The Tiger's Lady (20 page)

Pagan didn’t even turn around, too busy trying to subdue his unruly patient. “Boiling water, bandages, and that bottle I brought back from London. Quick, Nihal!”

“Yes, lord. Most quickly I am being.” Bare feet scurried over the wooden floor and then the door slammed shut.

“I won’t talk, d-damn you.” The woman’s teeth began to chatter and her head tossed restlessly from side to side. “The secret is m-mine. Won’t have it from me n-now. D-die first…”

St. Cyr’s brow knit in a frown as he anchored her beneath the weight of his body. What in the devil was the woman talking about? “I don’t want you to talk,” he growled. “Just to stop bloody fighting me!”

“Let go! M-must get to s-shore.” Her voice was growing weaker. “Gran—”

“You
are
ashore. Now you must rest. You’re—” He started to say “safe,” but stopped himself.

Safe is the last thing you are,
he thought. But she’d find that out soon enough.

“Here,” he finished instead. “Here with me.”

She blinked. Her eyes opened slowly and Pagan found himself staring down into teal eyes, gold-flecked and dark with unshed tears.

Beautiful,
he thought bleakly.

Just as he had known they would be.

As if to torment him, her bared nipple brushed his shoulder. Her soft thighs shoved against him, each movement bringing new tides of agony.

Her eyes widened, glazed and unfocused. “W-where? Where
am
I?”

Pagan scowled. This struggling of hers would be the death of him! “You’re home,” he lied.

She froze beneath him. Her head cocked as she fought to make sense of his words. “H-home?” she rasped. “At—at Cinnamon Hill?”

Pagan stored that bit of information away for future use. “No, not there. At
my
home. At Windhaven.” He waited for her glimmer of response.

All he saw was disappointment. Her shoulders seemed to droop and weariness darkened her eyes. Suddenly she looked tired—and infinitely vulnerable.

But before Pagan could react to that vulnerability, her hands tensed, then balled into fists.

“You’ll pay for this villainy! If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll see that you pay!”

How he would pay, Pagan was not to learn, for the next minute her body went slack. With a choked sob, she slipped back into the darkness.

For long minutes Pagan stared down at the woman in his bed. He cursed in the first tongue he had ever learned, using good, stout Hindi phrases. Then he switched to Tamil and finally to gutter English.

None of them made him feel any better.

He barely looked up as Nihal returned, laden with cloth and bottles.

“Where is the
memsab
coming from? No boats are being seen in the cove for over a month, nor is there any wreckage of wood or canvas.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.” Grimly St. Cyr tore off a piece of linen and dipped it in the basin of hot water that Nihal had brought. Carefully he began to clean the woman’s forehead, thankful that she was still unconscious. Even diluted, the carbolic acid solution was going to hurt badly. He hoped to finish while she slept.

To his fury Pagan noticed that his fingers were not quite steady.

Nihal noticed too. “Tiger is best being careful about that one. No good she is coming from the cove.
Yakkini
—devil woman—she is for sure. Ruxley is having sent men that way twice already, as the
mahattaya
is knowing well.”

St. Cyr’s eyes narrowed to black slits. “Thank you for reminding me, Nihal, but I am hardly likely to forget that fact. Please fetch a decanter of brandy and a glass. I believe I left them in the drying shed. The woman will be coming around soon, and I might need to loosen her tongue for a few questions. And bring me that bloody cinchona, too, while you’re at it.”

“With first-chop haste,
sahib.
Yes, yes, swiftly I am going.” Pagan’s chief overseer bowed and backed from the room, his velvet eyes narrowed. Whatever thoughts he had, he kept strictly to himself.

St. Cyr worked the lower hooks of the garment free. Pale skin teased the deep V of the open corset, her silken beauty marred by angry welts from the stiff boning.

He fought down an urge to run his lips softly over those welts, to tongue away their pain.

His hands began to shake. Beads of sweat glistened on his naked chest.

He was growing dizzy, the malarial fevers returning. Images came and went before Pagan’s eyes, and suddenly the room began to spin.

Bloody mosquitoes, he thought dimly. Now he would be useless for any serious work until the fevers receded.

He’d better leave Nihal with a rifle, he thought grimly, watching the woman on the bed part and separate into two blurred images.

Awkwardly he worked at the last hooks. As if in a dream he felt the heat of her skin flow into his fingers.

Hot. So hot…

In the same instant the chills began. Suddenly Pagan was shivering, starved for heat—her heat. Starved for her tawny hair tangled against his chest, her long legs wrapped around his waist while her softness sheathed his straining manhood.

Somehow he staggered to his feet and pried open the precious bottle of carbolic acid.

His hands were shaking so badly that it took him ten minutes to finish cleaning the wound.

Finally it was done. His face dark with strain, Pagan found one of her fallen petticoats—and draped it over her chest. He did no more, afraid to touch her.

