The Golden Leopard

by Lynn Kerstan

  Table of Contents

  She knew she should resist him but she couldn’t…

  The Novels of Lynn Kerstan

  The Golden Leopard

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  About the Author

  She knew she should resist him but she couldn’t…

  “Look down, Jessica. Watch my hand.” His fingers mesmerized her. She couldn’t answer. She could only feel.

  It was so overwhelming that in the aftermath, she felt herself falling into unwanted sleep. Distantly she felt him lift her and cross to the bed. She fought the darkness closing over her. It was unfair to deny him. And however great the pleasure she had just experienced, it was nothing compared to being joined with him in the most intimate embrace of all.

  “Please,” she whispered when he seemed about to let her go.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes. Give me this. I want this.”

  “I am your slave, my princess,” he said. “I will give you everything I have.”

  Praise for The Golden Leopard

  “. . . a great adventure with sharp, witty dialogue. The intrigue and suspense keep you on the edge while the love sizzles.”

  —Rendezvous

  “The Golden Leopard is an exotic, absolutely riveting tale of suspense, adventure, and a love too strong to be denied…. Enthralling from the first page to the last, The Golden Leopard is a keeper!”

  —Romance Fiction Forum

  The Novels of Lynn Kerstan

  A Regency Holiday

  The Golden Leopard

  Coming Soon From Bell Bridge Books

  Heart Of The Tiger

  The Silver Lion

  The Golden Leopard

  by

  Lynn Kerstan

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-154-8

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-139-5

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2002 by Lynn Kerstan

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  A hardcover edition of this book was published by Penguin/Onyx in 2002

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo credits:

  Man’s face (manipulated) © Konradbak | Dreamstime.com

  Clothing (manipulated) © razzdazzstock | Dreamstime.com

  Leopard © Juliasha | Dreamstime.com

  :Mlg:01:

  Dedication

  In memory of Dorothy, Lady Dunnett (1923-2001), and for the readers who love and admire her extraordinary books.

  She made the whole world to hang in the air.

  Prologue

  India, 1821

  There was nothing like the prospect of dying half a world away to make an Englishman long for home.

  Hugo, Lord Duran, had been given several months to reflect on his homeland, the one where he’d spent a grand total of eleven weeks of his life, before they came for him—two bearded, turbaned, cold-eyed men forced to bend double when they entered his cramped cell. They dragged him into the narrow passageway and hauled him to his feet.

  While a third fellow clamped shackles around his ankles and wrists, Duran focused his attention on the harrowing wail that resonated along the corridor. It had persisted day and night, muffled by the thick walls of his cell, as if the ghosts of the damned stalked the prison. Now he understood what he had been hearing. It was the sound of men gone mad.

  Had he howled as well? He didn’t like to think so, but he might have done. Except for marking each day by scratching a line on the moldy stone wall, he had wrenched his thoughts to the past and kept them there, reliving what little was worth recalling of his aimless, dissolute existence.

  Nearly always, he found solace, and even a bit of amusement, remembering Jessie.

  The first time she floated into his cell, more imperious and seductive than ever, she had startled him. After all this time, why the devil would Lady Jessica Carville come back to haunt him? Theirs had been an insignificant little dalliance, one of . . . well, he’d long since lost count of his dalliances. He should have forgotten her by now.

  A sharp pain at his wrists. He looked down and saw blood. In this humidity, everything made of metal rusted practically overnight, and the nizam’s flunkies were having trouble securing his manacles.

  Better to keep thinking about Jessie. That hurt as well, to be sure, but in a different way. He wasn’t sorry to have her with him again. Never mind the trouble he’d taken to exorcize her after returning to India, or the bothersome way she kept popping into his thoughts just when he became certain he was finally shed of her. It had required a year—very well, two or three years—but eventually she’d left him alone.

  Until he needed her. Until there was nothing for him but hunger and darkness and regret. From the other side of the world she came to him, all but alive and scrunched up next to him when he was awake, not touching him, but there. When he slept, he dreamed about her.

  She had been beside him when he heard voices in the passageway and pressed his ear to the door, trying to ferret out the reason he’d been snatched from his horse and tossed into a small, black hole. At the time, no one had seen fit to explain, and when he’d made a fuss about it, they’d beaten him senseless. But it was important that he find out. India could swallow you up if you weren’t careful, and besides, it wasn’t in his nature to give up without a fight.

  Eventually he learned his fate from two guards who paused outside his cell to discuss its occupant. It seemed that the foreign devil, at a time being calculated by the court astrologers, was to be executed. And so far as he could tell, it was for the unpardonable crime of being an Englishman.

