“Why, Ashiana?” Rao set the mango down without taking a bite. “Why did you not tell me?”
“Because I knew you would react this way!”
“And how should I react? To think of that thieving Englishman forcing himself on you—”
“No.” She turned and looked out at the gardens again, at the fountains splashing gently in the twilight. “That was not what happened between us, Rao.”
He crossed the chamber in three quick strides and turned her to face him. “Are you telling me you gave yourself to him?”
“Would you have me lie to you?” She felt desperation rising. “Please, Rao, you must spare him!”
“Spare him?” Rao shouted. “I should have instructed my guards to drown him in the sea like a diseased rat. I never should have let you convince me to waste my time listening to him!”
“But you didn’t listen to him!” She searched Rao’s deep brown eyes. The two of them had grown up together. She tried to appeal to the good heart she knew he possessed. “You do not understand, Rao. He came here to do my duty. He came not to take, but to give.”
Rao made a frustrated sound and turned away from her. “Englishmen live by violence and greed.”
“Saxon is a man of great honor.”
“I cannot believe you are arguing for the enemy’s life!”
“He is not my enemy!”
“His blood is English!”
“So is mine!”
Rao spun toward her, clearly astonished to hear her claim the heritage she had denied so long.
Ashiana couldn’t take another breath, feeling just as surprised as he, barely able to believe the words that had just passed her lips.
But after a moment, the words didn’t seem incredible at all, and the air seemed easier to breathe than it ever had before, and her tense muscles relaxed, and she repeated what she knew was the truth.
“So is mine,” she said, with the same quiet pride with which she had once declared herself an Ajmir princess. “You and I both know that I am half English.”
A myriad of expressions chased over his features. Denial. Outrage. Hurt. “You do not know what you are saying.”
Seeing the pain she caused him, Ashiana dropped her gaze to the gleaming marble floor. “I know what I am.”
“You cannot believe that you are one of them.”
She shook her head. “I am not one of ‘them,’ but I am not one of ‘us’ either.” She raised her head and looked around at the familiar, magnificent room, at the jeweled ceiling and lapis walls and plump silk musnad pillows, and felt sadness and peace. “I am…different.”
She had known that since childhood, hated it, fought it. But now, for the first time, she accepted it. All her life, she had wanted to belong. But now…
Now she knew she belonged to herself.
And she belonged with Saxon.
“Ashiana, you came back to me,” Rao said huskily. “I thought you were dead but you came back to me. And now you are telling me that you don’t wish to stay?”
“I am sorry.” It seemed so insufficient to heal his hurt, but she could not deny the truth, not to him and not to herself. What she felt for Rao was affection, even love—but it was the love of a sister for her brother.
What she felt for Saxon was the passionate, soul-deep love of a woman for a man…the one special man who was her soul’s other half.
“Where will you go?” Rao demanded. “England? Did you love it so much?”
“No.” She sighed heavily. “I did not love England. England is…how can I explain it? If you took all the strangest buildings you could imagine, and all the strangest people, and the strangest behavior and weather and noises, and put them together in one place, that would be England.”
“And you wish to return to that?”
“My place is with him,” she whispered. “If he were to go to a land where there was no sun and no moon and no stars, I would go with him. If he lived always at sea aboard a ship, I would live with him. If he had no home and walked the earth and never settled in one place, I would take every step with him.”
Rao stared at her, speechless.
“If there were any way to say this without hurting you, I would,” Ashiana continued calmly. “I love him, Rao. Please spare his life. If not because you believe him, then for me. If you kill him, you kill me. Take his life and you cut out my heart.”
Rao dropped his gaze and remained silent a long time. Sensing a softening in his attitude, Ashiana tried to appeal to his reason. “The clan is safe. You have the sapphires. All nine. I told you where the other eight are. You will know them by the cloth fastened to the reef.”
When he finally looked up at her again, his dark eyes seemed haunted. “Your part in this is done. I will personally hide the last sacred stone with the others beneath the sea. You have done your duty.”
She felt pride and peace and happiness at his words. “Then let Saxon live. He only did what he did because of the curse.” A hint of accusation crept into her tone. “The curse that neither you nor the maharaja told me about when I left.”
“It is best never to have sympathy for one’s enemy.”
“Yes, of course,” Ashiana agreed, mocking him softly. “Because then war and killing and the rest don’t make any sense at all, do they?”
“You are a woman,” Rao said dismissively, as if that should explain her inability to grasp the grand, higher meaning of war. “And the curse is no longer important.”
“But Saxon separated the stones—”
“If, as you said, he had them all in his hands when the explosion on his ship occurred, then they were separated by an accident, not by a thief. The curse is upon thieves.”
His assurance made Ashiana feel satisfaction as well as relief. “Then the fact that Saxon is not cursed is more evidence that you should let him live! He is obviously not a thief.”
Rao furrowed his brow, pondering that point. His next words astounded her.
“I will spare his life—”
“Oh, Rao!” Ashiana exclaimed, running across the room to throw herself at him in a joyous hug.
He wrapped her close.
And finished his sentence.
“If you will stay here and marry me.”
