The Tiger's Lady (6 page)

Just before she disappeared, the tall figure motioned silently to his bodyguard, who set off after her, careful to stay well out of sight.

Only then did the rajah turn away.

By the time he reached the brightness and noise of Great Russell Street, his face was once more set in its usual impassive mask.

Barrett stumbled down a narrow alley and fell back against the rough brick wall, dragging in a raw breath. Even now her ears were keen, listening for any sound that would signal a pursuit. Wearily she peered into the street behind her.

Nothing.

With a little sigh, she drew back into the shadowed haven once more, rubbing her aching shoulder. She must have bumped it when the Indian pushed her to safety just before the carriage thundered past. Her eyes closed as she massaged the aching muscles, reliving the horror of those minutes.

Her eyes blurred with tears.

For a moment she wondered if she had dreamed it all. It
must
be a dream, she thought wildly. Men with silk turbans and a fortune in jewels sewn over their bodies did not just step casually out of the London night.

And they certainly did not make offers such as this man had made.

Yes, a dream. Or perhaps it was delirium, caused by hunger and exhaustion.

Suddenly Barrett’s fingers froze. Something warm and sticky inched across her palm. Frowning, she opened her eyes and peered down.

Only then did she see the blood. Her cloak was covered in it, elbow to wrist. But why hadn’t she felt any pain?

She could have sworn the carriage had missed her. All she felt now was a sort of dull ache near the top of her arm.

Quickly she jerked back her cloak and shoved up her sleeve. Pale and silken, her skin gleamed unmarred from wrist to forearm.

And then the realization hit her. Dear heaven, the blood was
his.
She recalled her rescuer’s grunt of pain and the way he had flinched when the carriage thundered past.

The axle rim must have ripped across his thigh while he shielded her with his own body! And yet he had shown no hint of pain, not the slightest grimace or murmur.

What sort of man
was
he?

For a moment Barrett thought of going back. Yes, she had been too abrupt with him. Perhaps she could try to explain…

Then the cold, hard voice of reason returned. What value lay in explanations? She could never go with him.

She had sent her pursuers on a fruitless search once, to buy time for her grandfather’s escape, but they had not been fooled for long. Now she must draw them off again, long enough to be sure that he was truly safe.

Slowly Barrett rolled down her cuff and straightened her cloak, her eyes fixed all the time upon that thick crimson line of blood.

What are you waiting for?
she railed.
Go! Go before they find another way to stop you!

With trembling fingers she drew the veil down from the rim of her bonnet, until her pale features were hidden once more.

And then Barrett slipped out of the doorway toward her final destination.

Inside the drab carriage the man with the scarred face watched, scowling.

So the bitch had an ally, did she? The man’s flat eyes narrowed as he recalled the flash of jewels at the Indian’s turban and tunic. How he would have loved to lay into the bastard and pinch the lot of
them!

There must have been a king’s ransom there, unless he missed his guess. And when it came to jewels, Thomas Creighton seldom erred.

His long, thin fingers tightened on the doubled-bladed dagger at his knee. For a moment he had nearly had the both of them. But the heathen had been too damned quick with that dagger hidden within his cane. And the scum he had hired to grab the woman had allowed himself to be caught instead.

But Creighton wasn’t about to take a chance on losing the cursed female again. Not when he was being paid so well to hunt her down.

So he chose instead to wait and watch.

When his quarry finally came into range, he gave one short tap on the roof of the carriage.

As the wheels began to turn, his mouth twisted up in a smile.

It was cold and very cruel.

“Attention!
Attention
, ladies and gentlemen. We have now come to our final item on the agenda this evening.”

The slim man at the front of the auction hall fingered the ornate rosewood box on the mahogany podium. “Yes, now we come to the moment you have all been waiting for.” With a flourish, he lifted the carved box. “Lot number thirty-seven.”

Noise rocked the crowd. Jewel-bedecked society matrons jerked their lorgnettes to their eyes for a better view, while their escorts, attired in formal evening best, shot upright in their chairs, languor and affectation forgotten.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows snow feathered down over London’s gaslit thoroughfares and grimy alleys. For once the streets were silent, blanketed by the thick white carpet, yet none of the jeweled company inside appeared even to notice.

Breaths checked, every person in the room watched the auctioneer’s manicured fingers stroke the carved rosewood box. Slowly and delicately, conscious of the sea of eyes fixed upon him, Horace Purdy pulled the lid back to reveal a glossy bed of satin.

And there in its center, nestled between folds of dark silk, lay a giant emerald-cut ruby, its blood-red depths glittering with royal fires.

“The Eye of Shiva, all forty-six flawless carats. Discovered, legend has it, in the rugged hill country of central Ceylon. A fabled stone, as you can see, unparalleled in its hue, luster, and transparency.”

