Page 22 of The Princess Stakes
Seven
“There’s a ship on our tail.”
Rhystan passed the spyglass to Gideon and shaded his eyes with one palm to squint at the horizon. It was no more than a black speck in the distance, but the vessel had been following in their wake for some time. Possibly since the storm they’d outrun in the Arabian Sea, though Rhystan couldn’t be sure. He hadn’t been preoccupied with it because he’d been more focused on what lay ahead than what was behind them.
Gideon shrugged and lowered the glass. “This is a common enough trading route. We see other ships all the time.”
“Yes, but they either pass or disappear after a few days. That one has maintained the same gap. That’s what worries me.”
“You expecting trouble, Captain?”
Rhystan shook his head at his quartermaster. “Not that I know of, but keep an eye on it,” he told him. “Best be prepared if it is.”
Gideon actually looked elated at the prospect. Then again, after being stuck on a ship for weeks on end, a man tended to get restless. And a man like Gideon needed an outlet more than most. Normally, he and Rhystan sparred on deck once a day, but they’d both been busy.
In the Baltic Sea when they’d first sailed together, they’d dealt with many unsavory types on the ocean, including cutthroat pirates, whom Gideon had been merciless in hunting down. Given his lethal array of skills, he’d enjoyed putting his deadly scimitars to use. He’d been in the business of privateering for the carnage and the coin, but lately, actual physical combat had been sparse.
In that first year after leaving Joor, Rhystan had made it their business to disrupt the East India Company whenever they could. They sank ships in the dead of night, disrupted known opium trade routes, and repossessed valuable cargo, only to redistribute it to the locals it had been stolen from. He had taken great pleasure in compromising their shoddy practices and emptying their coffers.
The past four years, however, he’d spent more time in the West Indies, investing in infrastructure, trading goods, and doing what he could to better the lives of the people there. Handing over ownership of the former duke’s plantations to the locals was the first thing he’d done as duke. It wasn’t nearly enough to account for the crimes of the past, but it was a beginning—and a sign of how he intended to proceed.
Ironically, those choices had been because of Sarani.
Not that he would ever tell her that.
In Joor, she’d always been suspicious of the crown’s motives. “They didn’t come to settle or to integrate,” she had grumbled once when they were at the river. “They came to pillage. Tell me that isn’t true.”
Rhystan remembered thinking of Markham’s plans to subjugate the princely states under his rule. “I wish I could. In their eyes, more advanced civilizations have always explored lesser ones.”
“Lesser?” Sparks had flown from her. “What makes their country more advanced than mine? Our art, our wealth, our cultural history cannot even be measured. One people’s standards of civilization cannot be held to another’s!”
She’d been right, of course, and in truth, he’d never looked at the expansion of the British empire in the same way. She’d made him open his eyes to the injustices being committed in full view.
Rhystan frowned at the thought of their now intersecting paths. Five years had passed in a blink and yet felt like an eternity. It was a miracle he’d even been in Bombay at all, but he’d received word of an enormous shipment of opium, arranged by none other than his old friend, Markham.
Had fate had a hand in his return?
In this unwelcome reunion?
With one hand on the wheel, Rhystan let his gaze rove the deck, over the handful of men swabbing the wood clear of seaweed and crusted salt, until it fell on one small figure. Sarani sat with Tej and Red, a man he trusted, braiding ropes. A cap was pulled low over her head, and the nondescript clothing she wore made her blend in with the others, but she could be clothed in a burlap sack and he’d still be able to find her.
He wasn’t an enthusiast of her male attire, but Gideon had pointed out that she didn’t draw as much notice from the men. Rhystan begged to differ. He’d prefer to see those slender legs obscured by yards of voluminous fabric, not encased in formfitting trousers. Then again, heaving manure from the livestock pen off the side of the ship while wearing a dress wasn’t ideal. He scowled. The damned quartermaster had had a go at him for that, too.
“Mucking out the stalls, Captain? She’s a lady.”
“There are no bloody ladies on this ship, and it’s a job. Her job for the man she replaced.”
“Get the boy to do it,” Gideon had said. “Put her in the galley instead.”
The galley was a better place for her, true. A kinder place. Rhystan knew he was being harsh, but he couldn’t be weak. Not after what she’d done. “Shoveling shit is what she deserves.”
To his everlasting surprise, however, she’d borne the foul task without complaint. Grinning even, when she returned to see to his duties reeking to high heaven of filth and dung and tracking God-knew-what into his cabin. His scowl deepened. If it were up to him, she’d be sequestered in his quarters from sunup to sundown. Or off the sodding ship altogether. Between his marauding cock and his unraveling temper, his patience was at a new low.
Her presence rubbed him raw, mostly because it reminded him of things he needed to keep buried. Like speculating on whether the honeyed taste of her would still be the same. Or wondering if she was still ticklish on the sides of her ribs. That night in his cabin, it had taken every ounce of discipline not to drag her into the bath with him, and all the time he’d watched her, he’d felt like an interloping voyeur.
At first, when he’d come out of the privy, he’d observed her internal debate with amusement, waiting for the perfect moment to announce himself and offer her the bath, but then in seconds, she’d stripped. The power of speech left him, followed quickly by the power of coherent thought. He—a seasoned man of the world—had been knocked senseless by a mere slip of a girl.
Their handful of stolen kisses and furtive explorations in their youth had not prepared him for the sight of her unclothed—all that glorious, honey-hued skin and a pair of perfect dusky-tipped breasts, not to mention the mouthwatering swells of her buttocks and those never-ending slender legs that he instantly wanted wrapped around him.
