The Tiger's Lady

by Skye, Christina

  Only a few minutes later, Barrett awoke to see a grim-faced Pagan standing clad in boots and breeches before his cot. He’d dispensed with his eve patch again. Stunned, she watched him shove his arm into the trailing sleeve of his shirt.

  She rubbed her eyes, certain it must be a dream. “What—what in the name of heaven are you about?”

  Pagan merely scowled and turned away, muttering an oath when the bandage at his shoulder wedged in the sleeve.

  Barrett watched in raw disbelief. “Are you mad? Mita and I did what we could for you, but that wound will never heal if you subject it to such strain.”

  Pagan simply shrugged, wrenching awkwardly at the dangling sleeve. Barrett thought she heard him mutter something about bloody, wretched Western clothes, but she couldn’t be certain. “Damn it, Pagan, are you listening to me?”

  The sleeve did not budge. Abruptly Pagan tore his hand free and slung the garment onto the ground. “Oh, I heard you perfectly, Angrezi, and you might even be right for once. But I’ll be damned if I’ll languish about on that elephant forever. Not when there are a thousand things crying out to be done—”

  “Name one.”

  “Very well, there is game to be caught. There is today’s trail to be scouted. The rifles must be cleaned and rechecked and—”

  “All of which Nihal and the others have managed to do quite nicely so far without any assistance from you.”

  Storm-dark, Pagan’s eyes flashed to her face. Without a word the planter strode to his chest and wrenched out another shirt. His lips clenched, he maneuvered his arm into the sleeve, only to find the thick wad of gauze blocking him once more.

  He said something low and raw in Hindi, his tone leaving Barrett no doubt that it was a curse. A second shirt hit the ground, its bright folds glistening against the sienna soil.

  Sweeping away the last remnants of sleep, Barrett pushed to her feet and bent to pick up the offending garment. “A vastly impressive show of temper, Mr. Pagan. And exactly the performance I would expect of a petulant schoolboy.”

  “Leave it, Angrezi,” Pagan warned darkly. He had been up the whole night, unable to sleep, his wound hot and throbbing. He could recount the exact placement of every stitch and knot—and right now each one of them was screaming.

  But even worse was the throbbing at his groin, where his manhood strained in hot, unrelieved arousal. And Pagan knew that every minute spent in Barrett’s presence, every second of grinding contact with her in that damned howdah would only make his torment worse.

  No, by heaven, he’d not spend another second there, brushing against her, inundated in her scent.

  Knowing all the time that he could not have her.

  He would walk out like a man or perish by the trail. Either would be a death with honor—and either would be preferable to the hell he was enduring now.

  “Don’t—don’t do this, Pagan.” Suddenly there was a note of fear beneath the anger in Barrett’s voice.

  In stony silence the planter continued his awkward maneuvering.

  “Then tell me why, at least. Why must you push yourself this way?”

  At that Pagan let the sleeve fall. When he finally turned, his face was a bronze mask, onyx eyes burning with deep, nameless fires. “Why? Do you really want to know?”

  Barrett nodded mutely.

  “I’ll tell you why, Angrezi. Just look out there. Do you see that glint of silver just beyond the eucalyptus trees?” Bronze and ridged with muscle, his left arm rose, gesturing down the slope. “See it?”

  “I—I see it.”

  “Go down there right now, and you’ll see a troupe of langur monkeys playing in the shallows. Slightly farther downstream you’ll see the sambhur bucks, poised for a wary dash to the water. Behind them the thickets will be shaking with a thousand kinds of movement, hiding a few poisonous kraits, a sloth bear, and possibly even a leopard or two. In wave after wave they come and go, remorseless and unending while overhead glides the vulture, silent and patient companion, the black shadow who feeds on each one. For that is the way of the jungle, Angrezi: flesh feeding on flesh, life given and crushed out in an instant. One moment of carelessness—that’s all it takes, remember that. Remember, too, that here there’s no room for error or sympathy. In this green, teeming world only the very strong or the very cunning survive, and they do that by feeding off whatever creature is struggling to survive beside them. The jungle is faceless and entirely without mercy, Cinnamon; anyone who survives it must be just the same.”

