Page 89 of The Princess Stakes
Rhystan nodded with reluctance, his fist clenched at his sides, but offered her his arm. As they walked back up the terrace, Sarani did not look back. That was her mistake, she supposed. Because she wasn’t prepared for the wild-eyed earl who’d followed them, crashing into the ballroom like a bull gone mad.
“You stupid, worthless creature.”
Music cut off, and voices went silent. Sarani’s heart climbed into her throat, though there was nothing she could do but watch the train wreck of her life finally derail.
“She’s nothing but a filthy mongrel, Embry!” Talbot shouted. “Daughter of a native and a disowned countess. Lady Lisbeth? Everyone knows what a harlot she was, running after that Indian like a bitch in heat. Even Beckforth wrote her out of his will.”
Sarani whirled. “Don’t you dare speak about my mother!”
“That’s your future duchess?” Talbot sneered at the Duke of Embry. “Lady Mulatto?”
She glanced at the duke, whose face had gone rigid with fury. She recognized that deadly look—she’d seen it on theBelonging. A thousand men could not hold him back, much less Sarani. She did not even try. With one fist, he flattened the earl, knocking him out cold. Screams cut through the ballroom, chatter climbing to the rafters. Rhystan had silenced the man, but the damage had been done.
She caught the horrified eyes of the dowager duchess, the sympathetic ones of Ravenna, and the triumphant glare of Penelope. But mostly, people stared at her with disdain and mistrust, as though she were an impostor who would run off with the silver or contaminate them with some malodorous disease. The whispers grew around her—native, duchess, scandal—until nothing else could be heard.
There, the truth was out.
Everyone knew.
Twenty-Five
The scandal sheets the next day were far from kind. Rhystan had expected it. They were calling him the Disgraced Duke, though Lord knew why he should be disgraced in any way, beyond engaging in fisticuffs in the middle of a ballroom to defend a lady’s honor. As though that had never happened in the history of the aristocracy.
He was the one who had let Sarani down. In the aftermath of Talbot’s announcement and Rhystan’s own ungoverned reaction, he had called for their carriages and they’d left. His mother, predictably, had had a fit of the vapors and returned home to Huntley House. Ravenna, however, had insisted on staying with Sarani at his residence. They’d slept in Sarani’s bedchamber, and he’d been grateful that Sarani had not been alone. He had no idea what she must be thinking or feeling, and it gutted him. He didn’t want her to feel pain or be hurt in any way.
In the breakfast room, Rhystan stared down at the caricature in the newssheets with a grimace. This one rubbed him raw. It was one of him standing with his foot on top of a map of India with a pencil-shaded Sarani staring up at him with avarice in her eyes. Her features had been exaggerated—eyes lengthened, lips fattened, and curves emphasized—painting her as a foreign, title-hunting jezebel. It made him sick to his stomach. That was what Talbot had intended, perhaps. To shame her into running.
The one good thing out of this was the loss of Markham’s leverage. Gideon had found Finn Driscoll, and once Rhystan had given the Irishman the vice admiral’s marker, Markham had gone to ground. But it was only a matter of time before his crimes—and the new owner of his debt—caught up to him.
Rhystan’s skin prickled with awareness moments before his sister and Sarani entered the room. God, she was beautiful. Even with an ashen cast to her skin and purple shadows under her eyes, she was lovely in a pale-green-and-white-striped dress, trimmed in gold ribbon.
“Good morning, Brother,” Ravenna said without looking at him, her attention on the sideboard where steaming dishes let out mouthwatering smells. “Goodness, I could eat an elephant.” She giggled. “Though I’m sure if Mama were here, she would scream that eating elephants is just not done.”
Sarani’s eyes met his. He saw her gaze skip to the folded newssheets beside him, apprehension flickering in their green-brown depths. He wouldn’t hide the news from her, should she choose to see them, but neither would he shove it in her face.
“Good morning, Your Grace,” she said.
He smiled. So proper. “Good morning, Princess,” he said, startling her. “If we’re standing on formality, that is. Though I suppose it’s ‘Maharani’ now.”
“What does that mean?” Ravenna piped up, plopping down in a chair that a footman had pulled out for her and pointing to the seat opposite her, on his left, to Sarani.
“Queen,” Rhystan said.
“I am not a queen,” Sarani said. “My cousin is maharaja. I am… I don’t have a title.”
“But you were born a princess,” Ravenna pointed out while gesturing at the footman to fill her plate. She glared at him when he stopped after a small scoop of eggs. “I’m a person, Camden, not a bird,” she told him. “Keep going until it reaches the edges.”
Rhystan saw Sarani biting back a grin. How close she and his sister become pleased him, but then Sarani had always had a knack for drawing people to her.
“So, as I was saying,” Ravenna went on, buttering a piece of toast once her plate had been piled to heaping, “you were born royal, which means you don’t just stop being royal, no matter what you concoct in that clever head of yours. One cannot run away from one’s birthright. Ask my brother here, who has been running for years, only to discover—sod it to purgatory—that he’s still a bloody duke.”
“Ravenna!” Rhystan chided.
“What?” she asked innocently. “Do stop being a milksop, Brother dearest. Mother Dragon isn’t here.”
Rhystan blinked. Did his baby sister just call him amilksopin his own house? He opened his mouth to give her a piece of his mind but stopped as Morton came to the entrance of the breakfast room with a bow.
“Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but the dowager duchess has just arrived,” his butler announced.
