“What are you and your grandfather up to now, minx?” Pagan asked with a longsuffering sigh.
Barrett smiled secretly as her hands feathered over her husband’s thighs, then sought the buttons at his trousers. “Did I forget to tell you? We are engaged in a new project these days, something far more potent than explosive compounds. This one involves a heat-propelled balloon, which incorporates a steam-driven steering device. You see, Grandfather believes that—”
Pagan’s eyes flashed. “Enough! You’ll break your neck with these wild pursuits of yours! Since we arrived here at Broadmoor I’ve tried to—”
“You’ve tried to what?” Barrett’s voice was strangely tense.
“To give you time of your own, Angrezi. To restrain myself from living in your pocket. To give you your independence. But that is all at an end! I mean to see you think about other things than airships and explosives for a change!”
“Indeed.” The word was meant to goad him and it did its job well.
Pagan’s voice was a dark growl. “Things vastly more potent than explosive oils or heat-propelled balloons.” His eyes smoldering, he tongued aside an emerald and two sapphires, then captured one impudent nipple, which instantly hardened beneath his lips.
By all that was holy, she was more perfect than any jewel, he thought dimly.
“They—they are really quite safe,” Barrett whispered, her breath catching as her husband’s hard fingers glided up her thigh. “And with small propellers the airships should be—could be—quite, er, manageable.”
“Unlike you, minx!” Pagan’s fingers teased her other nipple, which promptly budded for him.
A little, choked cry spilled from Barrett’s throat.
Pagan’s eyes flashed, dark with triumph. “No more talk of airships, do you understand? At least not unless I am with you on these mad excursions. Your grandfather hasn’t a scrap of common sense.”
Barrett’s eyes went smoky with passion as she tugged him closer. “Your merest wish is my greatest joy, Tiger-sahib.” She brought her hands together in a sign of respect.
But her eyes were gleaming, smoky, blatantly provocative.
Pagan frowned, studying her suspiciously. “Why—”
“Truly, I thought you would never demand more of my time. In fact, I began to grow quite jealous, my lord, and was wondering if your interest in Helene stemmed from something more than friendship.”
“Jealous? Of Helene? I merely meant to give you some time to yourself before we left for Ceylon, Angrezi. I grew afraid that you would come to resent—”
Pagan’s voice broke off abruptly as his wife eased one long leg between his thighs. “What are you—”
“‘Trust a cobra before a jackal’,” his wife quoted sweetly. “‘Trust a jackal before a woman. And trust a woman before an Angrezi.’ I am guilty on two points, I’m afraid.” Her knee eased deeper between his thighs.
Pagan cleared his throat and tried to sound reproving. “You’ve been talking to Mita again. I knew Nihal would be too lenient with her.”
Barrett smiled darkly. “Oh, Mita has been teaching me all manner of fascinating things, my love.” Her fingers eased along the waist of his trousers.
Pagan’s voice grew hoarse. “Such as?”
“Such as how to cook a turtle.” Her fingers slipped lower. “How to drive away leeches.” She inched deeper, seeking his heat. “How to keep a man most deliriously satisfied.”
Dear heaven, she was close, Pagan thought. Agonizingly close…
And then she found him. Her hands cupped his hard, pulsing arousal. Gently, then not so gently.
With a hoarse groan Pagan kicked free of his trousers and swept her atop his granite thighs until his hot length teased her velvet woman’s petals.
Barrett’s soft laughter echoed over the glade. “Shall I tell you what else I learned, my tiger?” She did not wait for an answer, but leaned down and whispered in Pagan’s ear.
Her husband swallowed audibly. His fingers dug into the soft curves that strained against his thighs.
“Did I get that right?” she asked sweetly.
“I devoutly hope so.” His dark eyes glittered. “What in the name of heaven am I going to do with you, Angrezi?”
“Everything, I trust, my lord. As swiftly as you possibly can.”
Her low, breathless plea was the last straw. Pagan surged upward, parting her sleek petals and impaling her in one hard thrust. “Ah, my soul, I only meant to distract you. Why is it always you who end up distracting me?”
