The Princess Stakes

by Amalie Howard

  “My lady,” she murmured.

  Haughty brows vaulted to the dowager duchess’s hairline. “The proper address is Your Grace, but I suppose you should be forgiven considering where you’re from. The wilds, truly.”

  Sarani felt her cheeks heat with shame as the entire entourage twittered behind their fans. Of course, she knew how to address a duchess, but nerves had twisted her tongue. The dowager’s venom was hidden behind a patronizing, sugary smile, but Sarani would not fall prey to such an obvious trap. The woman clearly wanted to establish how unsuitable Sarani was as a match for her son in her eyes, royal or not.

  “As you say, Your Grace, my apologies,” she replied sweetly. “Though some of the Indian princes would beg to differ with that assessment.”

  “Oh, have you met many Indian princes, my lady?” a young blond-haired woman blurted out. “I’ve heard that their clothes are studded with rubies and emeralds.”

  Sarani held the dowager duchess’s eyes for an extended beat before smiling gently at the girl who had spoken and then gone pink as though she’d crossed some unforgivable line. Perhaps she had from the looks of the other ladies. Sarani gave a wide smile. “Yes, and they do. They’re quite ostentatious, truly, some of the displays of wealth. Rubies as big as one’s fist and emeralds the size of plums.”

  “I cannot even imagine!” the girl exclaimed.

  “They are uncivilized,” another lady scoffed with a look of affront. “Truly, I do not know how my father expects me to mingle with heathens from the colonies. It is insufferable.”

  Sarani detected the scorn in the woman’s tone and the tangible derision in her pale eyes. Undeniably pretty, she was dressed in a gorgeous gown, her heart-shaped face twisted into a sneer. Sarani would put money on this being one of her so-called rivals.

  Lifting one shoulder in an elegant shrug, she straightened her spine, her brow lifting in an arch that would rival the Dowager Duchess of Embry’s. “I am certain we have not been introduced. Do remind me, since I have been in the insufferable colonies, what is the proper etiquette again?”

  The lady went red, opening her mouth to spew some scathing retort, but closed it as her eyes flicked—along with everyone else’s—to the ballroom entrance.

  Sarani did not have to turn. She felt his presence like a palpable force. A wash of goose pimples spread across her skin, the fine hairs of her neck lifting in instant response.

  “The Duke of Embry,” the majordomo intoned.

  All at once, the chatter died as every lady with a pulse, even the married ones, smoothed her dress and patted her coiffure. Sarani forced herself to remain still, even when she felt the duchess’s gaze flick coldly toward her. Sensing Rhystan’s approach, she turned slowly, her blood thickening to molasses in her veins at the breathtaking sight of him dressed in raven black from head to toe.

  Sweet merciful heavens, he was sin on a stick. Her hitherto dry mouth watered indelicately.

  “Duchess.” He greeted his mother with a quick nod of his head and then turned to her. “Lady Sara,” he said, his deep voice washing over her as he lifted her gloved hand and kissed it. “How lovely you are.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” she mumbled with a curtsy, the whole of him assaulting her shaky senses on every level. Sight, smell, hearing, touch. The only thing missing was taste. Her traitorous tongue darted out to wet her lips.

  His gaze slid there, a smirk forming as if he knew exactly the effect he had on her.

  Could he sense that she wanted to do unspeakable things to him? That she wanted to claim that sinful mouth without a care for decorum like the heathen she was accused of being? Releasing a ragged breath, she pinned her tingling lips between her teeth, and his smirk widened. And now, her cheeks were positively on fire.

  She cleared her throat. “You are, too. Lovely. Er, handsome. Drat, you know what I mean. You look well.”

  Gracious, she was a lackwit. Queen of the Lackwits.

  He smiled as the musical strains of a new set began and offered her his right arm. “Will you dance?”

  Sarani hoped her knees would not fail her. “I am yours to command, Your Grace.”

