The Tiger's Lady (26 page)

“Would you have believed me had I told you it was only a small pet monkey?”

“You might have tried at least! You are vile! Reprehensible!” She tried to kick backward at him, but he sidestepped neatly.

“By all the saints, you feel even better when you’re scared speechless, Cinnamon.” Pagan’s mouth slid over the soft rim of her ear. “I warrant it doesn’t happen very often. Can you wonder that I seize an opportunity when it is offered?”

“With you, I wonder at nothing!” She jerked desperately at his fingers, but even two hands to one, her strength was no match for his.

“Careful,
Angrezi.
I have ways of taming the wild creatures on my land.”

“Do you indeed? Well, this is one m—monkey that won’t run at your call, Mr. Bloody Pagan.” She shoved and twisted, kicking madly at his powerful legs.

“Oh, I never took you for a monkey, my dear. Make no mistake, Magic is much smarter than
you
appear to be most of the time.” Pagan thrust his rifle over his shoulder and pulled her back until her soft bottom pressed against his thighs. His teeth teased the curves of her ear.

“S-stop that!” Her heart began to skip dizzily.

“Only
you
seem to be immune to my charms, Cinnamon. Unless all this struggling is another charade.”

“It’s no charade! And you bloody well won’t succeed in ordering me about like that monkey!” Fury blinded her for a moment. “They—
they
tried to—” Her breath caught in a gasp.

“You intrigue me vastly, my dear.” Pagan went very still. “Do continue. What did
they
try to do?”

As quickly as the dim memories had surfaced, they were gone, leaving her with nothing but a sense of helpless fury.

“I’m waiting, Cinnamon.”

“I—I can’t remember, damn it!” Her head ached. Her back began to throb anew, and suddenly the porch seemed to pitch.

But she knew her real pain came from a different wound—from something deep and raw and hidden. For one brief instant, she caught a glimpse of that ragged scar and she flinched before the piercing treachery and boundless hatred she saw there.

And then
nothing
.

It was as if a curtain had fallen in her head.

Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. Why couldn’t she
remember?

“Tell me, Cinnamon,” Pagan growled.
“All
of it. And make it the truth this time.”

“I—I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“No! It’s—it’s not like that at all!”

“Then tell me how it is. Talk to me.
Make
me understand, damn it.” He caught her wrists and spun her about, onyx eyes burning into the pallor of her face. “Prove to me that you’re telling the truth.”

Her teal eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I
can’t,
don’t you see? I don’t know
how
or why it happens. One minute there’s nothing and the next—” Her lips tensed. “The next minute I just
know.
Oh, I’m well aware that you don’t believe me, but—”

Pagan’s face hardened. “You’re right,
Angrezi,
I don’t believe you. The monkey could come up with a better story than that.”

She glared back at him. “I can only tell you how it feels—as if I’d suddenly become a stranger. No, as if I’d suddenly become
someone.
For the rest of the time I am nothing and no one. There’s only a vast dark hole where all the warm, solid memories ought to be.”

She stopped, her throat raw. Suddenly the wooden porch seemed to sway. She was engulfed in a flood of heat, noise, and light.

Her hands shot out, searching for support. They met muscle, hard male muscle.

“What is it?”

“It won’t—” Her fingers splayed open helplessly. She felt her stomach lurch. “Make the wretched porch stop rocking, can’t you? Otherwise, I’m going to be most dreadfully unwell on anything within three feet of me.”

Smothering a curse, Pagan swept her up into his arms and pounded across the wooden porch. Kicking open the door with his boot, he stalked down the long corridor to his room.

Immediately, blessed coolness descended.

Mita appeared behind them.

“Get me some brandy, Mita,” he ordered harshly. “Bring it to my room.”

“I will not,” the woman in his arms protested weakly. “I absolutely refuse to drink any such thing.” Her stomach heaved at the mere thought. She closed her eyes, as the vertigo grew, sweeping her headlong into waves of pain.

