The Tiger's Lady (75 page)

“She is indeed.” Pagan’s lips curved as he waved back at his son. Suddenly one dark brow rose. “And I seem to recall that you’ve spent a great deal of time out there in that experimenting shed of hers. Trying to seduce my wife, are you, blackguard?”

“I would have. Oh, most certainly I would have, had I met her sooner,” the rajah said matter-of-factly.

Pagan shot a look at the Junoesque redhead who had just strolled out onto the terrace. Helene was looking magnificent as usual, with her rich curves draped in sapphire velvet and an impertinent ostrich plume curving above her brow. “I think you may have your hands full already.”

The rajah smiled. “You might be right, my brother.” With calm majesty the Indian grandee moved away and caught Helene’s hand, which he raised for a lingering kiss.

Helene smiled, whispering something in his ear. His fingers tightened and then he nodded.

Moments later they turned and strolled casually over the terrace, but Pagan noted that they made their way toward the back stairway, which led to their rooms in the south wing.

The viscount smiled and shook his head. How strange life was and how very unpredictable. Truly, he was only just coming to understand how little he understood people—and himself.

And then Pagan heard the voice he’d been waiting for, the quiet laugh, the soft swish of silk.

He turned.

His breath caught and his heart lurched, the way it always did when he looked at her.

She was even more beautiful than she had been at twenty, her hair piled in loose curls atop her head, her glorious eyes alight with teal fires.

Without a word she slid her hands around his neck and pulled his face down for a kiss. The next moment Pagan forgot philosophy and deep ruminations, forgot his past, forgot everything but how much he wanted her.

Her lips opened to his, soft and sweet with the taste of spring strawberries.

Pagan groaned and crushed her against him, wishing that everyone were gone so that he might drag her down right there and bury himself deep inside her sleek, yielding sweetness.

A soft sound somewhere between a moan and a ragged laugh escaped Barrett’s lips. “Wretched man, what you do to me!” She eased back, studying his face with radiant eyes while she tugged ineffectually at an errant curl. A tide of crimson stained her cheeks. “We
do
have guests, if you’ll recall.”

“Yes, of course, the servants’ children who are being dandled on my father’s knee along with the twins. I marvel at how you managed it,
Angrezi.
The whole thing is still quite beyond fathoming.”

“He is really a dear, you know, once he unbends,” his wife confided softly.

“But no one except
you
can seem to accomplish that.”

“Julian can.”

They looked up together, watching the dark-haired boy who caught the duke’s gnarled fingers and tugged him off to look at some new discovery in the goldfish pond at the foot of the lawns.

“So he can,” Pagan admitted. “It’s more than I could ever do.” Abruptly his eyes narrowed. “Your grandfather arrives later today, I believe?”

“In good time for dinner, or so he promised. It was kind of you to think of him, my love. He is difficult, I know, and quite distant at times, but it is simply because his mind is too often buried in some experiment or other.”

“He has my sympathies, in that case. I know precisely how it feels to have one’s mind engaged in other speculations,” Pagan said huskily. His gaze wandered to the silken sweep of skin above Barrett’s white bodice.

Her red sash set off the curve of her waist, slim still, even after three children and five years of marriage. And her breasts! Sweet Lord, they were full and excruciatingly outlined, their rose-red crowns faintly shadowed against the white silk.

Pagan’s fingers tightened. He felt the old heat course through him. They had been busy of late.

Far
too
busy, he decided.

“Come here, wife,” he growled, seizing her fingers and pulling her from the terrace.

Without a word he tugged her laughing to the little waterfall he had had constructed in the high woods above the house. Here a lavish garden of lilies, roses, and bougainvillea now framed an isolated glade.

Just like the glade at Windhaven.

Barrett slanted him a measuring look. “There are no tigers about, I trust.”

Pagan’s fingers were already tugging at his waistcoat. “Not a one. Although if young Julian has his way the whole estate will soon become one vast menagerie.”

Barrett smiled. “He
is
terribly stubborn. He must take after his father.” Her teal eyes glinted. “Yes, I make out only one predator in the area.” Her fingers toyed with the top of her husband’s shirt. “A terrible predator. I must remember to be very careful of such creatures, so my grandfather told me.”

The first button sprang free, and then the next.

