The Princess Stakes

by Amalie Howard

  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.

  Goodness, am I doing the right thing?

  England was an entire world away, and fitting into life there would be a struggle. But she had no choice.

  It was either that or die.

  Two

  “Storm’s in the winds, Cap’n!”

  “All the more reason for us to outrun it, Gideon,” Rhystan said to his quartermaster, standing at the helm while navigating their passage out of the harbor. “And save on coal while we can before we can put into port at St. Helena.”

  Gideon bellowed an order to hoist the sails.

  “Give a hand with the moorings, Abe,” Rhystan shouted to a nearby deckhand, who nodded and shot down the deck. “Raise the masts. Haul braces and sheets!”

  “Aye, Cap’n!”

  It didn’t take long for the ship to be underway, the push of the incoming storm just enough to give them an extra boost once the sails were raised. Rhystan stayed on deck, keeping a close eye on the dark horizon. It was more difficult leaving port at night, but he didn’t mind sailing in the darkness.

  With the winds from the incoming storm at his back, they would make excellent time. And if they lost wind or ran into trouble, he’d drop the screw propellers. The ship was of a unique engineering design—half sail, half coal-fired steam—and the best of both worlds in terms of speed and function.

  The glimmering light of dawn had yet to stretch across the sky, giving shape to the storm that chased their heels. Cyclones were rare but worse than a game of hazard. With any luck, the bad weather would blow past them. Squalls and storms were a necessary evil of being on the sea, and while Rhystan’s ship was built to withstand them, cyclones were not pleasant to endure. Not even for the hardiest of sailors. He would prefer not to encounter one this early in the journey.

  They’d been out in the Arabian Sea for several hours before he felt the insistent growl of hunger in his belly. Rhystan scrubbed at his sore eyelids. Visiting the dockside tavern last night hadn’t been the brightest idea, but the crew had deserved a round of drinking and female company before the long trip. While he’d enjoyed a few tumblers of whisky, the latter hadn’t been for him, however.

  He’d spent one or two of his younger years in the company of enthusiastic spinsters and widows, but since he’d become duke, sating his desire wasn’t worth the risk of wedlock—especially when those women invariably found out who he was and schemed to become the next Duchess of Embry. Now that was a trap he strove to avoid at all cost. Avoiding women altogether seemed to be a smart bet.

  Rhystan scanned the horizon. “Right, Gideon, take the wheel. I’ll head down.”

  A man of few words and even fewer expressions, his quartermaster grunted in answer. They’d been part of the original ship’s crew together, and when Rhystan had purchased the Belonging from its previous captain to be the first ship in his shipping fleet, Gideon had chosen to stay on. A mountain of a man with part Turkish origins, Gideon kept to himself. He was a competent sailor, an even better fighter, and he was loyal. But beyond being an orphan and living as a deckhand on the high seas, he never spoke of his past.

  That made two of them. Until the dukedom had crashed into his lap, Rhystan hadn’t shared much of his past either. Where they came from did not make them who they were. If it did, he would be a sorry excuse for a man.

  All over a woman who jilted him.

  Rhystan frowned as he strode across the deck. Ever since he’d thought of Joor and Sarani earlier, he’d been unable to strike either of them from his mind. It’d been a lifetime ago. He’d been but a stripling himself in Joor. A third-born, cocksure, nineteen-year-old son of a duke, determined to make a name for himself and forge his own way.

  “The army or the clergy,” his father, the duke, had said on his seventeenth birthday. “Choose.”

  With the heir and the spare accounted for, Rhystan had chosen the Royal Navy to be contrary. After the navy, he’d joined the British East India Company because he knew his father wouldn’t approve of any son of his dabbling with the working classes. Though tied to the British Crown, it was a trading company—an unscrupulous one as he’d later discovered—and much too pedestrian for a duke’s son, even the bad egg of the family. He’d toed the line of being disowned until his father had practically ceased to acknowledge his existence.

  When the accidental fire caused by a blocked chimney had consumed the hunting lodge and killed his brothers and father during the duke’s fiftieth birthday celebration, the ducal estate had fallen to Rhystan, along with the care of his remaining family: a mother who resented him, a nearly grown sister he’d never known, and a sister-in-law and two nieces he’d briefly seen at the funeral. And so, the precious mantle had fallen to him.

  The pressure. The responsibility. Everything he’d run from.

  You should have been there, a voice taunted.

  Rhystan rubbed his temples, a surprising amount of guilt and bitterness pouring through him. He hadn’t been plagued with so many thoughts of his past in years. First, his pathetic first love, and now, his dead father and brothers. The title was cursed. He was cursed. Cursed in love, cursed in life. The only thing he hadn’t been cursed with was a lack of fortune.

  He stopped in the kitchens to wolf down his ration of food before making his way to bed with a bottle of whisky in hand. A dreamless sleep, he thought. That was what he needed. Not thoughts of his freedom slipping away or of hot, fragrant nights filled with laughter and adolescent vows.

  Sarani.

  The beautiful, headstrong daughter of the Maharaja of Joor. His first love. His only love. He’d learned quickly from that disaster.

