Scandal in the Night (31 page)

He took her reins and conducted her through the makeshift lanes toward the center of the camp, to a sumptuous tent where the two brightly clad young women danced by the light of a fire in the flowing northern style of dance Mina had taught her.

The audience was arrayed on low, cushioned divans behind the dancers, so the fire cast them in silhouette. And there he was—reclining against a bolster pillow with the same animal grace that had first drawn her eye.

The insistent rhythm of the tabla and sitar insinuated itself into her blood, pushing her forward, until she drew close enough so she could say his name. “Tanvir Singh.”

It was enough. It was all that was necessary to sharpen his gaze upon her, and bring whatever business or pleasure he was conducting to an immediate end. Tanvir Singh came swiftly to his feet, and said something she did not understand in Punjabi. The rest of the people—servants,
sa’is,
and dancers alike, dispersed and melted away into the gathering darkness, until there was no one but the two of them.

“My friend. Where is thy servant?” He took in both her attire and the bag clutched in her hand before he looked behind her, as if searching for such a retainer, or perhaps someone from the residency who would have accompanied her.

His deep voice was graven with concern, and Catriona tugged the hood of her cloak to shield her face. “There is no one,” she assured him. “I came alone.”

His keen gaze cut back to hers. “Thou shouldst not be here alone.”

“I had to come.” She could feel the weight of every unseen gaze in the place touch upon her and identify her despite the cloak. No doubt the gossip would reach the bazaar within the hour. “I need your help. Please.”

He heard the note of uneasy uncertainty creeping into her voice, and gestured to the open flap of his tent. “Come, where we can talk and be private.”

He took her hand, but held himself away from her, and led her with ceremonious politeness under the canopy of the tent, where they were sheltered from the majority of the caravan’s curious eyes. Or perhaps they were not curious, and
angrezi
women often visited Tanvir Singh on their own, without escort. Perhaps she was not as unique as she wanted to believe, and had made a mistake in coming there.

But she had only to look across the camp to the dark ribbon of the river, and then downstream toward the cantonment and residency, where she would be trapped for the rest of her life if she turned back now.

No. It was not a mistake. She knew him better. She knew herself better.

“How can I help thee,
kaur
?”

She turned to him, to Tanvir Singh, to the steady trustworthiness that lived in his warm, green eyes. To the careful, respectful way he held her hand within his. To the ease with which she trusted herself with this man.

Tanvir Singh did not grab at her and try to intimidate her. Tanvir Singh did not murmur threats, and sleep with her aunt.

But it was one thing to decide to cast her lot to fate, and another thing entirely to actually do it. She looked at the tented room behind the gauzy curtain separating the porch from his sleeping area, where a rich carpet covered the ground and the low mounding of a cotton mattress was covered by soft cushions and cocooned in a silence so deep and profound it captured all the brave words, all the eloquent arguments and forthright pleas she had prepared at the back of her tongue. “I…”

He took some pity on her, or else he saw the wisdom in making their conversation less public still. He spoke another low word in Punjabi, and a manservant appeared to put out the lanterns, before he, too, faded back into the dark.

“Tell me what it is that troubles thee.”

All the speeches, all the reasons and explanations she had rehearsed in her mind fell away. She could only tell him the bare truth. “I came to be with you.”

He did not mistake her. Nor did he look away. But he gazed at her for such a long moment, his green eyes poring over her, that she thought he meant to refuse her. But he didn’t.

He crossed the thick wool carpet that made up the floor of the tent and held back the curtain that led to the glowing interior. Inviting her in. “Come, then.”

Catriona entered into his small, private world—his portable realm of dark, richly patterned carpets, soft, white cotton mattresses, bright pillows, and swaying canvas walls. Though it was only a tent, no formal mansion or tiered, carved stone palace was ever as enchanting.

Because it was his. It was his home, where she had never gone before. Her gaze scanned the room, taking it all in, looking for clues about the private man who was Tanvir Singh. But Tanvir followed her in, and passed by with only the slightest touch to her arm, before he snuffed out the light of the lamps and plunged them into the velvet darkness.

