by Laura Parker
The Hind Div turned his head sharply toward her and opened his eyes. “You are wiser than is to be expected in a female. But why should you wish to impress me with your meager knowledge of state affairs?”
The words were not spoken harshly yet his judgment of her inferiority shamed her. She looked away, afraid that he would see that vulnerability in her gaze. “In a country where loyalties are as fluid as lamp oil the weak constantly shift allegiance with the changing fortunes of the strong.”
“My loyalties are to myself alone, ayah.”
A second refusal. “And yet it is known that the Hind Div may be persuaded to lend his talents to a cause by a shower of rupees.”
“I would prefer a deluge of lakh.” His expression was skeptical. “Have you the capacity to produce such a downpour?”
“I have but a minor skill,” she said carefully. She certainly did not have the capacity to produce the sultan’s ransom he suggested. One lakh was worth one hundred thousand rupees! If only she had not bought frankincense in the market she might make a better showing. Yet, he seemed to value cleverness.
She pulled out the last of her coins and tossed them in the air saying, “Does not a sprinkling of dew refresh the garden better than the flood of a monsoon?”
The meager shower of gold that fell upon him provoked a single harsh bark of laughter. “Bahia, you sadly underestimate my indifference to your situation. Be gone. I am weary of the game.”
Leaning back, he braced the arch of his left thumb and forefinger across his brow and rubbed hard at his temple, betraying a trace of weariness. It was the first unguarded gesture he had made, she realized. Perhaps he had not been feigning sleep. This sense of his mood surprised her. Yet she knew without a doubt that something weighed greatly upon his mind. Perhaps in that vulnerability lay a way to gain his help.
She moved quickly to the brazier near the foot of the bed. Using the tongs left there for that purpose, she picked out three glowing coals and transferred them onto a copper dish nearby. Taking two frankincense beads from her pocket she dropped them onto the coals. Almost at once a heady woodsy aroma arose in a thin plume of smoke. Fanning it with a palm frond, she carried the dish to the head of the bed and placed it on the floor near him. “I offer for your pleasure a gift of the finest incense to be had at any price. Breathe deeply, burra sahib.”
He did not move or speak.
Undeterred, she spied on a low table a long-necked wine pitcher inlaid with semi-precious stones. Beside it stood two matching goblets. She had refused his hospitality but that did not mean she could not offer it back to him. She poured a generous portion of wine and brought it to his bedside.
“Will you not at least accept this small offering as a token of good faith?”
“Good faith too often turns bad.” He sat up with a swiftness that was startling and grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the goblet. “Are you the assassin sent to poison me?”
“I am no assassin!” She winced as his fingers bit into her wrist. “You are hurting me.”
“I shall do more than that if you lie.” The markings on his face seemed to alter with his anger, changing him into a preternatural predator.
“I do not lie.”
“Then drink from the cup.” Releasing her, he reached up and snatched away her veil.
Japonica looked down, not wanting to see the disappointment she knew would come into his eyes when he realized how plain she was.
He did not seem to notice. “Drink, bahia, or you will not like what happens next.”
She steadied the goblet in her shaking hands and took a great gulp of the wine. She did not expect it would be so highly spiced, and choked. Sputtering and gasping, she tried to catch her breath as she passed it to him.
But he did not take it. He lifted the goblet by its base and pushed it toward her mouth. “Again,” he ordered.
Though her throat and eyes burned she took another small sip.
When she would again have lowered the cup he took it from her and grasped her by the back of the neck. “Drink!” he commanded and held it to her lips.
When she tried to sip slowly, he forced her head back and poured it into her until she had swallowed most of its contents. Only when she was gasping for breath with tears streaming down her face did he relent.
“Now then, I will drink.” Smiling, he took the cup and turned it up, draining it completely before tossing it away.
The inordinate sound it made as it bounced on the marble floor reminded Japonica with renewed trepidation of just how isolated they were.
He seemed to read her thoughts because he was smiling again. That wicked smile cut into the last of her courage like the sharp edge of a scimitar. “Now then, bahia, what did you truly come here for?” She held her breath as he reached up to touch her face, skimming a finger lightly over her lips. “Or shall I tell you?”
She could not look away from his golden gaze, brilliant with an emotion as old as sin. Yet she did not believe she provoked his lust. Now that her veil was gone he knew she was no beauty.
Something altered in his expression. He watched her with the same intensity yet in it was now a hint of detachment. All at once she understood. His interest lay in gauging the affect he was having on her.
A flush of anger made her tremble. He was mocking her, toying with her again. And this time he had chosen her most vulnerable spot, her confidence as a woman. Did he think her vain as well as foolish? She knew what men saw when they looked at her. But oh, for an instant, she wished she were a match for the lie in his eyes!
She pushed away the hand he rested on her cheek. “You do not frighten me,” she said in a voice thickened by wine and resentment.
He took her by the shoulders and drew her in slowly until his face was only an inch from hers. “Say … not… yet.”