  * * *

  Rhystan was well aware he was causing a scene by ignoring everyone else, given the glowers coming from the thin-lipped visage of his mother. Yet even she wasn’t aware of just how close he’d come to throwing propriety to the wind, flinging Sarani over his shoulder, and hauling her from the room like a Neanderthal at her husky, provocative reply.

  I am yours to command.

  Did the minx know what she was doing to him? The flash of unguarded pleasure and then the unhidden hunger in her gaze as he’d greeted her had nearly brought him to his knees. And then, the likely innocent response that had lewd fantasies of him commanding her elsewhere—in bed and without clothing—had sent his brain into a frenzy of lust.

  Rhystan knew he was practically dragging her to the ballroom floor, but he did not care. He needed her in his arms. From the moment he’d set his eyes on her, his body had leaped to attention, but something within him had also settled.

  It was a kind of calm a ship would see in the middle of a hurricane.

  He’d been drawn to her the moment he’d entered the crowded ballroom—gleaming like a vibrant lotus flower in a garden of lackluster blooms. His eyes had narrowed when he’d seen her in the company of his mother, but she had not been intimidated, not his tigress. Her spine had been ramrod straight, her shoulders back as she took a simpering debutante to task. He didn’t have to hear the exchange. From the look on the other girl’s face, Sarani hadn’t been cowed in the least.

  He knew he had been absenting himself from her too much. The situation with the ducal estates was grimmer than he’d expected, and according to Longacre’s projections, it would take a ludicrous amount of money to make them financially stable. Money, which he had, thanks to his many investments, but it wasn’t a quick or easy fix, which meant he would have to be in London much longer than he had anticipated.

  But now, he didn’t want to think about the estate or its solvency.

  He wanted to think about the woman in his arms and the strange sense of well-being that had slid through the marrow of his bones, tethering him to her. Everything else had fallen away—his mother, her schemes, Longacre, his financial burdens…all of it.

  There was only Sarani.

  “You look beautiful,” he said as he guided her into place for the waltz.

  A blush stained her cheeks. “Thank you.”

  Her gown—it had to be new—was a bold topaz color that made her changeling eyes lean toward brownish-gold and her cheeks glow. It was fashioned in the current style with an embroidered bodice that left the tops of her elegant shoulders tantalizingly bare, hugged the length of her torso to her waist, and then flared out in a bell shape to the floor. Long ivory gloves, matching the blond lace accents on the dress, covered her from fingertips to upper arms.

  She looked magnificent, outshining every other female in attendance.

  A princess among peasants.

  Rhystan wanted to trace his mouth along those elegant collarbones, scrape his teeth along that beautiful expanse of honey-rich skin, and mark her in the most carnal of ways so that everyone there would know she belonged to him.

  She’s not yours.

  The thought was a harsh reminder of the game he was playing—that they were both playing. They weren’t true intendeds. They weren’t even friends. They were temporary allies, and she was a means to an end. But that reasoning didn’t negate the fact that it felt like the first time he’d been able to breathe in days as though she were his very air.

  He tensed, waiting for the familiar resentment to rise, but it wasn’t there.

  His gloved palm tightened against her trim waist as they twirled into the first rotation. His swift pivot brought her upper body within inches of his, the crin
oline beneath her skirts crashing into his hips. She gasped, her fingers clutching for purchase on his shoulder, and he grinned at her vexed expression.

  “Stop that,” she hissed. “Everyone’s watching, and your mother’s glare might set fire to the entire ballroom. I’m already objectionable in her eyes. She’ll think I can’t dance.”

  “If anyone can’t dance, it’s me,” he joked. “I’ve practically forgotten how.”

  She huffed a small laugh. “I seem to recall you acquitting yourself quite well in the palace several years ago. What you lacked in confidence, you certainly had in skill.”

  Her eyes widened as though she hadn’t meant to bring up the past, but for the first time in years, the thought of them in Joor did not gut him. He remembered his scattered thoughts and the challenge in her stare when she’d reprimanded him for not asking her to dance.

