She wished she had someone to talk to, someone to confide in, but her mother had died from a mysterious stomach ailment a few years before. The doctor had said it was caused by diseased water, though Sarani had had her suspicions. A woman didn’t go from being perfectly healthy to deathly ill in the space of one day unless she’d been poisoned.
Someone had wanted her dead.
Assassination wasn’t a stretch. Some of her distant cousins in line for the throne had always scorned her mother. They worried she would birth a son. But mostly they resented her. She wished they didn’t, but she understood why…she was an outsider. Her mother had taught her to judge people on their internal merits rather than their exterior appearances, but most people did not think like that. Not some of the locals, and certainly not the self-aggrandizing British who swarmed her father’s palace.
Even with her status as a princess, Sarani wasn’t truly accepted by the hundreds of English officers and their wives currently occupying Joor. They afforded her respect, of course, because of her station, but she wasn’t immune to their whispered remarks and snide comments hidden behind fans and sugary smiles.
Sarani sighed. Only Rhystan had treated her as if her mixed bloodlines didn’t matter. He reminded her so much of her mother in the way that he approached things—with fairness and an open mind. He had strong opinions about the corrupt agenda and actions of the East India Company and had ideas to dismantle them from within.
“I’ll write to my father,” he’d told her.
“Is he powerful?” she had said and then frowned. “But you don’t speak to him.”
His eyes had shuttered, but he’d nodded. “He has connections, and this is important.”
Not that one man could fight the will or the arm of the British Crown, but her mother had once said that one stone could still cause ripples in the largest sea. The fact that Rhystan was willing to approach his estranged father based upon what she had shared with him spoke volumes. The truth was, the more time she spent with him, the more compromised her heart and mind became.
“Thinking about your handsome young suitor?” her maid, Asha, teased from where she was braiding and brushing Sarani’s hair.
“No.” But her fierce blush gave her away.
Asha smiled, her brown nose wrinkling. “Will you marry him?”
The innocent question threw her. Other than a few furtive kisses and stolen touches, Rhystan hadn’t signaled his intentions. What were his plans? Would he stay in Joor? Go elsewhere? Sarani knew he was of good birth. His education, diction, and bearing certainly supported the notion that he was of aristocratic lineage, and his service record was unsullied. But he’d never mentioned returning to England, and the curt way he spoke of his home there suggested a painful history.
Her father would not throw out such a match if it made her happy, but she was his only child. She worried the inside of her cheek and squashed the suddenly uncertain direction of her thoughts. “Perhaps one day,” she replied, noncommittal.
After dismissing her handmaidens, Sarani had just climbed into her bed with a book when a handful of tiny pebbles struck her shutters. Her heart leaped with joy and excitement. She and Rhystan had snuck out on many an occasion after such a signal. Vaulting up, she only had time to put on a pair of slippers before the shutters pushed open and a disheveled Rhystan tumbled in.
“What are you doing?” she hissed, eyes darting to her inner door. Rhystan had never come into her chamber before. She had always climbed down to meet him after dark in secret in the gardens. She frowned, taking in the details of his torn clothing and his wild hair. “What has happened?”
“Markham,” he growled.
“The vice admiral?” She blinked.
“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter. Only you do.” Those striking gray-blue eyes met hers in the candlelight. “Do you trust me, Sarani?” The way he said her name sent shivers down her spine to her toes. She nodded, her throat thick. “Good, then listen carefully. I want to be with you. But we have to leave Joor.”
Her heart jolted. He did want her, and then the rest of his words sank in. “Wait, what do you mean ‘leave’?”
“Sarani,” he said, his fingers coming up to stroke her jaw. “There’s nothing for me here or back there. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. I swear it.”
An oozing cut on his lip drew her eye. “Did someone hit you? Are you in trouble?” He rubbed his mouth and then raked a hand through his short golden-brown hair that also looked darker in patches in the flickering light. She frowned, squinting. Was that more blood? “What’s going on, Rhystan?”
“I’ve been discharged from service,” he replied. “Tomorrow, I’ll arrange passage on a ship for us, and we can go wherever you wish to go.”
Sarani felt the floor tilt beneath her feet. “Passage on a ship?”
“Yes,” he said, gathering her close. “Do you love me, Sarani?”
She huffed a breath. “You know I do.”
“Then trust me.”
He kissed her, cupping her face with his large hands. Her fingers wound around his neck and into the silky short strands of hair at his nape. She craved the way his mouth settled on hers, but what she felt went much deeper than physical passions. She belonged with him. This was love, wasn’t it? Before she died, her mother had told her that if and when she found it, she should never abandon it. Oh, no, her father. Would he understand?
“Meet me at the inn two nights from now. At the Flying Elephant. You remember?” He’d taken her to the rowdy tavern one night, both of them heavily disguised as Royal Navy landsmen, and she’d had the time of her life. “The owner’s name is Sanjay. Ask for him and wait until I get there. Speak to no one else.” His voice grew harsh. “No officers of the Company, no soldiers. No one. Do you understand?”
“Are you in some kind of trouble, Rhystan? My father can help.”
A defeated look crossed his face. “He can’t, not without offending important people. Agents of the Crown. My bloody father. And right now, those people hold all the power.”
She recoiled. “My father is a maharaja.”
“Under English law, Sarani,” he growled. “Open your eyes. How long do you think that will last once the British get the control they want over Indian lands and assets? They’re in power, not the princes, no matter what these treaties say. The princes are figureheads, and you know it. It makes me sick to say it, but your father will not be able to protect us.”
She bit her lip. Rhystan was wrong. Her father would go to the ends of the earth to protect her. But she also wasn’t stupid or ignorant to the discontented mumblings in court. She understood the political game of which he spoke, and she, too, knew that all the power the East India Company was accumulating couldn’t be good. Already local resentment was on the rise. Sarani couldn’t blame her people—this was their home and it was being violated.