“It—it—only serves you right, you insuff—sufferable—ohhhhhh!”
Pagan smiled darkly as he watched his wife shudder and arch against him, her hair spilling like a golden nimbus around her shoulders.
She was, he thought dimly, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen or ever would see, and he knew he would never tire of watching the many faces of her passion.
With that thought in mind, he began to move anew, cupping her sweet bottom and fitting her to his hard length while he tongued one tightly budded nipple.
Barrett’s eyes flashed open, dazed and smoky. “N-no, you don’t, you wretched man! Not again, Dev, no! Not until—” Her voice broke.
Her nails dug into his shoulders as passion exploded through her once more.
“Distracted yet, my sweetest love?” Pagan asked huskily long seconds later, when her breath had stilled.
Her eyes opened, wide and unfocused.
When he saw the dark need trembling within those beautiful eyes, felt her sweet, anxious yearning, he drove deep, head flung back as he muttered ragged words of praise in a jumble of four ancient and very earthy tongues.
Barrett understood none of them. She barely recalled basic English at that particular moment. “P-Pagan!”
“Yes, my beauty, take me. Ah, falcon, hold me. Hold me deep. Hold me forever.”
And Barrett did, offering him the haven he had never known, the love he had never expected, the paradise he had never imagined. “So I mean to, my love,” she whispered. “Always and forever.”
Gasping, she stretched to meet each reckless thrust, breathless, yielding, love-flushed.
Delighting in the fires that smoldered deep in Pagan’s eyes.
For they were fires of triumph and delight, and she meant to see them glowing in his dark eyes always.
“But … s-six children?” she murmured.
The next moment she tensed, following Pagan down, down, into the circle of light, into the haven of love that she knew would surround them always.
Far away, across two continents and two great oceans, where leopards roared and the sun sank in fuchsia splendor over emerald tea fields, a small, wiry figure inched up a rocky slope and then slipped between a narrow opening in the mountain’s blackened base.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the old man made his way into a shadowed cave studded with all manner of precious gems.
For long moments he studied the scattered stones glinting on the tunnel floor, picking up one after another and then discarding each in turn. As always, he wondered at the greed of the Angrezi, who valued these stones so blindly while having no notion of their true power.
Such a pity.
Abruptly the shaman’s eyes narrowed. He found what he had been searching for.
With a low sigh, he cupped the great red stone and raised it to his forehead in a gesture of profoundest respect. “Ah, my beauty, my old one. How I delight to see that you are safe once more.”
Within his wiry fingers the crimson surfaces began to hum, flashing with dim images.
Gripped by a rare twinge of curiosity, the shaman looked down to read the future reflected in those ancient stone facets.
There he saw first a pair of smiling lovers in a distant green land, their hearts full and true as their souls spilled together in bliss. In the ruby’s fires he saw that there would indeed be six children for them, just as the Tiger had predicted, one to become a prime minister, one an inventor, one a brilliant actress, one a p
oet, another a celebrated explorer, and the last a tea planter like his father.
One by one the images swirled past, and the shaman’s old, knowing face creased with laughter at the exploits of those six stubborn children, who would be both delight and torment to their parents.
Yes, it was good, he thought, very good that the old curse had finally been laid to rest. The jackal and his minions were gone now. Windhaven would be haunted no more. Just as he had hoped, the Tiger had proved to be a good guardian and would see the new tea acres to maturity.
And there in the ruby’s fires the shaman saw that in the fullness of time there would come the son of a son, tall and clear-eyed, who would take a smiling Sinhala princess to wife.
From their passion would spring a dynasty, a dynasty strong enough to weather the harsh inventions of a restless, untamed future.
Yet even in that future there would be the healthy leaves, rising green among the blue mountains, row upon serried row. In the years to come the teas of Windhaven would become known throughout the world and his beloved island would prosper once more.
The shaman sighed then, turning away from the stone.
