The Tiger's Lady

by Skye, Christina

  He swirled the crimson spirits gently and took another sip, enjoying the slow heat that unfurled into his chest and then down to his loins.

  A smile played over his thin lips.

  Did the stupid little man really think he could deceive James Ruxley? How laughable. From the start his greedy schemes had been pathetically obvious.

  Yes, Thomas Creighton had left him no choice but to see to his untimely demise in that house of sin. But it had all been for naught. The ruby had not been upon Sir Humphrey’s body after all.

  Ruxley’s hands began to tremble. The movement sent fifty-year-old claret sloshing onto the top of the lacquer table. It was coming again. The hunger. The terrible need. How he despised it!

  He jerked back as if burned, his hooded eyes glittering in fury.

  Twice he had been thwarted this night, once at the auction rooms and the second at Helene’s. It was all his fault, that damned heathen who strode about in a king’s ransom’s worth of jewels. The cursed rajah had probably arranged to have the Eye of Shiva stolen while that fool Sir Humphrey was busy at his debaucheries.

  The immaculate white fingers fondled the chalice’s cold crystal shaft.

  Very well. Now he would simply have to take the game one step further. It would be a decided pleasure, in fact, considering who the players were.

  He thought for a moment about the motionless figure awaiting him out in the leaden Thames. She would be frightened, helpless, pleading. He began to smile.

  Yes, she would do. She would do very nicely.

  Until he had the ruby.

  Part Two

  Ceylon

  Now I will tell you something about the island [of Ceylon] … the king … possesses the finest ruby that exists in all the world—the finest certainly, that was ever seen or is ever likely to be seen. It is about a palm in length and of the thickness of a man’s arm. It is the most brilliant object to behold in all the world, free from any flaw and glowing red like fire … I tell you in all truthfulness that the Great Khan sent emissaries to this king and told him that he wished to buy this ruby and would give him the value of a city. But the king would not part with it for anything in the world, because it was an heirloom from his ancestors. For this reason the Khan could not have it at any price.

  ~ Marco Polo, The Travels

  (The Travels of Marco Polo, Ronald Latham, trans.

  (New York: Penguin Books, 1958), p. 259)

  CHAPTER TEN

  April 1865

  The southwest coast of Ceylon

  Bloody everlasting hell, but it was hot!

  The tall man with the black eye patch straightened from inspecting a row of tea seedlings and slapped a mosquito feeding at his wrist. In one fluid motion he stripped off his white muslin shirt and reached up to massage his aching shoulders. Sweat beaded over his neck and forearms, glistening against his powerful, sun-bronzed chest.

  Yes, damnably hot it was, even for tropical Ceylon.

  The jet-eyed Englishman’s scowl grew as he walked a few rows farther and bent down to examine another young tea bush. To his fury he saw the same thing he had seen on three other plants.

  The upper leaves were dry and shriveled. The lower leaves were dead.

  Pagan swore beneath his breath, loud and long and in three languages. Another week of this weather and the whole wretched planting would be lost!

  He saw one of the Tamil workers dart him a hooded glance, half fearful, half curious, and then make a gesture meant to ward off evil.

  The viscount turned away, biting down his fury.

  But here he was not Viscount St. Cyr, but simply Mahattaya to his Sinhalese workers, and Lat-sahib to the rest. Here he was simply Pagan, a brash foreign devil who flaunted propriety by working in the tea fields alongside his pickers; who stripped half naked in the hot sun of midday, forgoing jacket, shirt, and pith helmet, and sometimes even donning native garb himself.

  Here he was simply a hard-faced tea planter who slept restlessly or not at all, waking in the night to prowl the plantation like one of the leopards whose cries haunted the jungle darkness.

  Grimly Pagan ran his fingers along the new pink skin above his cheekbone, welted and puckered still. Even now it pained him, the muscles tense after hours squinting in the sun.

  But at least he still had his eye. That was more than the bastard who had attacked him from behind could say.

