The Tiger's Lady (61 page)

In a drowsy haze Barrett watched two sarong-clad Sinhalese men carry in a gleaming copper tub and position it in the center of the room, then disappear after the traditional palm-to-palm gesture of respect. “Truly, Mita, you need not bother. A pitcher of water would suffice. I’m far too sleepy to bathe anyway.”

Mita swept away her protests. “But Hadley
sahib
was most precise. ‘First a bath, then a light meal, then leave her to rest.’ And that is what I will be arranging.”

Barrett watched steam curl up as the two women emptied silver buckets into the tub. “But—”

Mita ordered the women off and then drew something from the waist of her sarong. She held a tiny carved gourd over the water and sniffed its contents. “Perfect. It is an old mixture passed down by the women of my family for many generations. Do not ask its secret for I would be bound to refuse you. But it will refresh you,
memsab.
It will help you sleep and then … ah, then you will awake as a new person.”

Scent filled the room, carried on the delicate currents of steam from the tub. It was a light but intricate blend of jasmine, orange petals, and damask rose, along with some slightly darker scent.

Barrett let the fragrance curl around her, savoring its textures. “I am sure I shall enjoy it, Mita. You are kind to share such a treasure with me.” She filled her lungs and closed her eyes in reverence. “In London you could make a fortune with such a fragrance.”

“Perhaps, miss, were I to ever sell it. But that is a thing I could not even be thinking of. So now you will undress and bathe, no?”

Although uncomfortable at being waited upon, Barrett soon found Mita could be entirely relentless in her own quiet way.

In the end it was Barrett who yielded, allowing the Indian woman to brush her hair free and pin it up on her head, then help her into the tub. All the time Mita kept up a lively narrative about the many changes in Windhaven since her departure, the state of the latest picking, and worries about the delay in the monsoon rains.

Meanwhile Barrett closed her eyes and sank back, savoring the luxury of a hot bath—with lushly scented water, no less.

But by tacit agreement, neither woman spoke of the one subject most important in their thoughts.

And that was Windhaven’s hard-faced master.

Hours later, something snapped Barrett from sleep. She jerked upright, her heart pounding.

Silence, only silence.

The room was lit with the pale amber glow of a single palm-oil lantern. The gauzy mosquito net around the bed rose and fell in unseen currents while outside the wind drove the wooden shutters against the house.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

Barrett lay back with a sigh, recognizing the creak of the shutter. And then she heard another sound, a faint rhythmic hiss.

No, not another snake! Warily she scanned the shadows beyond the lantern’s reach, but it was a few moments before she placed the sound.

And then she stiffened.

It was the soft rise and fall of a person’s breath, low and rhythmic in sleep. For a wild moment Barrett thought it must be Pagan, stretched out on the chintz-covered settee in the shadows at the far side of the room.

But the settee was empty.

Then she picked out the small shape curled on a cot in front of the door. So he had sent one of the house servants to stay with her. He must have thought the cot would interrupt Barrett’s nocturnal rambling.

For a moment she felt a black wave of loss and regret so fierce that it blinded her, choked her.

But Pagan was right. What had happened in the glade was a colossal mistake, and the sooner she forgot it the better. Pagan, it appeared, already had.

She bit down a wild urge to laugh, struck by the irony that she should now be fighting so hard to
forget,
when before her struggles had been to remember.

Of Pagan’s other revelations, Barrett tried not to think, for in spite of all his cold implacability she could not believe him a coldblooded murderer. If he
had
killed, she was certain it must have been to avoid being killed.

With a sigh she turned her head into the soft pillow, administering a savage chop to its center. But no matter how hard she struggled, she could not drive the memories of Pagan from her mind.

And what of his last revelations?
a quiet voice goaded.
He is a bastard and a half-caste. What interest can such a man hold for you? Especially when he admits to such villainy toward his own mother?

Barrett twisted and pounded her pillow anew, but sleep continued to elude her. All she could think of was a pair of haunted onyx eyes and his naked wanting when he had plunged inside her and taken her to paradise.

“Wretched bloody man!” Her hands pummeled the pillow savagely, imagining it to be his broad chest.

But Barrett’s last thought as she drifted down into dreams was that Deveril Pagan had been far too scrupulous in pointing out the details of his villainy.

And though his sins might be legion, she couldn’t bring herself to believe that he was capable of the ones that he had actually professed.

As the moon broke in solemn silver majesty over the dark, serried hills, Pagan pushed open the door leading out to the veranda along Windhaven’s long, wooden south wing. Someday the whole house would be stone, but for now it was an uncomfortable mixture.

Just like its owner, he thought grimly.

His face was gaunt with strain, for he had not rested since his interview with the colonel hours before. In the last eleven hours he had inspected the three lower tea fields, examined two experimental plantings, repaired a drying oven, and quelled a minor rebellion among the Tamil women pickers over some trifling matter of precedence.

And all along he had thought of only one thing.

The woman with hair like a tropical dawn. The woman who lay sleeping three rooms down the hall.

All day his fingers had twitched to stalk through the teak door and seize her, driving deep inside her before she was aware enough to protest.

