Heart of the Tiger Read online

  Can a hardened heart resist her true desires?

  His smile sent a chill through her. “Isn’t that good news? You needn’t marry me after all, Miss Holcombe. You are not called to be a martyr.”

  And there it was. All she had to do in exchange for what he’d offered her was send him to his death. And he didn’t mind dying. She accepted his word on that, because she had shared his readiness to do the same. But at the time, she’d had very little reason to live.

  Did he feel the same, this powerful, beautiful, tormented man? She couldn’t bear to think of it.

  What had been, before this moment, impossible choices, now seemed to her irresistible temptations. Fear and longing tumbled inside her. She could not have everything. But he had offered her more than she had dared to hope for, and she need only select what she most deeply desired.

  Not without risk, though. Not without paying a terrible price.

  Apples in Paradise. Serpents twisting around her ankles, slithering around her thighs. I want you under me, open to me.

  His death, in exchange for her freedom. Or his life, in exchange for her surrender.

  She looked up at him, seeking an answer in his haunted eyes.

  The Novels of Lynn Kerstan

  The Golden Leopard

  Heart of the Tiger

  And Coming Soon

  The Silver Lion

  Heart of the Tiger

  by

  Lynn Kerstan

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-197-5

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-206-4

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2003 by Lynn Kerstan

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  A mass market edition of this book was published by Onyx, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.in 2003

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo credits:

  Man’s face and clothing (manipulated) © Curaphotography | Dreamstime.com

  Tiger © R. Gino Santa Maria | Dreamstime.com

  :Edh:01:

  Dedication

  For all my RomEx friends, whose wit, wisdom, and generosity make this world a warmer and finer place. Thanks for the Sword!

  Prologue

  June 1823, India

  Son of the Devil, they called him. Brother of the Beast. Outlaw.

  Not to his face, to be sure. Few of his countrymen dared speak to him at all, which was just as he liked it. Michael Keynes preferred a solitary life. And besides, it was dangerous to be in his vicinity.

  The past few months, his vicinity had been positively lethal. His mercenaries had beaten off five concerted attacks, but three of his best men were killed in an ambush. From all the attention being paid to his activities, the price on his head must have gone up.

  It was to be expected. He’d increased the pressure to the point that the East India Consortium had not completed a successful transaction for two years. Assassination was the logical response. Nothing else was going to stop him.

  In this, his private crusade, he had always taken care to break no law that anyone cared to enforce. While he efficiently put their competition out of business, Government House officials lined their own pockets with the country trade and secretly cheered him on.

  Or they had been cheering. Now his enemies had launched an investigation the officials could not ignore. Powerful forces were demanding he be driven out of India for good, which as it happened, was fine with him. He had unfinished business in England.

  But he suspected they weren’t going to let him depart in one piece, if at all. A week ago, he’d barely escaped Calcutta alive. And, as usual, made even more trouble for himself in the process. Behind him, he’d left an Archangel with a broken wing.

  Now the avenger, for that’s what he had always been, could expect an avenger on his own trail. There was a nice irony in that, but it was going to be a bloody nuisance.

  Ah, well. Not even an Archangel could find him tonight. Above the crumpled ridges of the Himalayan foothills, stars blazed through the water-clear, moonless sky. Michael lit a cigar from the fire and settled with his back against the trunk of a sal tree, his silver flask balanced on one thigh, puffing lazy smoke rings into the still air.

  For once, it felt good to be alive. The fat jungle fowl, perfectly roasted over the campfire, had been crisp and juicy, and he was nearly drunk enough to sleep.

  A rustle of grasses drew his gaze to the enormous man emerging from a screen of trees. Hari Singh had gone a distance from the camp to bury the bones from Michael’s dinner, muttering about infidels who killed and devoured God’s animals. Graceful as a deer for all his great height and muscular physique, he lowered himself cross-legged to the ground on the other side of the campfire.

  Like all devout Sikhs, he wore a dull metal bracelet around his wrist and threaded a curved dagger into his wide leather belt. His thick black beard, uncut for a quarter of a century, was tightly rolled against his chin. Always alert to danger, he was careful to wear shorts even when bathing. No Sikh would confront a surprise attack in the altogether.

  Michael gazed at him with something close to affection. Hari was the most spiritual human being he’d ever known, even in god-obsessed India. Michael’s own soulless faith, confined to aged brandy, fast horses, and passionate women, made him a difficult companion at the best of times. After fifteen years of hellish times, he was astonished that such a man continued to call him friend.

  “You needn’t come with me,” he said, reviving an old argument. “What’s the point? You won’t help, and you can’t stop me.”

  Hari fed the sputtering campfire from a stack of dry branches. “I wish to visit England. I have Punjabi friends there.”