  He’d come to dying that night nearly eight weeks ago. Stir-crazy from three straight months aboard ship on the voyage out from England, he had neglected to take his usual precautions when disembarking. No doubt his success at masquerading as the Rajah of Ranapore had made him cocky.

  But the three men who’d jumped him in a filthy alley in Colombo had been anything but careless. Their double-bladed daggers had been honed and ready.

  That attack had been Pagan’s homecoming. Hard on the heels of that had come a string of other incidents—attacks on his workers, broken equipment, and tea bushes uprooted.

  All of them James Ruxley’s work, no doubt. The Merchant Prince had hated Pagan for years now, ever since they’d had a difference of opinion about the propriety of cultivating poppies in the fields near Pagan’s estate in northern India.

  Pagan had won the battle that day. There had been no opium produced anywhere in his districts.

  But that beautiful house and all its acreage were gone now, swept away eight years ago in the bloodlust of the Great Mutiny.

  Ruxley was not a man to forget a grudge. He’d been bested that hot summer day, publicly humiliated when Pagan had ripped out every row of the lethal poppies and burned them to ash, while the natives watched and snickered.

  Ruxley had come back later, of course. He’d crept into the main house under cover of night and had nearly succeeded in slitting Pagan’s throat, though it had taken the strength of three hirelings to hold Pagan down.

  But he hadn’t succeeded. In the ensuing fight Ruxley had lost two teeth and a great deal of blood, along with the end of his little finger.

  It was small enough punishment for the man who had started the whole Sepoy unrest. Little did it matter to Ruxley that the cartridges he was selling to the British Army were tainted with animal fat. But to Hindu and Muslim alike, even the whisper of such infamy had undermined long years of loyalty in service of the Raj. Trust was shattered.

  Pagan’s jaw hardened as he thought about the months of blood and fury that had followed. A very large part of the responsibility for those horrors had to be laid at James Ruxley’s door.

  But Pagan had more important things to worry about.

  Scowling, he squatted down and sifted a clump of bone-dry soil through his fingers. It was good soil, fine and loose, excellent for setting in the fragile tea seedlings. But if the monsoon rains didn’t come soon, he’d lose his whole experimental crop. His lush upcountry acres at Windhaven would fare little better.

  Pagan’s mouth set in a flat line as he watched the dry earth slide between his fingers in an ocher stream. The planting here at the coast was a small one, fortunately. But the loss galled him, for this experimental group had been yielding fine results.

  Up until the arid kachchan winds set in three weeks ago. Fierce and unceasing, they’d blown ashore from dawn till dusk while the tiny leaves darkened and shriveled.

  Pagan walked up the hill.

  Everywhere the results were the same. All dying. Too bloody dry…

  Grimly, he strode over the hill to the coffee plants. Kneeling in the dirt, he began his investigation, starting at the lower leaves and working up slowly, plant by plant.

  On the fifth bush he found what he was looking for, little more than a faint mottling on the underside of the largest leaves, coupled with a dark scaliness on the upper face.

  But in two weeks, he knew, those abnormalities would creep to the neighboring leaves and in two more weeks the infected leaves would drop off. A short while after that, the entire plant would be dead.

  Pagan sighed, coming slowly to his fee
t.

  This coffee sickness would not go away, he was sure of it, and tea was the only practical solution. The cinchona bark used for treating malaria had been a temporary solution, but it could never replace the island’s vast coffee trade.

  But tea could. At least, he hoped it could.

  Pagan turned slowly, gazing out over the turquoise swatch of ocean beyond the thatched huts and tea-drying sheds, almost as if the sea held the answer he searched for. But his only answer came in the shape of the deadly kachchan wind, grating against his face.

  Jo hoga, so hoga.

  Kismet.

  His jaw set in a harsh line.

  He could have continued in the headstrong fashion of the other English planters, holding steadfast to the coffee bushes which had made more than one of his neighbors a rich man. But Pagan wasn’t about to lose everything he had worked so hard for. His head grader, a leathery-faced old expert from Kerala, had told him how the leaf sickness had infected half the crop of his whole district in less than a month.