At that precise moment the ferns near the edge of the waterfall began to shake. A white-haired man with spectacles awry wandered out of the copse, muttering beneath his breath.

“Wind velocity would be a factor. But there is always structural weight and density to consider.”

Gnarled fingers stabbed through his white hair, reducing it to even greater disorder.

Pagan’s eyes took on a pained intensity as Barrett’s hands played over his bare chest.

At the far side of the glade the old man stopped, scratching his head. “Of course kerosene might do it. If the quantity were correct.”

Behind him came a strangled laugh.

He turned, frowning down at the pool. And then his craggy face brightened. “Ah, there you two are. Sorry to arrive a day early—or is it a day late? Ah, well, no matter. I needed to speak to Sefton, you see. I’ve had a new idea and he’s damned sharp about such things—for a layman, of course.”

Suddenly Barrett’s grandfather frowned, studying the two figures by the pool more closely. “Going to have a swim, are you? Beneficial to the lungs and circulation, of course, but don’t overdo it.” He stared at Pagan. “Keep her in line, my boy. Always been too headstrong by half, just like her mother. Another child, that’s what she needs. See to it, won’t you, Deveril?”

And with that majestic pronouncement, Edward Winslow turned and ambled back toward the house. “Now where was I? Oh yes, tempered steel. That would do very well for the joints, I think. And for the balloon itself, we might try oiled twill…”

A moment later he disappeared over the hill, still muttering.

Pagan let out a raw gasp of relief, while Barrett broke into delighted laughter.

“See to it, won’t you, Deveril?” she said crisply, in a perfect imitation of her grandfather.

Her husband’s jaw tensed.

With a growl he caught her close and buried his fingers in her hair, while his other hand molded her soft thighs to his throbbing manhood. “I believe I shall at that! For I’m a very fierce predator, Cinnamon. And I always shall be where you are concerned.” His dark eyes searched her flushed face. “Are you happy, falcon? Truly?”

His wife simply smiled. Her fingers slid down to tease the dark springy hair at his chest.

Pagan’s eyes began to smoke. “We’ll be leaving for Windhaven next week. You won’t regret leaving England?”

Barrett considered her answer carefully. “Possibly not,” she mused. “But you must be careful to keep me properly distracted, my lord.” Her fingers dropped, circling the ridge of one male nipple nearly hidden in a tangle of black hair.

Pagan’s breath caught. “Distraction, is that what you want, wench? Oh, I’ve my own ways of distracting you.” With a growl he caught her up and carried her to the fern-strewn bank, where spray rose in a silver mist and the air hung lush with the perfume of flowers.

Barrett smiled up at him, slowly easing the white folds of silk from her shoulders.

“
Stop
, my soul. Before you kill me
.
” It was a raw growl.

Her head slanted back and she ran her pink tongue delicately over her lower lip. “I’ve left some strawberries there in a bowl in the water. They should be wonderfully cool by now. I rather think I should feed you some, husband.” Her eyes darkened. “With my fingers, of course.”

Her smile was a lesson in seduction itself. “No corset. No chemise nor pantalets. As you can see, I have remembered all those stern injunctions you made in the jungle.”

“So I—I see.” Pagan’s throat was suddenly blocked.

“You look … distressed. Have I forgotten something?” Barrett asked innocently, lying back against the lush grass.

The pressure at Pagan’s groin reached new and savage levels of agony. He bit back a groan as he watched his wife ease free of the white silk, her golden skin opened to his heated gaze.

“Dis…tressed?” To his fury, Pagan found he had to clear his throat to speak. “Oh, I’m indeed distressed. And you’ve forgotten
nothing,
temptress. As well you know!”

Recalling himself with difficulty, he dug into the pocket of his discarded waistcoat and produced a fistful of flashing gems, which he poured over Barrett’s golden skin.

Rubies, emeralds, and sapphires glinted like a rainbow in the sunlight, along with an elegant necklace of pearls cinching one huge, flashing ruby outlined in small, pavéed diamonds.

Barrett’s breath caught. “Deveril, it’s not—”

“No, my love, it’s not the Eye of Shiva. This one is not quite so large, alas, but it is a great deal safer to possess.” Lovingly Pagan clasped the rich stones around his wife’s neck, feasting on the sight of the jewels against her glowing skin.

