Forbidden Jewel of India

‘This would be the first.’

Oh. ‘Are you not supposed to be reassuring me by telling me there is no danger and you have it all under control?’ she enquired, despising herself for the fact that her hand shook on the reins.

‘If you were an empty-headed chit, I would, yes. As it is, you’d see right through that and, if you are on edge, then that’s two of us watching like hawks. There,’ he added as they came out of the tall grass on to the higher, drier ground, ‘We can see for miles now.’

Anusha let out her breath in one whoosh of relief. ‘Is an empty-headed chit like a totty-headed female?’

‘More or less.’ He was grinning, the wretch. ‘I said you appeared to have your father’s brains.’

‘I have my mother’s. She was an educated and intelligent woman!’

‘Remind me to start you on the subject the next time we are in heavy cover,’ Nick said, digging his heels into his horse’s flanks. ‘If you had made that much noise back there, every tiger for forty miles would have headed for the hills.’

‘Oh! You...you...man!’ But he was already almost out of earshot. Anusha gathered the reins and sent her mount after his. Insolent, scheming, manipulative man. He had deliberately played on her nerves back there. He should be cosseting her, soothing her fears, treating her like a lady. Seething, she rode on.

* * *

They had spent another night in the open on an island in a small river, another day untroubled by tigers or pursuing troops, then a night in an abandoned herder’s hut. Anusha stretched as she rose at dawn, wanting warm water and hot food and a pile of soft cushions.

Nick was boiling water for the usual strong tea that she was learning to tolerate, if not like. He had been restless the night before and had left her to sleep alone in the hut. She heard him padding around outside every time she woke and there were faint blue shadows like thumbprints beneath his eyes.

‘Did you not sleep last night?’ she asked. She squatted down beside him and studied his face. ‘You look tired.’ She did not want to think of him having any vulnerabilities, it made him too real.

‘I dozed.’ Nick shifted and stood up as she lifted a hand to touch the lines of strain at the corner of his eye. He had become more taciturn over the past twenty-four hours, she realised. Anusha searched her memory for anything she had done to anger him, but could find nothing. Perhaps he was simply bored with her company, tired of this journey. He stopped kicking at the fire and glanced at her, frowning. ‘We should be near the Jumna by now.’

‘That is good, isn’t it?’ Anusha ventured.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Of course. Never mind my mood, I am just...distracted.’

* * *

I am just bloody randy, Nick thought with deliberate crudity in an attempt to shock himself into focus. But it was more than that—he didn’t want to have a woman, any woman. He wanted this one, and for more than a tumble. He wanted to make love to her, slowly. He wanted to uncover those long limbs, that honey-coloured skin, unbind the thick plait the colour of toffee and teak. He wanted to lose himself inside her slender, strong body. That innocent body, he reminded himself as he had throughout the long, restless night pacing around the hut while Anusha slept inside.

The urge to seduce her warred with the instinct to protect her. He had felt it with Miranda, although his wife, whom he failed, had simply expected it, whereas Anusha alternately spurned his offers of help or pretended to berate him for scaring her with tigers.

For some reason, while he had found it easy enough to lie beside her in the open, the enclosed hut felt dangerously intimate and, once the thought had got hold of his imagination, his body had done the rest to ensure a sleepless night. No amount of reminding himself what a wilful, haughty, unpredictable—and completely untouchable—female she was helped in the slightest.

And, worst of all, perhaps, in the small hours, came the suspicion that the ache he was feeling was not just desire, but loneliness. He wanted to reach out to something within her that she was not prepared to let him touch.

The landscape was every shade of grey and violet in the pre-dawn light. As they rode, it gradually brightened and the colours intensified until the river valley was plain before them. There were the craggy hills behind, still purple in the shadow of sunrise, the lush green fringing the watercourse, the short-cropped grass and scrub where village flocks had eaten their fill. In the distance, downriver, there was a haze of smoke marking a town or a big village.