Only then did Barrett see that the monkey carried a wadded mass of white.
With a smile, Barrett accepted the precious offering. It was her corset—lumpy, the stays misshapen, the laces all knotted. It looked creased and well handled, the monkey’s work, no doubt. “Why thank you, Magic. Have you finally discovered it’s no use to you?”
The little gray monkey slanted her head, reaching furry fingers up to scratch one ear. Suddenly she emitted a shrill burst of sound, then began to jump up and down on the coverlet.
Barrett eased sideways, making a spot for her newfound friend. The primate sat down daintily, rocking back and forth and making a soft comfortable sound somewhere between a chortle and a whistle. A moment later, she reached out to stroke Barrett’s unbound hair, her black cheeks puffed wide in wonder.
She studied the long golden strands, then slowly raised them atop her own head. Curling her lips, she stared up at Barrett, as if to ask her estimate of this new coiffure.
“Very—er, nice, Magic. Except that that particular bit of hair is fastened to my own head, and I see no reasonable way of removing it, even for you, my little friend.”
With a low cooing noise, the monkey rocked back on her ankles, releasing Barrett’s hair. Suddenly the keen black eyes narrowed. Jumping up, the creature began to tug at the covers.
“Magic! Stop it this instant!”
But the monkey evaded her, and in a matter of moments, the covers were puddled on the floor.
Snorting softly, Magic studied Barrett’s white ruffled drawers and gossamer chemise. Gently, with an expression that Barrett could almost have called wistful, the small simian reached out to finger a satin ribbon.
“Do you really covet them so, you ridiculous creature?”
Magic’s soft sigh was answer enough. Abruptly the animal pushed off the bed with her hands, slid down to the floor, and darted to the table where the rest of Barrett’s garments rested in a neat pile.
She watched in amazement as dress and boots were flung aside and petticoats revealed.
Delighted, the monkey jumped up and down, white cloth in hand.
“Stop, you wretched thing!”
Magic lowered the undergarment to the floor, studying it intently. Then, very carefully, she draped it over her head, looping the hem under her chin and pirouetting, one hand clutching her would-be bonnet, the other raised daintily to her furry gray chest.
“Very grand, indeed,” Barrett agreed, laughing. “I have no doubt it will become all the rage.”
Magic swayed and danced, flapping the white cloth happily.
Among whom? Barrett wondered. What ladies came out here to the jungle? The governor’s lady, and an official’s wife or two. Perhaps some of the planters had their spouses, although she suspected most chose to leave their wives back in England and find more casual liaisons here on the island.
Had Pagan done that? she wondered suddenly, her hands strangely tight on her chemise.
Abruptly the vision of Mita’s liquid eyes appeared before her, and she heard the echo of the servant’s soft laughter. For some reason she had a sudden image of muffled laughter, and the creaking of a bed in the hot jungle night.
Perhaps he even had a wife somewhere back home in England, Barrett thought suddenly, realizing that she knew as little about Pagan’s past as she did about her own.
Somehow that thought struck her as bitterly funny, and she began to laugh. But soon the laughter changed, turning to low, ragged sobs.
Outside the sky began to lighten. Streaks of peach and crimson swept the sky above the palm trees. They were to leave this morning, she remembered, bound upcountry for Pagan’s tea plantation. Windhaven, hadn’t he called it?
She sighed. She ought to get up and dress, even though her back ached and her temples throbbed. She ought to wash her face and tidy the room before Mita or one of the other servants came to fetch her.
But the slim Englishwoman did none of those things. She simply sat on the bed, studying the brightening sky, while silent tears spilled silver onto her cheeks.
She would soon go mad if she didn’t have some answers. Even now there might be children waiting for her somewhere, restless and sad, crying for their lost mama.
Barrett had a sudden vision of soft, brown curls and bright pink cheeks. Chubby fingers that tugged at her skirts.
With a dry, choked sound, she pressed her hands to her face. Don’t think of it, she told herself. Wishing won’t make you remember. Time and time alone can heal these wounds.
