The Tiger's Lady (65 page)

The colonel snorted, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, “Cold-blooded, slack-witted fool.”

In fact Pagan was far from dispassionate. Inside he was seized with fury, dreaming of nothing but crushing every bit of life from Ruxley’s foul body. But there was no sense in revealing his fury to Hadley. Very young, Pagan had learned that strength was bought with secrecy, with concealing all the important things beneath a careful veneer of indifference.

But the effort was costing him something. Even now his hands clenched on the cool, polished butt of his rifle as he remembered his interview with the clearly terrified Tamil who had been discovered in the drying shed.

The man had protested wildly. He had seen nothing, heard nothing. He was simply delivering a package out of courtesy to a friend!

But in the drying shed?

He’d gotten confused, had been drinking arrack punch.

And the friend?

Disappeared.

And the tin of kerosene by the door?

Nothing to do with him. Most assuredly, it had been there before
he
had arrived!

Where was this package he meant to deliver then?

The frightened man tugged it quickly from its resting place on the ground.

All the questions had been anticipated. Once again there was no clue, no flaw.

With a raw curse Pagan had let the man go, warning him that if he ever again set foot on Windhaven soil he would be staked out and left for the leeches.

The man’s face, as he’d run off into the night, had been the color of bruised, unhealthy bananas.

Pagan said nothing more until they reached the house. The light in the dining room was gone, as was that in Barrett’s room. Her shuttered windows were easily visible from the path that led down to the tea fields.

He felt a sudden, sharp sense of regret. Of gut-wrenching loneliness.

“Thank you for your assistance, Adrian.”

“Nonsense, old man. Just a case of being in the right place at the right time. Happy to have been of help.” The colonel shifted his eyes away, uncomfortable at Pagan’s praise and at his obvious melancholy. “Think I’ll be off to bed now. Been one bloody long day.”

Pagan listened to his steps die away down the corridor. The house lay silent now, wrapped in dreams. He found himself turning toward the room with the darkened shutters.

The room where
she
slept, blissfully ignorant of the danger that stalked them all.

Only at the threshold did he catch himself up sharply. Then with a curse, he spun about, making for his study.

Yes, by his desk he had a very fine old bottle of whiskey he’d been keeping for a special occasion.

It appeared he wasn’t going to get one any better than this.

But as the first mouthful slid down his throat minutes later, hot and biting and pure velvet, Pagan faced the fact that it would require something a great deal more potent than whiskey to make him sleep that night.

It would take Barrett’s warm, silken body wrapped around him in ecstasy.

It would take words of love spilling wanton and breathless from her lips.

Probably both.

Hours later he finally dozed off in the battered old wing chair in his study. Fully dressed, his long frame filled the chair, booted legs outstretched upon a mismatched bamboo footstool.

The whiskey bottle at his side was half-empty.

His breath came low and regular when the first plumes of gray inched beneath the door and curled up malevolently toward his face.

Clouds, dense and billowy. Thin and feathery.

In all shapes and sizes they sailed across an azure sky.

And then they were not clouds, were not white at all, nor was the sky blue.

Now they coiled, like writhing snakes. Now they were dank, acrid, piercing.

Now they were
smoke.

With a gasp Barrett jerked upright on the bed. She blinked, feeling a hot, nagging pain in her throat.

Faint swirling fingers of smoke coiled about the floor, then thickened. In a matter of moments they had solidified into a swirling bank of gray.

Even then she had watched, paralyzed by sleep and shock, sure it must be a dream.

Only when the first hot blast drove through the room did she rouse from her daze, jerking off the covers and exploding toward the door. She began to cough almost immediately, as acrid air burned deep into her lungs.

Windhaven was on fire!

Excellent, the man in the darkness thought.

Too bad Nihal’s people had caught the fellow he’d sent in with the kerosene. But he had turned it to his own purpose, for it had drawn attention away from his task very nicely.

Now all he had to do was sit back and wait. In a matter of minutes he would have all the information he needed.

His eyes glowed for a moment.

Unless Windhaven collapsed, killing all of its residents, that is.

Wildly, Barrett lurched toward the door, struggling to sweep away the last traces of sleep from her mind.

She flinched at the enveloping smoke, plunging to a halt before the heavy teak barrier. Her hands brushed the door.

Instantly she fell back, gasping.

The wooden frame was flame-hot, which meant the whole surrounding area must be on fire.

She spun about, jerked the thick quilt from the bed, shoved on her boots, and ran toward the corner, where a pair of porcelain pitchers rested on ornate basins.

