“You mean you’re not going to run away? My dear sister-in-law, you shock me.” The look he gave her was mocking. The blue-black eyes laughed at her, although his mouth never smiled. The muscles on his arms rippled as he worked the soap; Anna was momentarily distracted by how very large and corded those muscles were. Although his lower arms were in the water from elbow to wrist, his upper arms bulged with every movement of his hands. Her eyes slid up to his shoulders, which appeared so wide when he was dressed. Naked, they were even wider, thick and solid-looking above a broad chest that was, as Anna had noted on the night of Chelsea’s nightmare, covered with a thick wedge of black hair.
Anna was conscious of a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to touch that wet pelt, to see whether it felt coarse or silky against her fingertips, to discover for herself whether it could possibly be as springy as it looked.
When she realized what was happening to her, and that she was staring as if mesmerized at his bare chest, she jerked her eyes away. Her cheeks flushed hotly, and she realized that they must be bright scarlet.
If he had not smiled then, a nasty, knowing smile, she would have fled.
“Look all you want,” he said, completing her mortification. “I don’t mind.”
Her cheeks felt as if they were on fire. It was all she could do not to clap her hands over them. He lounged back in the tub, idly rubbing the bar of soap over his chest, and. grinned at her.
“You could join me, if you like,” he suggested softly, his eyes never leaving her. “There’s plenty of room.”
Whether it branded her as a coward or not Anna didn’t care. She knew suddenly that she had to get away, that very instant. The allure of the naked man in the tub was so strong that she felt it like a physical ache inside her.
Surely she was not tempted to do as he invited and join him? The very thought was horrifying.
But it was also, a tiny voice inside her whispered, the most disturbingly erotic notion she’d ever had in her life.
“I have something important to discuss with you. When you’re finished here, please come down to the office. We can talk there.” She started to turn on her heel.
“When I finish here I’m going to bed,” he said, stopping her. She glanced back over her shoulder at him, then wished she hadn’t. He was soaping one hard-muscled leg; his knee and part of a powerful, hair-roughened thigh were clearly visible above the water.
“It’s very important,” she managed to say firmly, tearing her eyes away from what he was doing with an effort. Really, what was wrong with her? Paul had been modest, but she had seen him in his bath. Never, ever, had the sight made her throat go dry, or her heart speed up, or her mind reel with lascivious pictures of forbidden pleasures. But then, of course, Paul had been her husband and a gentleman. And Julian Chase was certainly neither!
“If it’s truly important you can wait for me in my bedroom. Otherwise, it’ll have to keep till morning.”
He sounded unconcerned. Anna bit her lip, careful to keep her eyes averted from any part of him below his black-stubbled chin, and decided.
“I’ll wait then. But please hurry. And …” How to phrase a request that he be decently covered when he emerged? She couldn’t think of a dignified way to put it.
“And?”
“Never mind,” Anna said crossly, giving up. “Just hurry.”
She turned her back on him and walked into the bedroom, where she perched on the very edge of the giltwood chair and tried not to picture what he must be doing in the dressing room.
When he emerged, some ten minutes later, Anna was relieved to see that he had at least had the decency to don a dressing gown. More elegant than the clothes he wore by day, it was of dark brown silk corded in gold. It covered him almost to his ankles. Of course, a large vee of black-haired chest was left on view, as were his ankles and bare feet, but still, considering, Anna felt fortunate. She had been half afraid that he would walk in here as bare as a babe.
“Now what was so important that it couldn’t wait until morning?” He carried a lit cigar, which he stuck in his mouth. Anna realized that one like it had been tamped out on a dish beside the bath, although the situation had so befuddled her that she had barely noticed. Funny, she had never seen him smoke before. Perhaps it was something he did only at night.
Recalled to her grievance, she sat a little straighter on the chair.
“You told Mr. Hillmore to go ahead with his plans to plant orange pekoe without getting approval from me.” Her voice quavered with indignation.
His brows lifted. “So I did.”
Anna was nonplussed. Whatever response she had expected to her accusation, it had not been a cool “So I did”!