  He faced her then, his features gaunt with strain, as rigid and unyielding as the granite outcropping above their heads. “It’s perfectly simple. The day I stop being strong is the day I die—and everyone who relies upon me dies with me.”

  For long seconds Barrett didn’t speak, her eyes dark with an emotion she was struggling to conceal. The sight made Pagan flinch.

  He didn’t want her pity, damn it. He didn’t want anything at all from this woman! At least that’s what he tried to tell himself.

  But there was another reason that Pagan was desperate to speed his recovery: with the passage of every hour he found himself wanting nothing more than to stay beside her, hip to hip, legs brushing, hands grazing.

  He wanted it even while it was tearing him to pieces.

  So he said nothing, merely turned and wrenched awkwardly at his stubborn sleeve.

  The next moment slim fingers lifted the crisp linen, slipped his arm within, then eased the bandage past the sleeve opening. Silent seconds flowed into a hot, sweet eternity. Frowning, Pagan tried to ignore the tendrils of fire that seared him wherever Barrett’s fingers brushed his skin.

  Finally she was done. Without a word, Pagan bent his head and probed at the buttons, using his left hand.

  One after one, they eluded him.

  Wordlessly Barrett pushed his fingers away. Her cheeks were swept with color as she closed the first button at his neck, her eyes fixed rigidly on his chest.

  “I can manage for myself, woman!” Pagan said hoarsely, trying to ignore the touch that was part torment and part paradise.

  “I know you can. But just this once you don’t you have to.” The second button slid home and then the third.

  Feather light, Barrett’s hand swept across his chest, each movement sending more fire to Pagan’s groin. When her palms flattened and slid down to draw the tails of his shirt closed, it was almost more than Pagan could stand.

  Her soft fingers caught at the trailing fabric. Breath checked, eyes half closed, Pagan waited for the agony to reach its delirious peak.

  Raw heartbeats later it did. Her hands tightened on the bottom of the shirt, grazing the throbbing line of his manhood. Pagan’s jaw clenched as desire exploded through him in wave upon savage wave. “Enough, woman!”

  But even as he spoke, Pagan knew the crude truth. He wanted her. Right now. Tomorrow. The next day and the next.

  He wanted her wet and reckless beneath him. He wanted her naked and straining, laughing and love-dazed. He wanted her wanton, touching him in a thousand forbidden ways, while he did the very same to her.

  Dear heaven, he would perish of this wanting!

  But strength was a thing that Deveril Pagan had learned very young. Those lessons, learned across his father’s knee, had often been painful. But in the course of an unpredictable and often cruel life, strength had been his one steady companion.

  He took refuge in that strength now, courted it, forced it around him like darkest armor.

  Tightening his jaw, he forced himself to step away from Barrett although it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. For he knew touching her would only bring more pain and greater torment. Maybe sooner. Definitely later.

  No, dreaming was as close as he could ever come to possessing a woman like this.

  “There’s one reason I failed to mention.” His face was unreadable. “Sit down and I’ll tell you, Angrezi.”

  She glared back at him, all fire and defiance.

  “Do as I sa
y for once, woman!”

  Something about the shadows in Pagan’s face made her relent. She sat stiffly on the edge of her cot.

  “Look at your feet.”

  Barrett frowned, glancing down. Suddenly her breath caught. She saw then that the soles of her feet were streaked with dirt; bits of dried grass and twigs clung to her heel.

  Pagan’s eyes were hard, dark with something that might almost have been regret. “You walked in your sleep again last night, Cinnamon. I only heard you after the flap closed. As it was, you were halfway down the hill before I caught you. A few minutes longer and…”

  He did not need to finish.

  Barrett shivered. How could she be so completely unaware, so out of control, remembering nothing of these nocturnal journeys? And what dangers might have befallen her if Pagan hadn’t followed?

  She stiffened, achingly vulnerable, a stranger captive in a cruel, alien paradise. Sea-dark, her eyes rose, seeking Pagan’s hard jaw and the unyielding line of his shoulders. For a moment she had a wild desire to drift, to forget everything but this moment and this man, to seek strength from that bronzed, rippling body.

