed to mean?”

Pagan’s lips twisted in a mocking smile. “It means, my dear Barrett, that we are not yet at Windhaven. It means that we have ten days of hard travel before us, days that will take us through leopard-and leech-infested jungle. We will probably have hill tribes on our heels every step of the way, along with whatever cursed cutthroats Ruxley sends. And if we are to make it through alive, you must obey
any
and
every
command I see fit to give you.” His eyes smoldered. “Starting with the removal of that bloody corset.”

Barrett’s lips flattened.

“Now,”
he growled.

Her eyes began to smolder, keenest sapphire. “Go to hell, Mr. Pagan.”

“In that case, you will remain here, in the custody of two of my natives until the next magistrate passes through on his circuit from Kandy. That should be in about—” His dark brows knitted in thought. “Four months, I should imagine. What with the monsoon rains about to set in and the general unrest in the hill country, you understand.”

Barrett’s fingers tightened on the fragile laces. “You
can’t!
You—you wouldn’t
dare!”

“Wouldn’t I?” Pagan’s eyes hardened. “You were caught in trespass upon my private beach, need I remind you? Twice I have been set upon by Ruxley’s hired thugs, which makes your complicity patent. Yes, it would really be an open and shut case, I assure you, even if the magistrate did
not
happen to be a particular friend of mine, which he is, owing to a certain favor I once rendered him back in London.”

“I can just imagine what sort of favor,” Barrett snapped.

“Oh, I very much doubt that, my dear,” Pagan said silkily. “Unless you are far from the genteel lady you pretend to be.” Cold and assessing, his eyes ranged over her half-clad chest, over the ripe curves molded above the rim of the corset.

Her flesh tingled and burned, stung by his hot scrutiny, making her fingers shake at their task. She turned her back to him, desperately trying to concentrate.

Pagan took a slow, silent step closer. His breath burned into her back. “Very nice,” he breathed.

Her hands flashed to her bared chest, where the loosened corset suddenly gaped. “You—you—”

“Give it to me,
Angrezi.
Unless you want me to remove it for you.”

She did not move.

Pagan jerked her around to face him, his eyes set in hard, deep lines. “It’s not a question of modesty, damn it! You’re going to need to be able to move quickly and silently where we’re going. And you’re going to need to be cool.” His eyes fell, smoldering over the ivory curve of her shoulders, over the high arch of her full breasts, upthrust above her locked fingers.

The sight raised a thunder in his blood.

His features frozen, he extended his hand. “Give me the bloody thing, Barrett. Why must you be so damned stubborn?”

The Englishwoman glared back, her thoughts awhirl.

Her fingers trembled on the stiff boned undergarment. She realized if she gave in on this issue she would be that much closer to yielding to him on others that were far more dangerous.

“Because my s-stubbornness is all I have left.” She tried, but failed, to keep the tremor from her voice.

The next instant to her total amazement Pagan spun about, muttering a raw curse; with his back to her he extended his hand. “Give me the damned thing!”

Barrett’s brow wrinkled in shock as she realized that she had won her very first skirmish with Deveril Pagan.

“Now,
woman! Before I change my bloody mind!” he growled.

This time Barrett hastened to comply, slipping free of the garment and pressing it quickly into Pagan’s fingers. She turned, darted to the bed, and tugged on her chemise. That done, she shot Pagan a fulminating look. “I shall expect it back as soon as we reach Windhaven.”

His eyes scoured her face. “Not bloody likely,
Angrezi.”

Barrett’s face grew red under his scrutiny. “You are
no
gentleman!”

Pagan’s laugh was low and harsh. “Where we’re going, Empress, the last thing you’ll need is a gentleman. No, what you’ll need in the jungle is a
man.
A ruthless man who has forgotten what it means to be civilized.” His jet eyes glittered. “You’ll need him—and you’ll want him, too, before we’re done. Just think of it,
Angrezi.
You and me, with no one else for miles. Unless one considers the natives, which I certainly shall not.”

“And Mita?” The question escaped before she even knew it.

Pagan’s eyes narrowed. “Jealous, Cinnamon?”

“Of
your
vile attentions? Hah! I’d sooner crave the affection of a jackal!”

“I wonder where your brave words will be when you wake to find a python coiled about your feet,” Pagan murmured softly. “Ten seconds, that’s all it takes, remember?”

A shudder flashed down Barrett’s spine, but she managed a scowl. “I’m quite sure you say that to all your—your
women,
” she muttered. “A little fear probably does wonders in breaking down their reserve.”

“Oh, not
all
my women,” Pagan growled. “Only the intractable ones.” His lips curved in a mocking smile. “And there aren’t many of those, believe me. Especially not after the first night.” His eyes searched her face for a moment. “But then I’ve never taken any of my
women
upcountry along the Mahaweli before either.”

“If the route is so dangerous, then why must we travel that way?”

“Because it’s the one route that Ruxley—and any curious natives—will not expect us to take. That gives us the advantage of surprise. Then there’s the advantage of the jungle itself, of course.”

“The
jungle?
An
advantage?”

“It makes things equal. Anyone following us will be pitted against the same difficulties that we are, you see.”

“No, I
don’t
see,” Barrett countered sharply. “Not
any
of it!”

Pagan studied her through hooded eyes, his posture oddly tense. “Have you ever seen a ruby before,
Angrezi!
A perfect ruby? A ruby of forty-six flawless carats?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!”

“Maybe you would understand it better if you had,” Pagan said softly.

“Are you implying there is something magic, something supernatural about this—this stone?” she scoffed.

“Don’t mock what you have no experience of, woman. Men have murdered foully and without remorse to possess this gem. They have betrayed their closest friends and sold their nearest of kin into slavery, all in hopes of possessing the ruby’s secrets.”

