To Tame a Countess (Properly Spanked 2)

His brows rose. “How terrifying. What did the servants do?”

“They tried to scare the animal away. It paced back and forth by the water, they said, as if it did not wish me to toddle into the currents. When they screamed and threatened it with torches, it finally bounded off.”

“Amazing.” He watched her expectantly. Of course there was more to the story, to the tragic arc of her life.

“The servants checked me over for bite marks or scratches, and finding none, they took me home to my parents. From then on, the natives called me baga lika in their dialect. It meant tiger girl or tiger child.”

“I expect they admired you very much.”

She shivered, so her cup rattled on her saucer. “No. They feared tigers, and they especially feared anything unexplainable. They believed, from what they saw, that I could commune with the tigers, that in fact I was half-tiger, and all the villagers regarded me with suspicion. Few of them would work in my parents’ house after that. They believed my parents must be powerful sorcerers to give birth to a half-animal child. I suppose my wild tantrums and dirty, neglected appearance did nothing to dissuade them. My hair was very much the color of a tiger’s coat at that time, and my eye color…” She glanced up at him with her golden, striated, feline-amber gaze. “In the end my parents were forced to leave that village. I only learned about this later. They taunted me with the story, when they wanted to show me how troublesome I was.”

“Oh, Josephine,” he said. “I see now why you hated them.”

“I’m the reason they died.” She bit down on her lip, but she couldn’t stay the rush of tears. Lord Warren put down his cup and saucer and came to her, and took her cup when her nerveless fingers threatened to drop it.

“I’m sure that can’t be true,” he said in a brisk voice, as if he could take this unalterable fact and discipline it to some other reality just as he disciplined her. He knelt before her, his features grim. “If people told you that… If they led you to believe that, they only meant to lie to you and hurt you. Lord Baxter said it was robbers.”

“That’s the story, but that’s not what really happened.” She drew in a stuttering breath. “You see, we had been away from India for some time, traveling in the Sub-Sahara. All the while, the tale of the English couple with their baga lika had been passed from mouth to mouth so that when we finally returned to India, all the natives seemed to know it, even though we went to a different region and a different village. Again, my parents couldn’t find servants for the house. I had to go into the village whenever we needed food or supplies, since we had no help, and my parents were incapable.”

“Incapable?”

“They’d become addicted to a number of medicinal substances in their travels. They had become very sick.”

“Why didn’t you go for help?” he asked. “Were there no English nearby to assist you?”

“If I had gone for help, what would have become of my parents? I was afraid to approach the English, or bring them to the house. I didn’t… I didn’t want them to see…” Her face screwed up with tears. She’d shed so many tears back then, tears of shame and loneliness. Tears poured out of her now like one of the Indian monsoons. Lord Warren produced a square of linen from his coat and dabbed at her cheeks.

“I knew enough of Englishness and manners to know we were peculiar,” she sobbed. “I knew we weren’t quality people, no matter what my mother claimed. I didn’t dare socialize among the English, and when I went into the village, people avoided me or looked at me like I was a ghastly thing. When I tried to buy meat and vegetables for our house, some of the sellers would turn away and mutter spells of protection. This went on an entire year, and then…”

She took the handkerchief away from him and mopped her own cheeks. She had already told him enough, but she found she had to tell the whole story now, the violent, vile ending that festered inside her and haunted her dreams. “The following spring, bad things started to happen. Livestock died without reason, and insects swarmed and ruined the villagers’ gardens and crops. It didn’t rain for weeks on end, and the sun baked the land and dried the rivers and streams. The tigers came down from the hills in search of food and water, frightening the people in the village. One afternoon, a tiger attacked a young child and killed her. That night…”

She buried her face in the linen handkerchief. It smelled like him, like sandalwood and freshly pressed clothing. “That night, the villagers stormed our house, screaming of evil and sorcery and the baga lika. I ran away. I hid in the woods.” That was all she could say. She couldn’t speak of the screams and the fire, and that she had left her intoxicated parents behind.

“Of course you ran away,” he said, pulling her into his arms. She rested her head on his shoulder, sobbing into the fabric of his coat. “Of course you did. You had to. No one could blame you for that.”

“But…” She choked out another sob. “I blamed myself. It was my fault the natives came to the house. I ran through the forest in the dark until I reached the English houses and even then I was afraid to speak to them. But I was more afraid of another tiger finding me, or the villagers. So I went and knocked on a door and told the English that my parents had been attacked. They went to the house and found my parents, and arranged for them to be buried, and treated me with such kindness, but I never told them the rest, that it was my fault.”

“Josephine.” His voice sounded pained. “Don’t say that it was your fault. You can’t believe that. The tiger wasn’t your fault, and your parents made horrible choices. It’s a miracle you’re alive, and they… Well, in my opinion, they are better off dead.” He leaned back, brushing fingertips across her cheek. “Were you going to keep these wretched memories inside you forever? Why didn’t you tell me before now?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want to punish you again for keeping it from me, all your pain and suffering.”

She stiffened, her eyes going wide. “Please, I beg you, no more.”

He gathered her closer. “Of course I won’t punish you, but you ought to have told me this sooner. I wouldn’t have been so hard on you. I understand now why you’re so afraid of society’s judgment. Why you wish to be left alone. People haven’t been very kind to you.” He gave a great sigh. “Including me. I’m sorry. I couldn’t have imagined such a tragic history, not in a thousand years.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you. And now, with this ball, and your expectations… I’m so afraid.” He massaged her nape as she broke into another barrage of tears. Letting the story out from the dark angst of her soul had been almost as painful as living through it.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” he said. “We don’t kill people here for being different. We don’t believe fantastical tales about tiger children and sorcery.”

“It’s not that. It’s the feeling of scrutiny, and disapproval, and having to endure it over and over again.”

At some point in her crying breakdown, he had lifted her and settled her in his lap. He tilted up her chin so she had to face him. “You won’t need to endure scrutiny and disapproval if you’d only make an effort to go about in society as you deserve. You’re a titled, intelligent woman. I know you’re afraid, and expect the worst, but no one knows yo

u’re that tiger-child, Josephine. No one but you.”

“And you,” she pointed out, sniffling.

“And me,” he agreed. “But I’ll never tell. I want you to be happy. I’ll help you belong, if you’ll only let me. I’ll make you into society’s jewel. God knows, you’re beautiful enough.”

As she gazed at him, Josephine admitted to herself, for perhaps the first time, that she would like to feel at ease around other people, particularly his friends and contemporaries. She wanted to live a happy, normal life, she just couldn’t picture it. “I don’t know,” she said, wiping at her tears. “I don’t think you can turn me into a proper English lady.”

“Boo for proper English ladies. You only need to be tame enough to get by. You can be as wild as you like when it’s just the two of us.” She shifted as his hand slipped down to her bottom, patting the tender, sore skin. “I can teach you what you need to know about decorum and common courtesy,” he said. “It’s not a matter of whether you can do it—for I know you can. It’s a matter of whether you wish to try.”

“Will you spank me if I don’t try?” She buried her face against his shoulder. “I don’t want to be spanked anymore.”

“And yet it seems to prove effective in calming and refocusing you to better behaviors. I daresay this very strict session finally compelled you to open up and tell me some very important things. Not that I enjoy punishing you so harshly.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “Won’t you trust me to help you? Won’t you stop being afraid?”

“Being afraid is what kept me alive.”

“There are no wild animals here. No murderous natives. English society can be vicious, but not that vicious. Josephine, your parents made you live a life you didn’t want, far from the place you belonged. You want to belong here. In your heart, I know you do.”