The Princess Stakes

by Amalie Howard

  Then for heaven’s sake, you henwit, stop bloody looking.

  Sarani had almost swung all her weight over when she realized the soft sounds of breathing had ceased. There was no noise in the cabin at all. Chill bumps spread over her flesh, her sense of danger heightening unnaturally. She spared a glance down and almost shrieked as his hand descended from his face and came to rest on her stockinged ankle, lodging her in place.

  Her gaze flicked back up, and Sarani couldn’t move, not because he was gripping her with loose fingers. But because every bone in her body had stilled in horror, her eyes locked on his face—proud forehead, an imperial blade of a nose, and a bearded, square jaw framing lush, parted lips. Lips that had been seared into her memory.

  This was the duke?

  No, it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Not him.

  She had to be hallucinating. But those slanted eyebrows and bold cheekbones were distinctive. Taken together, his features were enough to make her heart leap and quail in equal measure, battering against her rib cage with a force that would leave internal bruises. Her lungs ached but breath wouldn’t come.

  “Dreaming…” he mumbled and inhaled deeply. “Devil…jasmine.”

  His raspy voice galvanized her into action. Her breath sawing out of her lungs, she almost managed to nudge her foot out of his slack grasp when his fingers tightened. Sarani could hardly take in any air, and her survival instinct kicked into action. Flee. Flee. Flee. She had to get out of there before he woke.

  Too late! A pair of devastatingly familiar gray-blue eyes, the color of salt and storm, opened and fastened on her. They were very awake and very lucid.

  His fingers convulsed on her ankle. “Sarani?”

  The low rasp of his voice murmuring her name was too much to bear. Shock and stunned recognition flared in his gaze, emotions swiftly followed by such a fulminating hatred that she recoiled from the blast of it. He had every reason to loathe her, after all.

  Breaking from her own horrified trance, Sarani wrenched her leg from his gasp and scrambled over him. She dove for the door handle, yanking it open. But he was faster, moving like the wind for such a large man. The door slammed shut, and he caged her between his arms, all burning rage and brimstone.

  Trembling, Sarani turned to face him, her throat working. “Hullo, Rhystan.”

  Three

  The first time he saw her, Rhystan couldn’t breathe.

  Rising like a water sprite from a wide bend in the river, she was the most gorgeous girl he’d ever beheld in his life. And he’d seen a few. With his lineage and his looks, he’d never lacked for female company, not at Eton, at Cambridge, or as a naval officer. But no girl had ever made him feel like he’d run face-first into a wall.

  “Who is that?” he asked, almost toppling from his horse in an effort to keep her in view.

  The former commodore of his ship, Sir Edward Blankley, peered at him. “No one for the likes of you, Huntley,” Edward said. “That girl’s father, if I’m right, is the Maharaja of Joor.”

  Rhystan blinked, the knowledge that she was royalty and clearly out of his reach doing little to deter his interest or the sudden heated rise of his body. Though that could be because he hadn’t been with a woman in months. He and Edward were on leave from the Royal Navy, having spent the last eleven months in the Baltic and Black Seas detaining smugglers, then ferrying them back to port in St. Helena for criminal sentencing. He should have gone back to England, but he wasn’t finished seeing the world.

  Or avoiding his tyrant of a father.

  He felt a spurt of guilt at the stack of letters in his saddlebags. His eldest brother and the duke’s heir, Roland, had recently written about the birth of his daughter. Even so, Rhystan had no intention of returning to England. It had taken him two years to earn his rank and to carve his own path without the Huntley name looming over him. Going back was tantamount to telling his father he’d won. And Rhystan would be damned if he ever gave the duke the satisfaction.

  Tinkling laughter reached him again as the now heavily veiled young woman made her way up the hill surrounded by a bevy of handmaidens and guards. From what he’d seen before, the girl’s hair was jet black, a sleek inky rope that reached her waist, and her skin, covered now, had been a glistening rosy-gold from her swim. He couldn’t determine the color of her eyes from the distance, but he guessed they might be dark like that silken braid his fingers itched to deconstruct. He wondered what she would look like up close.