A collective gasp swept the room as a hundred people found themselves pondering the powers of that legendary jewel.

To each viewer the ruby whispered differently, its dark message infinitely variable. To one it promised adulation, to another financial security, and to yet another it promised raw sensual allure.

Each and every person in the room stiffened, gripped by an odd restlessness, a strange, primal tension, the indefinable arousal of ancient racial memories stretching back to the shadow-time at the birth of the human race itself.

For such a stone as this one carried great magic. The Eye of Shiva, it was said, made a man a god, giving him unquenchable sexual energy and the staying power of a tiger. Right now every man in the room was remembering the fantastic rumors that had been circulating ever since the auction had been announced.

Rumors of fantastic erotic rituals, whispers of Oriental potentates who serviced a hundred harem women in a single night through the aid of this stone’s power.

Rumors of the white-hot jolt of pleasure released when the jewel was used in the play of love, captured between the hot, sliding friction of naked skin upon naked skin.

Not a few elegant women were
also
contemplating those rumors, their foreheads bathed in fine beads of sweat.

Only one person, in fact, looked upon the ruby with anything other than awestruck fascination. That was the tall, turbaned Oriental seated inside a curtained alcove near the rear of the auction rooms.

His entrance ten minutes before had created quite a stir, for London had never seen anything like this enigmatic grandee with piercing ebony eyes and arrogantly impassive mahogany face.

Gazing on those lean, bearded features, more than one otherwise levelheaded female decided that the wild rumors about the Rajah of Ranapore and his ruby must be true.

It was whispered that his palace was floored with bricks of solid gold and that his harem was filled to overflowing with oil-scented beauties who vied feverishly to receive the honors of his manhood.

That the man was a skilled and insatiable lover who could sweep a woman to pleasures fierce beyond describing; and that once touched, any woman became his willing love slave forever.

Looking at that chiseled aquiline face, several respectable matrons decided they would gladly give away all they owned for one night of pleasure in the rajah’s bed. And the sight of the massive Sikh bodyguard stationed just outside the curtained recess only added a delicious element of danger to all these fantasies.

Horace Purdy, however, had more pressing concerns than how a heathen prince pleasured his women. “Truly, a gem fit for a monarch,” the sallow-faced auctioneer intoned, raising the jewel higher, already calculating how he would spend his hefty commission. “The Shiva’s Eye will indeed make its possessor a man envied among men. Tonight is an historic occasion, something you will speak of long afterward to your children and your children’s children.”

As he spoke, Purdy shifted the stone slightly. Fire seemed to leap from its crystal core, exploding in hot, blood-red sparks.

More than one person’s heart raced at the sight, and many who had planned simply to observe the proceedings suddenly found themselves deciding to place a bid of their own.

None of which was lost on Horace Purdy.

His eyes narrowed, the auctioneer nudged the stone again, studying his audience’s reaction and selecting his key prospects. It took but a few moments for him to shorten his list to five, singularly rich and powerful men all.

Purdy waited, calculating points and percentages, judging just how high he might hope to drive the bidding this night and how best to pit each man against his fellows.

For there was a subtle art to an auction, and Horace Purdy was a master of that art. Greed, ignorance, and lust were his weapons, carefully kindled in his clients and then turned neatly against them.

Yet tonight Purdy found himself strangely off-balance, unable to ignore the lure of the great gem that flamed within his palm. Worst of all was his awareness of the rajah’s brooding presence at the back of the room, where he sat flanked by his impassive Sikh bodyguard, lethal dagger in hand.

Alarm skittered through the auctioneer. Only yesterday another anonymous message had arrived at the auction house, describing in brutal detail exactly what would happen to any man who dared to lay claim to the ruby.

Yes, Horace Purdy knew all the dark legends about this stone. For millennia its blood-red fires had lain carefully banked, concealed beneath the dark earth of the Ceylon highlands, shaped to perfection in nature’s great crucible.

But from the first hour of its discovery by human hand, the ruby had brought bloodlust, madness, and violent death to all who dared possess it. With the death of each victim, the ruby’s fires seemed to grow. Bright, ever brighter and more deadly.

But Horace Purdy discounted such stories—or at least he tried to. After all, a vast experience of priceless objects had left him immune to such fancies. Or so he had believed.

Until he gazed upon the Eye of Shiva.

His fingers trembled slightly and he wished the whole business were behind him, that he might be at home nursing a glass of port with his four percent commission safely vaulted with his man of business.

He swept a look across the room in hopes of seeing his best prospect. The same man all London was waiting to see.

Julian Fitzroy Deveril Pagan, Marquess of Hamilton and Staunton. Viscount St. Cyr.