The Tiger's Lady (15 page)

Ruxley was not a man to forget a grudge. He’d been bested that hot summer day, publicly humiliated when Pagan had ripped out every row of the lethal poppies and burned them to ash, while the natives watched and snickered.

Ruxley had come back later, of course. He’d crept into the main house under cover of night and had nearly succeeded in slitting Pagan’s throat, though it had taken the strength of three hirelings to hold Pagan down.

But he hadn’t succeeded. In the ensuing fight Ruxley had lost two teeth and a great deal of blood, along with the end of his little finger.

It was small enough punishment for the man who had started the whole Sepoy unrest. Little did it matter to Ruxley that the cartridges he was selling to the British Army were tainted with animal fat. But to Hindu and Muslim alike, even the whisper of such infamy had undermined long years of loyalty in service of the Raj. Trust was shattered.

Pagan’s jaw hardened as he thought about the months of blood and fury that had followed. A very large part of the responsibility for those horrors had to be laid at James Ruxley’s door.

But Pagan had more important things to worry about.

Scowling, he squatted down and sifted a clump of bone-dry soil through his fingers. It was good soil, fine and loose, excellent for setting in the fragile tea seedlings. But if the monsoon rains didn’t come soon, he’d lose his whole experimental crop. His lush upcountry acres at Windhaven would fare little better.

Pagan’s mouth set in a flat line as he watched the dry earth slide between his fingers in an ocher stream. The planting here at the coast was a small one, fortunately. But the loss galled him, for this experimental group had been yielding fine results.

Up until the arid
kachchan
winds set in three weeks ago. Fierce and unceasing, they’d blown ashore from dawn till dusk while the tiny leaves darkened and shriveled.

Pagan walked up the hill.

Everywhere the results were the same. All dying. Too bloody dry…

Grimly, he strode over the hill to the coffee plants. Kneeling in the dirt, he began his investigation, starting at the lower leaves and working up slowly, plant by plant.

On the fifth bush he found what he was looking for, little more than a faint mottling on the underside of the largest leaves, coupled with a dark scaliness on the upper face.

But in two weeks, he knew, those abnormalities would creep to the neighboring leaves and in two more weeks the infected leaves would drop off. A short while after that, the entire plant would be dead.

Pagan sighed, coming slowly to his feet.

This coffee sickness would not go away, he was sure of it, and tea was the only practical solution. The cinchona bark used for treating malaria had been a temporary solution, but it could never replace the island’s vast coffee trade.

But tea could. At least, he hoped it could.

Pagan turned slowly, gazing out over the turquoise swatch of ocean beyond the thatched huts and tea-drying sheds, almost as if the sea held the answer he searched for. But his only answer came in the shape of the deadly
kachchan
wind, grating against his face.

Jo hoga, so hoga.

Kismet.

His jaw set in a harsh line.

He could have continued in the headstrong fashion of the other English planters, holding steadfast to the coffee bushes which had made more than one of his neighbors a rich man. But Pagan wasn’t about to lose everything he had worked so hard for. His head grader, a leathery-faced old expert from Kerala, had told him how the leaf sickness had infected half the crop of his whole district in less than a month.

The death of a way of life, or the harbinger of a new and better life?
Pagan asked himself.

If the latter, was tea truly the answer?

Instinct whispered that it was, for there was a rightness to the thought of row upon row of bright green shrubs, glistening and dew-hung in the misty upcountry dawn. There was an earthy pleasure in the pungent smell of green leaves hand-dried in metal pans.

With a disgusted snort, the bare-chested Englishman ran a dusty hand across his brow, wiping away a trail of sweat. Fifteen months of hard work and planning lost in a matter of days! Now he’d have to start his experiments all over again.

Another thing to thank the cursed ruby for. He should never have gone back to England for that damned auction.

Pagan froze, catching the faint scent of hyacinths.

Suddenly he was back in London, wrapped in darkness and chill air, while snow wafted down beneath globes of gaslight. Somehow the distant white sweep of the beach faded, reminding him of snow and a woman’s porcelain-smooth cheek.

Her
again, damn it! What in the devil was wrong with him?

But the memories grew until fire licked at his blood. He felt her lips, full and soft and clinging. Once again he tasted her skin, snow-dusted and sweet with the scent of hyacinths.

The swelling at his groin reached agonizing proportions.

What happened to you,
Angrezi?

Pagan looked down, frowning at the sight of his big hands. They were work-hardened and dirt-stained. The broad palms were callused, like those of a common laborer. Hardly the sort of hands to hold a woman of her quality.

But Pagan could not forget her.

Perhaps it was the memory of her face, veiled and mysterious, never clearly glimpsed. Perhaps that was why he still jerked awake from restless dreams with the scent of her, the sweet taste of her, flooding his senses.

With a curse, he slung his shirt over his shoulder and strode toward the bungalow that served as his quarters here at the coast. The bloody female probably had teeth like a barracuda and ankles like an aging workhorse, he told thought grimly.

Pagan’s scowl deepened as he passed more and more dying tea bushes. As he moved through the fields, the Tamil workers rocked back on their heels, staring at him curiously.

The English
sahib
was acting odder than usual, they would be thinking. Yes, by now they must be quite certain that their
Tiger-sahib
was a madman.

Perhaps they were right, Pagan thought bitterly.

But something told him that this rust disease attacking scattered coffee plants would grow far worse, and on that vague bit of intuition he was about to gamble his whole future.