“The lamps cast shadows upon the walls,” he said by way of explanation, and the butterflies that had been fluttering about her insides took wing all at once, flinging themselves against her heart with giddy, fraught abandon.

If she took this step, it would be irrevocable.

And Tanvir Singh understood that. “I am only a man, Catriona Rowan.” He reached out to caress the air below her jaw. “A man who wants to breathe the scent of jasmine from the soft skin at the side of thy neck. Who wants to take down thy hair the color of apricot fruit, and spread it through my fingers. A man who wants … thee,” he finished simply. “Do not offer what thou dost not mean to freely give.”

In the cocooning dark, his words warmed her and the low timbre of his voice insinuated itself deep below the surface of her skin. Something that had to be joy broke loose and went tumbling deep into her belly.

“I do mean to offer.” She had nothing else of value, except herself. She could offer him the only gift she had. “I do mean to freely give.”

And she began to do just that—she set down her satchel, pushed back the hood of her cloak, and pulled the pins from her hair, one by one, gathering them carefully into the palm of her hand, as if their neat alignment could keep the rest of her circumstances from flying out of her control.

But nothing was really within her control. Not Birkstead, and certainly not Tanvir Singh. She did not hear him move, but she felt the solid warmth of his body as he came up behind her and brushed his hand through her loose hair, raking his fingers through the length of it, and lifting it aside to bare her nape. Catriona turned her head aside, curving the length of her neck away from him, closing her eyes to give herself over to him, waiting for his touch.

It came at last, the merest, merest glance from the back of his fingers—an impression of warmth and sensuality. He slid his hand slowly upward, carefully delineating the curve of her neck before he turned and swept the pads of his fingers down along the tendon and out across the bridge of her collarbone to her shoulder. Her skin came alive beneath the cover of the layers of her English gown and the confines of her shift and stays. Every part of her, every inch of skin leaped with awareness and anticipation. With one brief moment of contact, he had filled her with longing for his touch.

He pulled her back against him then, gently settling her back against his chest, letting her rest against him. “We have begun, my
kaur,
” he murmured into her ear. “And already thy body calls out to mine. Already thy skin heats to my touch. But it is not yet too late. It is not yet wrong for thee to think better of thy offer.” He wound his fingers into her hair and tugged gently, holding her still so his lips could find the exact spot where her collar met her flesh. “You must understand.” He held himself entirely still, as if they stood together on some great precipice, and one further movement would tumble them headlong into an abyss. “You must understand that if you offer yourself to me, I will most assuredly have you. I will have you bared to my touch. I will have you naked and spread for me in all your pale, luminous glory. And I will worship your body with my hands and my tongue and my body. I will teach you everything I know of pleasure and delight. Bare and naked,” he whispered, “with nothing between us but passion.”

Her chest was already rising and falling in rapid agreement, and her skin was tingling with anticipation of his touch. It had grown exquisitely sensitive and she felt the deep tug of something that must be want flaring strongly within. “Nothing between us.”

She raised her hand to show him she meant it, to put words into action, and began to work loose the tight line of buttons at her wrist.

He rounded his hands around her shoulders, and then trailed them lightly down the length of her sleeves. “Let me, my
kaur.
I want to undress you.”

His arms enclosed her and held her steady against him, leaning back into his strength as his clever fingers plucked the buttons loose one by one, and his lips played along the line of her neck, and his teeth glanced along the sensitive tendon.

When the buttons at her wrists were free, she turned within the circle of his arms and brought her mouth to his to kiss him with the same fierce tenderness he had been lavishing upon her. To press her lips to his and worry at the taut line of his smooth flesh with tiny nips, the way he had taught her.

It was slow and measured—a promenade toward seduction, a courtly walk instead of a headlong rush. He took his time with her, drawing out each sensation, lingering and waiting for the yearning to work its way through her, to let the pleasure seep down into her bones until she wanted each next thing, each stronger touch, each possessive caress, each show of passion that pushed her ever higher toward a goal she did not understand but could sense was waiting. Waiting for her. Beyond. Hovering just out of reach.