“Srinagar belongs to me,” she said at last, getting her bearings again. “I give the orders here. As a matter of fact, I think it is probably a mistake to clear so much land. True, in three years or so we’ll realize a little extra profit, but in the meantime—”
“In the meantime the plants that are there are too overgrown to produce more than the bare minimum of tea. The fields are basically idle anyway, so it makes sense to convert them to something that will eventually pay.”
Again he took her by surprise. “You don’t know anything about tea!”
He puffed on his cigar, then pulled it from his mouth. “Now there’s where you’re wrong. I didn’t know much about tea cultivation when I came, but I’m a quick study, and I’ve made it my business to learn. From what I’ve learned from Hillmore, and your dear friend Dumesne, and the books in your library, I fancy I have at least as good an understanding of what Srinagar needs as you do.”
“You …”
“And as for Srinagar being yours, I would remind you that my hide paid for the place. I know I told you that I would leave when I recover the emeralds, and I will. So all you have to do is bide your time until then, and you can do whatever the hell you want. But in the meantime, I’m going to do what I think best. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry.” He crossed to the corner where she sat, stopping just short of where she perched on the giltwood chair, and stubbed out his cigar on the porcelain dish on the drum table.
“And now that you’ve said your piece, I think it only fair that I have a chance to say mine.”
At the grim tone to his voice, Anna looked up at him, eyes widening.
“If you invade my bedroom again, I’m going to take it as an invitation. I’ve wanted you from the moment I first set eyes on you in Gordon Hall, and I know damned well you want me too. So I suggest, unless it’s your intention to end up in my bed, you get the hell out of here and stay out. Do I make myself clear?”
As she listened to this brutal speech, Anna’s mouth dropped open. As he finished, she shut it with a snap. How dare he speak so to her! She surged to her feet. Her movement brought her just inches from where he stood facing her, but she was too angry to notice, or care.
“You conceited beast! I don’t—want—you, to use your nasty phrase! I came in here to—”
He interrupted her ruthlessly. “You can lie to yourself if you want to, Anna my sweet, but you can’t lie to me. You’re a flesh-and-blood woman, with good hot red blood, and you’re in such an itch to be mounted that you can hardly keep your hands off me. You look at me like a woman looks at a man she wants to bed. Hell, you kiss me like a woman kisses a man she wants to bed. Your breasts swell in my hands and your—”
“Stop it!” Anna cried, almost screeching. “Just stop it!”
“Oh, no, my lovely little hypocrite, it’s too late for that. You had your chance!”
With that he reached out and caught her upper arms. Despite her furious struggles, he dragged her close, until her breasts were crushed against his chest. Then, even as Anna looked up, hurling insults at him like stones, he lowered his mouth to hers.
He kissed her and she was lost. Her head swam under the rough tutelage of that hard mouth, and her knees went suddenly weak. Her hands, which had been beating at his chest, went still and then curled around the cool silk of the lapels of his dressing gown. Beneath the coolness of the cloth her fingers brushed the hair-softened heat of his chest.
Her lips quivered and parted; her tongue answered the fierce demand of his. He no longer had to hold her against him; she pressed close and closer yet, her breasts seeking the hardness of his chest to ease the ache that pierced their softness. Her hands slid up to close behind his neck.
“Now,” he muttered with fierce satisfaction into her mouth, even as his hands sought the first of the buttons at the back of her dress. “Now tell me that you don’t want me.”
The words hit Anna like a bucket of cold water. What was she doing.… How could she let him … Had she no pride at all? With a furious hiss she tore her mouth from beneath his and jerked herself out of his arms.
Then, without a word, she dealt him a slap that rocked his head.
For a moment he stood there simply looking at her while the imprint of her hand on his cheek slowly filled with dark red blood. Then he raised his hand to the hurt, and his eyes went as black as jet.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell out of my sight,” he said.
Anna drew in a deep, shaken breath, took one final look at those blazing black eyes, then turned on her heel and fled.
XXII
T
he monsoon started, a little later than usual, some four days afterward on the second of August. Anna lay in bed listening to the wind blowing and shivered. So had the wind sounded at precisely this time last year.