The room was still spinning when she felt softness cushion her back. Something cool touched her reluctant lips, burning down to her stomach. She coughed wildly. “No, s-stop! Don’t make me.”

“Hush, woman. There’s just enough here to renew your strength, but certainly not enough to make you drunk.”

Her fingers shoved feverishly at his chest. “I
won’t—”

It was no use. Another mouthful of liquid fire spilled between her opened lips, as he caught her mid-sentence.

“D-damn—you, Pagan!”

“Swear all you like, Cinnamon, but you’ll drink every drop.” The voice at her ear hardened. “Unless you want me to leave you here alone when I depart for Windhaven tomorrow.”

A shiver flashed through her, but still she continued to fight him, half delirious now.

“Cut line,
Angrezi.
Right now you’ve got too many clothes and too little sense. I mean to do something about both problems.”

Dimly she felt the tight layers of cloth fall from her neck and shoulders. Good, so good to feel cool air on her fevered skin…

Dimly she realized she had spoken aloud.

“I’m delighted you agree,” Pagan murmured, working at the hooks running down the front of her corset, all the time damning the Englishwoman for her stubbornness. “Now, turn over while I take this bloody thing off.”

When she ignored his order, he pushed her impatiently onto her side and swept away the offending undergarment, silently vowing to dispose of the thing as soon as he could.

Muttering a curse, Pagan hurled the confining corset across the room, where it struck the wall, then fell to the floor with a muffled hiss.

Her outer petticoats were the next to go. By now she was too weak to stop him, able only to turn her head restlessly, her fingers clutching at the white sheets.

“L-leave me a-lone,” she rasped.

Pagan scowled, trying to tear his eyes from the ivory sweep of her slim thighs. From the proud, coral-tipped curves above.

An arrow of flame swept through him. He tried to quell the ache at his thighs—and failed lamentably. “I want you to rest, woman. I’ve got eight hundred acres of green gold that need tending, just like the difficult children they are. And when I leave tomorrow you’re bloody well going with me.”

Her slim hands quivered on the thin coverlet. “I don’t want to,” she rasped, defiant to the very edge of consciousness. “And I
will
not…”

Ah, but she was a fighter, this one, Pagan thought. Something told him she had done too much losing in her life, that she had had to fight for herself this way far too often.

Deep inside him, something twisted and stirred to life. It was a silent thing, dim and wholly unfamiliar, composed of sweetness and dangerous longing…

For things the slate-eyed Englishman knew he could never have.

For such emotions were no more real than the dust devils that raged down from the Hindu Kush or the mirages that shimmered over the sunbaked sands of Rajasthan.

No more substantial than the gossamer mists that wreathed Windhaven’s green hills each dawn, Pagan told himself bitterly.

When she finally slipped into sleep, he was still there, his face an unreadable mask as he sat beside her. It hurt to sit so close and not touch her, of course.

But to leave would have hurt him far more.

The sun hung aflame, molten gold over green treetops. Pagan pounded up the steps to the bungalow, tired but well pleased with the state of preparations for the morrow’s journey.

At the front door he was met by muffled thumps and shrill simian cries. What deviltry was Magic up to now?

The sounds led to the door of his own room—or to the room that
had
been his, until his uninvited guest arrived. He stopped on the threshold, black eyes glittering, one dark brow quirked.

Had he not been so surprised, he would probably have begun to laugh. As it was, he could only stare in raw disbelief at the scene unfolding before him.

Clad in his own silk dressing gown—and very little else, he judged—his beautiful visitor was fighting a losing battle with the little langur monkey for possession of a ruffled, half-unlaced corset.

Pagan’s lips twitched. Gone was the exquisite lady, the haughty beauty. Instead he saw before him a wild temptress with golden hair spilling free over a gossamer garment that cupped every proud curve of her body. Her cheeks were streaked with red and her teal eyes were snapping.

