One Night with a Scoundrel

by Shelly Thacker

  Turning, she was surprised to find that Saxon had not awakened. As her eyes adjusted to the pitch blackness, she could just make out his large form sprawled in a rather uncomfortable-looking position on his side. Perhaps it was merely fatigue that had been making him so irritable. She hoped he would feel better in the morning.

  Curling up and pillowing her head on her arm, she started to drift off when a sharp cry from Saxon startled her.

  She sat up and looked down at him. “Saxon?”

  He seemed to still be asleep, though he was breathing heavily, his chest heaving as though he were running. He mumbled something in English, tossing his head.

  “Saxon?” She touched his shoulder gently.

  Suddenly he shouted and sat bolt upright.

  She gasped but did not move away. “It was only a nightmare,” she whispered soothingly in Hindi.

  She had barely finished the sentence when his arms came around her. He embraced her with crushing strength, muttering rapidly in Hindi now, his words slurred as though he were still half-asleep. “You are alive. Thank God. You are alive!”

  Aware that he was not yet fully awake, Ashiana did not try to pull away. “I-I am fine,” she assured him, whispering in the darkness.

  “I thought he killed you.” He cupped her face between his hands, feathered kisses over her forehead, her cheeks. “I thought I had lost you.”

  Ashiana’s heart skipped a beat and began to race.

  And then her lips sought his.

  He returned her kiss so tenderly that she melted in his arms. Longing and heat flooded through her. Yes. Oh, yes! This was the man she remembered, the one she had known aboard the Valor. The man she had missed so very much.

  “Saxon.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, murmuring against his mouth. “Oh, Saxon, I have missed you so. Ever since we arrived on the island, you have been acting so strangely—”

  He made a choked sound and froze.

  Cursing, he let her go—so abruptly that she fell back against the woven side of the shelter.

  “Saxon?” she asked softly, confused and hurt. “What is wrong? What—”

  “What is wrong? This is wrong! Every minute of it!” He swore viciously. “And I’ve had enough!”

  Ashiana flinched away from his anger, utterly bewildered. “I do not—”

  “I’ve had enough of the way you smile so sweetly and offer yourself so freely, when I know what you are!” He reached for her, grabbing her by the arms. “I’m sick of your games and your lies! I want the truth!”

  “I do not understand!”

  He pulled her against him. “Tell me the truth, damn it.”

  “What truth?” she sobbed. “I do not understand! What are you talking about?”

  “The sapphires,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “I want to know who you are and who the hell you’re working for and what you’ve done with the Nine Sapphires of Kashmir.”

  Ashiana could not blink or even breathe in that horrifying moment. The night and the storm closed in around her. She could only stare into the darkness, unable to see Saxon’s expression—but fully able to feel his fury, as strong as his hold on her.

  “I-I do not know what you m-mean!” she stuttered.

  “The sapphires.” He leaned closer. “The ones you kept hidden in that blasted tiger’s collar.”

  “You are mad! I do not—”

  “Stop it! I’ve had a bellyful of your lies. I saw the jewels. On the ship before the explosion. You had them all along.”

  Ashiana willed the sandy ground to open up and swallow her. He knew! Gods above help her, he knew! Her mind whirled, trying to think of some way to explain, deny, conceal.

  Then a sudden realization struck her: it no longer mattered.

  He clearly did not know where she had hidden them. He had no proof that she had them now—only that she had had them before. The sapphires were safe beneath the sea. She had done her duty. She had kept her promise to her clan.

  Her heart fluttered and began to pound, louder than the rain that hammered on the mats. So much suddenly made sense—his changed attitude toward her, his anger, his avoiding her. He was furious because she had tricked him.

  In that moment, she wanted only one thing, wanted it with every beat of her heart: to be free of it all. Free of her role, of the deceptions and lies that separated her from Saxon.

  Free.