  “She’s beautiful,” he murmured.

  “I told you. She’s not for you.”

  Rhystan scowled at his tone, but he was too mesmerized to care. “Why not? Too good for me?”

  “The opposite. You’re a duke’s son,” Edward said. “You’ll be expected to marry according to your station. Which means an Englishwoman with an English pedigree. You toffs have to breed the next generation of blue bloods.”

  “Trust me, the Duke of Embry has two other sons to provide him with the bluest-blooded little ducal heirs. Roland is well on his way.”

  Edward sent him a dry look. “I’m certain if any of Embry’s sons took up with a chit like that and brought her into the family fold, he’d care. So would the Dragon Duchess and all her toadies, I imagine.”

  “A chit like that? Like what exactly? Do you speak of all women like this?”

  “I’m being honest.”

  “No, you’re just being a prick.”

  “Heed me and set your sights elsewhere, lad,” Edward said, turning his horse and steering it toward the village. “By all accounts of the local gossip, Princess Sarani is a handful and a half, and her father is in the middle of negotiations with the British East India Company. Find a diversion somewhere else.”

  Rhystan drew a breath. Sarani. Even the lyrical sound of her name made his chest clench. He would meet her, he vowed, no matter what he had to do.

  As it happened, a few short weeks later, when Edward mentioned the ongoing treaty negotiations with the resident maharaja, Rhystan saw his opening. He would offer to transfer under Vice Admiral Markham, the Crown’s representative overseeing discussions.

  “You’re not thinking, Huntley,” Edward had warned. “And besides, the East India Company has a reputation. Their practices are corrupt.”

  Rhystan had shrugged. “I’ll handle the Company.”

  “Don’t do this. You’re forgetting who your father is.”

  “I never forget who he is.”

  A disapproving Edward had left, and Rhystan had stayed on. It was at the next state dinner and ball celebrating the end of the treaty negotiations that he came face-to-face with her.

  A goddess in opalescent silk.

  Nothing in his wildest imaginings could have prepared him for the reality of her.

  Like most of the attending nobility, the princess was dressed in European clothing—in her case, a becoming gown that made her sun-kissed complexion glow. She shone, pure and simple. Rhystan held his breath when he was presented to her, the proximity making him feel like his feet weren’t firmly planted on the ground.

  “Commander Rhystan Huntley,” his reporting officer, Vice Admiral Markham, intoned. “Maharaja Devindar Rao, and his daughter, Princess Sarani.”

  From a distance, she had been beautiful. Close up, Rhystan was struck speechless. Other names were said, he was sure of it. He heard none of them. Somehow, he managed to bow and mumble a tongue-tied greeting, though he felt his neck heat with embarrassment.

  A hint of deviltry curled the corner of the princess’s lip, but it was gone before he could take stock of its appearance. She nodded regally, and then it was over, thankfully.

  Disgusted with himself, Rhystan held up a pillar after the dinner concluded and the dancing began. The princess swirled past in a froth of silky skirts, her gaze touching him for a moment in what felt like a tangible caress.

  G
od, those eyes.

  He’d been lucky not to have seen them before. On the surface, she might have been the perfect royal jewel—pristine demeanor, elegant features, graceful bearing. But those expressive eyes of hers had told a different story. Something fierce had spun in their green-flecked brown depths, reminiscent of a free, defiant spirit undaunted by the trappings of nobility. It called to something equally untamed in him.

  “Why haven’t you asked me to dance?” a voice like cool velvet on hot skin asked.

  Rhystan whirled, the scent of jasmine curling around his already overheated senses as the princess came into view. Several guards hovered behind her, ever vigilant. His jaw slackened as she laughed softly at his expression. He was still struggling to take in the honeyed rasp of her voice, to deal with the musical, chest-tightening sound of her laughter that followed. “Apologies, I assumed your card would be filled.”

  “It is,” she said. “But I dance with whomever I please.”

