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 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 asked, "Why didn't you go into the forest service instead of the army? You know more about the Indian countryside than anyone I've met here."
"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."
They both fell silent. 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.
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.