After dismissing her handmaidens, Sarani had just climbed into her bed with a book when a handful of tiny pebbles struck her shutters. Her heart leaped with joy and excitement. She and Rhystan had snuck out on many an occasion after such a signal. Vaulting up, she only had time to put on a pair of slippers before the shutters pushed open and a disheveled Rhystan tumbled in.
“What are you doing?” she hissed, eyes darting to her inner door. Rhystan had never come into her chamber before. She had always climbed down to meet him after dark in secret in the gardens. She frowned, taking in the details of his torn clothing and his wild hair. “What has happened?”
“Markham,” he growled.
“The vice admiral?” She blinked.
“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter. Only you do.” Those striking gray-blue eyes met hers in the candlelight. “Do you trust me, Sarani?” The way he said her name sent shivers down her spine to her toes. She nodded, her throat thick. “Good, then listen carefully. I want to be with you. But we have to leave Joor.”
Her heart jolted. He did want her, and then the rest of his words sank in. “Wait, what do you mean ‘leave’?”
“Sarani,” he said, his fingers coming up to stroke her jaw. “There’s nothing for me here or back there. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. I swear it.”
An oozing cut on his lip drew her eye. “Did someone hit you? Are you in trouble?” He rubbed his mouth and then raked a hand through his short golden-brown hair that also looked darker in patches in the flickering light. She frowned, squinting. Was that more blood? “What’s going on, Rhystan?”
“I’ve been discharged from service,” he replied. “Tomorrow, I’ll arrange passage on a ship for us, and we can go wherever you wish to go.”
Sarani felt the floor tilt beneath her feet. “Passage on a ship?”
“Yes,” he said, gathering her close. “Do you love me, Sarani?”
She huffed a breath. “You know I do.”
“Then trust me.”
He kissed her, cupping her face with his large hands. Her fingers wound around his neck and into the silky short strands of hair at his nape. She craved the way his mouth settled on hers, but what she felt went much deeper than physical passions. She belonged with him. This was love, wasn’t it? Before she died, her mother had told her that if and when she found it, she should never abandon it. Oh, no, her father. Would he understand?
“Meet me at the inn two nights from now. At the Flying Elephant. You remember?” He’d taken her to the rowdy tavern one night, both of them heavily disguised as Royal Navy landsmen, and she’d had the time of her life. “The owner’s name is Sanjay. Ask for him and wait until I get there. Speak to no one else.” His voice grew harsh. “No officers of the Company, no soldiers. No one. Do you understand?”
“Are you in some kind of trouble, Rhystan? My father can help.”
A defeated look crossed his face. “He can’t, not without offending important people. Agents of the Crown. My bloody father. And right now, those people hold all the power.”
She recoiled. “My father is a maharaja.”
“Under English law, Sarani,” he growled. “Open your eyes. How long do you think that will last once the British get the control they want over Indian lands and assets? They’re in power, not the princes, no matter what these treaties say. The princes are figureheads, and you know it. It makes me sick to say it, but your father will not be able to protect us.”
She bit her lip. Rhystan was wrong. Her father would go to the ends of the earth to protect her. But she also wasn’t stupid or ignorant to the discontented mumblings in court. She understood the political game of which he spoke, and she, too, knew that all the power the East India Company was accumulating couldn’t be good. Already local resentment was on the rise. Sarani couldn’t blame her people—this was their home and it was being violated.
Rhystan cupped her face. “I won’t come to you again. It’s too dangerous. If you don’t hear from me, be at the tavern two nights hence. Please, Sarani. This isn’t what I planned for us, but I need you with me. Say you’ll stand at my side.”
Her heart could no more refuse him than it could stop beating. “I will. I promise.”
Rhystan kissed her again before leaving the way he’d come.
