The Tiger's Lady (11 page)

Helene started to speak, but the hardness in Pagan’s eyes made her hold her tongue.

“I must be thinking about leaving. I don’t care to let Ruxley know that Windhaven is left unguarded. As soon as the auction formalities are completed tomorrow, I must return to Ceylon.” For a moment his face softened. “Back to Windhaven.”

Helene studied him in silence. There were many things about St. Cyr that she didn’t understand, but this loyalty to a heap of dirt was the most baffling of all. “You really do love that place, don’t you?”

Pagan’s eyes flashed in the firelight. “More than I thought possible,” he said finally. “It’s my home, Helene. And you can only run so long. Otherwise they win.”

“Who
wins?”

But he merely turned away for another drink, his eyes brooding.

Helene could not help sighing. Really, it was such a waste.

She found herself recalling some of the more outrageous rumors circulating about this black sheep from one of England’s finest families.

Spy and cold-blooded adventurer, some called him. A bloody infidel, others called him—a man who had betrayed his heritage for the heathen ways of the East.

Even Helene wondered how he could turn his back on a life of English privilege to sweat and toil in the blinding sun in that mosquito-infested backwater of Asia.

And now he calmly passed over ownership of the world’s largest and most famous ruby, in the wake of an auction that left him only slightly less wealthy than Queen Victoria herself.

Helene realized that she was no closer to understanding this man than she had been fifteen years ago.

She sniffed with disapproval. “I’m glad to see that you’ve removed that outlandish Oriental finery. It looks entirely too—too
fitting
on you. It’s not right, you know. You’re as English as I am!” she added accusingly.

“Ah, but I thought you were French, my dear.”

Helene sighed. With a petulant sniff, she turned to leave. Only then did she notice the jagged gash across St. Cyr’s thigh.

Her face went pale. “Dev! What have you done to your leg?”

He glanced down negligently at the wound, which was dark with blood. “It’s just a scratch.”

“Just a scratch? What in the name of—”

“Don’t,
Helene.” His eyes were cold, as cold as she had ever seen them. “It’s nothing. Far less than I’ve experienced in India. Less than I’ve suffered at my own father’s hands, as a matter of fact. Let’s skip the melodrama, shall we?”

“Stop it, Dev! You don’t have to—”

“To what? Put on a show? But it’s not a show, Helene. It’s what I am, or at least it’s what I’ve become. Dig down deep and you’ll only find more of the same.”

Helene sighed. She, too, had changed in the last fifteen years. But there was something else about him tonight, an almost palpable tension that hadn’t been there when he’d left for dinner.

And now that tension had him stretched as tight as a bowstring.

“Is it because of what happened at the auction? When that—that horrible Indian tried to kill you and steal the ruby?”

St. Cyr laughed.

It was a cold, raw sound.

“That man was no more Indian than you are. First of all he was too brawny for an Indian, and he sure as hell wasn’t a Sikh. No, he could have been any number of things—Dutch or Portuguese or Spanish. English even. But he certainly wasn’t Indian.” Deveril stared down into the fire. “And he wasn’t a zealot, he was a tea packer. He worked at the docks, probably bulking new cargoes.”

“However do you know
that?”

“Because his shoes were covered with tea dust and horse manure, a pungent combination found only at the East India Docks.” Pagan’s eyes narrowed. “And because of one more thing. His hands.” He stared down at the fire for a moment, as if caught in memories. “His skin was thick with the scars of wood slivers. And he had calluses all along the outer edge of his palm. That comes from only
one
thing. Jamming wooden tea crates closed.”

He held out his hands and studied them in taut silence. “I should know. Mine are just the same,” he said at last.

Helene’s eyes widened. “But why did he undertake such a masquerade?”

“I don’t know. But I’m
going
to know, that you can be very sure of. And when I find the bastard who ordered it, I’m going to stake him out and—”

Pagan’s hard hands clenched against the mantel. He did not finish.

Yes, he was changed beyond belief, Helene realized. And this tension about him worried her terribly. But she was wise enough to know that sympathy was the last thing he’d want.

Instead she contented herself with finding a length of gauze and dropping it on the mantel beside him. “Clean that wound, at least. If not, you won’t be going
anywhere
tomorrow.”

When he did not look up, she muttered angrily, “Really, Deveril, you’d better take care or you’ll lose
all
your English ways out there in the jungle.” She looked as if she would say more, but she stopped herself. “Now I’d better go see what trouble that fool Sir Humphrey has gotten into.”

At the door she turned, her hand on the knob. “Shall I send someone up to you? Chloe? Amanda, perhaps? They’ve both been asking for you this age. You’ve been neglecting them of late.” She could not keep the speculation from her voice.

The man at the fire did not answer, his jaw like granite as he stared down into the flickering flames.

