The Tiger's Lady by Christina Skye Page B

English as I am!” she added accusingly.
    “Ah, but I thought you were French, my dear.”
    Helene sighed. With a petulant sniff, she turned to leave. Only then did she notice the jagged gash across St. Cyr’s thigh.
    Her face went pale. “Dev! What have you done to your leg?”
    He glanced down negligently at the wound, which was dark with blood. “It’s just a scratch.”
    “Just a scratch? What in the name of—”
    “Don’t, Helene.” His eyes were cold, as cold as she had ever seen them. “It’s nothing. Far less than I’ve experienced in India. Less than I’ve suffered at my own father’s hands, as a matter of fact. Let’s skip the melodrama, shall we?”
    “Stop it, Dev! You don’t have to—”
    “To what? Put on a show? But it’s not a show, Helene. It’s what I am, or at least it’s what I’ve become. Dig down deep and you’ll only find more of the same.”
    Helene sighed. She, too, had changed in the last fifteen years. But there was something else about him tonight, an almost palpable tension that hadn’t been there when he’d left for dinner.
    And now that tension had him stretched as tight as a bowstring.
    “Is it because of what happened at the auction? When that—that horrible Indian tried to kill you and steal the ruby?”
    St. Cyr laughed.
    It was a cold, raw sound.
    “That man was no more Indian than you are. First of all he was too brawny for an Indian, and he sure as hell wasn’t a Sikh. No, he could have been any number of things—Dutch or Portuguese or Spanish. English even. But he certainly wasn’t Indian.” Deveril stared down into the fire. “And he wasn’t a zealot, he was a tea packer. He worked at the docks, probably bulking new cargoes.”
    “However do you know that?”
    “Because his shoes were covered with tea dust and horse manure, a pungent combination found only at the East India Docks.” Pagan’s eyes narrowed. “And because of one more thing. His hands.” He stared down at the fire for a moment, as if caught in memories. “His skin was thick with the scars of wood slivers. And he had calluses all along the outer edge of his palm. That comes from only one thing. Jamming wooden tea crates closed.”
    He held out his hands and studied them in taut silence. “I should know. Mine are just the same,” he said at last.
    Helene’s eyes widened. “But why did he undertake such a masquerade?”
    “I don’t know. But I’m going to know, that you can be very sure of. And when I find the bastard who ordered it, I’m going to stake him out and—”
    Pagan’s hard hands clenched against the mantel. He did not finish.
    Yes, he was changed beyond belief, Helene realized. And this tension about him worried her terribly. But she was wise enough to know that sympathy was the last thing he’d want.
    Instead she contented herself with finding a length of gauze and dropping it on the mantel beside him. “Clean that wound, at least. If not, you won’t be going anywhere tomorrow.”
    When he did not look up, she muttered angrily, “Really, Deveril, you’d better take care or you’ll lose all your English ways out there in the jungle.” She looked as if she would say more, but she stopped herself. “Now I’d better go see what trouble that fool Sir Humphrey has gotten into.”
    At the door she turned, her hand on the knob. “Shall I send someone up to you? Chloe? Amanda, perhaps? They’ve both been asking for you this age. You’ve been neglecting them of late.” She could not keep the speculation from her voice.
    The man at the fire did not answer, his jaw like granite as he stared down into the flickering flames.
    Helene realized that Deveril Pagan was three thousand miles away, unaware of both her question and her very existence.
    In an angry rustle of silk she swept from the room, muttering beneath her breath about arrogant Englishmen driven mad by too much tropical sun.
    The door snapped shut, but the naked man before the fire gave no sign of