And she was breathtakingly beautiful.

“Give that back, you wretched creature!” The woman wrapped her hands tighter around one of the long laces and tugged furiously, while Magic erupted in a shrill torrent of protest. “You can’t have it, do you hear? What would you do with a corset anyway, you silly thing? Wear it on your head? Now stop this second—ohhhh!”

With a sharp
ping
the lace tore in half beneath the strain of their struggles. The Englishwoman went flying in a heap onto the wooden floor, her silken robe sweeping up to reveal golden skin from ankle to thigh.

Magic, meanwhile, jumped up and down in triumph, chattering shrilly and clutching the precious corset to her furry chest like spoils of war.

Pagan made a low, strangled noise at the back of his throat, and that was his undoing.

The woman scrambled to her feet. Jerking the robe tight to her slim body, she advanced upon him. “Get out! Get out, both of you! I’m sick of this place, do you hear? Sick of having no clothes! Sick of being hot and sticky! Sick of being dinner to every mosquito within a hundred miles! Most of all I’m sick of
you!”

Pagan was having trouble breathing. Her beauty was overpowering, wild and reckless as it was now. And he discovered she was infinitely more seductive this way than when she was wrapped up in all those stiff, choking layers of cloth and propriety.

“Hurts to come in second, doesn’t it, Cinnamon? Especially to a monkey.”

“Get out! Get out before I throw something and mar those perfect features, you detestable cur!”

Magic tilted her head at this interchange, studying first Pagan and then the Englishwoman in turn. The monkey’s lips stretched wide to reveal shining white teeth as she hissed thoughtfully.

The next minute she darted over the floor, swept up the lace-trimmed drawers from beside the bed, and tied them over her head like a bonnet.

Pagan burst into laughter. The sound made his captive’s face more furious.

“Stop, you devilish creature!” The woman chased the little langur toward the door, grabbing vainly for her white undergarments. “I’ve lost my freedom and my memory, but I’m not about to lose those clothes. They’re the only ones I have!”

Pagan settled back to watch. “Very fetching, Magic. I compliment you on your taste in hats.”

His visitor scowled at him. “Dolt! Degenerate knave!”

Pagan merely shook his head chidingly and held out a hand to Magic, who skittered across the room, drawers still tied overhead, and jumped up into his arms. With a little sigh, the monkey burrowed into her master’s arms and rubbed her head against his chest.

Smiling broadly, Pagan stroked Magic’s head and slipped her a peanut, which she attacked with noisy relish.

“Disgusting! You are both quite mad! Very well, take the things, since the animal appears to want them so badly. Only leave me here in peace!”

“That bad, is it?” Pagan asked softly, his eyes narrowing. “Which is it, the mosquitoes or the heat?”

The woman before him muttered something beneath her breath and twisted forward to slap a mosquito on her leg. What she said next sounded suspiciously like a curse.
“Both,
if you must know. But I shall survive, Mr. Pagan, you may be certain of that! First I mean to find out how I was brought here. And why,” she added, crushing another mosquito at its meal.

Pagan offered her an innocent smile. “Would you like to see where I found you?”

Her scratching slowed. “On the beach?”

Pagan nodded, stroking Magic’s furry head while he watched an array of conflicting emotions flash across his captive’s face. Her eyes really
did
change color with each emotion, first teal, then turning to turquoise and copen blue.

“Was there—did you see any—”

“Clues to your identity? Nothing. No wreckage, no signs of struggle, no footprints. No signs of a boat, either. I looked very carefully, Cinnamon, believe me. But there were no clues of any sort.” He offered Magic another peanut. “Whoever brought you here was very thorough in concealing his tracks.”

Nothing.
The thought echoed hollowly through the Englishwoman’s mind. Nothing at all, no past, no clues.

No future, either, judging by the dark determination she saw in Pagan’s eyes.

“You honestly remember nothing?”