“But—you
shouldn’t
have! You will need that money when you open those next thousand acres for tea. I distinctly remember telling you not to—”

“Be quiet, termagant,” Pagan whispered. “Be quiet and let me love you.”

Pagan silenced his wife with a hard kiss, tongue to tongue, letting her feel all his need and all his wonder at the joy she had brought into his life.

Knowing that he could never repay her.

Without warning he pulled away, his hands tensed on her slender shoulders. His face grew serious. “And no more of your dynamite experiments. You’ve already destroyed two greenhouses and an iron gazebo. That last explosion threw up dirt barely a foot from where you were standing!”

Barrett studied him beneath tawny eyelashes. “Of course, I shall cease, Tiger
-sahib.”
She smiled up at him, her tone sweetly compliant.

Pagan eyed her suspiciously. “You
will?”

“I shall do all you say, my lord. Behold me the most biddable of wives.”

“What are you and your grandfather up to now, minx?” Pagan asked with a longsuffering sigh.

Barrett smiled secretly as her hands feathered over her husband’s thighs, then sought the buttons at his trousers. “Did I forget to tell you? We are engaged in a new project these days, something far more potent than explosive compounds. This one involves a heat-propelled balloon, which incorporates a steam-driven steering device. You see, Grandfather believes that—”

Pagan’s eyes flashed.
“Enough!
You’ll break your neck with these wild pursuits of yours! Since we arrived here at Broadmoor I’ve tried to—”

“You’ve tried to what?” Barrett’s voice was strangely tense.

“To give you time of your own,
Angrezi.
To restrain myself from living in your pocket. To give you your independence. But that is all at an end! I mean to see you think about other things than airships and explosives for a change!”

“Indeed.” The word was meant to goad him and it did its job well.

Pagan’s voice was a dark growl. “Things vastly more
potent
than explosive oils or heat-propelled balloons.” His eyes smoldering, he tongued aside an emerald and two sapphires, then captured one impudent nipple, which instantly hardened beneath his lips.

By all that was holy, she was more perfect than any jewel, he thought dimly.

“They—they are really quite safe,” Barrett whispered, her breath catching as her husband’s hard fingers glided up her thigh. “And with small propellers the airships should be—could be—quite, er, manageable.”

“Unlike
you,
minx!” Pagan’s fingers teased her other nipple, which promptly budded for him.

A little, choked cry spilled from Barrett’s throat.

Pagan’s eyes flashed, dark with triumph. “No more talk of airships, do you understand? At least not unless I am with you on these mad excursions. Your grandfather hasn’t a scrap of common sense.”

Barrett’s eyes went smoky with passion as she tugged him closer. “Your merest wish is my greatest joy,
Tiger-sahib.”
She brought her hands together in a sign of respect.

But her eyes were gleaming, smoky, blatantly provocative.

Pagan frowned, studying her suspiciously. “Why—”

“Truly, I thought you would never demand more of my time. In fact, I began to grow quite jealous, my lord, and was wondering if your interest in Helene stemmed from something more than friendship.”

“Jealous? Of Helene? I merely meant to give you some time to yourself before we left for Ceylon,
Angrezi.
I grew afraid that you would come to resent—”

Pagan’s voice broke off abruptly as his wife eased one long leg between his thighs. “What are you—”

“‘Trust a cobra before a jackal’,” his wife quoted sweetly. “‘Trust a jackal before a woman. And trust a woman before an
Angrezi.
’ I am guilty on two points, I’m afraid.” Her knee eased deeper between his thighs.

Pagan cleared his throat and tried to sound reproving. “You’ve been talking to Mita again. I
knew
Nihal would be too lenient with her.”

Barrett smiled darkly. “Oh, Mita has been teaching me all manner of fascinating things, my love.” Her fingers eased along the waist of his trousers.

Pagan’s voice grew hoarse. “Such as?”

“Such as how to cook a turtle.” Her fingers slipped lower. “How to drive away leeches.” She inched deeper, seeking his heat. “How to keep a man most deliriously satisfied.”

Dear heaven, she was close, Pagan thought. Agonizingly close…

And then she found him. Her hands cupped his hard, pulsing arousal. Gently, then not so gently.