  A few other snippets of information had come his way, none of any discernible consequence. But he had committed everything he heard to memory and spent all his rational hours playing with the words and phrases, arranging and rearranging them like the pieces of a puzzle. Information, he knew from a lifetime of living on his wits, was the gambler’s edge.

  He had been in tight spots before. Always there came a moment when enterp
rise and intuition made all the difference, and when that moment came, he meant to be ready.

  The shackles were finally locked into place. A rough hand shoved at his back, nearly knocking him over. He caught his balance and put one bare foot in front of the other, swearing under his breath with each wobbly step. How long since he’d eaten? Two days? Three? Damn. This was no time to collapse in a heap.

  Dizziness washed over him as the little procession came to a heavy iron door. One of the guards unlocked it and pushed it open, and the sudden blast of sunlight and summer heat nearly sent Duran to his knees. Someone grabbed his arm and shoved him through the door.

  He stumbled into a bleak courtyard filled with silent men who had come, he supposed, to watch the execution. Sunbaked bricks scorched the soles of his bare feet. He became aware of the tattered, sweat-stiff shirt open halfway down his chest and the loose trousers hanging low on his hips. They had stripped him of everything else soon after his capture.

  It was a long walk to wherever they were going. The guards led him onto a wide street lined with dhoti-clad men, past large buildings he hadn’t sufficient interest to look at, toward a flamboyant palace glittering with mirrored tiles.

  He couldn’t help but notice a score of women perched like butterflies on the fretted balconies, staring down at him from behind fluttering veils. He only wished he made a better appearance. Sticky, overlong hair reached past his frayed collar. A ragged growth of beard and mustache itched on his face. What would they think if his precariously suspended trousers dropped to his ankles?

  He raised his manacled hands and waved at them, grinning when they gasped in chorus and fled into the zenana.

  There was no time to enjoy the moment. Quickening their pace, the guards steered him up a long flight of marble stairs. More people, better-dressed people, lined the wide entrance hall. Like the others, they went silent as he drew closer and whispered to one another when he’d gone past.

  He wondered when the fear would strike him. So far he felt mostly bemused, separated from what was transpiring as if it were happening to a man he did not know. But this, surely, was his last day of life. These, the last few minutes he would draw breath. He ought to be paying attention.

  At the least, he could make a good show of it. He assembled in his mind the snatches of information he had gleaned from the guards. The nizam of this backwater principality had once admired the English and gone out of his way to attract them to Alanabad for tiger hunts and excessive displays of hospitality. But not long ago, one of the guests had eaten of his salt, sampled his concubines, and repaid him by making off with something of great value.

  The reverent voices outside Duran’s cell had used many honorifics to describe it. The Star of the Firmament. The Heart of Alanabad. The Key to the Throne. Or perhaps they were referring to the ruler himself. In any case, whatever the stolen item might be, the nizam wanted it back. Meantime, he was taking revenge on any Englishman unlucky enough to get caught in his web, and right now, that Englishman was Hugo Duran.

  They had come to the end of the public reception hall. Two carved doors swung open, and Duran was thrust into a massive room with high ceilings and pink marble walls. Smoke, sweet and heady, curled from strips of sandalwood hung over the copper braziers that lined the aisle. Solemn-faced men were a dozen deep on both sides of him. Soft female voices murmured from behind silk-embroidered screens.

  Directly ahead, the local potentate lolled on a gilt throne shaped like the open mouth of a large cat. Ivory fangs descended from the backrest to curve above his narrow shoulders, and the armrests were supported by what looked like sharp, elongated teeth.

  Beside the throne, between two tall, unlit candles, stood a marble pedestal encrusted with bright jewels. Nothing lay atop it but a crumpled cloth of gold.

  Odd, that.

  As a guard propelled him forward, Duran focused his attention on the nizam. The little man was wrinkled and thin, except for a prominent belly left bare to expose a diamond set in his navel. A great beak of a nose arched down to meet an upturned chin, and between them, his narrow lips were set in a rigid line. His black-eyed gaze was directed at a bowl of fruit offered him by a servant.

  Duran’s sunken stomach rumbled at the sight of ripe peaches, purple grapes, and fuzzy apricots. One especially plump mango seemed to whisper his name.

  They had reached the stairs leading to the carpeted stage where the nizam was enthroned in full durbar, his courtiers and attendants scattered about him like ornamental statues. One of the guards grabbed Duran’s shoulders and drove him to his knees. Another pressed his head to the floor and planted a sandaled foot on his neck.