If anything could. For she realized it was possible she would never remember, that she would remain trapped in this terrible netherworld forever, a person with no past and no future, an orphan of time.
At that thought, a dark wall of pain engulfed her.
Her hands clenched.
No, somehow she would remember. She simply had to.
“Have the rice bags been covered in twill, Nihal?”
Without taking his eyes from the mirror, Pagan snapped his question at the anxious headman, while his razor scraped moistly over his jaw.
Impatiently, he jerked off his black eye patch and tossed it down on the nearby cot, squinting as he finished the delicate job of shaving his neck.
A thin scar, silver against his bronze skin, snaked from his inner eyebrow across his eyelid down to the outer edge of his cheekbone. Faintly puckered, the flesh rose in stiff ridges on either side of the welt.
Mumbling a curse, Pagan turned his face closer to the mirror, for his vision from the right eye was little more than a dim tracery of colors.
Just one more legacy of the night when Ruxley’s thugs had set upon him in Colombo.
“Yes, lord. Twenty-four bags are now covered and waiting at the lower clearing.” The slender native servant nodded. “The new tea plantings are also finished fermenting and packed in porcelain, as you asked.”
“Have you sent someone to round up our bearers?”
“Yesterday, Mahattaya.” There was quiet pride in that answer, something Pagan did not miss.
“Very good, Nihal.” Finally Pagan’s neck and jaw were stroked clean, and he swept away the last traces of soap with a hot towel. Turning, he studied the room, where tangled sheets spilled from the bed. It had been a hot, hellish night. He had tossed for hours before finally managing to snatch a few hours of restless sleep before his headman came to wake him at dawn.
A half-empty cup of tea stood on a silver tray, steam still rising. Beside it an untouched silver plate of mango and coconut gleamed in the early sunlight.
Suddenly Pagan frowned, feeling that he had forgotten something. He stared down at the bundle of papers ready to slip inside his leather satchel, along with the most recent newspapers and letters from England, to be perused at his leisure back at Windhaven.
Or to be ignored, he thought grimly. Especially if they included a letter from his father, little likely though that was.
Regret burned through him for an instant, before he suppressed it ruthlessly.
He owed the old man nothing. The white-haired martinet had made his feelings about his son abundantly clear at their last meeting. More than clear, Pagan decided, remembering his harsh denunciation of Pagan’s ramshackle, godless lifestyle.
But the duke and his thousand acres in Kent could go to the devil for all Pagan cared. Estate and lands would be an albatross around his neck, and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with them.
But you wanted them once. And you wanted everything that went with them, from the solemn title passed down for centuries to the adulation and responsibilities that came with being Duke of Sefton.
Most of all you wanted your father’s love. And you never got it.
Pagan scowled into his chipped mirror, suddenly seeing another face before him. A long, angular face punctuated by an aquiline nose and craggy silver eyebrows.
A face he could never please. A face that had never seemed to smile or recognize his existence.
His fingers tightened convulsively
on his razor. A moment later he looked down, feeling a prick of pain, and realized that blood was welling up over his palm.
But Pagan had learned in the last ten years that there were many ways a man might bleed, and most of them were invisible.
So you kicked over your traces and bolted, the accusing voice continued, relentless. All because you were too cowardly to face another chance of rejection.
A curse exploded from Pagan’s lips as he reached down to jerk a piece of linen across his palm. Forget it, he told himself. Those days are gone. They might never have existed, as far as he was concerned.
He had a plantation to run now, a plantation ten thousand miles away from that windswept estate in the green hills of Kent. Hills full of bluebells and Wealden butterflies. Fields rife with daffodils in spring and hectic with bourbon roses in July.
But he couldn’t forget, Pagan realized angrily, as he strapped on the belt which carried the payroll for the Tamil laborers, all five hundred pounds of it.
Sometimes he almost envied Barrett her loss. It might have made his own life a great deal more comfortable if someone hit him on the head, he decided bitterly.