Ashiana froze, then pulled back. “Rao!” she gasped. “After what I have told you—”
“It does not matter! I love you.”
Ashiana blinked at him. She had not realized, until this very moment, how strongly Rao felt about her. She had assumed that his feelings for her were like hers for him—affection but not passion.
She had clearly assumed wrong.
“Rao,” she whispered, “you would still want me as one of your wives, knowing that…I have been with someone else?”
“Yes, premika.” He drew her in against his chest. “I have known you since we were children. I know that you could never be happy in that foreign land, with him. You will be happy here. I will give you all the joy you could ask of life, and more. And you will be my only wife.”
Ashiana closed her eyes. It was an incredible sacrifice for him to make. For a maharaja to marry a feringi girl, a foreigner, was unusual. For him to make her his rani vadi, his first wife, his queen, was unprecedented. To make her his only wife was unheard of.
And it made no difference.
“I love Saxon,” she said as gently as she could, trying to pull out of his embrace. “I belong with him. I will always love him.”
Rao framed her face between his broad, dark hands. “In time, it will fade, premika. You will come to love me as I love you. I know you.”
Before she could protest, he went on. “Ashiana, it would kill me to lose you a second time. I cannot do it. I will set the Englishman free, because it is what you wish. He is the Ajmir’s most hated enemy and I risk the entire clan by letting him live, but for you, I will do it. But if you truly do not wish to stay, I am afraid…”
He dangled the sentence and the image of the executioner’s blade in her min
d.
Ashiana felt like screaming. Rao was offering her an impossible choice: to save Saxon’s life, she must face a life without Saxon. “I…I must have time—”
“We have no time, premika. He is to die at dawn. If you wish to save him, you must tell me now.”
She felt as if the entire world were spinning around her. Rao had forced her into a corner. And the worst part of it was that she could tell how much he hated forcing her. He truly loved her and thought he was doing what was best for their future.
He held Saxon’s life in his hands—and left her no choice but one.
Ashiana stopped resisting his embrace, and made the most painful promise she had ever given. “I will do as you ask,” she said through tears. “After Saxon is safely away from the island…I will marry you.”
In such a magnificent palace, Saxon might have hoped for a bit more comfort in the way of a cell. Perhaps a nice dank dungeon. But it seemed the clan’s fierce reputation was more than mere rumor: the Ajmir did not take prisoners in battle. He was apparently the first unwilling guest they had had in some time.
They had locked him in one of the cages in the maharaja’s menagerie, outside, surrounded by six armed guards. They left his hands tied, and bound his feet as well, but at least they had removed the cage’s previous occupant—a huge tiger that looked like it might have been one of Nicobar’s larger relatives. The guards had debated about making the two of them share quarters before they took the animal out and placed Saxon inside. He wasn’t sure they had been joking.
Long after nightfall, Rao paid a personal visit, striding out of the darkness, a torch in his hand.
The guards all fell to their knees, but their ruler waved them to their feet, spoke to them in low tones, and sent them to wait a few yards away.
Leaning against the bars of his cage, Saxon sat up with as much dignity as he could manage. “Come to gloat, Ajmir?”
Rao smiled slowly, the flame and the moonlight reflecting the hatred in his expression. “I have just come from speaking with your executioner, Angrez. I wanted to make sure he did not sharpen his blade. We would not want you to die too quickly. It may take him two or three strokes.”
Saxon listened to the details of his death sentence without emotion. It was the chance he had taken in coming here. He had only one concern, and he voiced it quietly.
“What will happen to Ashiana?”
Rao looked dumbfounded, as if he had expected rage or groveling instead of a question about her. He recovered quickly. “My betrothed is not your concern.”
Saxon forced back a grin. Betrothed. She was not yet Rao’s wife.
Rao braced his legs in an arrogant stance. “You think you mean something to her, Angrez, but you are wrong. She will forget you quickly after you are dead. In her heart, she knows she belongs here, with me.”
“You obviously don’t know her at all if you think that is what is in her heart.”
The barb struck home. “I spoke to her not an hour ago,” Rao shot back. “And she told me she is joyously anticipating our marriage. And the wedding night.”
Saxon fought the jealousy that ignited in him. “She would never forget so easily what she and I have shared.”
“Your death will make it easier for her.”
“Will it?” Saxon taunted.
“She never felt anything for you!” Rao’s eyes glittered with anger in the light of the torch. “She was merely doing exactly what we sent her to do. She fooled you into believing she cared about you and delivered both you and the sapphire directly into my hands.”
Saxon shook his head, refusing to believe it. “Touch her and I’ll kill you.”
“By the time I take her, you will already be dead. But enough of this,” Rao said abruptly. “I will see that you are brought a final meal, Angrez. Use this time to make peace with whatever gods you claim to believe in. You die in a few hours.” As he stalked away, he tossed a parting gibe over his shoulder. “Sleep well.”
Ashiana was dreaming.
It was a familiar dream: Saxon’s mouth warm and passionate on hers, his body heavy and hard, his hands strong and yet so gentle. She sleepily remembered throwing herself down on the pile of pillows near her terrace, muffling her sobs in the mounds of silk. She must have cried herself to sleep.