* * *
After a restless sleep, Sarani passed the next day in a fugue. Nothing could hold her interest, not even her books. She’d half expected armed officers from the Company to be waiting in the palace courtyard, but there was no disturbance of any sort. Despite her suspicion that Rhystan was neck deep in trouble, she distracted herself with a grueling horseback ride after her studies were finished.
“Princess,” a breathless groom said as she rode, wind-blown and red-cheeked, into the courtyard. “The maharaja commands your presence immediately.”
Without stopping to change her riding habit, Sarani dismounted and made her way to the throne room. Her gaze scanned the occupants of the room, hoping that Rhystan might be there although he’d said he’d been discharged, but his lanky frame was nowhere in sight. Disappointed, she approached the dais, where her father sat.
Sarani curtsied. “You wanted to see me, Father?”
The fact that his normally stern face didn’t break into a smile as it always did when he saw her should have been her first warning. The second was the distant expression in his eyes. “You are of marriageable age, and I have given my consent for you to marry the regent.”
Everything whirled to a violent stop. Marriage to the regent? Sarani’s jaw unhinged, her gaze flicking to the man in question. The regent, Lord Talbot, was an earl, one of the British Crown’s agents assigned to monitor local nobility. He was an aging Englishman who had always sent her lecherous stares that had made her skin crawl. His vile opinions on the locals was sickening, and she knew he viewed them—and her as well—as less than property to be claimed.
“But Rhystan…” She faltered, flushing. “Commander Huntley—”
“Has left for England,” Vice Admiral Markham said, stepping into view, his eyes touching on her, a sneer in his tone. She didn’t like the way he regarded her as though she were a stain on the edge of his cuff and not a princess a far step above him.
“He wouldn’t leave,” she said.
“I had him put in a convoy headed to Bombay myself.”
Clenching her fists, she met the vice admiral’s hard, scorn-filled eyes. “Why?”
“He assaulted me.”
The words jumbled into a nonsensical rush, but something like satisfaction in the vice admiral’s tone rubbed her raw. He was enjoying this. She recalled the blood in Rhystan’s hair and his split lip and smothered her cry. Likely, the vice admiral’s men had beaten him bloody for whatever crime they’d accused him of.
“He would never do that,” Sarani said, her heart in her throat. “Why would you send him away? Because of me?”
“You?” the vice admiral scoffed, his pitch lowering to a vicious whisper for her ears only. “You dress like us and talk like us, but you will never be one of us. You’re nothing.”
Her eyes widened with shock. “How dare—”
“That is enough,” her father cut in.
Though his face was dark red with suppressed anger, he did not say anything else. Sarani waited. Surely, he wouldn’t stand for the man’s insult! But then her eyes met his, and when she saw the resignation in them, her heart tumbled to her toes. Perhaps Rhystan was right, after all. Her father didn’t have any power. Not with men like Markham speaking on behalf of the powerful British Crown. Their wardens. Their smiling oppressors.
“Papa?” she whispered, forgetting herself and her place.
“You will be wed to Lord Talbot,” her father said, a note of regret in his voice.
Sarani gaped. “And if I refuse?”
“You will cease this nonsense.”
Flinching at the harsh whip of her father’s command, she pinned her lips between her teeth and clenched her fists. He had never spoken to her like that before. Ever.
Tears filled her eyes when he beckoned her close and dismissed the rest of the people in the room. “You would sacrifice me to him?”
“Sacrifice, Sarani?” The words held so much sadness, so much pain. For the first time, he let some remorse show, though it did nothing to reduce her ire. “We are rulers. Sacrifice is a necessary part of duty. He is a British earl. You will be an English countess by marriage. What could this discredited Huntley offer you? He is nothing and no one—a third-born, soon-to-be-disowned pauper. We cannot risk the ire of the English or the agreements in place. You are a princess of Joor.” His voice hardened, his dark eyes showing the merciless streak he was reputed to have. “Your duty is to your people.”
She lifted a blazing gaze. “You speak of duty? Is it our duty to give in to tyranny? Because that is what this is, and you cannot see it. These men are nothing but pirates plundering in disguise. Look at what they did to Bengal. They are our enemy, can’t you see that?”
