Soul of Fire (29 page)

“Because . . .” He opened his mouth, then closed it, suddenly, with a snap. “Because I saved you. And therefore what may happen to you is my fault. Even falling from the balcony would be easier than what might happen to you in the tiger realm.”

She shivered at his words, and thought of the novels she’d read in London, which delighted in describing in vivid, purple-streaked, blood-soaked detail the perils of captive maidens. These heroines would talk, at length, of their feelings, and of how their fate was shocking and cruel. In fact, they adorned horrors with big words and careful description that seemed to thunder and echo in the back of the scene, ominously, a Dies Irae of doomed musical accompaniment. But it wasn’t that way, was it? It wasn’t that way at all. Instead, horror came with a sort of matter-of-fact quotidian air. It was like . . . if one were to be killed by one’s own mother in the kitchen, it wouldn’t be with some arcane ornate dagger used by the priestesses of Isis, but rather with the wooden-handled knife that had all one’s life served to cut the bread.

Thus St. Maur’s description of what might happen to her. The idea seemed all the more obscene when stated in those simple, unadorned words. She turned to him a face that she could feel draining of color, and he looked conscience-stricken and worried.

“It’s not like that, Miss Warington. Not like that at all. They might have plans. They might have nefarious intent.” He shook his head, and for a moment the chiseled look was gone, leaving in its place that curiously vulnerable look he’d shown her before. “But nothing will be done to you. Not while I live and take breath. I am responsible for you, Miss Warington, and I take my responsibilities seriously.”

His responsibility. Why did her heart seem to close upon itself, as on an impenetrable shell at the thought that this was all she was to him—all she would ever be? It was foolish, unaccountable. A responsibility was more than she should be. She nodded primly at his words, and was rewarded with one of his rare smiles—the one with what seemed to her a shadow of brittleness in its quick appearance and just as hasty disappearance.

A wrinkle formed, vertical, on St. Maur’s forehead, as he said, “Now, listen. As soon as I change shapes, you will climb on my back. No, don’t protest. I can’t leave you alone here, you see. I want you to hold on as well as you may, because I’m going to be hunting for the tigers, and that might necessitate sudden maneuvers and turns. Do you understand?”

She ducked her head, to indicate acquiescence, and as was likely to happen when nervousness seized her, she heard her voice say unthinkable words: “You know, all this dragon riding would be far easier if you came provided with reins.”

There was a moment of silence and she thought that she had offended him mortally, but when she raised her eyes to his face, she saw that he was smiling, his eye crinkled at the corner, in a way that denoted true enjoyment of the joke. “Indeed,” he said. “Undoubtedly it would. But for now, I must ask you to hold on as tight as you can.”

And with that, he started glowing with the soft blue light that surrounded him on such occasions. She looked away from his torment, and did not look back until there was a sound that she had come to identify as a sort of dragon chuckle.

He extended his front paw and dipped his wing, to allow her climb, as had become their habit in these days of traveling together, and she leapt on the dragon’s back with an ease that would, doubtless, have scared her family, and all her friends back in London. For all the descriptions of dragons in books, they had neglected to say the dragon would, in the end, be much like the man they were in their other form—honorable or villainous, cruel or gentle. On the crest of this thought, she ran a hand down the dragon’s neck-ruffle, that protrusion of skin to which she normally held. It looked like gossamer silk shot through with gold thread, a thing too beautiful to be practical, but St. Maur had told her she could hold on to it as tight as she wished. She ran her hand down it, feeling its folds, surprised at realizing, for the first time, that it was not cold, as one would expect of a reptile, but soft and warm like one’s eyelid or the skin on the inner curve of an infant’s knee.

The dragon made a sound—a sound she could neither identify, nor remember its ever having made—and turned back, its eye—so disturbingly St. Maur’s eye—looking at her with something she could not identify, then closing partway, much like a cat’s on being caressed.

Rather proud of herself, Sofie held on to the neck ruffle with both hands and said, “You may start, my lord. You may be aloft as soon as you think it good.”

TIGER, TIGER; THE CODE OF HUNTERS; THE MOST PRECIOUS OF GOODS

Every time he changed shapes, Peter realized more
and more that he was the dragon and that the dragon was himself—the two inextricable and linked. He realized that pretending to be two different creatures was just a game he’d played with his own mind, to make himself feel normal.

And yet, this time, the situation was uniquely suited to make him feel like two people. The dragon was looking for tigers amid the forest and the undergrowth—now flying above, now dipping in for a close look at something moving down there. And Peter—Peter’s mind that was composed of memories and thoughts and feelings—felt Sofie on his back. That warm weight, that dear burden for whom he would gladly die.

The thought shocked him. It shocked him as much as the acts of barbarism he had first committed as a dragon. That thought, crossing what he could only call his most human of minds, reverberated through him as much as the frisson of being locked in a body that devoured sheep whole. The dragon dipped and wobbled, for a moment losing control of his glide upon the air.

