Veils of Silk (12 page)

Laura had dressed in her custom-made riding clothing for the trek to the machan. After the major inspected her tan divided skirt and high boots, he gave a nod of approval. "A practical outfit. A pity more Englishwomen don't do the same."

"The divided skirt was my father's suggestion," she explained as she hooked a canteen to her belt and donned her topi. "So much time is spent on horseback in India that he thought it would be better if I rode astride except on the most formal social occasions, which means hardly ever. And he flatly forbade me to wear a corset in the hot weather. He claimed that corsets were responsible for the fact that so many Anglo-Indian women are in delicate health—they can't breathe."

"He sounds like a man of rare good sense. I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to meet him."

Laura was sorry, too. The thought produced one of the waves of disabling sorrow that swept through her several times a day. She fell in beside Ian and they began their hike to the water hole. The path wound among the village fields, then through light forest interspersed with grassy meadows. The sunshine and lovely countryside lifted her spirits. Though she would never stop missing her stepfather, neither would she allow herself to be drowned by despair.

As she had observed earlier, Ian saw more with one eye than most people did with two. As they walked he wordlessly drew her attention to things she would otherwise not have noticed. In fact, his awareness of their surroundings was a product of all his senses, not only sight. It was he who heard the almost inaudible wingbeats
of a brilliantly colored sunbird that hovered like a hummingbird by a flowering shrub. Later he pushed aside some grasses to reveal a cluster of white flowers. The blossoms looked unremarkable, but when he picked a sprig and handed it to Laura, she found that they had a sweetly haunting fragrance.

Not all of his discoveries were so innocuous. After twenty minutes of walking, he halted and threw up one hand to block Laura's progress while he studied the forest to the left. Then he beckoned her into a protected spot among the arching aerial roots of a banyan tree, directing her gaze toward a tree about a hundred yards away. Obediently she shaded her eyes with one hand and peered upward, wondering what she was supposed to see.

Her jaw dropped when she recognized the creature lounging among the dappled shadows. It was a leopard. The great cat's spots were near-perfect camouflage as it sprawled lazily along a branch, paws and tail drooping with the boneless ease of a child's rag toy.

When the rasping voice of a leopard sounded right next to Laura, she nearly jumped out of her skin. She gave a strangled gasp and whipped her head around, fearing to find that a leopard had dropped onto her companion. Instead, to her amazement, she discovered that Ian was the one making the sounds. Bemused, she glanced back at the real leopard, wondering how it would react.

Slumber disturbed, the cat's head shot up and its ears cocked forward. After a moment of intense listening, it flowed silently down the tree trunk and vanished in the grass.

Nervously Laura watched the rippling stalks that indicated that the panther was coming to investigate what it clearly thought was a rival. She didn't believe that Ian would allow either of them to be eaten—but apart from cocking the hammer of his rifle, he seemed remarkably unconcerned by the fact that a dangerous predator was stalking them.

After a taut minute had passed, the leopard emerged from the high grass a dozen feet away from Laura and Ian. Whiskers twitching and body low, it hesitated and swung its head back and forth, sniffing curiously as it tried to locate its fellow.

When its gaze reached Ian and Laura, the furry face took on an expression of near-human shock. The leopard's reaction was so comical that Laura almost laughed aloud. The beast looked like a vicar enraged by the discovery of a frog in the baptismal font.

Hackles rising, the cat spat furiously at the man who had the impudence to speak like a leopard. Then the beast whirled and bounded away with fluid, heartstopping grace. In the blink of an eye, it was gone.

Laura discovered that she was holding her breath, so she exhaled shakily. "What was that all about?"

Ian gave her the closest thing to a real smile that she had seen yet. "I thought you might be interested in seeing a leopard. Lovely creature, wasn't he?"

"Yes, but I prefer cats that aren't large enough to eat me," she said with asperity.

"We were in no danger. Look how he ran away when he saw that we were humans."

Laura arched her brows. "Are you going to try to convince me that leopards never attack humans?"

"No," he said as they resumed their progress. "But killing humans is an aberration. Men talk about the law of the jungle, but animals seldom kill except for food." A hard edge entered his voice. "Humankind could learn a great deal from them."

Ahead a flock of green bee-eaters whirled away, disturbed by the approaching humans. Laura looked not at the birds but at her companion, and at the slight smile on his face as his gaze followed them upward.

"Did you know that if you sit and watch for an hour almost anywhere in India, you can usually count a hundred species of birds?" he said. "I used to make a game of it. Once I counted one hundred seventy-three breeds in an hour."

Laura felt a rush of sympathy so intense that it threatened to choke her. What had it been like for a man with such love of the outdoors to be locked in a dank, filthy hole without sunshine or flowers or birdsongs? It must have been hell in the truest sense of the word. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she said, "Why didn't you go into the forest service instead of the army? You know more about the Indian countryside than anyone I know."