  The death of a way of life, or the harbinger of a new and better life? Pagan asked himself.

  If the latter, was tea truly the answer?

  Instinct whispered that it was, for there was a rightness to the thought of row upon row of bright green shrubs, glistening and dew-hung in the misty upcountry dawn. There was an earthy pleasure in the pungent smell of green leaves hand-dried in metal pans.

  With a disgusted snort, the bare-chested Englishman ran a dusty hand across his brow, wiping away a trail of sweat. Fifteen months of hard work and planning lost in a matter of days! Now he’d have to start his experiments all over again.

  Another thing to thank the cursed ruby for. He should never have gone back to England for that damned auction.

  Pagan froze, catching the faint scent of hyacinths.

  Suddenly he was back in London, wrapped in darkness and chill air, while snow wafted down beneath globes of gaslight. Somehow the distant white sweep of the beach faded, reminding him of snow and a woman’s porcelain-smooth cheek.

  Her again, damn it! What in the devil was wrong with him?

  But the memories grew until fire licked at his blood. He felt her lips, full and soft and clinging. Once again he tasted her skin, snow-dusted and sweet with the scent of hyacinths.

  The swelling at his groin reached agonizing proportions.

  What happened to you, Angrezi?

  Pagan looked down, frowning at the sight of his big hands. They were work-hardened and dirt-stained. The broad palms were callused, like those of a common laborer. Hardly the sort of hands to hold a woman of her quality.

  But Pagan could not forget her.

  Perhaps it was the memory of her face, veiled and mysterious, never clearly glimpsed. Perhaps that was why he still jerked awake from restless dreams with the scent of her, the sweet taste of her, flooding his senses.

  With a curse, he slung his shirt over his shoulder and strode toward the bungalow that served as his quarters here at the coast. The bloody female probably had teeth like a barracuda and ankles like an aging workhorse, he told thought grimly.

  Pagan’s scowl deepened as he passed more and more dying tea bushes. As he moved through the fields, the Tamil workers rocked back on their heels, staring at him curiously.

  The English sahib was acting odder than usual, they would be thinking. Yes, by now they must be quite certain that their Tiger-sahib was a madman.

  Perhaps they were right, Pagan thought bitterly.

  But something told him that this rust disease attacking scattered coffee plants would grow far worse, and on that vague bit of intuition he was about to gamble his whole future.

  Soon he would be one of the biggest producers outside Assam. He had decided that a mixture of Chinese and native Assam seedlings would make the best stock. But even if he turned out to be right in his choice of stock, a thousand things could still go wrong on any one day. If the kraits and cobras didn’t get him, the leeches probably would, the planter thought cynically.

  He thought of the green-eyed widow in Madras. Would the fair Georgiana feel any regret at the news of his passing? Would anyone miss him?

  Enough of being maudlin, Pagan told himself. What you need is a drink.

  What you need is a woman, a mocking voice answered.

  But there were no females anywhere near this secluded beach, except for the few Tamil women who had come to work the fields with their husbands. Those Pagan would never touch, for practical reasons as well as a sense of morality.

  It had been almost seven weeks since he’d seen Georgiana, Pagan realized. No wonder he’d become damnably foul-tempered of late.

  Yes, a week or two in the inventive widow’s bed was precisely what he needed.

  Liar, a voice countered.

  It’s not her you dream of but a different woman. An unforgettable woman whose lips met yours with haunting passion, yielding and challenging at the same time. A woman whose body you’ve dreamed about for months now.

  Scowling, Pagan kicked at a clump of sere earth, scattering it to dust. Forget about the ache in your groin, he told himself. Forget about the mystery woman with the silken skin.

  She is on the far side of the horizon right now.

  In a green country where the hedgerows are bright with blue-bonnets and the first spring roses are in bud.

  And then it hit him.

  His lips twisted in a bitter smile as he stared out at the field of wide-eyed, Tamil workers.