  “You have a lot more of them here. If you want to be useful, contrive some way to keep that meddling idiot busy until I’m finished.”

  “Lord Varden will be unable to travel for a time, Michael. And he will never be able to fight you again.”

  “But he can get in my way. He already has. I—”

  Aung oo aongh. The cry hung in the air like smoke.

  Hari cocked his head, listening acutely. “Distant, maybe three miles. Sound travels far here. It pushes off the mountains.”

  It came again, a little different. Aooch aounch aoo oo aongh.

  “Tiger.” The other noises of the night had gone strangely hushed. “Is that the one?”

  “The man-eater is male,” Hari said patiently. “I showed you the pug marks. The toes are square, thick. This one you hear is female.”

  “Good God, how can you tell that?”

  Two days out of Calcutta, they’d picked up news that sprang
from village to village like wildfire. A rare, dreaded man-eater had taken three people in Sarai and five more a few miles north. Every day the shikaris followed a confused trail, passing word by runner and drum of new victims savaged, children carried off.

  For a time, Michael and Hari had joined the hunt, but when the trail veered east, Hari continued north, summoned by an inner voice to an almost forgotten place.

  In the area of Naini Tal was a sacred lake shaped like a teardrop. Hari had stumbled upon it by accident many years earlier. Its legend told of three sages on a penitential pilgrimage who arrived on the crest of a hill called Cheena and found no water on the other side. Desperate with thirst, they dug a hole at the foot of the mountain and siphoned water into it from the holy lake of Mansarowar in Tibet. When the sages departed, the goddess Naini arrived to take up residence in the blessed waters of the new lake they had formed. It was reached by way of the mountain called Sher Ka Danda, “Path of the Tiger.”

  The call sounded again, closer now. Michael looked a question at Hari, who shook his head.

  “It is a tigress in estrus. Late for her time. Male and female keep territory near each other and he seeks her out when she calls him. Only when her cubs can survive alone, usually two years, will she call again. The male recognizes her voice and returns to her.”

  “That’s a hell of a long time to wait in the bushes.”

  “Patience has its reward.” Hari smiled. “During their week together, tigers mate fifty or more times each day.”

  “The devil you say! Still, two years without a woman—”

  “Only the female mates for life. The males keep a larger territory, so to speak.” Hari traced obscure figures in the dust with his finger. “This brings to mind a parable told by the Lord Buddha of a man pursued by a tiger.”

  With a groan, Michael stabbed out his cigar. Hari’s evening homily was as inevitable as sunset, but at least the Buddha’s tales were short. He could never decide if they were deeply profound or only designed to sound that way.

  “There was a man pursued by a tiger,” Hari intoned. “He ran and ran until he came to a sheer cliff, where he seized a vine and swung far down over the precipice. Above him, the tiger paced and snarled his hunger. And below, at the bottom of the cliff, another tiger waited for the man to drop.

  “While he hung there, two mice came near, one black and one white. They gnawed the vine with sharp white teeth, slowly cutting it through. The man clung for his life to the shredding vine with one hand, and with the other he reached out and plucked a strawberry growing on the cliff. Never had anything tasted so sweet.”

  The only sound was the crackle of the fire.

  “That’s it?” Michael said after a time. “Gather ye strawberries while ye may?”

  “The parable is not so simple as that. It is different for every man, and each time I hear the tale or speak it, new harmonies flow from the center. Tonight it sings of life reborn.”

  Michael drained the flask in one long swallow, rolled onto his side, and stuffed a blanket under his head. “That’s the trouble with this country. India never lets you finish dying.”

  The dry riverbed crackled under the blazing June sun. Dust billowed with every footfall as Michael and Hari plodded along Sher Ka Danda, obscuring their sight in a haze of heat and whirring insects. Hari led the horses while Michael slouched a few yards ahead, one foot after the other, lost in his own darkness. He didn’t want to think, but his head spun and hummed like the gnats that clouded his eyes.

  It was late afternoon when they came near an oxbow that retained a little water. Hari dropped back to refill their canteens and let the animals drink.

  Michael scarcely noticed. Hot, tense, driven to keep moving, he turned a bend and nearly tripped over an exposed tree root. Recovering, he looked up. Froze.

  No more than ten feet in front of him, a sleek tigress glared at him from icy sky-blue eyes. She was white, silvery in the harsh sun, with black stripes inscribed across her back and sides like a tocsin. Her ears were flattened with challenge. Sharp fangs curved from her snarling mouth. She dared him to move.

  No chance to lift the rifle and fire in time. He wanted to look away, to let her know he wasn’t a threat, but her blue gaze held his with implacable purpose. Beauty and death, poised to leap. She growled low in her throat.