  To accept the hot comfort she knew she would find there.

  But instantly something in her nature rebelled, something old and deeply imbedded. Even as she shivered with need, Barrett closed her mind to those seductive images.

  “Oh, you needn’t bother about me. I shall be just fine, Deveril Pagan, I assure you. And it will be a snowy day in hell before I need to ask your help in anything!”

  The words should not have hurt Pagan, but they did. Angrily he jammed his shirt into his breeches, the pain at his shoulder making him grimace.

  He strode to the door and stood studying the green, rising hillside for a moment. “Bold words, Angrezi. Unfortunately for you, those first cold flakes hit the ground the day you got involved with James Ruxley.”

  For three more hours they climbed, the air growing steadily cooler. Barrett tried very hard to keep her eyes from the lead elephant, where Pagan had passed the last twenty minutes gesturing at a map with Nihal.

  Now she shared her howdah with Mita, whose dark eyes were uncustomarily strained. From her forced monologue on the passing terrain and its diverse flora, she realized that the servant was discussing everything but what was really bothering her.

  And that was the man riding next to Nihal. The man she loved.

  A few minutes later, in spite of anxious protests by Nihal and Mita, Pagan got down and began to walk. His gait was stiff and awkward, but somehow he managed it.

  Vainly Barrett tried to keep her eyes from the pain-lined face, from the broad shoulders held rigid against his pain. She felt her throat constrict and angrily jerked her eyes away.

  Damn the man anyway! What did it possibly matter to her how he felt?

  But she knew only too well. Every second her heart whispered why; a moment later surging blood and aching skin echoed the answer.

  For Deveril Pagan was part of her now, bonded through the pain and danger they had shared in this wild, rugged country. She felt him always, present or absent, and the awareness was as keen and piercing as the bite of any krait.

  Maybe there was a strange logic to it, for he was a man with too much past and she a woman with too little. Together they might have evened the account, turning weaknesses to strengths.

  But for them, together could never be.

  Memory or no, Barrett knew it unquestionably.

  “What is he like?” she asked Mita abruptly. “The viscount, I mean.”

  “The viscount?”

  “Viscount St. Cyr—the man who owns Windhaven. Is he as cruel and aloof as I’ve been told?” Barrett could not understand how a man could invest such sums of money in these lush acres without taking an interest in examining the results first hand. Or caring about the dangers his workers faced.

  Most important, though, was whether the owner ever visited Windhaven.

  “The—Tiger told you that?”

  “That and a few other things. All of them were equally unpleasant.” Barrett flushed, recalling that particular conversation.

  Mita’s coffee-colored eyes went wary. “I—I am not knowing what to say, miss. The Tiger-sahib will be very angry if I carry gossip, you understand.”

  Barrett hadn’t missed the frown at Mita’s brow, nor the hesitation in her voice. What was the woman trying to hide?

  Could it be that the viscount was not the tyrant Pagan had made him out to be? That the English peer was closer at hand than Pagan cared for her to realize? Perhaps he was even now resident at Windhaven!

  At that thought Barrett felt a conflicting storm of emotions—excitement, hope at the thought of escape, and something else.

  Regret, perhaps?

  Grimly she forced down the thought.

  No, her only regret was that she had ever met Deveril Pagan!

  Oh, absolutely, my girl, a dry voice whispered. And if you say it long enough you might just begin to believe it yourself.

  “But surely the viscount must concern himself in estate affairs.”

  “In his way,” Mita answered ambiguously.

  Barrett could only feel a keen disgust for the sort of man who would leave such difficult work to a hireling, even when that hireling was as arrogant and infuriating as Deveril Pagan. “Then … then he never visits Windhaven? Nor anywhere else on the island?”

  “I—I cannot say.” Mita slanted a wary look at the Tiger-sahib, who stumbled, climbing down from his elephant. The mahout issued a sharp order and the elephant raised its trunk to steady him.

  Nihal quickly hid a look of anxiety as Pagan pushed stiffly to his feet and plunged up the thickly wooded slope.

