The Tiger's Lady (50 page)

The breath squeezed from Barrett’s lungs in an audible whoosh.

Dear lord, the man was huge! And he was growing steadily
more
huge every second.

How was she possibly going to manage this without waking him? Especially when her own blood seemed to flame higher with every passing second. Pulsing heat filled her fingers, causing her to think of dark, forbidden images. How would it feel, what would it be like if he—

Gasping, she struggled to free her hand and to inch back into the corner of the swaying
howdah.
But it was useless.

Pagan murmured sleepily, his aroused member straining against her trembling fingers.

A moment later one eyelid lifted and Barrett was pierced by a black, glittering gaze. “Well, well,” he said softly, his voice thick and potent as rum. “I pass out and the first thing you do is take advantage of me. What sort of adventuress are you,
Angrezi?”

With a furious snort, Barrett jerked away and pressed her body into the corner, as far away from Pagan as possible.

Unfortunately, it was not far enough.

“I—I did no such thing, you—you miscreant! It was you,
you
who—” She sputtered, her cheeks aflame, unable to finish.

Pagan’s lips twisted in a smile and his brow rose, faintly mocking. “I suggest you stop careening about or we’ll both go flying from this
howdah
any second.”

Already the power had returned to that voice and he spoke with the old, familiar note of command. And yet somehow the sound did not provoke Barrett as it had before, only made her smile faintly.

“Quite back to your old insufferable self, I see.”

“Not entirely,” Pagan grated, “but I’m but working on it.” He stirred slightly, then tensed, only then aware of how tightly his hand gripped hers. His fingers loosened, but even then did not draw away. “My head feels like a band of monkeys are camped inside it. And my—shoulder … What—what happened to me?”

“You had a Vedda blade buried in your shoulder and lost a great deal of blood. But it’s clean and the bleeding has stopped.”

“No poison?”

“Apparently not.” Mita had said that Pagan would be dead by now if the blade had been smeared with one of the jungle’s lethal flora.

Pagan passed a hand slowly over his eyes. “I remember—very little.
You
tended to me? Why not Mita?”

Barrett felt heat rise to her cheeks and tossed her hair forward to cover the telltale stain. “Somehow that task fell to me. You were delirious for quite a while, and—”

“And what,
Angrezi?”

“It—it seemed that you would listen to no one else.”

Pagan frowned. “Sounds damned unpleasant. For
both
of us.”

“You do not exactly make a biddable patient, that is certain,” she said stiffly. Did the wretched man take no pains to conceal the fact that he would have preferred Mita’s care?

“Did I say—speak—” He stopped, then cleared his throat. A wariness seemed to grip him.

Cawnpore, Barrett realized instantly. Just as quickly she decided to deny him that information. “Speak? Actually, I couldn’t seem to shut you up. You talked about Windhaven and your precious tea seedlings. And then you talked a great deal of nonsense about how much you hated elephants. Then, as I recall, you ranted on about the corruption of the Kandy court and made rather a great many unrepeatable comments about our own Most Gracious Majesty. Quite uncharitable of you, but entirely in character, of course.”

A muscle flashed at Pagan’s jaw. “You are an astonishing woman.”

Touched beyond reason by his words, Barrett managed a little shrug. “Because I forfeit my sleep to tend to you? Hardly so wonderful. After all, I nearly shot you.”

“So that was
your
cartridge.”

“Lucky for you, the wretched revolver pulls badly to the right.”

“What else did I say?”

Barrett shrugged lightly. “You treated me to all the details of your nefarious dealings with any number of lush and willing females. What a busy little boy you have been, Mr. Pagan.”

His eyes dark, he pulled her closer. “I don’t believe you,
Angrezi.
Not for a minute. But I won’t task you with the lie now. And as for the rest, I’m no boy. One touch will confirm that. As it did when you ran your warm fingers over me.”

Heat licked Barrett’s cheeks as she remembered the feel of Pagan’s rigid sex beneath her hands.
“I?
T-touch
you?
You must be delirious!”

“Never try to lie to me, Cinnamon. You’re as clear as a north country salmon stream in the spring.” He slanted her a wolfish smile. “And as for who was seducing whom, let’s claim equal share of the guilt. I have seen the full force of your passion, remember?” Pagan’s eyes darkened. “Ah, it will be sweet between us,
Angrezi.
It will be hot and hungry and all night long when I take you. And I promise when I’m done, you’ll only want more.”

Furious, Barrett wrenched her foot from beneath his thigh and wedged herself farther into the corner. In the process, she knocked against his bandaged shoulder.

Immediately Pagan’s lips clenched and his face bled white.

“Dear Lord, I’m sorry, Pagan. I didn’t mean to—”

His breath hissed out slowly. “You never do, woman,” he rasped.

“Here. Hold onto me.” Anxiously Barrett reached out to him, her hands trembling.

For a moment he did not move, strange restless shadows playing through his eyes. A shudder ripped through him. A second later his hand covered hers in a painful grip.

Even when he finally sank back into a restless sleep, Pagan’s fingers remained locked to hers.

In sleep his face was strangely boy-like, the scar on his cheekbone making him look vulnerable rather than dangerous. Barrett found herself wondering what he had looked like, acted like, before Cawnpore.

Suddenly she yearned to make him look that way again, carefree and young.

They camped that night on the far side of a churning river in a little valley fringed by sandalwood and eucalyptus. They would be safe here, Nihal told her, for he had scouted the area and seen no more signs of Vedda pursuit.