Fear burst in his eyes at her heedlessly hissed words, and she knew then that her father would not listen. “Quiet, daughter.”
“Silence has never done any woman any favors.”
Her father didn’t stop her when she ran from the room and closeted herself in her bedchamber, her body racked with hard sobs. She would have to let Rhystan go and marry a man three times her age. Duty would always come first.
Duty, and the will of powerful men.
She was no more than a pawn…a piece to be played on a board. Such was her fate.
Her very hollow future.
Why shouldn’t she run? She could leave with Rhystan and never look back. But what if Markham was telling the truth and he was already gone? Her heart battled with her head, reason warring with impossible dreams. But in the end, Sarani knew she couldn’t abandon her people, not when she had any shred of power left in her. She had a voice and she would use it, even if her new husband tried to muzzle her.
Quelling her protesting heart, she reached for a piece of parchment and a quill before hesitating. It was not the done thing for an unmarried lady to write to a gentleman, but Sarani couldn’t bear the thought of Rhystan not knowing why she hadn’t come, if he did show up to the inn. She had to explain why she’d broken her promise to meet him. Perhaps it was in the face of her own sorrow or perhaps it was because, deep down, she felt like she’d wronged him somehow. But he had to know the truth, even if he’d already been sent away for good. Her message might never reach him, but she had to try.
She asked her houseboy Tej to deliver the note in secret to Sanjay at the Flying Elephant, in the event that it would get to Rhystan. It was short and precise, conveying nothing of her inner heartbreak.
Commander Huntley,
I am to marry an earl, a peer of the realm, at my father’s behest. Please understand that this is my duty. I wish you peace upon your return to your home. Be happy, Rhystan.
Sincerely, Sarani Rao, Princess of Joor
She agonized about how to sign it. Yours had come to mind. But she wasn’t his. She didn’t even belong to herself.
She belonged to Joor.
Four
Hullo, Rhystan.
Two whispered words that felt like lead ballast and shot him five years into the past reverberated in his whisky-soaked head. The melodious hum of her voice prickling over his skin hadn’t changed. Nor had its effect on him, clearly. Her jasmine-scented skin was pure opium, threatening to suck him down into its dark, sultry depths. Rhystan knew where that road led—he’d been there, and it had nearly destroyed him. He fought the pull with everything in him.
What the devil is the bloody Princess of Joor doing here?
“I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m here,” she said. Dimly, he debated whether he’d bellowed the question. He lifted an eyebrow in expectant silence, and she ducked beneath his arm to put some space between them. “I’m Lady Lockhart, you see.”
He blinked, turning. “Lady who?”
“Lockhart. My manservant came to see you yesterday. About passage to England?”
Fighting past the fog in his brain, Rhystan recalled the boy who had offered him money. He distinctly recalled telling both Thornton and the servant no in no uncertain terms.
“I told Thornton and your servant that I would not take any passengers.”
She cleared her elegant throat, those high cheekbones staining rose. “Yes, well. There was a misunderstanding. You will be compensated, of course.”
Rhystan’s eyes narrowed and he pushed off the door. He didn’t miss her flinch or the fact that she’d moved to insert the desk between them. “I also made it clear that no amount of money would sway me.”
His mocking gaze swept her trim form. Sleek tendrils of ebony hair escaped the loose knot of her coiffure to toy with the perfect oval of her face. Her beauty had not dimmed with time. He did not let his gaze drop to the decadent, dusky bow of her lips, knowing they’d always been his undoing.
Instead, he let his mouth curl into a slow, derisive smirk. “I assume then that you have some other form of compensation in mind?” The insinuation was far from veiled.
“You are a brute.”
“And you are a beautiful woman, despite everything.”
“You hate me, remember?” she tossed back. “Or have you forgotten your correspondence outlining my transgressions in such foul detail?”