  In spite of herself, Barrett felt a wave of unreasoning admiration for the arrogant man, and that traitorous rush of emotion drove her to press her case. “Help me, Mita! If having this man is your greatest wish, then you must help me. Tell me how to contact the viscount. I—I have no money now but I swear I’ll see that you are repaid for your help.”

  The native woman frowned. With each passing word she grew more agitated. “No, no, miss. This is asking me something terrible—something I cannot do. You must not—you are paining me greatly in this asking!”

  “He must come to visit sometimes,” Barrett persisted, her voice low and urgent. “How can he be so cold and indifferent to the state of his plantation? It must bring him a great deal of money, after all. Even a greedy man would take a little care about the source of such wealth.”

  It was the merest grasping at straws, but Barrett prayed it was true.

  Mita stiffened. “No, it is not as the memsab is suggesting. The master of Windhaven is a most good and caring man!”

  “Then he must be in some sort of contact with the estate, either through Pagan or Nihal. Or someone else, perhaps.” Barrett grasped Mita’s wrist urgently. “Please, Mita. I—I must speak with him!”

  The servant’s eyes churned with conflicting emotions. “But there is none—that is, you cannot—” At that moment the mahout issued a shrill command and the elephants rocked to a halt.

  As soon as the two women were on the ground, Barrett leaned close to Mita. “I must find him, Mita. My presence here only adds to Pagan’s danger, don’t you see? If I am involved with this man Ruxley, as Pagan charges, then…” She caught the servant’s slender hand. “Don’t you see? You must tell me how to reach the viscount! It is as much for Pagan’s good as for mine!”

  “But—that is, he—you do not understand. We are not supposed to speak of this. He told us most forcefully—” Unconsciously Mita’s velvet eyes rose, searching for something.

  Barrett’s own gaze followed. She frowned, seeing nothing but two bearers arguing with their grim-faced master.

  With Deveril Pagan.

  Who was also, she realized in that raw instant, Viscount St. Cyr.

  The realization struck Barrett with all the dark, explosive fury of a tropical storm, making her heart lurch, stealing
away her breath. “N-no,” she rasped. “It cannot be!”

  But even then she knew it was true, that her last and only hope was dashed. Everyone in camp knew of his lie. All had been involved in the deception. No doubt they had found the whole sordid masquerade most amusing!

  How could he?

  The next moment she was running over the boulder-strewn slope. She churned to a halt mere inches from Pagan. “You and your fine words! You’re nothing but a bloody liar!” Barrett struggled to fight back tears, crushed beneath a blinding wave of betrayal and disappointment. She had actually begun to believe in the man, to hope that they—

  Angrily she swept a hot tear from her eye. “I should have known that it was just another one of your lies, just another way to mock and deceive me. How you must have laughed at me for a silly, pathetic fool!” She stood rigid, wild with rage and disappointment. Her fury goaded her, made her reckless as a trapped animal.

  As her eyes darkened with pain and unshed tears Barrett turned and slapped Pagan full across the cheek.

  He did not move a muscle, his face harsh and shuttered.

  “How could you lie to me that way?” Furiously she pummeled his neck and chest, and even then she felt a wild impulse to cling close instead. To seek heat in his hard embrace and draw his arms around her for comfort.

  “Dear Lord, how could I ever think—how could I ever hope that—”

  With a raw cry, she stumbled away from him, her pale cheeks misted with tears. “Damn you! Damn you now and forever, Deveril Pagan!”

  Pagan didn’t move, and his rigid stoicism was the worst insult of all.

  Nor did he move when she turned and flung herself up the slope toward the dark line of the jungle.

  This time Windhaven’s hard-faced master made no attempt to stop her.

  In angry disbelief Pagan watched Barrett stumble up the slope. His cheek throbbed and warm blood trickled onto his skin.

  So now she knew. Maybe it was better this way, with her hating him. He hadn’t missed the naked vulnerability that swept her eyes sometimes, when she thought he wasn’t looking.

  He’d meant to tell her his identity, of course, only somehow the time had never been right. Damn, but she was hot-blooded, as quick to anger as a wild hornet. It would serve her right if he left her out there!