  He had feared nothing since leaving England, least of all death, but he found himself terrified by this silver-white, blue-eyed cat. She seemed to have his name written across her open mouth and gleaming teeth.

  The sharp crack of a snapping twig sounded to his right. He swung his head toward the noise. Nothing. When he looked back, the tigress had vanished.

  About fifteen feet away, to the left, Hari slowly rose from behind a shield of dry grasses, rifle poised.

  Michael shuddered as black and white streaks flashed before his eyes. His flesh seemed to melt in the hot air. Dropping to hands and knees, blood drumming in his ears, he gasped for air.

  After a time, he dragged his head up and looked through sweat-stung eyes at Hari, who was now crouching in front of him. “My God, man. Why didn’t you shoot?”

  “I could not, Michael-Sahib. For my life I could not kill her.” Rising, Hari offered his hand.

  Michael grasped it and allowed himself to be pulled upright. His legs quivered. He’d been that close to death many times, but nothing had ever struck a chord of terror like those endless moments facing the white tigress.

  Hari let go his hand. “I spared her life. She spared your life. It is karma.”

  “If you say so.” And if karma was another name for large, ravenous cat.

  “Shall we make camp? The water is clean here and it will soon be dusk. By now, the tigress is far away, but I shall keep watch.”

  Michael poked Hari’s broad chest with his rifle barrel. “A lot of use that will be. If she comes back for a late supper, you’ll probably dish me up on a bed of rice.”

  “With curried peas.”

  As he watched the Englishman turn away, Hari Singh felt the air crackle. He lifted his head to the sky. Like all his prescient visions, the message came and went in a heartbeat. A blast of light. A flash of truth too bright to distinguish.

  He would only know what he’d seen when he saw it again.

  Chapter 1

  November 1823, England

  “There is no hope, then?”

  Grim faced, Mr. Stewart Callendar, honored graduate of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, closed the door behind him and sagged against it. “Miss Holcombe . . . Mira . . . you knew it, I think, before you brought him here.”

  “Yes.” She kept her hands tightly folded on her lap. “You needn’t protect my sensibilities, Stewart. Complete frankness will help me understand what we are facing.”

  “Very much the same as you have dealt with these last three years, I’m afraid. In my experience, whatever improvement there is to be will occur within the first year. Naturally, there are exceptions, but beyond his progress in the early months, your father has regained little control of his body. I find no significant improvement in muscular control.”

  “But his wrist is stronger, and his finger. He can lift his head now.”

  “Yes. But those are motions he developed early, and the added strength comes from usage and the exercises you conduct with him. Have you seen voluntary motion in some other part of his body?”

  Wishing it, willing it, did not make it so. “None,” she said.

  “It is little comfort, I know, but his breathing is excellent, and he is still able to swallow liquids and soft foods. None of what I observed on my last examination has diminished.”

  “Nor has his mind. He has lost weight, though, and seems more lethargic than before. But we have been required to relocate several times in the past few months, and travel is difficult for him
.”

  The doctor, a sturdy, compact Scot with unruly copper hair and side-whiskers that needed trimming, took his place in the chair behind his desk, hazel eyes fixed on her intently. “I wish you would consider leaving him here with us.”

  “Did he ask you to say that?”

  “He would have done, I ken, could he speak. And you know we will care for him as we would our own father. Janet is fond of him, as am I.”

  “All your patients receive excellent care, Stewart. And it is perfectly true he wants to remain here. But that is on my account.”

  “Then why begrudge him the good deed? Tunbridge Wells is not so great a journey. You can visit him often. He will have a regimen of healthful foods, exercise, and the company of the other patients. Surely that is preferable to the isolation of your home? And it cannot be easy for you to tend to him with so little help.”

  Before her father’s examination, she had been compelled to describe his circumstances since last the doctor had seen him. And Stewart, bless his soul, was perniciously keen at hearing what she had not said.

  “We won’t be returning to Seacrest.” It hurt to say that. The home where she had grown up, her father’s cherished library, all closed to them now. “But our circumstances have improved a bit. You will be glad to hear I can soon pay what we owe—”

  “The money doesna matter.” His dark eyes flashed. “There is naught I would withhold from you. My feelings have not altered. Not in all the time you were gone.”

  A heaviness began to gather in her chest. She closed her eyes for a moment, willing it away. “Nor have mine,” she said as gently as she could.

  They had met on only four occasions, for heaven’s sake, and he had proposed marriage on their second and third encounters. Kind men, decent men, kept falling in love with her for no good reason whatever, leaving her to refuse them because she could do nothing else. If they knew her as she truly was, they would run like foxes.