At this same time she had been sitting beside Paul’s bed, his still-warm hand in hers, his dying breath in her ears, listening to the rushing of the wind.
It had sounded just as it did now. Only the last time it had come, it had taken Paul’s soul away with it.
Anna couldn’t bear the sound.
She got up from bed and crossed to the window, pulling aside the flimsy muslin curtain. It was well past midnight, and she had been in bed for hours. But she had not been able to sleep, and now she knew that she would not. Not this night.
It was one year ago to the day that Paul had died.
Shadows shrouded the garden, dancing eerily in the pale moonlight as branches and clouds were blown about by the wind. The wind’s whistling took on an eerie, keening note, as if it, too, mourned.
Beyond the garden, the small fenced-in enclosure at the top of the knoll was thick with shadows. Anna thought she could just make out Paul’s tombstone, shimmering white through the darkness. Calling to her.
For a while her loss had been so painful that it was like a blade twisting constantly in her heart. Then, slowly, so slowly that she scarcely realized it at the time, she had started to recover. A whole day would go by, and she wouldn’t think of Paul. At night she was able to sleep, untroubled by dream-time visits from his shade. She’d started to feel again, sharply: anger, fear, joy. And passion. Passion the like of which she had never experienced. A passion so strong and intense that it frightened her even to admit it. Even as her heart had grieved, her body had awakened. Perhaps the new vitality of her senses had worked some magic on the ache in her heart.
It was because of Julian, of course. Guiltily, Anna finally admitted to herself what she’d been afraid to face before: he was absolutely right when he accused her of wanting him. Dear Lord, how she wanted him! She wanted to kiss that hard mouth, to touch him all over, to have him touch her.
She wanted to sleep with him, God forgive her.
Anna closed her eyes, clenching her fists as she tried to will the thought away. But it refused to be banished. Suddenly she felt sick to her stomach. On this, the one-year anniversary of her husband’s death, it was depraved that she could stare through the darkness at his grave and think indecent thoughts of another man.
Anna reached for her wrapper across the foot of the bed. She tied the garment’s belt tightly around her waist, then slid her feet into her slippers.
She needed to be close to Paul. She needed to talk to him, as she had talked to him in the weeks just after he had died. She needed to know that, after all, the love they had shared from childhood had not died with him. Just because her body quivered with hunger for another man in a purely physical attraction did not mean Paul no longer held premier place in her heart.
What kind of fickle, feckless creature would that make her, if she could so soon replace in her affections the kind, gentle man who had been her dearest friend for most of her life?
Anna left her bedroom and moved soundlessly down the stairs and along the corridor toward the rear of the house. From somewhere behind her she heard a scuttling movement. Glancing over her shoulder, momentarily afraid, she was reassured by two small bright eyes gleaming at her from near floor level. Moti. Of course he had the run of the house at night. Reassured, Anna continued on her way, lifting the leather latch that secured the back door and letting herself out of the house.
The tendrils of hair around her face, which had worked free of their nightly confinement, were whipped upward by the wind. She had plaited the long mass for sleeping, as she always did, and it hung in a single braid down her back to her waist. The wind caught at the skirts of her simple white nightgown and wrapper, swirling them around her legs. Above her head branches blew and creaked. Leaves rustled all around her, or maybe the sounds were caused by small things wandering through the night. Anna neither knew nor cared. She felt removed from herself, caught up in a dream, almost as if she were one with the shadows and the wind and the creatures of the night as she climbed the hill behind the house.
The iron spikes of the fence surrounding the small graveyard were cold against her hand. Anna felt for rather than saw the latch. Lifting it, swinging open the gate, she let herself into the tiny cemetery.
There, in the very center, was Paul’s grave.
The vines and creeping vegetation that threatened to take over every other bit of arable land were kept at bay here, on Anna’s orders. Good English grass had been planted and was kept neatly scythed. The marker was of the local moonstone, carved simply with Paul’s name and the dates of his birth and death. At one end of the small plot a temple tree grew, its tiny white blossoms perfuming the air.