The Tiger's Lady

by Skye, Christina

  And then, though the joined lovers barely noticed, the dark clouds above the mountains opened and the first fat drops of the spring monsoon began to fall over the hill country at last.

  EPILOGUE

  Kent, England

  June, 1870

  Laughter spilled over the green English lawns. A chorus of little hands clapped wildly. With grave demeanor, Magic, dressed in a little silk gown ornamented with stars and moons, spun around, pulled a handful of paste jewels from the air, then tossed them among her giggling audience.

  In the middle of the crowd of children sat a gaunt old man with feathery white hair who was working hard to suppress his own smiles as the monkey darted to and fro, then began to pull playing cards out of her voluminous silken sleeves.

  Standing on the flagstone terrace overlooking the lawns, Deveril Pagan watched bemused as his father, the august Duke of Sefton, dandled his twin grandchildren and mingled happily with the daughters and sons of his groom, steward, and housekeeper.

  It might as well have been a dream, the viscount thought. And in that strange way of dreams his old home looked exactly as it always had and yet entirely different. Now its shadows were banished and the long polished corridors rang with laughter. Even his father was changed, his stern hauteur a thing consigned to memory.

  That was her doing, too.

  Yes, his old home was a changed place, and he a changed man. He owed it all to his beautiful wife.

  “Daydreaming again? If this is what marriage does to a man, then I must remember to forsake the honor.” A rich foreign voice came close at Pagan’s side. He turned to see an exotic figure in silk tunic and turban, jewels embroidered across his chest.

  “Strutting about like a peacock again, eh? I suppose the women of England delight in that sort of finery.” Pagan ran a speculative eye over the man beside him, marveling anew at their resemblance.

  Their faces were both dark, their shoulders equally broad. Both had hard jaws which warned that they would pursue a goal with deadly determination.

  Pagan smiled faintly. “You realize that the clothes looked much better on me, don’t you?”

  “You? Your performance was passable at best, my dear Deveril. I’m afraid you haven’t the panache for it.”

  “No?” Pagan’s dark eyes glittered as he studied the real Rajah of Ranapore. “And you do?”

  His guest’s brow rose. “But of course! By the way, did I mention that I have been going through some ancient texts connected with the ruby? Persian, Sanskrit, that sort of thing. They were quite fascinating, actually.”

  “Bloody show-off, that’s what you are, Indra.”

  The rajah made Pagan a slight bow. “Because I am predisposed to be in a cheerful mood, I shall ignore your typically English insolence. Yes, the texts were remarkable, for I find that all accounts of the Eye of Shiva have one element in common: all mention a small man with dark eyes and leathery face who appears whenever the stone is in danger of falling into the hands of one of true evil. It was so in the days of Alexander and again in the time of the great Khan of China. Curious, is it not?”

  Pagan’s eyes narrowed. He thought of the dark-eyed shaman who had stolen into the cave to set him free. The man had never been seen again, and Barrett still worried that he had been caught when the mountain exploded.

  Dear heaven, was it just possible that…

  Pagan shook his head. No, of course it wasn’t. What was he thinking of?

  At that moment a quavering laugh interrupted the viscount’s thoughts. He looked up to see his father pick up the cook’s son and toss him onto his shoulder for a ride.

  A wry smile played about the planter’s lips.

  “He is very changed, the duke. Can you forgive him for his stubbornness? He believed he was doing what was best for you, after all.”

  Pagan stared at the white-haired man for long moments, then gave a faint shrug. “I am trying, Indra.” His gaze wandered to the tawny-haired beauty at his father’s side and his onyx eyes softened. “With her help, I might actually succeed.”

  “She is a most remarkable woman. Yes, she would have made a fine consort. I am sorry that our paths did not cross sooner, for I would have made her a very happy woman.”

  Pagan simply smiled and shook his head. “Arrogant sod, aren’t you?”

  “Of course.” The rajah dipped his head in acknowledgment of the barb. “It runs in the royal blood, I believe. Just as it runs in yours.” His lips curved faintly. “My brother.”

  Pagan’s fingers tightened on the marble balustrade. “Brothers … I still find it incredible. If only I’d known sooner.”

  Sighing, the rajah stared out over the sweeping lawns where lime trees tossed in a spring wind. “It must never be talked of among my people, of course. In some ways they possess great insight, but not in this, I fear. Your mother—our mother—loved you dearly, my brother. She talked often about you with our father. In fact, their arguments were quite famous in the zenana. He wanted you with him, but she knew that the duke needed you more, though he refused to show it. You were conceived during the last months she was with the duke, you understand, and I think she always felt a deep regret about that, as did the maharajah, our father. But so the wheel turns, Deveril. So the wheel turns.”

  He reached out and caught a cluster of crimson cherry blossoms drifting on the wind. “They quarreled often; even as a boy I remember hearing them argue, and often it was over you. But she was convinced it was best for you to be with the duke, and that one day she would explain it all to you herself.” The rajah’s eyes softened for a moment. “How sad that she never took the chance while she had it. Yes, she was a remarkable woman, our mother. She knew precisely how to goad our father to the most terrible fury, but then she always managed to wrap him around her finger again. I think the only time I ever saw him lose control was when she told him she was going south to find you, to warn you that the fires of rebellion were coming.”

  Pagan’s fingers clenched white on the chill, polished marble. “Her disguise was beyond penetrating; now I see why. And I still can’t understand it, Indra, no matter how hard I try. Now I’ll never know, for she’s gone. And how much we missed…”

  “What is there to understand? She loved you, Deveril, and in her love she made a difficult choice. Who are you to question her decision, for truly, love is a law and a certainty unto itself. Would you do any less for one you loved?”

  Pagan’s mouth flattened as he recalled how close he and Barrett had come to dying in the tunnels at Windhaven. “You are a wise man, I think,” he said simply.

  “Of course I am. And now seek no more explanations, my brother. Simply accept our mother’s gift. And remember the rare gift that you still possess.” The rajah’s gaze rose to the slender figure winding her way through the crowd of laughing children, hugging one, tickling another, joining her bell-like laughter to theirs.

  Suddenly a tall, black-haired lad of five squirmed free of the crowd and shot across the lawn into her arms.

  His mother looked down at him lovingly, her fingers combing through his thick raven curls. A moment later her head rose and her eyes sought out Deveril’s.

  The radiant look of love Pagan saw there made his throat constrict, made his knees weak, made him feel the proudest man on earth.

  Beside his mother, the dark-haired boy conceived in the dust beneath the gaping, half exploded mountain smiled and waved gaily at his besotted father.

  “She is very beautiful, my brother,” the rajah said softly.

  “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 magn
ificent 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. H
ave 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.”