“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 hate 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.
Surprisingly, the breeches fit rather well, riding snugly at her slim waist. If they were his, they must have been many years old. His legs were much fuller, she thought dimly. They rippled with muscle at thigh and taut buttocks, only to taper down to—
Red-faced, she cut off her unruly thoughts before they could progress to further ignominy.
Last to come were the boots, which slipped perfectly over her feet. As she straightened her shirt Barrett caught the smell of smoke and looked out to see Pagan braced against a sal tree, smoking comfortably on a cheroot.
“I ordered them in Colombo. Paid the tailor three times what they were worth to have them ready them by toda
y. You’re bloody lucky I could guess your size, Angrezi. But then, I’ve seen so much of you. There was nothing left to the imagination, I suppose.”
“The viscount must pay you well to afford such things,” she said stiffly. Her eyes narrowed. “Or did you charge this to his account?”
Pagan’s expression was unreadable. “The viscount and I have an understanding. I take care of his estate and in return he allows me the run of things, accepting my chits without question. A very tidy arrangement, all in all.”
Barrett mumbled something pointed beneath her breath, thrust the last folds of the shirt inside her waistband, then stalked back to the trail, blinking as the sunlight streamed into her face.
Pagan’s silence made her go still, frowning.
“Sweet Lord above, now that’s a sight.” His voice was low and husky. “With any luck, you’ll start a new style in Colombo. But I think I must forbid it, for the sight of your thighs in those tight breeches would drive men mad within minutes, Empress. But we’ve chatted long enough,” he said abruptly, tossing down the smoking end of his cheroot and crushing it beneath his boot heel. A moment later he kicked a lump of dirt over it, then stamped the mass down again.
Barrett wondered at his excessive concern over a single cheroot.
Seeing her frown, Pagan pointed out at the restless wall of green. “The jungle’s a bloody powder keg right now. One spark and everything will go up in smoke for miles. There will be no fires at night. It will be too dangerous until we get up higher where things are not so dry.”
Barrett was still digesting this new bit of danger facing them when Pagan turned.
“Oh, there’s one last thing.” He crooked a finger. “Come here, Angrezi.”
“More delights in store? I can barely contain my excitement.”
“It will be four months before the next magistrate arrives, remember?”
Fury coursed through her, but she had no choice but to obey. She crossed the path in a posture of frozen disdain, her lips compressed to a flat line. Inches away from him, she halted. “Well?”
Pagan’s eyes were hooded, unreadable. “Kiss me, Cinnamon.” He couldn’t resist, though he knew it was terribly dangerous. Somehow he had to find out if she truly was the woman he’d rescued on that London street corner.
Barrett only stared, her nostrils flaring with anger. “Kiss you! You must be mad! I’d just as soon—”
“Four months, Angrezi. Maybe five, if the monsoon comes late.”
She caught her lip between her teeth, streaks of color darkening her cheeks. Five months here in the middle of nowhere, with no companions except a group of tea pickers who spoke not a word of English?
Her chin rose. “I hate you, Deveril Pagan. Just remember that,” she hissed. “I am not like your Mita.” Quickly, before she could change her mind, she rose to her toes and pressed tense lips against his mouth for the merest space of a second, then backed away.
His brow rose. “You call that pathetic gesture a kiss? I hope for your sake that you never kissed your husband in such a way.”
“Husband! I am not married!” Once again her teeth worried her full underlip. “At least, I don’t feel married.”
“I can see why, if you treated your suitors to such a chill display. Now try it again, this time as if you meant it.”
She trembled on the edge of refusal, her hands clenched to fists, her eyes locked on Pagan’s face.
“Afraid?” he murmured.
“Of you! Never!” With that she caught a sharp, jerky breath, then catapulted toward him with such force that they both nearly toppled to the ground.
Then somehow her hands were clinging to his taut shoulders.
Somehow his fingers were buried in the glorious weight of her hair.
“Hold still, you arrogant brute.”
“I’m trying to, Angrezi. But you make it damnably hard.”
The next minute her belly fit snugly into the arch of his thighs and her breast thrust against his chest. She screwed together her eyes and leveled her lips in the general direction of his face, distaste evident in every rigid line of her body.
The kiss landed somewhere atop his jaw.
Barrett’s eyes flashed open to low, dark laughter. “Not much better, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, you wretched, contemptible worm!” After a second’s delay she grasped his head and dragged it down to hers.
This time her lips hit home, locked to his with angry vehemence. In fact, so intent was she upon succeeding in her mission she barely noticed his hands slipping around her waist.
A moment later, despite her punishing vigor, Pagan’s mouth softened. His lips molded to hers, coaxing, welcoming.