Now he could rest, certain that his beloved Lanka would be safe amid the coming storms. He needed to know no more than that.
Long ago he had learned that it was best to know as little as possible about the future.
Yes, it had all been most exhilarating, the thin man decided. But now it was time to go, back to the valley of the wind in the land of the high snows.
With that decision his form seemed to glisten. Rocks tumbled from the ceiling and somewhere far below the earth lurched in protest, its rumble sounding curiously like the roar of a great cat.
There in the dim light, surrounded by glinting jewels, the shaman brought the ruby to his forehead one last time.
Around him the air began to stir and shimmer, the earth to pitch. There was a faint flash, almost like the movement of sleek white fur through the darkness. A moment later the walls shook and the tunnel exploded, burying the cavern and all its jewels forever.
Of course, by that time the shaman was already far, far away…
END
Glossary
Angrezi: English; Englishman or woman
Ayah: Nursemaid
Bern: Elephant grass
Burra-sahib: Important man
Diya redde: Water cloth; length of fabric worn by
Sinhalese women for bathing
Ghat: Steps or embankment beside a river or reservoir
Howdah: Seat for riding on an elephant
Jo hoga, so hoga: What is meant to be will be.
Kama: Desire, love, sensual pleasure
Khanjar: Indian dagger with twisting, double-edged blade
Lat-sahib: Lord
Mahattaya: Sir, Mister
Mahout: Elephant handler
Mar ja sale!: Die, bastard!
Meri jaan: My heart, my soul, my world
Memsahib: Miss, Madam (referring to European women)
Sahib: Sir, Lord (referring to a European man)
Tulwar: Long, curved Indian sword with a single cutting edge
Yakkini: Female devil
Zenana: Women's quarters
Author’s Note
Dear Reader:
I hope you have enjoyed Brett and Pagan’s story as much as I have enjoyed telling it. Difficult and demanding though this pair turned out to be, they have constantly managed to surprise and delight me, which surely repays any frustration they entailed.
The ruby?
Ah yes, that fabulous jewel. Funny you should ask. As it happens, in 1896 a rare, flawless ruby of 46.75 carats was sold at auction in London. As one early gemologist commented, “When a ruby exceeds six carats and is perfect, it is sold for whatever is asked for it.”
To my knowledge there was no curse connected with this gem, which came up for auction again in 1988. But other famous stones such as the Orloff Diamond and the Hope Diamond have a long history of violence and ill omen. Both gems are said to have been stolen from Hindu idols. The Hope Diamond, in particular, is accounted to be a stone of great evil, and has been implicated in over a dozen violent deaths among its owners.
The life of the early European coffee and tea planters in India and Ceylon was vastly primitive. Many succumbed to disease (cholera, malaria, smallpox, dysentery, and elephantiasis, to name a few) or animal wounds (leopard, cobra, krait, tiger, wild boar, sloth bear). The saying was that two summers made a planter—or broke him. Alas, many did not last even that long. Those who did and managed to clear the dense jungle to plant coffee did well for a decade or two.
Then in the 1860s a deadly leaf virus swept through all the coffee acreage of Ceylon, southern India, East Africa, and Java. By 1890 hundreds of estates in Ceylon lay abandoned and coffee had disappeared as a cash crop.
Tea was the natural answer, though it had not been cultivated by the British until 1839. The vast majority still came from China, where traditional secrets of cultivation, fermentation, and hand rolling were fiercely guarded. Even today, many of those same techniques are still preserved in tea-producing areas of south China.
I have tried to be faithful to the harsh realities of life faced by these early planters. It was a life of beauty and hardship, triumph and challenge. Those who stayed grew to love the life; most would not have chosen to live anywhere else. (Very few would have had a home with anything near the grandeur of Windhaven, of course!) Yes, there actually is a record of a tiger in Ceylon. The nineteenth-century explorer, Sir James Tennent, wrote that government officials had seen the creature often while hunting. “One gentleman of the Royal Engineers, who had seen it, assured me that he could not be mistaken as to its being a tiger of India, and one of the largest description.” (Tennent. Ceylon: A Natural History of the Island. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1868).