“What complete and utter rubbish!”

Pagan studied her in chill, brooding silence, his dark eyes shuttered. “Now I
know
you are not long in the East, Cinnamon. Otherwise you would never say such a thing.”

Pagan’s gaze rose, sweeping to the open window and then out to the distant green of the jungle beyond, where the sun streaked the sky fuchsia and gold. “Life is … different here, Barrett.” His tone was more serious than she had ever heard it. “Things you would never accept for a second while you stood amid the cheerful din of Oxford Street become commonplace here in the jungle.” A smile twisted his lips as he turned to look back at her. “You still don’t believe me, do you?”

“That stones have strange powers to influence human destiny? Hardly.”

Pagan’s face hardened. Barrett couldn’t quite repress a tingle of fear at his next words.

“For your sake I only hope that nothing happens to make you change that opinion,
Angrezi.”

Barrett’s face was stony when she stepped off the porch twenty minutes later. Stiffly she patted back a strand of shimmering hair which had worked free of the coronet on her head. It was a severe style, one which the mirror had told her would discourage male attention.

Which was precisely her intent. And to discourage it from catching in vines and branches, she reminded herself hastily.

Pagan spared her only one sharp look, which ranged with mild distaste over her tightly fitted dress. He muttered something beneath his breath, then turned away.

Overhead the sun beat down, already tinged with a heat that would build to blasting within hours. Barrett clenched her lips, forcing herself not to think about that.

With a brisk gesture from Pagan, they trailed out of the compound. They were nineteen, first coming ten bearers loaded with twill sacks, followed by five armed scouts. The headman, Nihal, walked in front, and Pagan soon ranged off out of sight.

Within minutes of leaving the compound, the terrain changed. The trees thinned as they followed the twisting, boulder-strewn course of a dry riverbed. Mita came to walk beside her, pointing out the names of various gaudy plants and explaining which Barrett must avoid, because of their stinging leaves or barbed stems.

They were going north, Mita explained. Beyond that she knew nothing. The
sahib
wished it so. It was safer that way.

A bead of sweat trickled down Barrett’s face. The confining cloth at her back rode like sandpaper over her welted skin. For a moment she wished she might be dressed as Mita was, in thin, flowing gauze from waist to ankles and only a small blouse above, which left her midriff bared.

But that was out of the question, of course, so she gritted her teeth and concentrated on avoiding the lizards sleeping beside the shadowed boulders, her eyes narrowed against the burning sun.

By midday her feet were aching and her throat was parched. The noon hour came and passed, but still they did not stop. Of Pagan there was no sign, and somehow that infuriated Barrett more than anything else.

She swatted a mosquito, conjuring up a sweet image of Pagan tethered beneath an angry swarm of the voracious insects. But her triumph vanished when she realized that in her fantasy his bronze body was completely naked. The vision made her suck in her breath and curse her unruly thoughts.

Suddenly hard fingers cupped her shoulders. Barrett spun about in fury, only to freeze, blinking at the sight before her.

He might have been a Sinhalese native, tall and bronze, wrapped in the customary white shirt with a sarong clasped about his lean hips. His face was mahogany, his jaws covered with a thick black beard.

“W-what—”

“It is a useful disguise, one with many advantages, especially on the trail.” Pagan’s eyes narrowed as he looked down at her tattered sleeve, where burrs and vine ends dangled. “And now it’s time for you to remove that dress and put on something more suited to the jungle.” He reached into the leather satchel at his shoulder and pulled out a tangle of white cloth, which he thrust at her. “Take those things off and put this on.”

Fury licked at Barrett’s cheeks as she looked down at the unwanted garments. He had given her one of his own shirts, she saw, along with a pair of buff twill riding breeches. Peeking beneath the cloth was a pair of butter-soft leather boots.

Pagan’s dark brow slanted upward. “I find that I enjoy the sight of you in my shirts, Cinnamon,” he whispered darkly. “This time I’ll allow you breeches, at least.”

“I—I refuse!”

“Oh, you will, little hellcat, and you’ll do it right now. Otherwise I’ll take you back and leave you on the beach.”

Her chest heaving wildly, Barrett glared at him in rigid anger.

“And don’t try to tell me you enjoy those ludicrous garments of yours. I’ve been watching you for the last hour,
Angrezi
, and every step is a torment. I only marvel that you’ve managed to go so far without tripping. But then it only proves what I’ve known all along—that you’re a stubborn creature. But I can’t afford for you to hold us back. We need to make better time if we’re to reach camp before nightfall. Now go over behind that bamboo thicket and change.”

She was still sputtering when he caught her elbow, spun her about, and shoved her off toward the screening wall of greenery. “Very well, you exasperating, infuriating, insufferable man,” she hissed, moving reluctantly in the direction he’d thrust her.

Pagan’s only reply was a dark rumble of laughter.

After checking carefully for spiders and other unwanted intruders, Barrett began prying at the buttons of her dress. That job done, she stripped off her skirts, cursing him all the while.

“That corset goes too,” he called.

She thought briefly about defying him, but decided against it. The thought of taking off the restricting undergarment sounded entirely too pleasant right now.

“I hate this place,” she muttered. “I hate these
clothes.
Most of all, I hat
e you,
Mr. Bloody Pagan!”

After checking to see that he wasn’t spying, Barrett stepped out of her corset and petticoats, then lifted Pagan’s soft shirt of finely woven lawn and tugged it around her. The sleeves were far too long, of course, and the neck gaped open slightly, but all in all she had to admit that the garment was a wonderful relief after her tight dress.

Something moved behind her in the grass, and she quickly jerked on the twill breeches then cinched the soft leather belt Pagan had included in the bundle.