Barrett felt her breath catch, felt her blood begin to whine crazily. She clutched his shoulders as the earth pitched, then melted away beneath her.
She opened her mouth to cry out, and instantly his tongue slid deep to tease her own. The sleek, wet movements left her dizzy, left her hungry for more. Unconsciously she fitted her mouth around him, shivering when he stroked the tender skin inside her lip.
His hard fingers clenched against her waist and Barrett felt him stiffen. Dimly she felt a tug at the waist of her trousers and then a cool sliding sensation against her naked skin.
The next moment she was slipping along his granite chest, deposited back on her feet. Only then did she realize she had been dangling above the ground, anchored to his chest.
“There. That should do it, I believe.”
Wildly Barrett fought for control, even as the sweet, hot taste of his tongue and lips continued to haunt her. “You vile, depraved—” Abruptly her tirade ceased. She looked down at the loosened waist of her breeches which now rode just above her navel.
And there above the twill hung a chain of beaten gold links, with an odd, serpentine plaque dangling from the center. Dimly Barrett realized this was what she had felt seconds before.
Speech eluded her as she stood stunned and furious in the face of Pagan’s newest villainy.
“It suits you, I believe. I’m delighted to see that my estimate of your size was correct.” He studied his handiwork with patent triumph. “Of course, my estimates usually are.”
With stiff, angry movements Barrett jerked at the offending chain, seeking a clasp but finding none. “Take it off,” she snapped, unable to find the closure.
“The chain stays, Angrezi. It marks you as my property, property of the Tiger. If you are somehow taken from me in the jungle, that chain might be the only thing that saves your life. The natives know that I protect my possessions well, you see.”
He might as well have waved a red flag before an angry bull.
“Property? You pompous, arrogant ass! I’m no man’s property, do you hear?”
Pagan’s eyes narrowed. “You are now, Cinnamon. You were from the first moment you set foot upon my beach. And don’t try to tell me you didn’t like what just happened between us every bit as much as I did, because I know better. A moment ago you were just about as hot and willing as a woman can get.”
But Pagan knew it was a lie. Her reaction had lacked the sweet fiery innocence and rare honesty that he had known four months before on a London street corner.
But the kiss had taught him one thing, at least.
She was indeed his falcon, the woman he had dreamed of every night since leaving England.
And it infuriated him that she did not know it, for in some way he had hoped the kiss might awaken her, rekindling old memories.
So much for childish fantasies, he thought grimly.
He turned then, afraid of the things he might say next.
Instead he wadded her corset and dress into a misshapen mass and thrust it beneath his arm.
He looked at her then, his face harsh. “I hope, by the way, that you don’t plan to make a habit of sleepwalking while we are in the jungle.”
Instantly Barrett stiffened. “Sleepwalking?” she repeated softly, feeling faint tendrils of memory skitter through her
mind. Fear rushed against her in cold waves, and she found herself shivering. “I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Pagan,” she managed coolly.
“Don’t you?” His eyes were mocking. “I only hope that in the jungle it is myself rather than a leopard who finds you first.”
Their direction changed soon after. Neither Nihal nor Mita would speak of it, but Barrett noticed by the sun’s position that they were going northwest now rather than due north.
After a while the riverbank narrowed and disappeared altogether, leaving them to pick a tortuous route through tangled, brown underbrush and dry, rattling thickets.
Now Barrett understood Pagan’s concern about the dry terrain before the onset of the monsoon rains. A fire would sweep through this sere world in seconds, unchecked by any trace of moisture.
What a horrible way to die, she thought, repressing a shiver.
She frowned, studying the rippling play of Pagan’s bronze shoulders. Something told her no threat from plant or beast could compare with that of the brooding predator who stalked silently before her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
They made camp when the sun hung mere inches above the treetops. Barrett was hot and sweaty, longing for a bath.
The salt tang of the air was unmistakable now. When Barrett spotted Pagan at the far side of the camp giving curt instructions to the bearers, she strode across to him determinedly. “May I speak with you?”
He turned, one sable brow raised in inquiry.
“I wish to bathe. Mita tells me we are near the coast,” she added deceitfully, sure he would not admit the fact otherwise. “I would like for you to arrange it, please.”
The dark brow rose higher. “Just like that? A royal command?”
“I am hot. I am tired. I am sweaty, Mr. Pagan. It is the smallest of courtesies that I ask.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Perhaps you’re right. I could do with a plunge myself.” His face hardened. “After our last experience on the beach, you must realize you can’t go alone.”
Barrett had suspected that would be his answer, though she had hoped that Mita and one of the armed bearers might be protection enough. Right now, however, she was far too hot to argue.
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