Sofie screamed. Peter shook his head—or the dragon did—and Peter forcefully willed control upon himself. The dragon’s wings stretched as it found its balance again. And the girl on his back relaxed her death-grip on the neck ruffle, and gave it a long caress instead.

What did she mean by it, Peter wondered. Did she mean anything at all? Perhaps she was a good horseback rider in England and that had simply translated to her trying to gentle him on this ride. He felt her hands grip the neck ruffle again, and frowned at himself, before he realized that the dragon face was uniquely not equipped to show much emotion at all.

It didn’t matter, since she couldn’t see his face anyway. And why did she matter? He couldn’t understand it all. She was just . . . a girl. He would grant that she was one of the most beautiful he’d ever seen. And she was daring, as no girl he’d ever met before.

But six months ago, while traipsing through Africa with his friend Nigel Oldhall and his friend’s then-wife, Emily, he’d thought he’d never again meet Emily’s like—for bravery, for unconventional accommodation to impossible circumstances, nor for beauty. And yet in all of those, Miss Sofie Warington either met or surpassed what he’d presumed to be the most superior female. But there was more than that to his feeling. There was also an ache, a feeling of belonging.

Peter Farewell had no conscious memories of his mother—or at least no coherent ones. She had died when Peter was just three, and all he could call to mind when he thought of those situations to which other people attributed mother’s love, was his nanny—a great Scottish woman with a large bosom and a permanently strached apron.

Of his mother, he retained but one memory—at least he thought it was of his mother, because there was no one else he could attribute it to. His nurse had had pale blond curls, arranged—or so it seemed—with iron bonds. But Peter remembered being very young, lying in bed, huddled in a mended nightshirt, and having a woman lean over to kiss him. Again and again, in dreams and awake, he’d pursued that memory, and tried to see the face of the woman—but this was never granted him. Instead, the memory replayed itself in the same manner. A soft voice talking to him, saying words he couldn’t quite understand, then a woman leaning over him—a scent of powder and rose water, a billowy, lace nightgown, the touch of soft lips on his forehead, and then the woman rising, her dark hair enveloping him like a curtain through which the light of his bedside oil lamp shone diffuse and rich, like the dawn of a new day.

Though Sofie looked nothing like his mother, and though he wouldn’t say that she struck him as particularly maternal, the feelings she aroused in him were of the same intensity, the same disconnected, deep-echoing nature—an attraction, a feeling of need that surpassed all the constructions of his well-schooled mind.

As the dragon swept closely in an area where all the undergrowth was tawny-yellow—the color of a tiger—burned and parched by the drought before the monsoon, Peter wondered if this was what people talked about when they spoke of being in love.

He didn’t know. All he knew was that he would give his life for her, and give it willingly and without thinking—and that there was no rational reason for this. There was nothing she’d done for him that merited such a return. And there was nothing particularly special about her. She was an excellent woman, superior in all parts—but, within those parts, just a woman.

And yet, if he could—he realized with a shudder of wonder—he would marry her tomorrow and take her away from the were-tigers and whatever they wished with her. He’d take her away from India, with its warring factions, its multidinous clamoring crowds. He’d take her away from holy men and madmen. And he’d take her to Summercourt and install her there, as Lady St. Maur.

The thought startled him for a moment, and then he thought it was all a symptom of his age. It was one of those mad passions that men almost in their thirties developed for girls much younger than them. Just as well that his condition and her position prevented him making a fool of himself.

Unbidden, a line of poetry that he hadn’t heard since school crossed his mind: “Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time.” Alexander Pope, begging the gods to make two lovers happy. But Peter was not sure there were two lovers here. In fact, he was absolutely sure she did not love him. As for himself, he was just a fool. Besides, Peter Farewell, Earl of St. Maur, did not believe in gods. No gods—or at least no sane gods, worthy of being believed in—would have laid this curse on him.

At that moment, as the dragon swept low once more, he saw the tigers in the forest below. There were ten of them, and none of them was looking up, though they were all excited by something—probably the feel of his presence nearby.

Ten of them, and one clearly the leader—large and built and muscular. Yet, at the edge, were a couple who—without Peter being able to explain why—looked scrawnier and younger. More defenseless.

He dipped in toward them in one long flight, mentally hoping Sofie was holding tight. There was an art in this, like there had been an art in picking Sofie up before. It was one thing to grab prey and silence its screams with quickly plunged talons. And another entirely to grab prey and keep it alive while you flew with it thrashing and shrieking in your grasp.

Peter held on to the creature a little harder than he’d held Sofie—Sofie had made no attempt to escape—and tried to think clearly despite the dragon’s firm decision to fly away as far away as quickly as he could.

He could return to the clearing from which they’d departed. But alas, it was too close to the prowling tigers for his comfort. They would find him too quickly.

So he’d fly farther on, look for an area totally isolated—a rocky area, where perhaps the tigers would have more trouble going. And he’d cross a river—or as many courses of water as he could find. He didn’t know if it was true that crossing water made it impossible for a witch-sniffer to discover you. He doubted it would be as simple as that. But if there was a chance, he would take it.