Snatching both up, she plunged toward the far wall and then triggered the small latch that Mita had revealed to her only hours earlier.

The outside door to the veranda swept open and cool, clean air swept over her face. Instantly she shoved the door closed behind her, mindful that the rush of outside air would only add to the inferno’s ferocity.

From her door to the front entrance was only a matter of fifty or so steps along the broad veranda. She flung open the front door with trembling fingers, and was met by a hellish scene of orange-red flame and acrid black smoke, the heat and fumes nearly overwhelming her.

But her heart was firm. She tossed down her quilt, drenched it with one of the pitchers, then flung it tunic-style around her slim body.

With the remaining pitcher clenched close, she plunged forward into a scene that could have come straight from Dante.

And with every gasping breath, every searing wave of heat, she prayed she would remember the way to Pagan’s room.

She threw open three doors, only to find each room unused, shrouded in dust covers. Her heart pounding, she ran back into the hall and made for a smaller door she had overlooked before.

The ornate brass knob burned her fingers and she fought back a sob as she struggled to wrench the door open.

On the third try she succeeded.

But beyond the threshold she saw only a massive desk littered with papers, a copious quantity of framed prints and antique maps on the wall, along with a particularly gruesome boar’s head.

She was poised to run to the next room when she saw, between drifting arms of smoke, a pair of polished black boots.

With a wild cry she flung herself forward, scattering the foul smoke to make out Pagan’s inert form sprawled against a leather wing chair.

She fell beside him and shook him with desperate force. “Wake up, Pagan. Dear heaven, wake up
now!”

He mumbled something beneath his breath and turned his face away.

Only then did Barrett catch the tinge of whiskey. Lord, the man was drunk! How would she ever manage to drag him from the room?

Wildly she shook the long, supine figure, receiving nothing but muttered oaths for her trouble. Then she drew back her hand and slapped him ruthlessly. Once, then twice, on each cheek.

He caught her hand in a painful grip, his eyes opening to frigid slits. “You’d better have a bloody good reason, Nihal, for—” He stiffened, his brow furrowing. “What are you—”

But those few moments were enough for him to take in the situation.

With a beautiful economy of motion he shot to his feet and scanned the room.

Barrett gestured with the pitcher, her eyes smarting from the smoke. “I’ll douse you. It’s the only way.”

She didn’t wait for his answer before emptying the basin on his chest and lower legs. Then she emptied the last of the other container on herself.

She was at the door when she realized he was not behind her. He had run to the far bookcase and was flinging open drawer after drawer.

“There’s no time, Pagan. In a minute or two we’ll be trapped!”

He turned then, his face a mask of fierce determination as he shoved a small leather box down inside his shirt.

It must be something of infinite importance for him to risk his life in fetching it, Barrett thought dimly.

At that moment she saw a blur of movement in the corridor.

“The whole bloody wing’s about to go up. Get out of here, you two! I sent Nihal down to the native lines to rouse the men. But if we don’t go now…”

Pagan spun about, rebuttoning the neck of his shirt. “Quite right, Adrian. It
is
distinctly unpleasant in here.”

Then Pagan was beside her, tugging her back into the crackling fury in the corridor, his granite grip her only lifeline as they fought their way down the hall toward the entrance.

They were both coughing and smoke-blind by the time they stumbled down the front steps. They fell to their knees, dragging in huge drafts of cool, clean mountain air.

Almost immediately Pagan lurched back to his feet and ran toward the rear of the house, where the first shrill shouts of alarm were being raised. The colonel staggered after him a few moments later.

Barrett subsided onto the dew-chill grass, racked with a painful spasm of coughing. Her cheeks were singed and her hand was throbbing painfully from the blisters where she had seized the red-hot doorknob.

But these things subsided to a faint dull ache, for right now she was simply happy to be alive.

When a hushed, trembling figure slipped out of the darkness and pressed close with furry hands, Barrett pulled the little langur to her. Together they huddled in the chill night, watching in horrified fascination as red-orange flames spilled from the southern wing, lighting up the whole roof.

Her heart caught when she saw a tall form silhouetted against the licking flames. There was no mistaking those broad shoulders or lean, powerful thighs. As Barrett watched, breathless, Pagan caught the first bucket of water towed up by rope from a native below him. He emptied it onto the flames and then tossed the bucket down onto the ground, where it was snatched up and taken to be refilled.

In a jerky tableau against the orange glow, the buckets rose and fell, Pagan emptying them with a savage sort of grace, then tossing them down again.

But to Barrett’s throbbing, smoke-stung eyes, there seemed to be no effect at all on the raging flames.