Sensation quaked along every one of her nerve ending as his lips parted over hers, offering her first the heat of his breath and then the shocking length of his tongue. She gasped and tried to pull away but his arms were suddenly around her, holding her fast. She went still. Perhaps he wanted her to struggle, to plead with him, to beg for her life. If that were his intention, he would be disappointed.
The torment of his kiss lasted only a few seconds more before he lifted his head. “Do I frighten you yet, bahia?”
She merely glared at him unwilling to admit the “yes” that her heart proclaimed in its rapid pounding. Cast away her courage because of a kiss? Never!
Something new entered his gaze, a calculating intelligence that ruled even the wild look in his eyes. “Pass the night with me. Relieve me of the torment that plagues me and perhaps I will aid you.”
A surge of heat from within stung her cheeks and put a quiver in her voice. “A man of genuine persuasion would not need to bargain for an unwilling lady’s favors.”
His smile was a tricky thing. “How little you know of men.”
His hands found and cupped her face and then he sank his teeth into her lower lip, startling another gasp out of her. Given entrance, his tongue slipped between her lips and plied her mouth with a gentle in and out motion. This time she tasted in his kiss the spice of cloves, tang of wine, and it seemed something of the mysterious essence of the man himself.
Let him have his way! a heretofore unacknowledged part of her whispered. Learn what it means to be desired!
Wherever had that thought come from? She possessed twenty years of modest living to go against the strange sensations uncurling inside her.
He is a seducer! The conventional part of her warned. You will live to regret it!
In answer to her struggling thoughts a dizzying spiral of longing thrust up suddenly from the depths of her being. She felt a tear splash her cheek and was astonished. What was this unbearably, frighteningly sweet sensation provoked by his kiss? More of the Hind Div’s magic?
“Do you like it, bahia?” The amusement in his voice came to her from afar. She was not a woman
to set a man aflame. Yet this man had done so to her with only his lips. If he mocked her, she no longer cared. “Yes!”
He lay back and drew her onto the bed beside him. She did not think of resistance. Instead, she reached up and touched his cheek, feeling the hard ridge of his jaw beneath the bristle of shaven beard. He was no metaphysical being but wholly man. And that was more than enough. She slid her other hand up behind his neck to bring him closer. She needed him to be closer—much closer!
He followed her invitation, adding and elaborating on the kisses that had come before. And with each heartbeat her sense of touch became more achingly acute. She found the subtle variations of pressure and tastes of his lips enthralling. The fine weave of his silk abe became thick as burlap beneath her fingertips. From its folds rose the heady perfume of a Persian garden: orange blossom, jasmine, and carnation as well as the bolder essences of amber and musk. The fragrances seemed to take on colors that spiraled in and about them like an aurora. Through the thick delicious tension rising in her, she realized too late that his hands were removing the veil from her hair.
“Red hair!” she heard him say in astonishment. His fingers plowed through her curls, lifting and spreading them on the pillow beneath her head. An exultant chuckle rumbled from his chest onto hers as he rose up over her to whisper, “You are the rarest of harem beauties, bahia.”
He could not be talking to her. She, a beauty? She tried to meet and hold his stare but her eyes would not focus. “I—I feel…”
Even as his features blurred she saw his smile change. “You were wiser when you were suspicious, sweet one. It is only the effects of the potion in the wine.”
She saw his lips moving but his words no longer made sense. Caught up in the wonder of the feelings coursing through her she could only gaze in awe at the creature poised above her. So many questions half-formed in her mind only to slip away….
She had never embraced a man before, never felt the heat of a man’s body against her skin. That heat warmed her and soothed her yet made her restless for things she had no words or experience to give a name. It was all too bright, too feverish, too much!
“Oh please, help me!” she cried out and again reached for him.
“Yes. I will help you, bahia.” He sounded so certain of what she needed and so pleased that she had asked it of him.
He rolled her over on her back and slid the weight of his body over hers. His powerful hands glided down then up over her, lifting her robes. “Oh yes, I will help you and me to happiness.”
She was drifting on a melody. The music, a forlorn tune played on a flute and accompanied by the complex tempo of a drum enfolded her, moved inside her, then carried her along in a rhythm all its own. The beat changed, the drumming faster and stronger as if she were being chased by it.
Dizzy, impatient, curious and frantic, she tried to keep the pace, matching the undulations of her body to the insistent urge of the rhythm … until she was spinning like a dervish out of control, complete in the madness of the moment.
The Milky Way traced a pale smudge through the midnight sky. From a distance the sound of singing carried on the breeze with a melancholy sweetness as exotic as it was plaintive. Desert blooms laced the air with heady perfume. But the beauty of the night was lost on the Hind Div. His mind was afire with thoughts untouched by his half-drugged state.
A virgin!
He had not expected that.
He had been awaiting an assassin.
For weeks carrion birds had been circling, banded together in their fear that he knew too much and might be captured by the English, the French or the Afghans and tortured to tell all that he knew. There was nowhere to turn. No ally to trust. Several attempts were made on his life before he shut himself up in his house three days earlier. Yet there were worse ways to die. Better, for instance, to die quickly at the hands of an assassin than ignobly on the rack or in boiling oil.