He was everything of patience, when she had none. He was everything of caution when she wanted done with it. He tasted her slowly, carefully, as if every single moment mattered. As if she were spun glass, and if he lifted her too high she might shatter from the pressure. But she was made of sterner, stronger stuff. She was not a fragile teacup of a woman to be sipped at delicately. She was strong like Scots whisky—hot and volatile, ready to combust. Ready to make him combust. She wanted him to drink her down until his head was spinning and the world was turning around the place where their flesh met.

But his care could not but affect her. And the moment after she wanted him to rely upon her strength she was glad that he did not. How long had she waited to depend upon someone else? How long had it been since she could trust someone else to carry the burdens that needed to be borne?

“Please,” she said, unsure of what exactly she was asking for, but sure that he would understand and give it to her. She could trust him to do what needed to be done. “Make me naked. Quickly.”

“Oh, there is no need to rush. We have all the night. And all of the day. And the following day. And the day after that. And the night. Every night.”

But he had not been idle. While they kissed, his fingers had worked assiduously at the buttons down the front of her jacket. “So tight and closed up. All those buttons marching up and down your stiff bodices, enclosing the soft woman behind. So erotic. You have no idea how your buttons have tempted me.”

In far less time than it had taken to button herself into the habit, the fasteners were slipped loose, and she was becoming more undone by the second. With each incursion of his mouth upon hers. With each kiss that grew bolder and bolder still, until she did not know where she was or what the state of her undress might be, only that his kiss had insinuated itself with hers until it seemed as if she could think and feel of nothing else but the sinuous rapture of his tongue within her mouth, and the feeling like morning that awoke and stretched within.

And then he pulled back to push the loosened jacket off her shoulders. And she was helping, pulling away the tight lower sleeves, working first at the hooks of her chemisette, and then at the hooks at her waist, but he placed his hands over hers to still her. She looked up at him, but he was looking at her throat, at her body as it was revealed.

“So beautiful. So pale and exotic,” he whispered, though she did not think he could see her—the velvet darkness pressed close. A single fingertip traced along the loosened collar of her chemisette, and she could feel herself leaning into him, seeking out even the slight pressure of that long, clever finger.

Beneath his eyes, beneath the linen chemisette and shift, behind the confines of her stays, her nipples contracted to tight needy peaks. Her breath came shallower still, her breasts pushed higher over the top of her stays by her rising excitement.

He leaned his head down and placed a single kiss right in the hollow of her throat, and for the first time in her life, Catriona thought she might swoon. Her eyes swept shut, and her knees felt weak, and she clutched at him for balance, for sanity, for more of the heat and overwhelming pleasure that swept across her skin like a hot wind.

She was clutching at him, holding on for dear life, and she could feel the sinuous line of his shoulders, lean and hard from the years of riding and travel in the hills, and she let her hands search across the smooth muscles of his back and down the long strong column of his spine.

But he was moving away, his mouth no longer on her skin, and he was kneeling in front of her, a supplicant almost, reverent as he continued to undress her. His hands were back at the hooks at her waist, and in another moment he was helping her to step out of the pool of fabric at her feet.

But she had told him she was no idol to be adored. She had told him she was as human and flawed as any other woman upon the face of the earth—probably more so.

She came down on her knees as well, to be his equal. And she was impatient to touch him, to kiss him, to feel the hard strength of his shoulders beneath her hands. His hands were at the last fastenings of her chemisette, pushing the fabric wide to glance over the warmed skin above her stays and shift.

“So many, many layers. A gift to be unwrapped.” And then she felt his hand run down the length of her thigh until it came to the weight of her gun. “Oh, my dangerous girl, my
dacoity
bandit queen.” His low chuckle vibrated through her, as his fingers searched to find the deep slit in the side of her petticoat, and into the long, pistol-shaped pocket beneath. His hand closed over both pocket and gun and pressed the weight of the pistol between her thighs. “So dangerous. So brave, my northern goddess of flame. I shall have to divest you of all your weapons, my
kaur,
save one.”