Helene realized that Deveril Pagan was three thousand miles away, unaware of both her question and her very existence.

In an angry rustle of silk she swept from the room, muttering beneath her breath about arrogant Englishmen driven mad by too much tropical sun.

The door snapped shut, but the naked man before the fire gave no sign of noticing. For at that moment, deep in the English winter, Deveril Pagan was indeed far beyond the horizon, ensconced in a green land where parakeets screamed companionably and the summer wind blew hot and sweet up from the orange trees and tea fields.

On eight hundred fertile, mist-swept acres.
At Windhaven
.

The only thing left in this world that he could feel the slightest affection for.

Barrett’s first thought was that she was dying.

She was sick, terribly sick, her stomach racked by wave after wave of nausea.

Dry-throated, she choked out a moan, but already she knew that no one would answer her.

Let it end
, she prayed as another wave of pain took her broadside, shaking her until her whole body screamed out in agony and she thought she would split in two.

But she wasn’t dying, of course.

Nothing changed. The pain went on and on and on.

Dimly she heard the clatter of carriage wheels and smelled the sharp salt tang of the sea.

She hardly wondered at it, convulsed in her pain, lost in a world where time and place no longer held any meaning. They had caught her, and a brawny fist had sent her plunging down into unconsciousness.

Dimly she remembered the tall, bearded stranger who had appeared in the night. What if she had agreed to his request? Would she be seated in splendor right now, dining on pheasant, dressed in silk, as he had promised?

But the food would have been ashes in her throat, Barrett knew, and the silks no more than sackcloth. Everything about the idea was madness: Perhaps it had been no more than a dream, brought on by her hunger and fatigue.

Another spasm shook her slim body, doubling her over with pain. Blood pooled up on her lips as she bit down to keep from screaming, fighting her way through waves of torment that racked her inside and out.

It seemed to Barrett that she had been sick forever.

Or perhaps she’d died and this was what they meant by hell.

Her last clear thought was a prayer that her grandfather was safe.

He was not a small man, though his stoop sometimes made him appear so. Right now, as he studied the wreckage around him, his stoop was very pronounced.

He ran unsteady fingers through his white mane, making it even wilder than usual. Tears filled his eyes as he stared down at the shattered bottles and ragged pages torn from priceless old books.

His eyes glazed with pain. A year’s work ruined.

And Barrett—

What of his granddaughter?

He pushed unsteadily to his feet, grimacing in pain. His temple began to throb. Blood ran into his eyes, and he wiped it away awkwardly.

“Barrett.” It hurt even to say her name. He had told Goodfellow to take her out and hide her in the ice house, but the stubborn girl had refused to budge. Then they had taken
her,
saying she would be more useful to them anyway.

That young constable had said he would find her.
Stay right and tight,
he’d said,
and she’ll be home before you know it.

But the constable hadn’t known the kind of men they were dealing with.

He searched for his glasses, blinded by tears. He hadn’t thought, couldn’t have expected—

But then he never did. He had always left the practical decisions to Barrett.

His only consolation was that the men hadn’t gotten what they’d been looking for. He had thrown them off by pretending to be confused, just a helpless old man.

But he
wasn’t,
by heaven! And he’d find them and take Barrett back, even if he had to—

He staggered toward the door. “Goodfellow!” he bellowed as he crunched over the carpet of broken glass. “Where is that man when I need him?”

Without his spectacles to help him, the floor appeared little more than a blur. Then he saw the thin blue ribbon caught beneath the jagged, crumpled pages of a ruined folio.

Redouté’s Roses
. It was Barrett’s favorite book.

Only now the delicate pages were ripped, ruined.

He felt a sharp pain stab through his chest. “
B-Brett!”

His hands were straining toward her ribbon when he fell.

How long had it been since he’d seen snow?

Deveril St. Cyr took a final puff on his cheroot, then tossed it casually over the porch railing, watching the faint orange embers spiral down toward the Thames thirty feet below.

A hail of dancing flakes struck his chest, naked beneath the paisley silk dressing gown. He smiled, enjoying the feeling of power it gave him to challenge the cold. To
will
the discomfort away, as he had learned to do years ago in India.

There he had learned that power came from oneself, in the hard discipline of body and mind. His old tutor Shivaji had taught him that—or had tried to teach him. But Pagan had only absorbed the lesson much later.

During the nightmare carnage of Cawnpore, when the ground had run red with blood. With English blood. And with his own blood.

His eyes hard, Pagan studied the drifting flakes. Snow, by Shiva … Yes, it had to be almost ten years. The last time had been at Broadmoor, when his father had—

With a curse, the viscount jerked his dressing gown closed, pushing down old memories. Pushing down everything to do with his past, and with his father most of all.

His face set in bitter lines as he watched the dancing flakes float over the water. After a moment he drew a slow, deep breath, his control slowly returning.