  Once more, she laughed, causing him to fixate on her lips. They were perfect, a dark rose pout that curled in amusement. Gulping, he took in the rest of her face, from those entrancing eyes and strongly drawn nose to the golden freckles dancing over a pair of sweeping cheekbones. By God, she had to be one of the most stunning women he’d ever seen. His tongue felt thick in his mouth even as his heart raced.

  “Are you naturally quiet?” she asked after he escorted her into the first turn of the next dance. “Or just shy?”

  “I’m in awe of your beauty.”

  She sniffed and tossed her head. “A woman’s worth is not only in her looks, sir.”

  Rhystan forgot about their audience and suddenly wanted to sample that saucy mouth, see if it was as tart as it sounded. “What other attributes should I be looking for?”

  “Her intelligence, her compassion, her knowledge, her wit, her strength.”

  “I see no lack thereof, but then again, we’ve only just met. You could be a coldhearted, book-burning, humorless harpy for all I know,” he teased, his chest leaping at the delighted curl of her lips.

  She threw a dramatic palm to her heart and blew out a breath. “Take that back, you rascal! I love books, more than people, in fact.”

  Rhystan grinned, the flash of a mischievous pair of dimples in her cheeks making him want to tease them out again. They parted in a swirl of skirts and came back together. “Besides reading, what else do you enjoy doing, Princess?”

  “I am fond of simple pleasures, Commander Huntley.”

  “Rhystan.” It was the only word he could safely say after the word pleasures fell from her lips and his mind was blanketed with all manner of wicked things. Like kissing. Kissing her senseless, specifically. Sweat beaded under the collar of his uniform. This girl could be the end of him. He cleared his throat. “I mean, my name is Rhystan.”

  “Calling you by your given name in public would not be proper, Commander.”

  His voice lowered. “In private, then.”

  He expected her to slap him. To lift up the voluminous silk of her skirts and flounce away in indignant rage. But a thick fringe of jet lashes lifted as those storm-bright hazel eyes caught his, wicked mirth in their depths, her whispered cadence matching his. “In that case, you may call me Sarani. In private.”

  And in that moment, Rhystan was lost.

  From that day onward, he spent every available moment he could in her presence. If an opportunity came up to accompany the princess, he volunteered for it, and if his commanding officer was noticing his obsession or disapproving of it, Rhystan didn’t care. She was as intoxicating in intelligence as she was in beauty, and he was utterly lost.

  However, he should have known it couldn’t last, and after a few months, Vice Admiral Markham summoned him to his quarters.

  “End it,” he said without preamble.

  “End what, sir?” Rhystan asked.

  Markham did not look up from his papers. “This unpalatable distraction you have with Rao’s daughter.”

  Rhystan stiffened. “Unpalatable?”

  “We need to reduce tensions with the natives, and she’s one of them.”

  Rhystan suppressed his growl of rage, knowing he was toeing the line of misconduct by challenging the man. He’d expected it from Markham, whose prejudice against the locals was obvious, but in recent weeks, Rhystan had become acutely aware of the hypocrisy of other officers in the British regime, particularly the Company, taking what they wanted without consequence and trampling the rights of the locals with impunity. They wanted the lands and the riches, but scorned the people who lived there. Including the maharaja and his daughter.

  After spending so much time with Sarani and seeing things through her eyes, the duplicity dug at him. He’d seen those underhanded treaties for what they were—cheating local princes out of power and autonomy, while their lands were pillaged. Rhystan had even cast aside his pride and written to his father, hoping his and Sarani’s concerns might be aired in chambers, but he should have said more. Done more. He blinked at the vice admiral and frowned. Had his letters even been delivered?

  “May I ask on whose authority, Vice Admiral?”

  Cold eyes met his. “The Duke of Embry.”

  Hearing his father’s name was a blow. Rhystan’s mind raced. How would the duke have learned about his relationship with the princess? Edward was the only one who had been privy to his interest in the girl, but the duke also had many connections in India, including the vice admiral.