The dream was such a pleasurable escape from reality, she let herself doze and gave herself over to the fantasy. Saxon’s touch was glorious.
But after only a moment, he stopped. She moaned softly in protest as he lifted his mouth from hers.
“Sorry, my love. We have to go.”
Ashiana’s eyes flew open. Never had her dream spoken to her before! Darkness cloaked her sleeping chamber. He had extinguished all the oil lamps. Moonlight shimmering in through the open terrace illuminated the golden head bent over her, the muscular body pressing her into the pillows. Panic for his life tore a strangled cry from her throat. “Saxon! How—”
“Shhh, meree mahila veer.” He silenced her with another kiss.
Ashiana wanted to shout at him in terrified fury. How had he escaped? What was he doing in her private apartments? He should be running for his life! She had just managed to convince Rao to spare him, but if he were caught here in the harem—
He started to rise, his mouth still sealed over hers as he lifted her from the pillows. She could tell from the tension in his body that he knew the danger they were in. She felt desperate to make him leave. Now. Even as her heart thundered and her senses soared at being in his arms again, she tried to wriggle free.
His arms only tightened around her, his embrace fierce and tender.
He tore his mouth from hers. They were both breathing unsteadily. “We have to hurry,” he said roughly.
But then he suddenly kissed her again, deeper this time.
Longing and need ignited inside her, drawing a moan from her throat that sounded nothing like protest. He angled his head, his tongue sweeping and claiming. They had been apart so long. Too long. An eternity. Before she could stop herself, her arms stole round his neck.
“Damn,” he groaned. She nibbled at his lower lip. “Damn.”
She held him closer and their kiss became a cascade of kisses, those brief, light, feathery brushes of their mouths that turned reason to fog and left her shivering and breathless in his arms.
Some distant shred of sanity cried out that they could not do this! He had to run! She must convince him to escape. Without her. She had made a promise. She had to stay…here…
They might be discovered at any moment! But the danger only sharpened their desire. Need. Urgency to steal one moment that might be their last.
She parted her lips beneath his. Hungering, caressing, loving, they fell together onto the pillows.
There was a swift, impatient sweeping away of breeches and silks, and she felt skin against skin. The weight of him, so heavy, so right, pressing her down into the soft bedding, was suddenly the only reality in her world.
His hands aroused her masterfully. The rough satin of his tongue glided along hers in a deep claiming that left her languid. His fingers sought her heat, brushing against her intimately, finding her wet and ready.
She cried out with need and he captured the sound and echoed it back in deeper tones. Gentleness tempered his strength even as the velvety steel of his arousal parted her. She buried her hands in his hair, urging him closer. “Saxon, now. I need you now!”
He turned his head to kiss the rose tattoo on her wrist and took her in one powerful thrust.
The sensation of his hard length becoming part of her brought a low cry of pleasure and joy from her lips. Her head tilted back, her hips arching upward, her entire being welcoming the sweet pressure of him inside her. His possession sent fiery sparks sailing through her, fanning outward from her belly to her fingertips. Dream and reality and memory and ecstasy blended as he began to move, pulsing and hot, stroking deep and then deeper still.
It had been so long, so very long, but her body adjusted and rem
embered and held him within. Their breathing rasped together in heated kisses and aching sighs as they rose together, higher. Threading his fingers through her hair, he gazed down as he drove himself into her with a passion she had never felt from him before. His eyes burned like diamonds afire.
Together they formed a whole, a circle of two that could never be broken. She felt like a goddess, worshipped by his body, caressed by his silver gaze. He plunged faster, harder, every motion of his hips defining the depths of her femininity.
And then Ashiana knew no thought but bliss as he sent her soaring to the stars. The pleasure twining within her exploded in a blinding flare of ecstasy. She had no voice but a ragged whisper of his name that he captured hungrily.
The tenderness of his mouth on hers as all the heavens expanded and shattered within and around her was more exquisite than any feeling she had ever known, like life ending and beginning anew.
She heard a groan tear through his chest as he joined her in release, embedded deeply inside, spilling his breath and his life and his seed into her. They held one another, silently accepting and belonging to one another. She could feel him breathing hard, his chest pressing against her breasts. Saxon allowed them to savor the sweet moment only an instant before he withdrew from her body and stood, drawing her up with him.
“Saxon, you should—”
Her breath whooshed out as he pulled her against him in a sudden, fierce embrace. “I’m not leaving without you, so let’s just skip the discussion completely.”
He kissed her to reinforce his declaration, and Ashiana abandoned logic and objections. Leaving with Saxon would mean betraying her promise to Rao—but staying would mean living a lie. This was the right thing to do and she knew it with all her heart.
Before her drugged senses had time to drift back to reality, Saxon had picked up her clothes and started to dress her hurriedly. She still felt languorous from their lovemaking. “How did you ever find me?”
“Your perfume. You’re still wearing the perfume you had made in London.” He nuzzled the curve of her throat, where her pulse heated the scent of spice and roses, just for a second before he grabbed his own clothes.
One Night with a Scoundrel Page 36