“Should we wake him?” the same voice asked.
No, no, for heaven’s sake, don’t wake him. He’s dead to the world, and I need him to remain that way.
“We ’ave to ’cause Crawley found a stowaway,” a hushed voice said.
A stowaway? Sarani clapped a distressed hand to her mouth. Had they discovered Tej? It was only a matter of time, she supposed, but at the rate they were going, she’d be discovered next…trespassing in the captain’s quarters. When the voices grew more heated, arguing about what to do, she glanced around for a place to hide.
But as large as the cabin was, there was nowhere she could escape detection. The desk, more of a table, offered no hiding room beneath, but on the far side of the bed, there was a wardrobe and what looked like a door that led to a privy. She could probably hide in there.
The only problem was…she would need to clamber over the sleeping man to reach it. Not insurmountable, but not easy either. He was so tall that his feet hung over the edge of the bunk, propped upon a pair of trunks that blocked the way and were stacked too high for her to climb safely. There was no help for it. She would have to creep over him and hope that he was foxed enough to stay asleep.
“Sod it, I’ll do it,” one of the men said and scratched at the door. “Cap’n?”
With her heart in her throat, Sarani darted toward the bed and hiked her skirts, hopping onto the wooden bed rail. It creaked. She froze midstep as the captain let out a snore but didn’t move. He was enormous, like a slumbering giant. Carefully, she moved to the lower rail at the end of the bed and then lifted one foot over his feet, nearly kicking over a heap of books beside it and toppling the topmost one. It made a soft thump as it fell open, but the captain didn’t stir.
A sheaf of what looked like translated literature from the Royal Asiatic Society drew her eye. Poetry, if she had to guess. Other volumes in the stack caught her eye, including Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero, a book by Thackeray that had sparked many an impassioned discussion once upon a time with said boy from her past.
“The Sedleys are selfish bigots,” she remembered telling him. “They don’t care if their son is happy, only that he marries the right pedigree.”
He’d nodded. “That’s the way of the nobility.”
“That might be so, but my parents made a love match. And what about poor Miss Swartz? It’s revolting, such hypocrisy. They were willing to accept her money, but not her, simply by virtue of her Jamaican heritage. How is that fair?”
“It’s not. And your parents were a rare exception to the rule.”
“I want to dismantle the rules!” she’d growled.
The look on his face had been one of awed admiration. “If anyone can do that, you can.”
Sarani blinked away the memory. What were the odds?
And why was she thinking about him?
Move, Sarani. Now’s hardly the time to reminisce.
Giving her head a frustrated shake, she’d just made it to the other side when the tapping stopped and the doorknob turned. Her heart pounding, Sarani dove behind the privy door just before a head of carrot-red hair appeared in the opening.
“Cap’n?” the redhead whispered and tiptoed to the bed. “He’s dead asleep, lads,” he said, creeping back to the two others waiting in the corridor.
After a few more seconds of frantic argument, they shut the cabin door. Sarani stayed put, taking in the small water closet and then the empty chamber pot. She was fit to bursting. It wouldn’t hurt to relieve herself, would it? The captain wouldn’t be the wiser, and she’d rather not soil herself. Making quick work of it, she gathered her skirts and did her business with no small amount of relief before cracking the door and peeking around it.
Her breath caught. The duke was still sound asleep, but he had turned and now lay on his back. The arm that had curved around his head lay flung over his face, hiding it from view. A chiseled chest dusted in crisp hair rose and fell with deep, even breaths. Her dread didn’t allow her to appreciate the frontal view of him—she was only intent on escape. Muttering an oath under her breath, Sarani blew out a breath.
Easy does it, she told herself.
Retracing her steps with her skirts in hand, she climbed up on the bottom bar and stretched out her left leg toward the bunk rail. She made the mistake of looking down in her precarious and admittedly lewd position—she was straddling the man, for heaven’s sake—and nearly toppled over. Everywhere her eyes fell, she saw nothing but acres upon acres of masculine perfection. If his back had been delicious, his chest was a veritable feast. A slow ache took up residence in her belly and then spread like hot oil elsewhere.
She might be in a hurry, but she wasn’t dead!
This man did not look like he had an ounce of excess anywhere on him, unlike most indolent aristocrats she’d met in India. The scattering of bronzed hair on his broad chest tapered into a trail that arrowed between the carved muscle of his abdomen to narrow hips. He was not given to indulgence, this man. Sarani gulped and suppressed a shiver at the dormant predator sleeping beneath her. If he woke, she’d be done for.
Then for heaven’s sake, you henwit, stop bloody looking.
Sarani had almost swung all her weight over when she realized the soft sounds of breathing had ceased. There was no noise in the cabin at all. Chill bumps spread over her flesh, her sense of danger heightening unnaturally. She spared a glance down and almost shrieked as his hand descended from his face and came to rest on her stockinged ankle, lodging her in place.
Her gaze flicked back up, and Sarani couldn’t move, not because he was gripping her with loose fingers. But because every bone in her body had stilled in horror, her eyes locked on his face—proud forehead, an imperial blade of a nose, and a bearded, square jaw framing lush, parted lips. Lips that had been seared into her memory.
This was the duke?
No, it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Not him.
She had to be hallucinating. But those slanted eyebrows and bold cheekbones were distinctive. Taken together, his features were enough to make her heart leap and quail in equal measure, battering against her rib cage with a force that would leave internal bruises. Her lungs ached but breath wouldn’t come.
“Dreaming…” he mumbled and inhaled deeply. “Devil…jasmine.”
His raspy voice galvanized her into action. Her breath sawing out of her lungs, she almost managed to nudge her foot out of his slack grasp when his fingers tightened. Sarani could hardly take in any air, and her survival instinct kicked into action. Flee. Flee. Flee. She had to get out of there before he woke.
Too late! A pair of devastatingly familiar gray-blue eyes, the color of salt and storm, opened and fastened on her. They were very awake and very lucid.