During their climb, the air had grown steadily cooler and now, with the coming of night, cold winds wrapped them in blue, clinging mists. Barrett spent an hour in a folding chair beside Pagan’s cot, berating him when he thrashed about, scolding him into drinking Mita’s herbal brews, and swabbing him dry when the fevers returned.

Overhead the stars blazed like scattered diamonds in the crisp, cool mountain air, while eucalyptus smoke curled up from a crackling campfire. After the oppressive heat of the jungle, it seemed a different world, a world fresh and newborn, all its pleasures inexpressibly precious.

Dimly Barrett sensed that up here in the high country she, too, was changing. With every step she came closer into harmony with this beautiful, alien land. Closer too, to the iron-willed, brooding man who lay sleeping beside her.

In a strange way she found herself wishing they could go on this way forever, caught between two worlds, eternal travelers in a landscape of dreams, free from the strictures of East and West.

For here in the green foothills they were not enemies, but simply two desperate people trying to survive.

Here they were simply man and woman.

But Barrett knew her dream was not to be. Though stripped of her memory, some instinct warned that nothing could ever be simple between the two of them.

And as it happened the lesson was brought home to her far sooner than she could have imagined.

Two days later, as dawn broke over the camp in a fury of crimson, Nihal and Mita were arguing loudly.

“Humph! I am expecting such nonsense from a woman. But of course the Tiger will be walking in a week!”

Mita glared back at him. “Twice that at least. Possibly he will be needing three weeks. As you will soon be seeing for yourself, man with the heart of a jackal!”

As it happened, both were wrong.

Only a few minutes later, Barrett awoke to see a grim-faced Pagan standing clad in boots and breeches before his cot. He’d dispensed with his eve patch again. Stunned, she watched him shove his arm into the trailing sleeve of his shirt.

She rubbed her eyes, certain it must be a dream. “What—what in the name of heaven are you about?”

Pagan merely scowled and turned away, muttering an oath when the bandage at his shoulder wedged in the sleeve.

Barrett watched in raw disbelief. “Are you
mad
? Mita and I did what we could for you, but that wound will never heal if you subject it to such strain.”

Pagan simply shrugged, wrenching awkwardly at the dangling sleeve. Barrett thought she heard him mutter something about bloody, wretched Western clothes, but she couldn’t be certain. “Damn it, Pagan, are you listening to me?”

The sleeve did not budge. Abruptly Pagan tore his hand free and slung the garment onto the ground. “Oh, I heard you perfectly,
Angrezi,
and you might even be right for once. But I’ll be damned if I’ll languish about on that elephant forever. Not when there are a thousand things crying out to be done—”

“Name one.”

“Very well, there is game to be caught. There is today’s trail to be scouted. The rifles must be cleaned and rechecked and—”

“All of which Nihal and the others have managed to do quite nicely so far without any assistance from you.”

Storm-dark, Pagan’s eyes flashed to her face. Without a word the planter strode to his chest and wrenched out another shirt. His lips clenched, he maneuvered his arm into the sleeve, only to find the thick wad of gauze blocking him once more.

He said something low and raw in Hindi, his tone leaving Barrett no doubt that it was a curse. A second shirt hit the ground, its bright folds glistening against the sienna soil.

Sweeping away the last remnants of sleep, Barrett pushed to her feet and bent to pick up the offending garment. “A vastly impressive show of temper, Mr. Pagan. And exactly the performance I would expect of a petulant schoolboy.”

“Leave it,
Angrezi,”
Pagan warned darkly. He had been up the whole night, unable to sleep, his wound hot and throbbing. He could recount the exact placement of every stitch and knot—and right now each one of them was screaming.

But even worse was the throbbing at his groin, where his manhood strained in hot, unrelieved arousal. And Pagan knew that every minute spent in Barrett’s presence, every second of grinding contact with her in that damned
howdah
would only make his torment worse.

No, by heaven, he’d not spend another second there, brushing against her, inundated in her scent.

Knowing all the time that he could not have her.

He would walk out like a man or perish by the trail. Either would be a death with honor—and either would be preferable to the hell he was enduring now.

“Don’t—don’t do this, Pagan.” Suddenly there was a note of fear beneath the anger in Barrett’s voice.

In stony silence the planter continued his awkward maneuvering.

“Then tell me why, at least. Why must you push yourself this way?”

At that Pagan let the sleeve fall. When he finally turned, his face was a bronze mask, onyx eyes burning with deep, nameless fires. “Why? Do you really want to know?”

Barrett nodded mutely.

“I’ll tell you why,
Angrezi.
Just look out there. Do you see that glint of silver just beyond the eucalyptus trees?” Bronze and ridged with muscle, his left arm rose, gesturing down the slope. “See it?”

“I—I see it.”

“Go down there right now, and you’ll see a troupe of langur monkeys playing in the shallows. Slightly farther downstream you’ll see the sambhur bucks, poised for a wary dash to the water. Behind them the thickets will be shaking with a thousand kinds of movement, hiding a few poisonous kraits, a sloth bear, and possibly even a leopard or two. In wave after wave they come and go, remorseless and unending while overhead glides the vulture, silent and patient companion, the black shadow who feeds on each one. For that is the way of the jungle,
Angrezi:
flesh feeding on flesh, life given and crushed out in an instant. One moment of carelessness—that’s all it takes, remember that. Remember, too, that here there’s no room for error or sympathy. In this green, teeming world only the very strong or the very cunning survive, and they do that by feeding off whatever creature is struggling to survive beside them. The jungle is faceless and entirely without mercy, Cinnamon; anyone who survives it must be just the same.”