  If she could make him understand…

  “I am sorry.” She trembled in his grasp. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

  He released her suddenly, though he still loomed over her. “You are a spy.”

  He pronounced the word with such contempt, she wanted desperately to deny it. The truth would make him hate her—but a lie would only make everything worse. She braced herself.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  With a vicious oath, he backed away from her, as far as he could in their small, rain-battered shelter. “Tell me. All of it! No more lies.”

  “I don’t have to lie anymore. The sapphires are gone.”

  “I’m warning you, woman—”

  “They are gone. I have no reason to lie to you now because I have nothing left to protect! They were in Nicobar’s collar. You are right about that. But when he came ashore, he was not wearing it. They are lost somewhere at sea.”

  She vowed to herself that that one lie, utterly necessary, would be the last she ever told him.

  When he spoke again, his voice was low and sharp. “Start at the beginning.”

  Ashiana wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in the darkness. He sounded so full of anger and outrage…and hurt.

  For that more than anything, she regretted all that had happened. But wishing could not take back the past weeks. Her only hope in making him understand lay in the truth.

  “Part…part of what you already know is true—”

  “Then let’s start with whatever the hell your first lie was and work forward from there.”

  She tried not to feel the sting of his words. “The first truth I must tell you,” she said quietly, “is that I am a Rajput princess of the clan Ajmir.”

  The curse he uttered this time was a particularly short, expressive one she had not heard him use before. “That explains a great deal,” he said through clenched teeth. “Knives and torture didn’t do the job, so they sent a female spy with pale skin and blue eyes to lure me into bed.”

  Ashiana winced. It all sounded so deliberate and ugly put that way. Her role pained her all the more, now that she knew how the Ajmir warriors had tortured him. “I was not sent to—”

  “How can you side with the Ajmir when you are English?”

  “I am not English!” Her temper flared. “The Ajmir are my people. My clan. My family.”

  “Your face and your skin tell a different story, chura.”

  Ashiana hated hearing him call her a thief. “I am an Ajmir princess.” She clenched her fists. “My father was a Portuguese merchant captain. I grew up on his ship. I loved the sea. All of that was true. But my father did not trade me to the Ajmir for treasure when I was a child, as the emperor told you. They adopted me—”

  “Ah,” Saxon said bitingly. “And there the lies began.”

  “You are not listening!” Ashiana rushed on as emotion choked up in her throat. “The Ajmir rescued me when my father was murdered—by English pirates. I was only six years old when I saw my Papa and everyone aboard our ship killed.” She thrust out her left arm, though it was too dark for him to see. “This tattoo that you have noticed? The scar? I was not abused by the Ajmir. It came from an Englishman’s whip!”

  For once, Saxon remained silent.

  “The pirates wanted to force my father to reveal what he knew about the sapphires. Papa and the maharaja of the Ajmir were close friends. We were near the Andaman Islands. The maharaja and his men came, b-but…” Tears, hot and sudden, burned her eyes but she blinked them away. “But they arrived too late. Papa was already dying. My English mo
ther died on the day of my birth and when I lost my father, I…”

  She took a breath and forced herself to finish. “I was alone. I had no one. The maharaja adopted me as his own daughter. The Ajmir gave me everything when I had nothing. They are my family.”

  “Which explains how you knew so much about these islands. Where to find food. How to make mats from fronds.” Saxon struck the side of the shelter with one fist. His voice sounded as angry as before. “You were never one of the emperor’s dancing girls in Daman.”

  “No, I was not. We only went there to—”

  “To get to me,” he finished for her.

  “To reclaim the sapphire,” she corrected. “Saxon, the maharaja has been as a cherished father to me—”

  “So naturally you would do whatever he told you. Lie, steal, poison me—”

  “I did not poison you! I could have killed you but I did not! It was an accident that you fell and hit your head in the pool. I never…I never wanted to harm you.” Tears spilled onto her cheeks. She had to make him understand the perfectly valid reasons for what she had done. “Our cause is honorable. The sapphires are sacred to my people—and they belong here, in India. It is you English who are nothing but thieves! Our people do not go to your country and steal your most priceless religious relics. But you arrogantly come to our land and think to strip it of all its treasures!”