The events at Cawnpore are as I have told them. Only four men are known for certain to have survived the massacre at the ghat, but some records mention a heavily bearded Englishman who escaped through the jungle, only to be shot before he could relate his tale. On that germ of fact I have based Pagan’s escape.
The causes of the massacre—and indeed of the Mutiny itself—are still hotly contested. Here I will only add that acts of extreme compassion and bravery as well as rankest barbarism were committed by both sides, Angrezi and Indian.
It is interesting to note that today the government of Sri Lanka is one of the most ardent supporters of wildlife preservation. With an active wildlife conservation program and some ten percent of its acreage set aside for parklands, Sri Lanka is actively working to protect its rich and varied animal population. Elephants are especially revered, for cultural as well as religious reasons, and many ambitious programs have been enacted to relocate these gentle giants to safe forest habitats.
Today no Sri Lankan species is endangered.
Would that we could say as much.
Today tea, too, continues to be produced in Sri Lanka in record quantities.
Keemun, Lapsang Souchong, and Hyson. Though the words originated in connection with Chinese teas, they continue to enchant and delight, conjuring up cloud-swept highlands and mysterious, shadowed valleys. I must confess that I have always been a tea lover, and perhaps it was those wonderful, exotic names which captivated me first.
Dragon Well.
Sparrow’s Tongue.
Crimson Robe.
Who can resist their allure?
Pagan’s skill as a tea taster is part of that long and venerable tradition, which is still very much alive in Daijeeling, Calcutta, Colombo, Hangzhou, and London. And yes, even in the United States, where there are currently eight certified tea tasters. Now we even have our own domestically grown premium tea.
Now there’s an idea for a sequel!
Alfred Nobel, of course, is the man credited with the discovery of high-powered explosives. In 1863 Nobel received a patent to manufacture a new explosive made of liquid nitroglyc
erine (or pyroglycerine, as some called it), which he detonated by the action of a smaller explosion nearby. Fulminate of mercury was the substance Nobel later found to be most reliable for this initial triggering.
In 1867 his factory began to produce a solid form of his product, which he named dynamite. In this form it was much safer to use and became a great success.
But suppose another brilliant but eccentric scientist had pursued the same lines of research? Suppose a ruthless enemy decided he had to have the secret for himself? I like to believe that somewhere in England a white-maned, absent-minded inventor discovered the secrets of pyroglycerine first, but decided to abandon his research for fear of the harm that this weapon would bring the world.
History or fantasy?
Just put it down to an author’s whimsy, I suppose.
I’m delighted that so many of you have written to ask for Lord Morland’s story. Your letters have been wonderful and immensely inspiring. I thank you all so very much. You can find that story in Seducing the Rake.
While you read, why not brew a cup of tea? Pekoe, Daijeeling, or Dragon Well, all will do. (Never bring your water to a hard boil, by the way. This burns away the oxygen, resulting in a weaker, flatter infusion.)
Then sit back, put up your feet, and disappear into a good adventure.
It is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
With warmest regards,
About the Author
Christina Skye is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty-three books. She is a pushover for Harris tweed, Scottish cashmere, Chinese dumplings, French macarons and dark chocolate.
Not necessarily in that order.
A classically trained China scholar with over two million books in print, she has appeared on national television programs including ABC Worldwide News, Travel News Network, the Arthur Frommer show, Geraldo, Voice of America, Looking East, and Good Morning, Arizona.
Christina loves being a writer and savors quirky historical research. Most of her first drafts are written by hand, while her white Siamese helps with the “editing.” While she writes, she usually has her knitting right beside her. But don’t expect speed. “The sheer pleasure of colors and texture running through my fingers helps me concentrate on the mystery of my characters taking shape before my eyes. Researching a period draws me into a sense of place, and then knitting pulls me to a quiet place where a story can unfold at its deepest level. It’s my best writing tool.”
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