In the breakfast room, Rhystan stared down at the caricature in the newssheets with a grimace. This one rubbed him raw. It was one of him standing with his foot on top of a map of India with a pencil-shaded Sarani staring up at him with avarice in her eyes. Her features had been exaggerated—eyes lengthened, lips fattened, and curves emphasized—painting her as a foreign, title-hunting jezebel. It made him sick to his stomach. That was what Talbot had intended, perhaps. To shame her into running.
The one good thing out of this was the loss of Markham’s leverage. Gideon had found Finn Driscoll, and once Rhystan had given the Irishman the vice admiral’s marker, Markham had gone to ground. But it was only a matter of time before his crimes—and the new owner of his debt—caught up to him.
Rhystan’s skin prickled with awareness moments before his sister and Sarani entered the room. God, she was beautiful. Even with an ashen cast to her skin and purple shadows under her eyes, she was lovely in a pale-green-and-white-striped dress, trimmed in gold ribbon.
“Good morning, Brother,” Ravenna said without looking at him, her attention on the sideboard where steaming dishes let out mouthwatering smells. “Goodness, I could eat an elephant.” She giggled. “Though I’m sure if Mama were here, she would scream that eating elephants is just not done.”
Sarani’s eyes met his. He saw her gaze skip to the folded newssheets beside him, apprehension flickering in their green-brown depths. He wouldn’t hide the news from her, should she choose to see them, but neither would he shove it in her face.
“Good morning, Your Grace,” she said.
He smiled. So proper. “Good morning, Princess,” he said, startling her. “If we’re standing on formality, that is. Though I suppose it’s ‘Maharani’ now.”
“What does that mean?” Ravenna piped up, plopping down in a chair that a footman had pulled out for her and pointing to the seat opposite her, on his left, to Sarani.
“Queen,” Rhystan said.
“I am not a queen,” Sarani said. “My cousin is maharaja. I am… I don’t have a title.”
“But you were born a princess,” Ravenna pointed out while gesturing at the footman to fill her plate. She glared at him when he stopped after a small scoop of eggs. “I’m a person, Camden, not a bird,” she told him. “Keep going until it reaches the edges.”
Rhystan saw Sarani biting back a grin. How close she and his sister become pleased him, but then Sarani had always had a knack for drawing people to her.
“So, as I was saying,” Ravenna went on, buttering a piece of toast once her plate had been piled to heaping, “you were born royal, which means you don’t just stop being royal, no matter what you concoct in that clever head of yours. One cannot run away from one’s birthright. Ask my brother here, who has been running for years, only to discover—sod it to purgatory—that he’s still a bloody duke.”
“Ravenna!” Rhystan chided.
“What?” she asked innocently. “Do stop being a milksop, Brother dearest. Mother Dragon isn’t here.”
Rhystan blinked. Did his baby sister just call him a milksop in his own house? He opened his mouth to give her a piece of his mind but stopped as Morton came to the entrance of the breakfast room with a bow.
“Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but the dowager duchess has just arrived,” his butler announced.
“Oh, hell on wheels,” Ravenna squeaked, brushing the crumbs from her chin and shoving her overfull plate toward the waiting footman. “Camden, take this, for the love of all things holy, before she sees! She’ll sack you for feeding me. Trust me, she’s done it before.”
The footman blanched and hurried to take the plate. Rhystan shook his head at Ravenna’s antics, but he had to admit, his spine went a little straighter, too. It was appalling the effect his mother had on them. He had the sudden urge to pull off his cravat, muss his hair, and smear jam on his pristine shirt.
“Thank you, Morton. Instruct the footmen to set another place in case Her Grace decides to stay,” he said instead and braced himself.
The dowager duchess swept into the room, elegantly appointed from head to toe. Besides being paler than usual, she had a fight in her eyes. By God, Rhystan had had enough and she hadn’t even spoken. He opened his mouth to say so and stopped as she lifted an imperious hand.
“Allow me to apologize.”
Rhystan swore he could hear half a dozen jaws hitting the floor—his, Sarani’s, Ravenna’s, the butler’s, and even those of a couple of the footmen. A small part of his brain wondered if she might be ill or going mad. Either was possible.
Still, he wasn’t going to allow his mother to lower herself in front of the servants. He waved a hand, and the footmen cleared the room, Morton closing the door, until it was only the four of them. His mother gave him a grateful look.
“I was wrong, Embry,” she said haltingly. “About all of it. What you said there at the end about my reign made me think. You were right about me and the silly things I valued, and I asked myself, for a woman who has lost so much, would I be willing to lose the family I have left to preserve the status quo? To care for those who would cut my family down for sport without blinking? I’m ashamed to even think I put them first.” She drew a shattered breath. “Because the answer is no. I don’t wish to lose you.” Her gaze slid to Ravenna. “Or you. You’re all I have left, now that Elodie has remarried and taken my granddaughters to Northumberland.” She walked to the table where Rhystan sat, calmly picked up the newssheets, and ripped them in half. “And no-goddamned-body vilifies my family and gets away with it.”
Ravenna gasped, staring at their mother like she’d grown wings and a tail, her mouth ajar. Even he was shocked speechless.
The duchess sent them an arch glance. “What? You thought your straitlaced mother didn’t know how to swear?”
Sarani, for her part, held her composure, though something like shock flashed in her eyes. She tensed when the duchess turned her gaze toward her as though uncertain of what to expect. “I was wrong to judge you so harshly. What you did for Ravenna when that man had her in his grasp…” She choked up, a hand coming to her throat. “I made a horrible mistake. I was so afraid for her, so afraid I’d lose her, too, and I admit my reaction was cowardly in the extreme.”
“Your Grace,” Sarani began, but his mother held up a palm.
“Please, before you say anything, I have something more to say. I know it’s asking quite a bit, but I hope you have it in your heart to forgive me. My very smart son has the right of it. A person should be judged by their conduct and character, not by the color of their skin or their place of birth. I was wrong.”
A stunned Sarani looked like she was considering her reply before she spoke. Rhystan would back her up no matter what, but he waited. “Thank you for saying that, Your Grace,” she said softly. “It’s hard when those who are different from others have to earn respect instead of it being afforded as a basic courtesy, but I can’t fault you for owning up to what you did. It takes great strength of character…and if I hope to honor my own mother’s and father’s teachings, it would behoove me to be equally gracious. We all make mistakes. What matters is that we learn from them.”