  “So to protect your priceless relics, you devised a seductive, clever scheme,” he said hotly. “The emperor didn’t give you to me by accident. And that outlandish tale you told me in the preet chatra—that the Nine Sapphires of Kashmir are entirely a myth, a children’s story, guarded by talking flying squirrels in a palace in the clouds—”

  “I had to say whatever was necessary—”

  “You had the damned things with you the entire time! There was no ‘mysterious stranger’ who threatened you with a pistol. You planned to steal my sapphire and catch a free ride aboard my ship back to the Andamans.”

  “No,” she protested. “I was to take the sacred stones and leave the palace. I never meant to go near your ship. Your brother caught me by surprise, and then I was trapped in your cabin and—”

  “And to carry out your ‘sacred’ duty, you gave yourself to me,” he said contemptuously. “You offered me your innocence and your body to keep me from asking too many questions about my missing sapphire. You kept me hard and kept me from thinking about anything but bedding you.”

  His insults made her cheeks sting. “That is not true! I never…it was not—”

  “You seduced me because it was your job,” he grated out. “There’s a word for women who do that.”

  “I am not a whore!” Her anger ignited. “And I refused you at first, if you will recall!”

  “At first. But then you managed to make me believe that you wanted me just as much as I wanted you.”

  Ashiana’s face burned. She did want him just as much as he wanted her. How could he think that her passion for him had been only playacting? Did he truly believe that she had given him her innocence because of her duty?

  “Even once we were here, on the island,” he continued angrily, “after the sapphires were ‘lost’—”

  “They are lost,” she insisted at the sarcastic way he said it.

  “After, as you said, you had nothing left to protect, you still kept up the act. Coming to me with your charming smiles and your healing ointment and your blasted pineapple. Wanting me to believe that you cared about me. Why didn’t you just stop pretending?”

  His deep voice echoed in the humid air. The drumming of the rain sounded deafening on the mats overhead.

  Ashiana braced her hands on the dirt floor. Her fingers sank into the sugary sand. “I was not pretending,” she said quietly. “Not now, and not before.” It was agonizingly difficult to say that aloud, but she could not let him believe that her feelings for him had merely been part of her plan.

  He whistled, soft and mocking. “You are even better at this than I thought.”

  “I am telling you the truth!”

  “The truth?” he ground out. “The truth is that you’re an Ajmir princess. The English killed your father. The English threaten your people and their precious treasure. The truth is that you despise every last one of us.”

  Ashiana looked away. He was right: that was exactly how she used to feel…until she met him. “I have learned,” she whispered, “not to hate all the English.”

  She glanced toward him again, wishing fervently that she could see his expression. He remained only a shadow among darker shades of black.

  “I allowed you to fool me once,” he said coolly. “It won’t happen again.”

  “I have no reason to lie to you anymore! I tended your wounds because I do care. I care about you, Saxon. And I think…I think you care about me.”

  Harsh laughter choked out of him.

  It hurt her worse than any words he could have spoken. She blinked back tears. “You do,” she insisted. “You risked your life to save me when the ship went down. That was after you knew I was a spy.”

  His laughter stopped.

  Her hope strengthened. “Why? Why would you have done that if you hated me? And why would you have come to my shelter that night? I think you wanted to make sure I was safe.”

  “I stumbled across the clearing. I had no idea you were there.”

  Ashiana didn’t remind him that she had had a fire burning at the time. “But why—”

  “Save it. Save your bloody whys. I don’t know why. Reflex. Temporary madness. Sublime stupidity. Why else would I risk my neck for a deceitful female spy? You toss around words like ‘honorable’ and ‘caring’ when every second since you met me has been a fraud—”

  A bump on the side of the shelter interrupted him. Ashiana recognized the low puh-puh-puh sound accompanied by scratching. Grateful for the distraction, she unfastened the mat that covered the opening and let her tiger in, wet fur and all.