  The tiled floor felt cool against his cheek. He heard the nizam speak to someone who replied in a quiet voice, but his thoughts kept drifting to the mango. He imagined peeling back its skin, slowly and seductively, the way he would remove the clothes from a woman’s body. He would lick it all over before biting in and letting the sweet juices and soft flesh surge into his mouth. For that mango, and for the time to savor it, he would go to his death with a song on his lips.

  The guards levered him upright again, grasping his arms when his knees buckled. He cast around for Jessie, for some awareness of her, but the witch had deserted him. Feminine pique, he supposed, and singularly poor timing. She would have enjoyed watching her treacherous lover brought low.

  Licking his cracked lips, he managed a teetering bow to the nizam. “Lofty Eminence,” he said, his dry throat producing a frog-like croak. “I am Lord Duran, honored to be your faithful servant and confused at the manner of my welcome.”

  The nizam turned to the straight-backed, slender man standing beside him.

  Duran, who had pretended from the moment of his capture to speak no other language but English, listened with interest as the translator rendered his words into Hindi and added several of his own. “Star of the Firmament,” he said, bowing to the nizam with uncommon grace. “Heart of Alanabad.”

  Politely, Duran kept his attention focused on the nizam, who appeared unimpressed with the proceedings. He spoke briefly, impatience clipping his words.

  After a moment the translator took a step forward. “I am Shivaji,” he said in a level voice. “The Powerful One has pronounced you a spy, a thief, and a cur.”

  Duran remembered to put a humble expression on his face. “I am sorry to hear it. Dare I suggest that the Powerful One has been misinformed by his enemies?”

  Shivaji, one brow lifted, glanced across the dais to a harsh-featured man who separated himself from a group of courtiers robed, as was he, in severest black. Unlike the others, his fingers were studded with rings. His coned turban, starched and tightly wound, was embellished above his forehead with two entwined silver serpents.

  One hand over his heart, he bowed to the nizam, who beckoned him closer. But when he spoke, it was directly to Shivaji. “It is known from Bombay to Calcutta that English devils may not cross the borders of Alanabad. How does he account for his presence here?”

  While Shivaji translated, Duran, mordantly amused, cast about for a credible tale. For once in his life he was innocent as a babe, but no one here would believe the truth. What he required was a great thumping lie, a story that could not be verified. And at its heart must be the promise of something the nizam wanted even more than the pleasure of killing an Englishman.

  “You see!” The black-clad man jabbed a finger in his direction. “He cannot reply. Lies burn in his throat, but he dare not release them. It is well. Send him to his fate, Excellency. He already stands condemned.”

  Duran gave him a bright, befuddled smile and turned to Shivaji for a translation, his mind working furiously. The empty pedestal. He was willing to bet that whatever the Englishman—the one who started all this trouble—had stolen, it used to be enshrined on that pedestal, and that its value was not confined to rupees. But what the blazes had it been?

  “Condemned?” he inquired of the nizam when Shivaji had finished. “For what crime, Magni
ficence? It was not my will that brought me here. Indeed, knowing of your prohibition, I tried again and again to escape my destiny. But every road, by twist and turn, led me to where I would not go.” Lifting his head, he willed confidence into his faltering voice. “I am but a humble instrument of the gods. They have put me like an oiled blade into your hands. How you use me is in your wisdom to decide.”

  Shivaji waited, saying nothing.

  Duran, feeling the translator’s sharp gaze probe him, concentrated on the nizam’s unreadable face. “I have been sent, O Heart of Alanabad, to serve you. I am charged to return that which has been foully taken from you by one of my miserable countrymen.”

  Shivaji paused for a breathless few moments before rendering Duran’s exact words into Hindi.

  The nizam, looking bored, reached for a handful of grapes and popped one into his mouth. “Does he think me a fool?” he said, chewing noisily. “This insect has come in search of more plunder. I shall have him flayed alive and fed to the crocodiles.”

  Shivaji’s translation was solemn and inaccurate, omitting the threat in favor of a question. “How were you told of your mission?”

  A diplomat, this cool-eyed man with the expressionless face and calm voice, and perhaps the brains behind the little fellow who huddled like a toad on his absurdly carved throne. How the bearded chap fit into the equation remained unclear. The nizam paid him no attention, but neither did he order him back to his place.

  Duran, sensing rivalries and concealed agendas all around him, was having difficulty focusing on his own thready scheme. “This unworthy one cannot say precisely who it is who sent me, Your Loftiness. The message was given me in a dream.”

  Shivaji translated. The nizam made a guttural noise. The black-robed man, his nose scarlet, opened his mouth to speak.

  “Naturally, I paid it no heed,” Duran continued in a rush. “A man of traditional European education, I place no credit in signs and visions. And yet, as I made my way on the road from Poona to Mysore, the dream returned each night for seven nights, carried . . .”