Afraid that if he
began
touching her he would never stop.

In tense silence he untied the mosquito net and let it fall down around the bed, capturing her within like Sleeping Beauty in her wall of thorns.

Too damned fanciful by half, old man. And she is no Sleeping Beauty.

His tremors grew.

Fair is fair,
he thought grimly.

For you’re no bloody prince.

The coconut-oil lamp danced wildly as Pagan flung open the door to his room twelve hours later. Scowling, he slapped down his lantern and bent to study the woman on his bed.

Still she showed no sign of waking. Between his own bouts of fever, he had cleaned her scalp wound and twice applied a diluted mix of the carbolic acid he had brought back from London. Cleanliness, he had learned, could make the difference between life and death here in the tropics.

Pagan’s eyes darkened. Frowning, he tugged the black patch from his eye and massaged the muscles left aching from a day in the sun.

Soon he would have to leave for Windhaven. If the woman was still too weak to travel, he’d have to leave her here with Nihal, little as he liked the idea, for she might well prove the clue to this whole imbroglio.

In the dancing light of the lamp his face was a study in copper and shadows. Even a delay of three days was probably too much, with a tiger twice sighted in the jungle and the hill country tribesmen cutting up ugly under their bloody shaman’s influence.

He’d give her only two days, Pagan decided. He could spare no more than that—not with the monsoon due at any moment.

Grimly he checked the linen bandages at her forehead, willing his restless eyes away from the silken skin below.

He had considered trying to remove the bloody corset, but in the end had decided not to. He did not trust himself to stop when he was done undressing her.

Scowling, he concentrated on her wound. The cut was clean, at least. The center was deep and still oozing, but not as much as he had feared. Fortunately, there was no sign of contagion.

The scar would not be a pleasant one, of course. Made with a rope, unless he missed his guess. So his Eve had nasty friends, did she?

A thousand questions sprang to Pagan’s lips as he slipped a fresh piece of linen in place and secured it with a knot. It was tricky work in the flickering lamplight, for his hands were still unsteady. Already he could feel the fevers returning.

His fingers slipped, grazing the lush swell of her breast, outlined beneath the petticoat.

At even that faint touch Pagan froze. Madness swept through him and his jaw locked in a hot, urgent swell of desire. But denied, the need only grew sharper, digging at the already frayed edges of his sanity.

Beneath his fingers he felt her nipple harden. Even with his eyes closed, he could see it clearly—all pebbled silk and rich heat, its proud crest upthrust.

Instantly the old hunger slammed into him.

Grim-faced, he fought the urge to bury himself deep inside her, relieving his torture before she awoke to contest him. She was simply another of Ruxley’s pawns, after all.

Something tells me you’ve too much pride to take a woman by force.
Another woman had said that.

Was it true?

Beneath him the woman with tawny hair flinched slightly. Her lips opened with a restless moan.

The sound jerked Pagan back to reality. He stepped back, dropping the mosquito net in place.

This time Ruxley would lose, Pagan swore. He’d waited two months to bed a woman, so he supposed he could wait a few hours longer.

Until he was stronger and the malaria was past.

Until she knew
exactly
what he was doing to her.

She heard the roar of distant thunder, then the steady beat of drums.

A parade? she thought. This time of year?

Her lips tensed. But what time of year
was
it? And where precisely was
here?

Her eyes opened slowly. She saw the dim outline of carved bedposts beneath some sort of net. She felt no warmth about the room, just emptiness and a chilling sense of unfamiliarity.

With it.

With everything.

Even herself.

Frowning, she made to sit up, only to bite down a moan as pains shot through her back and shoulders. White-faced, she eased back against the cool sheets, listening to her heart pound.

Where was she? And why did every muscle in her body scream in protest?

Looking down, she saw a petticoat draped over her chest. Beneath was a damask dress—
her
dress, though she did not seem to recognize it.

She began to tremble. Beneath the dress she wore a rigid corset of cotton twill, laced so tight that she had to struggle for breath. Her breasts, she saw to her horror, were crushed together, her nipples rising in pebbled points at the lacy trim.

Crimson-faced, she tried to tug the garment up, only to subside with a gasp of pain a moment later. Not that she would have succeeded anyway—the frame was far too stiff to permit shifting.

Warily she took in her frothy petticoats and a slim foot clad in silk stockings.

Silk stockings?

But, it was all wrong! These were not
her
garments! Where was she? What had happened to her?

Her slim fingers tightened, pleating and unpleating the unfamiliar petticoat at her chest.

Her back began to throb. She turned slightly, wincing at the pain even that slight movement provoked. Through the open shutters at the far end of the room, a blinding rectangle of turquoise sky stretched over an emerald expanse of forest.

She tried to sit up, grimacing as dagger-sharp pains shot through her back.