  It was April 23, 1865. His thirtieth birthday.

  And James Ruxley had sworn to see him dead before the month was out.

  About one thing the long-limbed planter turned out to be quite wrong, however.

  For at that very moment, a tawny-haired English beauty stood white-faced and stiff-legged in the hold of a sleek two-masted brigantine bearing down on Colombo’s azure harbor. Her hands locked on her hips as she glared at the vessel’s captain. “I won’t do it, do you hear me? You can take your craven crew and sail straight to the devil for all I care! This is one game you and your black-hearted employer will never win!”

  The captain came a step closer, a thin smile twisting his lips. “Oh, there you’re wrong, my beauty. For we’ve ways of persuading you here on the Orient Queen. By the devil, don’t we just!”

  As if to prove his point, the seaman draped a length of rope between his fingers. Smiling coldly, he slapped the stout coils against his palms and took a step closer.

  “Stay away, you bastard,” Barrett hissed. The long months of confinement at sea had weakened her body, but none of her spirit, although the voyage had been endless torment. They had drugged her food, hoping to keep her docile during the voyage. But since there was no other food, she had to take what they offered or perish.

  Laudanum? Or something worse? No matter, for the result had been the same: long hours of shadows, barely moving in dim transit from sleep to waking, never knowing the hour, the day, or even how long she had slept.

  But two days ago everything had changed. She had eaten the moldy crusts of bread left on her tray and gulped down the dish of weak gruel without feeling the usual lassitude. Soon after, the pitch of the vessel had lessened, as if they were in the protected reach of land.

  That morning two impassive sailors of indeterminate race and nationality had brought her water to bathe. After she had washed, removing the last remnants of black dye from her hair, they had dragged her up to the captain’s quarters.

  To the first fresh air and sunlight Barrett had known for weeks.

  She compressed her lips in a tight line, scowling at her captor. At least she had seen to it that her secret was safe.

  For now. She could only pray that her grandfather had made his way safely to his old friend on the Isle of Mull.

  Fear choked her as she thought of what awaited her. And as always there were the memories, cold and ugly, her only companions on the long voyage.

  She forced away those thoughts, almost as if they belonged to someone
else. All that mattered was that they’d made landfall at last. Right now if she climbed to that single high porthole, she would see other ships, perhaps only yards away.

  Dear heave, if only she could—

  “Stay away?” the captain repeated mockingly. “Now that, wench, was nowhere in my orders. As I recall, the letter said something about seeing to it that you knew exactly where your duty lay.” He was almost to the middle of the room now, his eyes glittering coldly. “And that you understood the consequences if you failed.”

  Barrett’s eyes flickered to the scarred wooden desk bolted to the wall beneath the porthole. The only other contents of the room were a bed which folded down from the adjoining wall and a large trunk beside the door.

  Her eyes narrowed. Yes, it just might work, but she would have to be very clever.

  She slanted her captor a glance through tawny lashes. “Very well, Captain. What exactly is it that you expect me to do? And speak simply, if you please. I am merely a female. We are all so featherbrained, after all.”

  The leathery seaman frowned, confused by this new turn of events. For the last twenty-four hours the Englishwoman had been hostile and sullen by turns, and that he had expected.

  But this sudden docility made him damned uneasy.

  “You’re to perform a little errand, that’s all you need to know for now, woman. And you’ll begin by putting on these clothes.” Smiling grimly, he moved past her to the trunk. A moment later a pile of bright garments came flying toward her.

  On top was a feather-weight chemise of tucked white lawn and a pair of silk stockings, which landed on her shoulder. Beneath were a pair of peach silk garters and a diaphanous organdy petticoat.

  She frowned as she studied the costly fabrics. What was the man about now? How could such a cutthroat afford expensive garments like this?

  Barrett ducked reflexively as a heavy, boned corset hurtled through the air and landed at her feet. The revolting worm had thought of everything, it appeared.

  Suddenly her teal eyes narrowed. Not everything, perhaps.