  “And what about him,” Saxon said caustically. “I suppose he was part of the whole scheme. That story about him being a gift from the emperor and ‘accidentally’ on my ship was one more lie.”

  Ashiana wrapped her arms around Nicobar’s neck, protecting and seeking solace. “Nicobar was on the ship by accident. But he was not a gift from the emperor. He was a gift from—” She stopped herself suddenly.

  “From whom?”

  Frustration and hurt made her blurt out the truth before she could think. “From the maharaja’s eldest son, Prince Rao. My betrothed.”

  For the span of one heartbeat, Saxon remained mute.

  When he finally spoke, he used a tone she had never heard from him before, shock laced with something she didn’t dare believe was jealousy.

  “A gift from your what?”

  “My betrothed,” she repeated, peevishly wanting to hurt him as he had hurt her.

  “Really?” he said silkily. “And do you suppose that this future husband of yours is going to be pleased to learn that I’ve had you? I doubt he’ll accept his enemy’s leavings.”

  The crude insult struck home, for she had asked herself that very question and could not answer. “He is a prince. A man who honors his word and his people. He has always accepted me as I am. And he loves me!”

  Saxon reached out, so swiftly she couldn’t evade him. He ignored Nicobar’s growl of warning, grabbed her arm and pulled her to him.

  “How nice for both of you. I’m sure you’ll be very happy together. In fact, I’d like to give you a wedding gift. Not that I’m actually going to give it to you—it’s just something for you to think about.” His voice took on an icy edge. “I still have one of the sapphires.”

  Ashiana gaped at him in disbelief. “Nahin, no! How could you?”

  “It fell out of that blasted tiger’s collar and I found it in the straw before the explosion. I’ve got it and I’m keeping it. Tell that to your betrothed while you’re busy explaining how you lost your innocence.” He let her go and pushed away from he
r, as if he could not bear to be near her anymore. “Tell him how you gave all for the cause. Then tell him you’re right back where you started from.”

  “You have to give it back!”

  “Why?” he asked mockingly. “What does it matter now? The others are gone, lost at sea—aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “Yes, but you cannot be so stubborn! That sapphire belongs to my people. Saxon, you must give it back—”

  “I’m supposed to just hand it over to you? You and this noble prince of yours? After all the lies and the tricks and the hell you’ve put me through? Chura, if you haven’t figured it out by now, let me spell it out for you: you are the enemy.”

  “No! No, no, no…” Ashiana hung her head, feeling utterly defeated. She could not make him understand. She had told him the truth, told him of her love for her adopted family, of all the reasons she had done what she had done. None of it mattered to him.

  She did not matter to him. He truly did not care about her.

  Not anymore.

  “Why?” she whispered. “Why are the sapphires so important to you?”

  His voice sharpened. “Save your questions, Princess Ashiana of the Ajmir. You tricked me once. You won’t get a second chance.”

  She could hear him untying the mat that covered the opening of the shelter.

  “You cannot be that greedy and selfish!” she cried.

  He stepped outside. She could barely hear his reply over the rain that lashed the forest.

  “You have no idea what I can be.”

  Ashiana felt as if something had just broken inside her, leaving behind only emptiness and pain beyond any she had known. “Then you are no better than all the other English! You are nothing but an arrogant, heartless thief, without honor!” Her throat constricted. “You are not who I thought you were!”

  “Well, then, that makes us even.”

  He let the mat fall back into place and left her alone in the darkness and the rain and her tears.

  A week in the rains left Saxon feeling thoroughly soaked and thoroughly bad-tempered. Nothing could lighten his mood, not even the fact that this was the first dry day since the monsoon had struck. The clouds abated just enough to let the late-afternoon sun shine through.