Soon he would be one of the biggest producers outside Assam. He had decided that a mixture of Chinese and native Assam seedlings would make the best stock. But even if he turned out to be right in his choice of stock, a thousand things could still go wrong on any one day. If the kraits and cobras didn’t get him, the leeches probably would, the planter thought cynically.

He thought of the green-eyed widow in Madras. Would the fair Georgiana feel any regret at the news of his passing? Would
anyone
miss him?

Enough of being maudlin,
Pagan told himself.
What you need is a drink.

What you need is a woman,
a mocking voice answered.

But there were no females anywhere near this secluded beach, except for the few Tamil women who had come to work the fields with their husbands. Those Pagan would never touch, for practical reasons as well as a sense of morality.

It had been almost seven weeks since he’d seen Georgiana, Pagan realized. No wonder he’d become damnably foul-tempered of late.

Yes, a week or two in the inventive widow’s bed was precisely what he needed.

Liar,
a voice countered.

It’s not her you dream of but a different woman. An unforgettable woman whose lips met yours with haunting passion, yielding and challenging at the same time. A woman whose body you’ve dreamed about for months now.

Scowling, Pagan kicked at a clump of sere earth, scattering it to dust.
Forget about the ache in your groin,
he told himself.
Forget about the mystery woman with the silken skin.

She is on the far side of the horizon right now.

In a green country where the hedgerows are bright with blue-bonnets and the first spring roses are in bud.

And then it hit him.

His lips twisted in a bitter smile as he stared out at the field of wide-eyed, Tamil workers.

It was April 23, 1865. His thirtieth birthday.

And James Ruxley had sworn to see him dead before the month was out.

About one thing the long-limbed planter turned out to be quite wrong, however.

For at that very moment, a tawny-haired English beauty stood white-faced and stiff-legged in the hold of a sleek two-masted brigantine bearing down on Colombo’s azure harbor. Her hands locked on her hips as she glared at the vessel’s captain. “I won’t do it, do you hear me? You can take your craven crew and sail straight to the devil for all I care! This is one game you and your black-hearted employer will never win!”

The captain came a step closer, a thin smile twisting his lips. “Oh, there you’re wrong, my beauty. For we’ve ways of persuading you here on the
Orient Queen.
By the devil, don’t we just!”

As if to prove his point, the seaman draped a length of rope between his fingers. Smiling coldly, he slapped the stout coils against his palms and took a step closer.

“Stay away, you bastard,” Barrett hissed. The long months of confinement at sea had weakened her body, but none of her spirit, although the voyage had been endless torment. They had drugged her food, hoping to keep her docile during the voyage. But since there was no other food, she had to take what they offered or perish.

Laudanum? Or something worse?
No matter, for the result had been the same: long hours of shadows, barely moving in dim transit from sleep to waking, never knowing the hour, the day, or even how long she had slept.

But two days ago everything had changed. She had eaten the moldy crusts of bread left on her tray and gulped down the dish of weak gruel without feeling the usual lassitude. Soon after, the pitch of the vessel had lessened, as if they were in the protected reach of land.

That morning two impassive sailors of indeterminate race and nationality had brought her water to bathe. After she had washed, removing the last remnants of black dye from her hair, they had dragged her up to the captain’s quarters.

To the first fresh air and sunlight Barrett had known for weeks.

She compressed her lips in a tight line, scowling at her captor. At least she had seen to it that her secret was safe.

For now. She could only pray that her grandfather had made his way safely to his old friend on the Isle of Mull.

Fear choked her as she thought of what awaited her. And as always there were the memories, cold and ugly, her only companions on the long voyage.

She forced away those thoughts, almost as if they belonged to someone else. All that mattered was that they’d made landfall at last. Right now if she climbed to that single high porthole, she would see other ships, perhaps only yards away.

Dear heave, if only she could—

“Stay away?” the captain repeated mockingly. “Now that, wench, was nowhere in my orders. As I recall, the letter said something about seeing to it that you knew exactly where your duty lay.” He was almost to the middle of the room now, his eyes glittering coldly. “And that you understood the
consequences
if you failed.”

Barrett’s eyes flickered to the scarred wooden desk bolted to the wall beneath the porthole. The only other contents of the room were a bed which folded down from the adjoining wall and a large trunk beside the door.

Her eyes narrowed. Yes, it just might work, but she would have to be very clever.

She slanted her captor a glance through tawny lashes. “Very well, Captain. What exactly is it that you expect me to do? And speak simply, if you please. I am merely a female. We are all
so
featherbrained, after all.”

The leathery seaman frowned, confused by this new turn of events. For the last twenty-four hours the Englishwoman had been hostile and sullen by turns, and that he had expected.

But this sudden docility made him damned uneasy.

“You’re to perform a little errand, that’s all you need to know for now, woman. And you’ll begin by putting on these clothes.” Smiling grimly, he moved past her to the trunk. A moment later a pile of bright garments came flying toward her.

On top was a feather-weight chemise of tucked white lawn and a pair of silk stockings, which landed on her shoulder. Beneath were a pair of peach silk garters and a diaphanous organdy petticoat.

She frowned as she studied the costly fabrics. What was the man about now? How could such a cutthroat afford expensive garments like this?

Barrett ducked reflexively as a heavy, boned corset hurtled through the air and landed at her feet. The revolting worm had thought of everything, it appeared.

Suddenly her teal eyes narrowed. Not everything, perhaps.

Slowly she lifted the exquisite chemise to her chest. “How lovely, Captain. But not for
me,
surely?”

Dark with lust, the captain’s eyes fixed on the lace-trimmed lingerie spilling from Barrett’s fingers.