Fitting, too, that he should then choose the moment to allow the assassin in. He had issued an invitation the day before. Tonight he would be at home to all visitors.
It was to be the last night of his life. He had prepared for it carefully, bathed and dressed, and painted his face for the occasion. A few puffs of opium-laced tobacco in his huqqah had taken the edge off his eagerness for the matter to be over. When a stranger finally appeared at his door he was almost relieved. It seemed fitting his life would be given up at the hands of a woman.
So young, so innocent seeming, he had thought when she first spoke to him. How deadly she would prove to a man who had any ounce of goodness in him. But he was not a good man and so had prepared a surprise of his own for his guest. For he had discovered that life, even when freely offered up, is hard to give away. He would die, but not before he had taken his last pleasure with her.
Many who sought his favor sent their mistresses or harem slaves to the Hind Div, believing that a feminine plea would more easily gain his sympathy. He learned after taking a knife in the shoulder from a houri who came to do her master’s bidding that women could be as treacherous as their brethren. Oh, he continued to bed those who offered themselves, but only after he had defanged them with drugged wine. Some were quite skilled. Others played reluctant. Afterwards, there was always a smile of triumph. Even if they went away with other hopes unmet they could boast that they had lain with the legend known as the Hind Div.
Except this one. She had stared up at him afterwards with the teary confusion of one who did not understand what had occurred.
A virgin!
If only she had not reached for him a second time, begging him to ease the passions he aroused in her, he might have been more wary. But he had been heedless of doubt as she so recklessly embraced him, so certain that she was as practiced as he in the erotic arts. The barrier was broken before he understood its significance. She had not presented herself as a seductress. Now he knew why.
“Sobhanallah!” Who would send a true innocent into the lair of the Hind Div?
That maddening thought had sent him roaring out of his bed as soon as the deed was done to find the note she had tried to give him earlier. Instead of the triumphant taunt he’d expected from an enemy, it was addressed to the man he had once been. He had to read it twice before the full import made itself clear to his drugged senses.
Dear Boy,
I have found for you a bride! Wondrous creature! She is that rarest of women: resourceful, levelheaded, and with a true loving heart I send her to you for your approval. And then I shall borrow her back for a time. No doubt you’ve made an impression upon her to last a lifetime.
Until you are ready, she will be in my care.
But don’t make her wait too long, my proud young cock. I would not like to think of her shackled to a less deserving man.
George Abbott
A bride!
He cursed again in astonishment! For such innocence there was no less-deserving man than he.
He had rushed back to the bed to ply her with questions. Though she appeared to be sleeping she answered readily enough. In fact she had reached for him again, tried to kiss him. No surprise, in that the potion in the wine was an aphrodisiac, which was why he had willingly drunk a portion. The answers he received to his questions dampened what was left of his lust and deepened his self-disgust.
Miss Japonica Fortnom! An English merchant’s daughter.
He knew the name. Had known her father, slightly, through his dealings with The East India Company.
So then, it was true. She was no assassin. He had seduced a complete innocent!
Below him a quarrel began, male voices raised in belligerence. The sounds grew louder as they spilled into the street below. Sounds of a scuffle followed, then a cry of triumph and laughter. After a minute, the men moved on and silence again fell upon the night.
An emotion he did not at first recognize stabbed him. Regret. It was an emotion he could ill afford. Not after the life he had led. R
ecanting one’s sins at the hour of one’s death seemed a cowardly act. He realized that he was no longer a gentleman or even, he sometimes suspected, wholly human. He felt a thousand years older than that idealistic young lieutenant who had come to Persia ten years earlier to seek his fortune. No, he could not do the honorable thing.
Men such as I, who see how the grains in their hourglass dwindle, will always seize the moment. To my everlasting glory or shame, I am such a man. He had written those words as part of his last will and testament before he left his post in Calcutta.
So then he would remain true to his nature … until the assassin found him. He had not forgotten that if she were not the one, another awaited for him this night. The last grains in his hourglass dwindled, indeed.
He did not consider the feelings of the young woman in his bed as he turned back to the room and allowed himself no thoughts at all as he moved toward her on a silent tread, wanting only to savor the moments strung between his first despicable act and the next.
She lay as he left her on her back. Her face held the blurred softness of one in the embrace of sweet dreams. She was no beauty but there was charm in her snub nose and enough sweetness in her generous mouth to shame the stingy kisses of many greater beauties.
Such sweetness! He ached with the need to love her again.
He bent and kissed her. Her lips softened under his but as he brushed a caress over one breast she suddenly shied away. Even in sleep, it was her nature to resist what she would certainly have refused had she had her full senses. A better man would have relented.
He was not a good man! He was the Hind Div. He showed no mercy. Took what he wanted. Helped no one but himself. And so then he would help himself to what he had never before had and would never have again.
He made love to her slowly and completely. The fierce need gripped him to stretch out each moment to its fullest, to hold her and pleasure her, even though the look in her dazed eyes was more wonder than recognition. But she did respond. He found the wanton beneath the innocence, turned her sobs to cries of pleasure, until together they tasted paradise.