Why shouldn’t it be her?
He’d wanted to marry her once upon a time, and as he’d noted, he was still attracted to her. The pretense would be a believable one. It could be an arrangement, one that would be mutually beneficial: she would get her fresh start with the protection of a duke, and he would be freed of the parody of being paraded on display like a prize bull to hordes of matchmaking mothers. Especially to his own.
If he already had a fiancée, his mother couldn’t very well force him to court any other without inviting ridicule, could she? And once he’d made sure the dowager was hale and hearty, he could leave without any attachments.
A smile drifted over his lips as he considered his new plan.
Who would have thought it—his cursed first love, now his unwitting saving grace.
* * *
Sarani didn’t like the predatory gleam that had appeared in Rhystan’s eyes as soon as his hunter’s stare fastened on her. She could see the wheels in his brain turning, and instinctively, she knew that whatever he was thinking would decide her immediate future on his ship.
Her stomach flipped and soured. Goodness, would he turn her over to the assassin? Cut her loose in St. Helena? She was prepared for that option, though being stranded on an island with a killer on her heels wasn’t ideal. And it would be impractical to hide within the small and no doubt tight-knit local aristocracy.
The newssheets mailed to the palace in Joor a year ago wrote of a short visit to St. Helena by Prince Alfred, second son to the queen, and the excitement of the local elite. Everyone knew everyone. She would hardly be able to blend in to avoid detection, and she wouldn’t have much time to secure passage on another ship, but it wasn’t an impossibility. She had money, and money could work magic in difficult situations.
Sarani did not need a man, much less a salty, mercurial sea captain, to save her. She could—and would—save herself.
Still, Rhystan’s intense gaze unsettled her. And that sudden smirk did not bode well.
“Why are you staring at me?” she asked.
His blue-gray gaze slipped down to her bandaged palms, the tips of her fingers grasping the now-warm cloth in them. Sarani tossed it back into the bowl and straightened her shoulders, her belly tightening with dread. If he chose to, he could toss her overboard just as he’d done with the unfortunate fellow who had put his hands on her. Not that he would…but he could. He held all the cards here. Every instinct screamed that whatever fell from his lips would not be in her best interests. She held her breath when his mouth opened.
“Since you have injured yourself,” he said, “I have to think up another suitable position for you to pay for your place on my ship.”
“I can still work.”
Rhystan smiled. “No, I’ve a better idea.”
He couldn’t mean…
Oh, good gracious.
Though a spark of desire ignited in the pit of her abdomen, Sarani shook her head wildly, backing away several steps as though reason would miraculously appear with more space between them. It didn’t. “I refuse to be your ‘shipboard doxy,’ as you called it, or whatever insanity you’ve conjured in that head of yours,” she burst out, waving a wild hand. “Regardless of what happened between us earlier”—she sputtered at the sudden gleam in his eye—“that’s not going to happen, Your Grace.”
A darkening gaze met hers. “Would that be so bad, Sarani? Being in my bed?”
Would it?
Parts of her body went instantly molten as her eyes slid to the very bed he was propped upon, visions of those fine sheets crumpled around a pair of naked, intertwined, writhing bodies. His. Hers. No end to where each of them began. Much like the carvings and sculptures she’d discovered during a trip with her father to a princely state where the temples of Khajuraho depicted maithuna—the coupling between a husband and wife.
Her maid, Asha, as wide-eyed as she, had been a veritable fountain of information. Hot-cheeked, Sarani had been riveted, gobbling up the wickedly erotic depictions of the Hindu god Shiva, the masculine aspect of divine creativity, and the Goddess Shakti, the feminine aspect of the power of creation. Her people saw the concept of physical desire as something sacred, and that sexuality was a symbol of unity and oneness. She bit her lip. What would such oneness be like with Rhystan?
No, no, no!
Hastily, Sarani blinked the provocative and categorically unwelcome imaginings away. Heavens, what was wrong with her? She was surely out of her mind. There was no future, sexual or otherwise, with this man. She must have inhaled rope fibers and they were clogging her brain, because she couldn’t possibly be thinking that climbing into the Duke of Embry’s bed wasn’t remotely the worst conceivable idea in the history of existence.
Her body hummed its denial.
Not exactly the worst.
“Yes. No.” She gave her head a rough shake. “Of course it would be. And my name is Sara. I’m not that girl anymore.”
“No, you’re not,” he said quietly. He paused with a shadow of a smirk. “As diverting as it is to see you at such a stunning loss for words, that’s not the offer I had in mind.”
A breath rushed out. In relief? Disappointment? Sarani hissed to herself—definitely the former. “Oh. It’s not?”
“No.”
“Then what?” she asked.
“An offer of marriage.” Before the word or its implication could properly sink in, he arched a bronzed brow. “To me.”
Sarani blinked. “Why on earth would you—” She gaped, her jaw falling open in indecorous horror. “Marry you? You have to be joking.”
“Au contraire, I’m deadly serious. I’d like us to become engaged.”
“One of your quartermaster’s blows must have addled your mind, Your Grace,” she said with a frown. “Might I remind you that you are a duke. An engagement to…me will never be countenanced by your mother, remember?”
“Talbot was a peer and you were engaged to him.”
Disgust rolled through her. “Talbot was a swine, the bottom of the barrel, ousted from London. Marriage to me was a windfall for a man like him.”
Sarani couldn’t disguise the ripple of pain that threaded through her words.
Even Lord Talbot had reminded her on more than one occasion that he was doing her a grand service by offering her marriage. Oh, he’d desired her badly. Sarani had known it from the way he’d slavered over her body, his eyes wild with lust, but he had lorded his privileged male superiority over her like a cudgel. His close friend Markham had made no attempt to mask his contempt, and others had followed suit.