  “I was too busy trying to count the measure in my head so as not to brutalize your royal toes,” he said easily. “I wanted so terribly to impress you.”

  Her eyes dipped for a moment and then raised back to his, her reply so soft he almost missed it. “You succeeded.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask why she hadn’t fought harder for him, but he swallowed the bitter question. Rehashing that was only a recipe for misery. Falling into silence, he distracted himself with their avid audience. His gaze caught on Ravenna as she stood to the side. Guilt slashed through him. She’d practically turned into a woman overnight, and a beauty by all accounts. It would also be up to him to see her properly settled before he left.

  His guilt doubled as an unpleasant thought cut through him that he was doing exactly as his mother was—finding and selecting a spouse for Ravenna—when he was so violently opposed to her doing the same for him. Rhystan shoved aside his discomfort; the rules were different for men and women. Women of quality were bred to marry well.

  That doesn’t mean they relish being traded like heads of cattle.

  The voice in his head sounded like Sarani.

  He blew out a breath…better for him to choose a match for Ravenna than his mother. Unlike him, she couldn’t gallivant on a ship, nor could she be husbandless, and Lord knew what kind of man the duchess would approve for her—some old goat with an even older title who would only quash her bright spirit. Rhystan frowned. She was eighteen. Did she have any suitors? Was she sweet on anyone? It was curious that no gentlemen had sought her out where she stood, nearly invisible in white chiffon against the marble pillar.

  “She’s charming, your sister,” Sarani said, following his stare. “I’ve enjoyed her company. At least she doesn’t want to shove me on the first ship back to India.”

  He smiled. “I’ve missed the ship, you know,” he said as they executed yet another libido-torturing turn, his voice low. “And you tending to my needs.”

  A smile lit her face, despite the underlying innuendo. “You mean you miss me sewing your sleeves shut and setting barnacles in your sheets?”

  “I thought you emphatically declared that second one was Red’s doing.”

  She flushed. “He was the bosun who scraped the things off the devil.”

  God, the sound of ship’s lingo on her lips fired his blood. It was just like her to know that the curved seam on the hull was called the devil. The memory of her standing on the quarterdeck, black hair lashing into her face in those tawdry, formfitting breeches and with kukri blades in hand, had him stiffening in a second. It didn’t escape his notice that she was equally at ease on the bow of a ship surrounded by lowborn sailors as she was in a ballroom filled with the upper crust of English society. She’d been that way in Joor, too—a kindred spirit with the locals at the river and a princess with the peers at court.

  It had been one of the things that had drawn him to her.

  He’d never known anyone like her, not then and not now. No one had ever fit him as she had. In nautical terms, she was the true north to his south. His forgotten heart kicked stupidly against his ribs at the thought, and then that cold voice in his head chimed in, reminding him of what had happened the last time he’d felt this way about a girl. The burst of pleasure unspooling within him withered and died.

  Damn, he was an idiot.

  He might have impressed her with his dancing, but in the end, she’d agreed to marry someone with a title, handpicked by her father. Regardless of how well she felt in his arms or how well he felt in hers now, he needed to remind himself of that. She was a tool, nothing more.

  Their agreement was only fake, after all.

  Rhystan ended the dance abruptly, ignoring the flash of hurt surprise on her face as he deposited her where he’d found her and swept his mother’s favorite into the next set.

  Distance was best.

  Sixteen

  “Tell me the truth, Embry, she’s the girl, isn’t she?” the dowager duchess demanded.

  Rooted in her tracks en route to the morning room where she was to meet Ravenna, Sarani felt her skin go hot and then icy cold. Her Grace’s voice was hard and insistent, drifting from the open door of the study. Sarani wanted to cover her ears and flee. She abhorred eavesdropping, but her stubborn feet refused to move.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she heard Rhystan say, his voice laced with irritation. “What girl?”

