When they were out of sight of the village, he said, "If you ever come back to Nanda, you may find that the villagers have set up a small shrine to the tiger lady."
"They might turn me into a minor deity?" she said, bemused.
"Such things happen. Some Punjabis established a cult in honor of a British political officer." An amused glint in his eye, he added, "I think you'd make a decent deity. How many women would take on a tiger before breakfast?"
She shuddered as an image of looming fangs flashed through her mind. "I still can't believe that I did what I did."
"Diving into the path of a man-eater is not a rational action, but under life or death circumstances, one often reacts from pure instinct. It's like being in battle."
"Then thank heaven I'm not a soldier!"
He looked into her face, his gaze warm. Then, to her surprise, he bent over and kissed her lightly on the forehead. "It's a privilege to know you, Larissa Alexandrovna."
The touch of his lips was fleeting, but for some reason Laura's knees weakened again. Perhaps it was Ian's use of her true Russian name that made the moment special.
As they continued along the path, she realized ruefully that she would consider challenging another tiger if it meant that he would look at her like that again.
Chapter 8
I don't know how Ian manages to maintain his spirits, but thank God for his laughter and good nature. We talk of almost everything, except politics, and learn much from each other. I now remember to call him a Scot, not an Englishman, and he uses my patronymic, as a decent Russian would. Can harmony between our two hostile, suspicious empires be far behind?
Laura smiled at Pyotr's ironic comment. Every night she read some of his journal before going to sleep. Her progress was slow, partly because it took time to translate her uncle's sparse, cramped words, more because she found the effort as emotionally draining as it was rewarding.
The last time she had seen Pyotr she had been little more than a child, and his letters over the years had mostly been witty accounts of his travels. Through his journal she was coming to know him as a man, and she mourned his passing even more.
At the beginning her uncle wrote about his unexpected imprisonment and gradual loss of hope in terse, infrequent entries. The pace picked up and the tone became lighter after Ian was condemned to the Black Well. Their companionship had been a vital support for both men.
She was learning as much about the major as about Pyotr. When first imprisoned, Ian had been able to laugh at adversity, and his physical and emotional strength had helped keep her uncle alive. But as the months dragged on, he had lost the ability to laugh. She hoped that someday he would find it again.
But she would never know if Ian Cameron would recover from his experiences, for tomorrow they would arrive back in Baipur. The day after, he would be gone from her life.
She sighed and decided that it was time to get to sleep. "Turning to the next page of the Bible, she started to tuck in her bookmark. Then she stopped, her brows drawing together. Most of the entries were written in the margins in tiny, precise script, but this page had several lines sprawled across the printed text. There was something frenzied about the lettering. Moreover, the words were written in the almost illegible scrawl that marked Pyotr's handwriting toward the end of the journal, when his health had deteriorated.
It took time to puzzle out the words, and at the end she was still unsure if she had translated correctly. Her best guess was, "May God have mercy on my soul, for in my cruel arrogance I set a fire that may destroy India. I pray that the Lord in His infinite wisdom will send a rain to quench it.''
She wondered if she should ask Ian if he knew what her uncle had meant by his ominous words. Then she shrugged and set the volume down. There was no point in bothering Ian with something that was probably a product of fever and depression.
She doused the lantern, settled into her pillows, and drew the sheet up to her shoulders.
* * *
The week-long journey had been blessedly uneventful compared to the turbulent days in Nanda. The bullock carts kept the party to a slow pace.
As they ambled through the lush countryside, Ian proved to be an agreeable traveling companion. Though he had no interest in Laura as a woman, he seemed to enjoy her company. Ian talked little, but when he did, his comments were always to the point and often amusing in a dry, acid-edged fashion.
When Laura needed it, he was also capable of quiet compassion. One night after they had made camp, she climbed alone to the top of a nearby hill to admire a spectacular sunset. As the sun dropped below the horizon in a flare of scarlet and gold, a wave of paralyzing grief engulfed her.
Never again would she share such sights with her stepfather. For Laura, beauty was diminished if it wasn't shared, and the pain of loss sent silent tears down her cheeks. She wept not only for Kenneth, but for Uncle Pyotr, for her splendid, outrageous mother, and for her first father, whose death was so painful that even now her mind refused to contemplate it.