But he had not, of course. Instead he had taken a perverse pleasure in driving himself nonstop while he personally attended to every one of Windhaven’s unfinished tasks, no matter how irksome or insignificant.

But now the fields lay silent, dappled with silver beneath the moon’s chill eye, and all Pagan’s tasks were done.

Now there was nothing left to distract him from thoughts of
her.

Dangerous, old man. With a woman like that you could slip deep and never work your way free. She’ll have you caught in her web before you even know it.

Maybe she already has…

He smothered an oath, watching a line of eucalyptus trees near the tea-drying shed pitch and sway in the night wind.

But one look could not hurt, he told himself. It was such a simple thing. Surely it could offer no temptation as long as she did not rouse and provoke him.

Besides, as tired as he was, Pagan doubted if he could accomplish much more than a look.

Still engaged in his silent arguments, he looked up and saw he was standing before the outer door leading from the veranda into Barrett’s room. The veranda had been his own design, created so that every room in the south wing could have a full cross-draft during the hot months.

He had never before considered that the arrangement might have other, more clandestine uses.

In silence his long fingers moved along the doorframe, releasing a hidden latch. As if in a dream he saw the room revealed before him with the slender figure at its center, her golden hair spilled upon white linen.

Pagan’s breath caught in a sharp rush. Unnoticed, his nails dug into the hardwood doorframe.

Beautiful…

By heaven, it was unfair that any creature be so beautiful and exert such control over another.

Slowly, soundlessly he crossed from shadow into the muted light of a palm-oil lamp, his shadow a slash of black across the foot of her bed.

Barrett twisted restlessly, as if in some way aware of his presence, her fingers clutching the embroidered linens. Muttering disjointedly, she turned her face away from the light, one slim hand outstretched. As she did so her fingers caught a mass of bright burnished hair and swept it across her cheek.

His face a harsh mask, Pagan bent down and very gently smoothed the strands off her face and back onto her shoulder. Springy and dense, the tawny hair curled up around his fingers, sheathing him in warm silk and even warmer memories.

A muscle flashed at his jaw as he looked at that golden cloud wrapped around his fingers. He remembered how those bright tresses had spilled lush and wild around them in the glade.

Beautiful, it had been. A wild, blinding splendor, better than anything he had ever known—or even dreamed of.

And it had been an inexcusable mistake, something he swore would never happen again.

Outside in the night came the distant growl of a leopard, a subtle reminder of the danger that waited always just out of sight. Pagan’s jaw hardened.

How much he wanted to touch her, to mold her to him again and feel her velvet tremors clutch his manhood while she tumbled into paradise.

But she was from that other world which Pagan had put aside long ago; he could never allow her into the new life he had forged here at Windhaven.

With a raw curse, he wrenched his hand free of its burnished nest and thrust it deep into his pocket. Even then the skin tingled from her touch.

Leave it, fool. You’ve too many other problems to worry about a flaxen-haired temptress sent by a jackal named Ruxley.

His jaw clenched, Pagan carefully lifted Barrett’s outflung hand and tucked it back under the quilt. For long moments he stood at the foot of her bed, tasked with thoughts of all the things that might have been or should have been, but never could be.

And each thought was more bitter than the last.

He should be asleep, he knew, or resting at the very least. But though his body was throbbing, driven nigh to the point of collapse, Pagan knew sleep would never come this night.

Not with Barrett’s soft, satin body beneath the same roof.

Abruptly he spun about, fleeing from the sight of what he had come to want too much. Outside on the veranda he struck spark to a pungent cheroot and filled his lungs. His eyes hardened as he tried to fight down the image of exactly what Ruxley would do to Barrett when he learned she had failed him.

Maybe after he had ended this deadly game with Ruxley…

But it was a fantasy. Even with Ruxley out of the picture, there were other dangers.

Yes, he had to get her away from here, Pagan told himself. Every minute, every second he spent in her company depleted the fragile remnants of his control until it became a matter of time before he broke again, just as he had done beside the waterfall.

And next time they might not be lucky enough to escape any man or beast who might be stalking them.

No, he had to let her go—he had to
make
her go, the sooner the better.

When the moon hung mid-heaven several hours later, flooding the tea fields with silver, he was still standing outside her room, elbows braced on the teakwood balustrade while he studied the unquiet night, a dark, unreadable tension in his face.

He had no choice. The only decision left was where he should send her. There were any number of places, of course: to his old friend, the dour-faced MacKinnon in Calcutta; to the elderly widow in Brussels who owed him a favor. Even, if necessary, to Meiling Choi’s luxurious but discreet pleasure house in Macao.

Whichever it was, Pagan thought grimly, it would have to be soon, for a sharp stabbing pain in his gut warned him that something was building, coming nearer to an explosion every second. Ruxley would have left spies everywhere, starting with the owner of that very English boot whose print Pagan had discovered by the trail three days before.

And when Ruxley discovered that his latest hand-picked agent had failed in her usefulness, he would choose only one plan of action.

He would destroy her. Swiftly and conclusively, leaving no untidy clues behind to connect her with him.