  “It’s not that simple,” he admitted. “I care for her.”

  What looked like disgust tinged the officer’s features as a sneer appeared. “She’s a half breed.”

  The slur to her mixed origins made Rhystan see red, but before he could launch himself across the table and grab the vile man’s throat in his hands, two soldiers stepped forward to restrain him.

  “She’s bloody royalty,” Rhystan growled, abandoning the hold on his temper.

  “You forget your place, boy.” The vice admiral rose, his revulsion clear now. “I’ve watched you for months casting pearls before swine. You’re a disgrace to the entire British regiment.” He nodded to his men, his lip curling. “Get this sorry sack of shit out of here, and make sure he’s on the next convoy bound for London. Let his father deal with him.”

  * * *

  Sarani rose from her bath, jasmine-infused water dripping down her skin as her handmaidens rushed forward to enclose her body in warm drying cloths. Her thoughts, as usual, centered on Rhystan…the handsome young commander who had stolen her heart.

  Though in all honesty, she’d thrown it at him enough times herself in the past weeks. She wanted to throw more, including her body. Love made people stupid, evidently.

  Is it love?

  She’d devoured enough Sanskrit mythology to suspect it very well could be. The Mahabharata, the Ramayana. Her people loved their epic romances, and their gods and goddesses were renowned for celebrating life, devotion, and fertility. At the last, she flushed and bit her lip, her cheeks hot as the handmaidens dressed her in her flimsy nightclothes.

  She wished she had someone to talk to, someone to confide in, but her mother had died from a mysterious stomach ailment a few years before. The doctor had said it was caused by diseased water, though Sarani had had her suspicions. A woman didn’t go from being perfectly healthy to deathly ill in the space of one day unless she’d been poisoned.

  Someone had wanted her dead.

  Assassination wasn’t a stretch. Some of her distant cousins in line for the throne had always scorned her mother. They worried she would birth a son. But mostly they resented her. She wished they didn’t, but she understood why…she was an outsider. Her mother had taught her to judge people on their internal merits rather than their exterior appearances, but most people did not think like that. Not some of the locals, and certainly not the self-aggrandizing British who
swarmed her father’s palace.

  Even with her status as a princess, Sarani wasn’t truly accepted by the hundreds of English officers and their wives currently occupying Joor. They afforded her respect, of course, because of her station, but she wasn’t immune to their whispered remarks and snide comments hidden behind fans and sugary smiles.

  Sarani sighed. Only Rhystan had treated her as if her mixed bloodlines didn’t matter. He reminded her so much of her mother in the way that he approached things—with fairness and an open mind. He had strong opinions about the corrupt agenda and actions of the East India Company and had ideas to dismantle them from within.

  “I’ll write to my father,” he’d told her.

  “Is he powerful?” she had said and then frowned. “But you don’t speak to him.”

  His eyes had shuttered, but he’d nodded. “He has connections, and this is important.”

  Not that one man could fight the will or the arm of the British Crown, but her mother had once said that one stone could still cause ripples in the largest sea. The fact that Rhystan was willing to approach his estranged father based upon what she had shared with him spoke volumes. The truth was, the more time she spent with him, the more compromised her heart and mind became.

  “Thinking about your handsome young suitor?” her maid, Asha, teased from where she was braiding and brushing Sarani’s hair.

  “No.” But her fierce blush gave her away.

  Asha smiled, her brown nose wrinkling. “Will you marry him?”

  The innocent question threw her. Other than a few furtive kisses and stolen touches, Rhystan hadn’t signaled his intentions. What were his plans? Would he stay in Joor? Go elsewhere? Sarani knew he was of good birth. His education, diction, and bearing certainly supported the notion that he was of aristocratic lineage, and his service record was unsullied. But he’d never mentioned returning to England, and the curt way he spoke of his home there suggested a painful history.

  Her father would not throw out such a match if it made her happy, but she was his only child. She worried the inside of her cheek and squashed the suddenly uncertain direction of her thoughts. “Perhaps one day,” she replied, noncommittal.