His face tightened. He hadn’t forgotten the response he’d sent from Bombay after receiving her thin excuse for a letter, delivered by Markham himself, but he hadn’t waited around to find out whether she’d received his reply. Had she spoken to the tavern owner? Heard about the wretched state in which he’d been beaten and taken? Or gotten one of her lackeys to report back on what had happened to poor, naive, heartsore Commander Huntley?
She and whichever bootlicking earl she’d married had probably had a good laugh at his expense. His letter was the least of what she deserved.
“Everything above my waist does,” he said with a pointed look. “Doesn’t mean my cock agrees. Ask any of the men on this ship. Holes are holes.”
Her face flushed red. “You are—”
“Yes, yes, a brute.” Rhystan waved a careless arm. “We’ve already established that, Princess Sarani or Lady Whatever-The-Fuck-Your-Name-Is.”
Ignoring her flinch at his oath, he sauntered to the near side of the desk while swiping the half-full bottle of whisky from the floor and taking a liberal swallow. Leaning on the edge of the desk, he crossed one foot over his ankle. The casual stance belied the latent rage coursing through his veins.
“So shall I call you Countess or Princess?” he drawled. “Which title is worth more, do you think?”
Her mouth tightened imperceptibly, her spine going stiff. “I should think duke trumps both of those, Your Grace.”
Rhystan laughed without mirth. “Ah, the trap springs. You wish to set your sights on a loftier peer. I hate to disappoint you, my clever stowaway, but I’m not in the market for a wife.” His mouth turned into a smirk. “Or a shipboard doxy.”
“What happened to you?” she blurted out, a slender hand going to her throat.
His brows cinched in disbelief. “You have to ask?”
“Rhystan—”
“As you have so cleverly discerned, Countess, might I remind you that the appropriate form of address is ‘Duke’ or ‘Captain.’ And you were about to tell me what you were doing on my ship.” His frown deepened. “Are you alone?”
“No, of course not,” she said.
He pushed off the desk, rolling his shoulders. “Please don’t tell me that Lord Liverhart is somewhere on this ship, or I will be forced to ferret him out and cast him overboard.”
His unwelcome guest worried the corner of her mouth between her teeth in a gesture that made him desperate to kiss her once upon a time. Now, it only made him want to throttle something. He chose the bottle instead and lifted it to his lips to take another long swig. He then turned to lean over the desk, narrowing the distance between them.
Her eyes lowered to his bare chest and jerked away as if scorched.
“For heaven’s sake, can’t you put on a shirt?” Her cheeks flamed with bright spots of color. “You’re indecent.”
“You are in my cabin, Sarani dearest, on my ship.” He smiled and flexed his pectoral muscles. He’d fantasized for years about how he’d receive her if their paths ever crossed, and while this wasn’t one of the creative ways he’d imagined, he still took perverse delight in her maidenly discomfort. “And I was sleeping until you decided to climb into my bed.”
“I didn’t climb into your bed. I simply mistook the cabins because your men were outside,” she snapped. “And it’s Sara now.”
“What?”
“My name is Sara.”
He smirked. “So English. So tepid. Decided to deny your heritage, have you, Countess?”
“Desperate times,” she said flatly.
Something in her voice made his eyes clash with hers, but he didn’t care enough to delve further. At least, that was what he told himself. He was curious why she was running from India, but he would rather castrate himself than ask.
“You have yet to explain why you’re here and whether I need to feed your earl to the sharks.”
“I have…no husband.” She sucked in a breath. “I’m here with my maid, and you’ve met Tej.”
Rhystan blinked, his thoughts momentarily derailed. No husband? If she went by Lady Lockhart, did that mean she was a widow? He frowned. There’d only been a handful of titled English peers in Joor—a few earls and barons—but he hadn’t cared to make their acquaintance or learn their names. No, the only obsession that had consumed him stood not a foot in front of him.
The Princess Stakes Page 4