He stood unmoving in the tall dry elephant grass above the bungalow, his tan pants and olive drill cloth shirt nearly invisible against the foliage. His sharp eyes swept the clearing, once and again, narrowing as a group of Tamil bearers emerged sleepily from the native huts slightly down the hill.
Twelve bearers, he counted. That would mean three, maybe four rifles among them. And of course there would be Pagan’s.
Cold gray eyes studied the heavy-laden pack animals. Those would be the rice stores for Windhaven, and whatever bloody clever new devices Pagan had imported for his tea factory there.
But what was his route? Did he mean to go through the lowlands or did he have something different in mind?
No information had been forthcoming from the servants, even though arrack wine had been passed around liberally on their last visit to the village. Considering that Deveril Pagan was known to be a bloody closed-mouth sort of a bastard, that was hardly surprising.
Those fools on the beach had bungled it. He’d half expected they would.
The man in the tall beru grass frowned. His hard fingers closed around his breechloader. Slowly he raised the muzzle, squinting into the sight. The vertical ridge flashed across the green clearing, finally coming to a halt over the headman’s slim, sinewy body.
His fingers twitched on the trigger. He ached to squeeze gently, perfectly, and watch his man drop. Just as he had seen them drop at Allahabad and Lucknow and Patna. The memories haunted him still…
But he would wait. Soon the day would come when Deveril Pagan’s face was lined up within those sights.
And then the ruby would be his, despite Ruxley’s grand schemes.
Such a jewel could belong to no one else.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Barrett was still struggling with her corset, which she had finally managed to wrest free of Magic’s fingers, when she heard a noise in the corridor. She stiffened, awareness pricking at her spine and bare shoulders.
Only one person could make her feel like that.
Her shoulders rigid, she concentrated on threading the lace through the last eyelet.
“You will not wear that godalmighty thing in the jungle, do you hear me?” Pagan towered in the doorway, grim-faced, his eyes cold and commanding without his patch.
“I shall wear, Mr. Pagan, whatever I choose to wear. The destination is of your choosing, but the clothing, at least, will be of my own.”
“Indeed?” Pagan’s eyes glittered. “Then let me enlighten you, Angrezi. You will wear whatever I tell you to wear—even if I tell you to wear nothing at all.”
Her eyebrow rose. “Has anyone ever told you that you are an arrogant, contemptible swine?” she asked silkily.
Pagan did not move so much as a muscle. “On countless occasions, my dear. And it changed nothing, I assure you. Then—or now.”
Thick and molten, fury squeezed through Barrett’s veins. “I am not one of your Tamil bearers to be ordered about, Mr. Pagan. Nor am I one of your docile honey-eyed servant girls, who scurry to your bidding!”
Pagan’s eyes glittered. “That, my dear, I am only too well aware of.”
Barrett’s fingers stilled on the corset laces. “And what, precisely, is that supposed to mean?”
Pagan’s lips twisted in a mocking smile. “It means, my dear Barrett, that we are not yet at Windhaven. It means that we have ten days of hard travel before us, days that will take us through leopard-and leech-infested jungle. We will probably have hill tribes on our heels every step of the way, along with whatever cursed cutthroats Ruxley sends. And if we are to make it through alive, you must obey any and every command I see fit to give you.” His eyes smoldered. “Starting with the removal of that bloody corset.”
Barrett’s lips flattened.
“Now,” he growled.
Her eyes began to smolder, keenest sapphire. “Go to hell, Mr. Pagan.”
“In that case, you will remain here, in the custody of two of my natives until the next magistrate passes through on his circuit from Kandy. That should be in about—” His dark brows knitted in thought. “Four months, I should imagine. What with the monsoon rains about to set in and the general unrest in the hill country, you understand.”
Barrett’s fingers tightened on the fragile laces. “You can’t! You—you wouldn’t dare!”
