looked, felt, for any wound on his body and on hers.
It was good that he was holding Dita, because he suspected his hands would shake if he was not. Never, in his life, had he been more afraid—for himself, for another person. She thought he had grabbed the knife when he heard the screams because he wanted to save the child and he could not tell her the truth, that he had reacted purely on instinct: she was where those screams had come from.
‘Something smells of fish,’ she said. She still sounded drugged with shock; the sooner she was in bed, warm, the better. Despite the heat she was shivering.
‘I do. That was a fish-gutter’s knife and I ran through those puddles by their stalls to get it.’
She chuckled and he tightened his arms and made himself confront the nightmare that was gibbering at the back of his brain. If he had been bitten, then he would have shot himself. He had seen a man die of the bite of a mad dog and there didn’t seem to be any worse way to go. But what if it had bitten Dita? What if he had arrived just too late? The vision of her slender white throat and the knife and his bloody hands and the dog’s foaming muzzle shifted and blurred in his imagination.
‘Ouch,’ she murmured and he made himself relax his grip. All his young life it seemed he had looked out for Dita, protected her while she got on with being Dita. Eight years later and, under the desire he felt for her, he still felt the need to do that—but would he have had the courage to do for her what he would have done for himself? Would it have been right?
‘Alistair? What is wrong?’ She twisted round and looked up at him, her green eyes dark with concern, and he shook himself mentally and sent the black thoughts back into the darkness where they belonged. The worst hadn’t happened, they were both all right, the child was safe and he had to keep his nightmares at bay in case she read them in his face and was frightened.
‘Our wardrobes are wrecked, I smell of fish and now you probably do too, we haven’t finished our Christmas shopping, Mrs Bastable is still wailing—it is enough to send a man into a decline.’
Her face broke into a smile of unselfconscious amusement and relief. ‘Idiot.’
It was the least provocative thing to say, the least flirtatious smile, but the desire crashed over him like a wave hitting a rock. He wanted her, now. He wanted her hot and trembling and soft and urgent under him. Somehow he knew how she would feel, the scent of her skin, of her arousal. He wanted to take her, to bury himself in her heat and possess her. He wanted her with all the simple urgency of a man who had felt death’s breath on his face and who had tasted more fear in a few seconds than he would surely ever feel for the rest of his life.
She was still looking at him; her wide mouth was still smiling and sweet and her eyes held something very close to hero worship. Alistair bent and kissed her without finesse, his tongue thrusting between lips that parted in a gasp of shock, his hands holding her so that her breasts were crushed against him; the feel of soft, yielding curves against his chest, against his heart, sent his body into violent arousal.
Dita must have felt his erection and she could not escape the message of a kiss that was close to a brutal demand, but she did not fight him. She melted against him, her mouth open and generous, her tongue tangling with his, her hands clinging while he tasted and feasted and felt the need and the primitive triumph surge through him. He had killed the beast for her and now she was his prize.
The seat tilted sharply, almost throwing them out of the rickshaw as the man lowered the shafts to the ground. Alistair grabbed the side with one hand and held tight to Dita with the other, shaken back into reality and the realisation that he had damn near ravished a woman in a rickshaw on the streets of Madras.
‘Hell.’
She stared at him, apparently shocked speechless by what they had just done, then scrambled down on to the ground unaided and went to the other rickshaw.
Alistair got out, paid the drivers, found the boat, paid off the porters and oversaw loading the parcels before he turned to the three women. By then, he hoped, he would have himself under control again. Mrs Bastable was leaning on Averil’s arm, fanning herself, but looking much more composed. Averil smiled. Dita, white-faced, just looked at him with no expression at all, although if either of the others had been themselves they could not have failed to see her mouth was swollen with the force of his kisses. She had said nothing, he realised.
He got them into the boat, the three women in a row, and sat down opposite them so he could look at Dita. She sat contemplating her clasped hands, calm while they were rowed out, calm when he helped her into the chair, last of the three so he could get up the ladder and be there when she landed on the deck.
‘I’ll take Lady Perdita to her cabin,’ he said to Averil and picked her up before either of them could react.
‘Second on the left,’ she called after him. ‘I’ll come in a moment.’
If there was anyone in the cuddy he didn’t see them. He fumbled a little with the ties on the canvas flap, uncharacteristically clumsy with delayed shock, then he had her inside and could put her on the bed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said as she raised her eyes to meet his. ‘It happens, it’s a male reaction to danger, fear—we want sex afterwards. It doesn’t mean anything … It wasn’t you. Don’t think it was your fault.’
‘Oh.’ She arched her brows, aloof, poised, the acid-tongued lady from Government House despite her stained, torn gown and tumbling hair and bruised mouth and shaking hands. ‘Well, as long as it wasn’t me. I would hate to think I was responsible for that exhibition.’ He could not read her eyes as she watched him and her smile when it came did not reach them. ‘Thank you for saving my life. I will never forget that.’
‘Dita?’ Averil said from outside. ‘May I come in?’
‘Ma’am.’ He opened the flap and stepped out, holding it for her to enter. ‘I’ll have the parcels sent down to the cuddy.’
‘Oh, Dita.’ Averil sat down on the trunk. ‘What a morning. Mrs Bastable is resting and I’ve asked the steward to make tea.’
‘Thank you. A cup of tea would be very welcome.’ Incredibly she could still make conversation. Alistair had kissed her as though he was starving, desperate—for her. And she had kissed him back with as much need and desire and with the certainty that he wanted her. And then he said it wasn’t her. That any woman would have provoked that storm of passion. That kissing her as she had always dreamt he would kiss her meant absolutely nothing to him. He needed sex as Mrs Bastable had needed to have hysterics.
That time when they had made love fully, gloriously, he had looked at her as she had smiled up at him dreamily afterwards and told her harshly to get out, to go, all his tenderness and passion hardening into rejection and anger.
Alistair had saved her life, risked a hideous death, behaved like the hero she had always known him to be—and stamped on her heart all over again.
‘Oh, don’t cry!’ Averil jumped up with a handkerchief. She must have an inexhaustible supply, Dita thought, swallowing hard against the tears that choked her throat.
‘No, I won’t. It is just the shock. I think I will lie down for a while. That would be sensible, don’t you think?’
‘Yes.’ Poor Averil, she doesn’t need another watering pot on her hands. ‘You get into bed and I’ll bring your tea and tuck you in. I’ll put all our shopping in my cabin; you just rest, dear.’
24th December 1808
They rounded the southern tip of India and headed across the ocean towards Mozambique as dinner was served on Christmas Eve. The stewards had brought a load of greenery on board from Madras and the Great Cabin and cuddy were lavishly decorated with palm