  “The one from Joor,” came the acidic reply. “Lisbeth’s colored daughter.”

  Sarani flinched, though she was more than familiar with such a descriptor. She’d heard them all at some point or another. More importantly, though, the duchess knew. Or suspected, rather. After all, one did not show up with a female of unknown origins on one’s ship returning from India and declare that one was to be married to said female. Especially when one was a duke.

  “You are mistaken.” Rhystan’s voice was hard.

  “I am not. Do you know what this will do to our family? The scandal it will cause? How could you bring her to London? Bring her here as your bride?”

  Sarani’s heart clenched, the familiar bitterness wrapping its barbed fingers around her. She’d known the duchess could be brutal, given that Sarani was ruining her grand plans, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear the obnoxious sentiments.

  “Rhystan, be reasonable,” the duchess went on. “You are a duke. She is not suitable.”

  “Enough!” And then more softly. “Enough, Mother.”

  They did not speak for a long moment, and Sarani had almost coaxed her limbs to respond when a masculine throat cleared.

  “Why did you not tell me about Roland’s and Richard’s debt?”

  Dead silence ensued, but Sarani frowned, listening for the duchess’s reply. “It was not your burden to bear.”

  “I’m not duke only when it pleases you, Mother. If you had informed me, the interest alone on the defaulted loans could have been avoided. Hundreds of thousands of pounds.”

  “Which is why you need to marry an English heiress. Restore our name, not drag it through the mud. A woman of her character cannot—”

  Suddenly, Sarani could not take any more. Cursing her uncooperative feet, she ran toward the back of the house and into the gardens beyond. The slight chill in the morning air was bracing enough to douse the heat billowing through her veins. She did not stop until she came to the large elm buttressing the perimeter wall at the very back of the garden.

  How dare the duchess impugn her character? She was not a woman of poor integrity or lacking in moral fiber. She was proud of who she was. Her exterior—or happenstance of birth—she could not control. And besides, that should not bloody matter!

  Sarani bit back a sob, covering her mouth with a fist. She wrapped her arms about herself, remembering how precious she’d felt last night at the ball. How magical it had been for a handful of moments—until Rhystan had left her without explanation and proceeded to dance with every unmarried female in attendance to the gloating s
mugness of his mother. Sarani’s heart had shriveled.

  She’d been on the verge of falling for a fantasy.

  Because it was a fantasy, wasn’t it?

  Oh, she would not cry. Not for that poisonous woman. Not for Rhystan, not for anyone. She’d shed enough tears mourning circumstances she could not change. Like many others, she had not picked the life she’d been born into. Yes, she had privilege, but that privilege came with many other traps. Traps of belonging and erasure. Traps of never feeling like she was enough.

  You are the product of love, my little bee. Never doubt how much you are loved. Her mother’s voice echoed in her head.

  It’d been after some of the children at court had excluded her from their games, calling her Paste Princess. They’d tripped her in the courtyard, muddying her new dress and mocking her with other ugly names until she’d run away weeping. Her mother had cleaned her face, wiped her tears, and told her that she should hold her head high, rise above small-minded people, and never allow herself to be reduced by others.

  It was a struggle, but she’d learned to tuck those feelings of inadequacy away. She could not control others; she could only control herself. But some days, like today, her courage and those lessons failed her. Some days, she wanted to disappear.

  Sarani had never doubted she’d been cherished by her parents. They had defied expectation, propriety, and everything and everyone for love. But where had love gotten them? Spurned, criticized, and eventually murdered…with their daughter left to pick up the pieces in a world that had no place for people like her.

  A tear of self-pity slipped free, marking a hot path to her chin.

  “Princess, are you well?”

  Hastily, Sarani swiped at her damp cheek and turned to see Asha approaching, a concerned look on her face.

  “Yes, Asha,” she said tiredly, unable…or unwilling to correct her on the address. Sarani shook her head, the truth spilling out of her. “Though I admit, it’s not what I expected.”