“Wouldn’t I?” Pagan’s eyes hardened. “You were caught in trespass upon my private beach, need I remind you? Twice I have been set upon by Ruxley’s hired thugs, which makes your complicity patent. Yes, it would really be an open and shut case, I assure you, even if the magistrate did not happen to be a particular friend of mine, which he is, owing to a certain favor I once rendered him back in London.”
“I can just imagine what sort of favor,” Barrett snapped.
“Oh, I very much doubt that, my dear,” Pagan said silkily. “Unless you are far from the genteel lady you pretend to be.” Cold and assessing, his eyes ranged over her half-clad chest, over the ripe curves molded above the rim of the corset.
Her flesh tingled and burned, stung by his hot scrutiny, making her fingers shake at their task. She turned her back to him, desperately trying to concentrate.
Pagan took a slow, silent step closer. His breath burned into her back. “Very nice,” he breathed.
Her hands flashed to her bared chest, where the loosened corset suddenly gaped. “You—you—”
“Give it to me, Angrezi. Unless you want me to remove it for you.”
She did not move.
Pagan jerked her around to face him, his eyes set in hard, deep lines. “It’s not a question of modesty, damn it! You’re going to need to be able to move quickly and silently where we’re going. And you’re going to need to be cool.” His eyes fell, smoldering over the ivory curve of her shoulders, over the high arch of her full breasts, upthrust above her locked fingers.
The sight raised a thunder in his blood.
His features frozen, he extended his hand. “Give me the bloody thing, Barrett. Why must you be so damned stubborn?”
The Englishwoman glared back, her thoughts awhirl.
Her fingers trembled on the stiff boned undergarment. She realized if she gave in on this issue she would be that much closer to yielding to him on others that were far more dangerous.
“Because my s-stubbornness is all I have left.” She tried, but failed, to keep the tremor from her voice.
The next instant to her total amazement Pagan spun about, muttering a raw curse; with his back to her he extended his hand. “Give me the damned thing!”
Barrett’s brow wrinkled in shock as she realized that she had won her very first skirmish with Deveril Pagan.
“Now, woman! Before I change my bloody mind!” he growled.
This time Barrett hastened to comply, slipping free of the garment and pressing it quickly into Pagan’
s fingers. She turned, darted to the bed, and tugged on her chemise. That done, she shot Pagan a fulminating look. “I shall expect it back as soon as we reach Windhaven.”
His eyes scoured her face. “Not bloody likely, Angrezi.”
Barrett’s face grew red under his scrutiny. “You are no gentleman!”
Pagan’s laugh was low and harsh. “Where we’re going, Empress, the last thing you’ll need is a gentleman. No, what you’ll need in the jungle is a man. A ruthless man who has forgotten what it means to be civilized.” His jet eyes glittered. “You’ll need him—and you’ll want him, too, before we’re done. Just think of it, Angrezi. You and me, with no one else for miles. Unless one considers the natives, which I certainly shall not.”
“And Mita?” The question escaped before she even knew it.
Pagan’s eyes narrowed. “Jealous, Cinnamon?”
“Of your vile attentions? Hah! I’d sooner crave the affection of a jackal!”
“I wonder where your brave words will be when you wake to find a python coiled about your feet,” Pagan murmured softly. “Ten seconds, that’s all it takes, remember?”
A shudder flashed down Barrett’s spine, but she managed a scowl. “I’m quite sure you say that to all your—your women,” she muttered. “A little fear probably does wonders in breaking down their reserve.”
“Oh, not all my women,” Pagan growled. “Only the intractable ones.” His lips curved in a mocking smile. “And there aren’t many of those, believe me. Especially not after the first night.” His eyes searched her face for a moment. “But then I’ve never taken any of my women upcountry along the Mahaweli before either.”
“If the route is so dangerous, then why must we travel that way?”
“Because it’s the one route that Ruxley—and any curious natives—will not expect us to take. That gives us the advantage of surprise. Then there’s the advantage of the jungle itself, of course.”
“The jungle? An advantage?”
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