  He hadn’t thought of her in years. Rhystan would have assumed the passage of time would have lessened the ache, but he was wrong. His chest contracted painfully. She’d been sixteen and stunning. He’d fallen head over heels for her and thought she’d felt the same, until he realized she didn’t.

  Rhystan came to a halt at the entrance to his quarters as the phantom scent of jasmine assailed his nostrils. He must be tired. Jasmine had no place on a ship like this. She had smelled like it, the soft skin at her throat and wrists delicately fragrant. He’d kissed them enough to know. Buried his face in her glossy waist-length hair. Stolen her kisses and shared more. He’d been intoxicated. So much so that the scent of jasmine haunted him to this day.

  Slamming the door to his cabin, he tipped the bitter whisky up and gulped it down. He would exorcise thoughts of her from his mind even if he had to drain the entire bottle.

  * * *

  Sarani came awake with a start, clutching her pistol with a shaking fist. That noise had sounded too much like a gunshot. Had the assassin found her? Had she been followed? Discovered?


  No, no.

  She was on a ship. Secure in a shoebox of a cabin with the door shut. Shaking the webs of sleep from her head, she forced herself to release her death grip on the pistol. They’d been careful. They were safe. And from the soft sway beneath her, the ship was moving, which meant they were already at sea. Thank goodness for that, then. Her eyes flicked to Asha’s motionless form. The loud bang Sarani had heard hadn’t disturbed her maid’s rest.

  A tight fullness shot through her bladder when she uncurled herself from her cramped position, hunched over the chair. She glanced around the room for a chamber pot and found nothing even remotely resembling a receptacle for personal needs. Not even a bucket. Clearly, the cabin hadn’t been prepared for guests, though she had no right to complain. Tej had said as much.

  The ache became more insistent when she stood, and Sarani resigned herself to trying to find a pail. Or the head, as the sailors called it in her books. Urinating at the front of a ship would be an adventure, though the mechanics of it for a woman might be a smidge more complicated than for a man. Sarani was convinced petticoats were the devil’s armor.

  If only I’d been born a boy…

  That old wish had been a constant during her childhood, and though she’d learned to do things as well as any boy—climb trees, shoot guns, fence, and wield a sword—she was still a woman. Living in a man’s world. On a man’s ship. Without a chamber pot.

  Cracking open the door, Sarani peered down the gloomy corridor. No one was in sight. She crept out and slunk down the hallway, freezing when the murmur of voices filtered down to her but faded after a minute. Well aware she could be seen at any moment, she continued her search and almost wept with relief when she spotted a bucket and mop leaning against one wall. Snatching the former, she retraced her footsteps and came to a dismayed halt at the sight of several identical doors.

  Her cabin was on the right, but she couldn’t recall which one it was. Tiptoeing to the first, she pressed her ear to it and was greeted by the sound of loud snoring. That wasn’t it, not unless her maid was impersonating a steam locomotive. The second was quiet; so was the third. There was no help for it—she would have to try both.

  Sarani was deliberating cracking open the second door when more voices came from the stairs. Growing louder and heading her way! Discarding the hard-won bucket, she opened the door and closed it just as three men breached the corner.

  Goodness, that was close. Her relief was short-lived, however, as her gaze adjusted to take in the shadowy details of a large cabin that was clearly not hers: the velvet drapes, the large desk covered with cartographer maps, a bookcase crammed with books, and the bed that was at least twice the size of hers…which was presently occupied by a man lying sprawled facedown upon the mattress.

  Long, lean, and sculpted.

  And shockingly bare.

  Sarani’s pulse throbbed. For a breathless moment, she was stunned into wonder by the taut, tanned lines of those broad shoulders, the muscled planes descending into the scooped hollow of his spine and tapering to a narrow waist cinched into snug breeches that left precious little to the imagination. Unperturbed by her flagging morality, her curious eyes traced over the firm rise of his buttocks and sinewy, splayed thighs encased in black fabric, and her mouth went dry while other parts of her went mortifyingly damp.

  Gracious! She hadn’t had such a visceral attraction to a member of the opposite sex in, well, ever. Not since…

  No. She wouldn’t think of him.

  Not that a boy from her youth could compare. This was a man. A very large, very broad, and clearly very powerful man. She couldn’t see his face, but his overlong hair was a sandy sun-streaked brown. Idly, Sarani wondered what he looked like and whether his front would match the back. Perhaps he would be old and weathered. His sun-bronzed back gave little idea of his age, but his face would.

  She had a sudden, indescribable urge to see it.

  A bottle rolled into view from beneath the bed as the ship rocked, amber liquid sloshing around inside of it. The bed’s occupant groaned and flung one hand up over his head. Sarani didn’t dare breathe as lucidity and understanding of her situation rushed back to her woolly brain. She should have been trying to hide instead of mooning over some half-naked—albeit put-Adonis-to-shame kind of naked—sailor.

  “Cap’n, are you awake?” a voice said, footsteps stopping just outside the door, and Sarani’s heart plunged to her toes as she shot a wry glance at the dozing man. She bit back a groan. Of course this had to be the captain…a duke, no less. It couldn’t have been the cook or the surgeon or someone without the power to toss her overboard.

  “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, cree
ping 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.