"I probably would have been wiser to do that, but to an energetic eighteen-year-old, civilian duty sounds dull." He gave her an ironic glance. "I was mad keen to go into the army and defend the empire from the heathen. The young lack a proper respect for life." He checked the angle of the sun. "Time to stop loitering. The woodsman, Punwa, will be waiting for us."

Another ten minutes of walking brought them to their destination. The machan was a crude platform a dozen feet above the ground, built in a tree that gave a clear view of the water hole. The builders had placed it downwind so that human scent would not disturb the animals that came to drink.

Ian linked his hands together to provide a foothold for Laura, and she scrambled up to the platform. He himself waited on the ground until Punwa arrived with the kid that was to be used as bait. After the small creature was tethered and the woodsman had left, Ian swung easily up to join Laura. "The man-eater is an old male with a bad paw and a distinctive limp. Punwa says that a young tigress sometimes comes here as well, but she has never attacked a human. So if a tiger shows up and I don't shoot, it will be because it's the wrong one."

"Won't she eat the kid?"

"Probably. We'll have to hope that the right tiger comes. Even if he doesn't, we'll have plenty of company." He settled down with his back against the tree trunk, rifle and ammunition convenient to his left hand. "It's interesting. Since all animals need water, they usually observe a water hole truce. Creatures that are enemies elsewhere will ignore each other when they're drinking."

After that, neither of them spoke. Though it never would have occurred to Laura to choose to spend a night watching a pond, she found the ever-changing cavalcade fascinating. A suspicious, quick-eyed jackal trotted up to the far side of the pond and lapped its water at the same time that several of the graceful spotted deer called chital were drinking near the kid. As the jackal left, a troop of exuberant rhesus monkeys romped up, acting much like a human family pick-nicking in the country. They were soon followed by a chattering flock of parakeets, the noisiest of the pond's visitors. Some of the visitors showed mild curiosity in the kid, but none disturbed it.

Yet interesting as the parade was, Laura found herself distracted by Ian's closeness. The machan had room for two people, but only just, and their shoulders almost touched. Her senses heightened until she was conscious of his slightest movement. While her gaze might be on the dive of a little blue kingfisher, all head and beak, her skin prickled with awareness of her companion's breathing, and the warmth of his body.

For eight years she had tried to forget the magic of a man's touch, but Ian was making a shambles of her resolutions. She wanted to reach out and embrace him, bury her face against his throat and taste the salt of his skin.

Her reaction fueled her worst suspicions about her nature. If her companion had shown the least interest in her—if his fingers had brushed her hand, or if he had smiled into her eyes—she would have melted like wax in the Indian sun.

Thank heaven Ian was oblivious to her overheated imagination. As Laura ruthlessly suppressed her longings, she swore that she would not allow herself to get into such an intimate situation again. Though the major was indifferent to her modest charms, another man might not have been.

Dusk fell rapidly, and it was nearly full dark when a tiger emerged languidly from the underbrush. In the bright moonlight, its stripes shone pale gold. Laura had never seen a tiger in the wild, and she caught her breath, awed by its dangerous beauty.

Even that tiny sound caused the massive striped head to swing toward the machan. She held utterly still until the tiger resumed its stroll. Ian silently raised his rifle, but held his fire. Laura wondered how he could identify the correct tiger at night, then remembered that he had said that the man-eater had a bad paw. This beast had no limp, so it must be the innocent tigress rather than the rogue they sought.

Catching the predator's scent, the kid gave a thin bleat of fear. Instantly the cat dropped into a stalking position and slunk toward the staked animal, tail switching and hindquarters quivering with anticipation. Laura bit her lip to prevent herself from asking Ian to shoot into the air to drive the tigress away, Doing so might save the kid at the price of alerting the man-eater, if it was near.

The kid backed to the end of its tether and bleated again, its terrified cry sending a chill down Laura's spine. The sound also affected the tigress, for she abruptly abandoned her stalk. Majestic as a queen, she walked up to the kid, lowered her head, and sniffed. Briefly the large beast and the small stood nose to nose. Then the tigress gave the kid a friendly swipe with her huge tongue, using a force that staggered the little animal.

Peace having been made, the tigress moved to the water and drank, then disappeared into the night. Laura released her breath. The water hole truce had held, or perhaps the tigress's maternal instincts had been roused by the kid's vulnerability.

Laura glanced at Ian in time to see his head turn toward her. Neither spoke, and she could not see his face in the shadows, but words were not needed to know that they shared the same sense of wonder over what they had seen. For a moment she felt as close to him emotionally as she was physically.

After the tigress, traffic slowed down and eventually Laura began to feel drowsy. She was trying to suppress a yawn when Ian took off his jacket, folded it into a crude pillow, and gestured for her to lie down. By shifting his position a little, he created enough space so that she could rest.