“That was devious,” he said.
She scowled. “You expect me to offer you my neck meekly?”
“Your cousin wants to talk.”
“And I’m the queen of England.”
Snarling, he lunged forward, one blade coming precariously close to her shoulder as she shifted her weight onto her heels and brought up her left arm to block the blow. Within seconds, their blades spun and crashed, the noise echoing in the now-empty foyer. The man was skilled. Then again, if he was the man who had murdered her father, he would have to be.
She didn’t have time to breathe before he came at her again, his knives whirring so quickly she had to work to keep track of them. Sarani danced around him a few times, observing his footwork and the way he held his weapons, searching for anything that she could use against him while keeping him off-balance with a basic attack strategy. It was a technique she’d learned fighting Rhystan.
As if she’d conjured him, she felt the duke’s presence even before she laid eyes on him.
“Sarani!” The growl was male and guttural and tore through her like a tempest, but Sarani didn’t dare take her stare off her foe. One mistake, and it would be over; she knew that much.
“Stay back, please,” she told him.
She cleared her mind of everything but the man in front of her, lunging and parrying. Learning. The assassin was good, but there were flaws in his skill, like the roll to his back heel every time he struck left and then right in a certain sequence. It threw him off-balance the tiniest bit. Waiting for the right moment, Sarani propelled all her weight forward as they both fell, her kukri flashing in midair in a vicious six-strike series.
An incredulous look was punctuated by a gurgling scream, red blooming through his linen shirt on his abdomen and the cuff of his sleeve. The six weren’t fatal cuts, but the one slashing through his wrist meant he would never wield a blade with such finesse again, and the one severing his Achilles tendon would ensure he couldn’t walk. Or run.
Hitting the ground hard, Sarani rolled and vaulted to her feet, putting distance between them, feeling a solid wall of male enclosing her from behind. Rhystan’s crisp masculine scent of salt and sea surrounded her.
The assassin wheezed from his crumpled position on the floor. “Finish it.”
“I’m no murderer,” she said. “I have no power in Joor, but you will be tried for your crimes on English soil. Feel free to write to my lily-livered cousin from prison that if he sends any more of you, I will come for him.”
Sarani glanced up at the man holding her in his arms, blue-gray eyes scanning her body for injury. Movement flickered behind him as the police swarmed the foyer. She wiped her faithful blades on her skirts and returned them to their sheaths.
“Get me out of here, Rhystan.”
Twenty-Three
With shaking fingers, Rhystan poured himself a glass of whisky, but he could not even lift it to swallow. His nerves were shot to hell. When he’d been located at his club earlier that evening by the head of police himself, he had feared the worst, but nothing had prepared him for the sight of Sarani facing off against a man who even the untrained eye could see was a killer. He’d wanted to roar his rage, to tear the assassin apart with his bare hands, and only Sarani’s voice had restrained him.
Stay back, please.
He’d heard the soft command, the utter steel in her tone, and obeyed. And then, he’d waited, heart in his throat, watching her. The seconds had turned into lifetimes, but the moment she’d felled the man, he’d shot forward to gather her into his arms and make sure she was unharmed. Of course she wasn’t harmed—she was a warrior goddess, Durga incarnate.
After he’d taken her back to his house with strict instructions to Harlowe to see to her every need, he returned to Huntley House to take care of matters there with the police. The assassin had been taken into custody, the foyer scrubbed of blood, and servants sworn to secrecy. Ravenna was distraught, refusing to speak to their mother, who was her usual unemotional self, though strain was evident in her eyes. Both women had taken to their chambers.
He’d only just returned home and gone straight to his study to calm himself before checking on Sarani. Rhystan stared at the tumbler in his hand. He’d come so close to losing everything he held dear—his remaining family and the only woman he’d ever let himself care for. Maybe cared for still. Hell. With a frustrated growl, he flung the glass into the hearth.
“That was Venetian crystal, Your Grace.” The low voice slid into his veins like honey. His gaze followed the sound to find Sarani curled up in a chair near the bookshelves that was thrown into shadows, observing him over the rim of the twin to the goblet he’d carelessly smashed.
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking.” She held up her glass. “Imbibing.”
Rhystan frowned. She was still dressed in the torn, bloodstained gown she’d had on earlier. His frown turned into a scowl. Hadn’t he instructed his valet to tend to her? A soothing bath would have been the least of it. “Harlowe didn’t run you a bath?”
Watching him, she let out a sigh. “Before you strip the hide off your very kind valet, I dismissed him.”
He approached her cautiously. “Are you all right?”
“Not particularly,” she said. “But this is helping. You really do have the finest whisky. Where’s it from? Scotland?” He nodded, and she smiled, lifting the glass for a sip and then licking the bow of her top lip to collect the moisture there. The provocative swipe made his breath hitch. “Tastes like you.”
Was she sotted?
“My lady—”
“Sarani,” she whispered. “Call me by my name, Rhystan. I’m so sick of pretending to be someone I’m not.” She made a wry smile. “If I’m being honest, you’re the only one I’ve ever been able to be myself with. Then and now. As the princess and as the pretender. I’m so bloody tired of trying to fit in and follow all these ludicrous rules that make no sense. I don’t belong here.” She let out a sound that was painful. “I don’t fit anywhere.”
“You fit with me.”
“You’re a person, not a place.”
Rhystan closed the gap between them and dropped to his knees in front of the armchair. “Belonging isn’t always defined by earthly margins.” He tapped his heart and then his temple. “It can be here and here. Home is where you make it.”
Her soft laugh rasped over his senses. “The Duke of Embry, so poetically mawkish… Who would have thought it?”
“Tell a soul and I’ll deny it to the grave.”
She stared at him, so much swirling in those glittering eyes that appeared dark in the dimness of the study, and took another sip before offering the tumbler to him. He took it and swallowed. It was strangely intimate, sharing her drink. Her hand lifted and reached forward, sifting into a lock of hair curling onto his brow. Rhystan fought the urge to lean into her palm like a cat.