Page 3 of The Princess Stakes
The reason struck an unexpected chord of understanding and sympathy within him. Death had a way of upsetting everything. This unknown lady was racing against time for closure, while he was doing the same, only he was trying to beat the clock to get to his purportedly ailing mother in time. Rhystan could empathize more than anyone.
The boy must have noticed his hesitation because he started forward and bowed deeply. “I implore you, sahib. Please, reconsider.”
“Where are you from?” Rhystan asked, curious.
“Joor,” the boy replied and then gulped as if it was something he shouldn’t have disclosed.
But Rhystan was too stunned to dwell on his reaction.Joor. What were the odds?
Unwanted and unwelcome memories, long buried from Rhystan’s youth, rushed up to greet him. He shook himself hard and ground his jaw. What was in the past was in the past. He hadn’t thought about Joor—or what had happened there—in years. And for good reason.
A feminine lilt rose in his head:I’m yours, Rhystan.
He throttled the recollections with brute force. Sarani Rao had never been his, not when she’d jilted him for an earl. Rhystan appreciated the irony, considering he now held the most venerated title of the English aristocracy, a half decade too late. Joor and that faithless princess were parts of his past that needed to remain dead and forgotten.
“Captain Brooks of theVoyager,” he said to the servant, dismissing him and turning on his heel. “Tell him I sent you.”
* * *
Sneaking onto a ship in the dead of night wasn’t ideal. Or ladylike. Or sane.
Especially for one newly nascent Lady Sara Lockhart. But Sarani was desperate, and since theBelongingwas the only one on the manifest leaving Bombay for England in short order, she didn’t have much choice.
Tej had explained that the captain had been inflexible. Sarani would have gone herself to beg, cajole, or argue, but she was short of options and time. And she couldn’t shake the sensation that one of Vikram’s men had followed them from Joor.
“Where is the captain now?” she whispered to Tej.
“At the tavern with his men.”
“Are you certain the ship is unguarded?”
Tej shrugged. “He’s a duke. No one would be foolish enough to board this ship.”
Except for them, clearly.
A half hysterical chuckle rose in her throat. She’d questioned Tej thoroughly, but the boy had been adamant that this was the only way if she wanted to leave Indian shores in short order.
“Won’t those men waiting onboard stop us?” she asked as they crept up the footbridge where two deckhands were waiting.
Tej’s pale teeth glimmered in the gloom. “I told them it was all arranged with the duke earlier and that he gave orders to settle you aboard in the meantime. I also learned that they were hired here for the journey so I convinced them to give up their places.”
Sarani worried the corner of her lip. “And they agreed?”
“They’ll live like kings with what you gave me to pay them,” Tej whispered when the two men in question took their trunks.
Sarani winced. If this recalcitrant captain-duke found out that members of his recently added crew had absconded with a better offer, he’d be furious. He would be even more furious to discover his new, unwanted passengers. But Sarani hoped the ship would be long at sea before that happened. In any case, the amount of money she planned to settle upon him would be enough to convince him not to toss them overboard.
She hoped.
Sarani sucked in a breath, the briny waters of the harbor carrying a hint of salt on the wind. It smelled like rain. Though it was two months shy of the start of the monsoon season, if a cyclone was brewing, they would be stuck here for who knew how long and at the mercy of whoever had murdered her father. She shivered. No, this was the only viable alternative.
Then again, this duke might kill her, too, once he discovered the deception.
Sarani swallowed her fear and hiked her skirts. Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
The two scruffy-looking men led the three of them down into the hold and deposited them in a cabin the size of a closet. A lumpy bed took up one side, a small chest and a chair the other. The lodgings didn’t matter. She and Asha could sleep together, and she hoped Tej would find a space in a hammock with the rest of the crew.
A frisson of doubt assailed her as she thought of the weapons she’d packed in the base of her bag: a brace of pistols, several daggers, a pair of polished sabers, and her precious kukri blades. All deadly, should she need to use them. And she might. Four months on a ship she had no right to be on and whose captain already sounded like an unforgiving sort.
