Controlling his temper, Courtland shook his head. “I won’t have to.”
He heard her sharp exhale. They both knew what his answer meant. Lady Ravenna would be disgraced just from being in the West Indies on her own without a chaperone. If word got out about her travels on a ship with a bunch of rough-and-tumble sailors, her reputation would take an unrecoverable thrashing.
But that was none of his business. Her virtue, or lack of it, wasn’t anyone’s concern, but he more than anybody knew the exacting nature of the ton’s rules. Upon her return, they would slice her to ribbons. Any hope for a suitable match would be lost. Courtland felt an expected stroke of pity for what she would face, even if she’d brought the storm upon herself.
They fell into tense silence.
“What would it take for you to forget you ever saw me?” she asked after a while.
Courtland blinked—she couldn’t possibly be asking what he thought she was. “I couldn’t in good conscience do that.”
“Yet you were willing to throw me in jail an hour ago.”
“You weren’t you!” He glared at her.
She cleared her throat. “Look, I’m serious. You know what awaits me if I’m sent back to London. What will it take? Money? You are welcome to whatever I have. My body? Though I don’t know what good it’ll do—it’s as frigid as they come, or so I’ve been told.”
He ignored the bolt of pure lust at her wicked offer, even as her cheeks flamed. “I’ll protect you.”
“How? Trust me, you can’t.”
“Bloody hell, woman, I can’t let you go off on your own.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and sighed. “Embry would pulverize my bones to meal. My father would turn in his grave if he knew I abandoned an innocent girl to her own foolish devices.”
“I’m not innocent or foolish.”
“Your actions prove otherwise,” he said.
“Then I’m sorry for this.”
A noise that sounded uncannily like a cocking gun made his eyelids snap open. He was right—a loaded pocket pistol was pointed right at his face.
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Author’s Note
Hello, readers. I hope you enjoyed Sarani and Rhystan’s story! When I started this book, I knew I wanted to write a story that would incorporate some of my background (I’m a biracial West Indian-American woman, and have been in an interracial marriage for twenty years), but the journey I went on for this novel was more than I’d hoped for. The questions of identity and self-worth are themes that every woman struggles with—especially in areas of friendship, family, and romance. My heroine, Sarani, who changes her name to fit in when she travels to England, embodies that struggle. I changed my name when I went to college because my first name was difficult to pronounce. It stuck, and later on, I found myself torn between the two vastly different identities I had constructed. It took quite a long time for me to bridge the two. What I’ve found, however, is that the creation of separate personas isn’t isolated to cultural or racial differences. Many women have different faces they share with the world. We become who the world needs us to be at any given time, whether that is at home, at work, in relationships, or even with our own families, and sometimes, it’s hard to reconcile those facets of ourselves.
Lakshmi Bai, the Rani of Jhansi, also known as Manu, whom I mention in this novel as a friend of the heroine and who inspired me so much, was an actual Indian queen in the nineteenth century. Born in 1835, she lived in the princely state of Jhansi (inspiration for the fictional princely state of Joor) and was a fierce leader in the Indian Rebellion in 1857, fighting against British rule in India until her death in 1858. She was raised as a trained fighter, horsewoman, and independent thinker. When the maharaja she married (Gangadhar Rao) died, she became regent to their adopted son. However, the boy was not recognized as a true successor, and under the doctrine of lapse, the princely state was annexed to the British Crown. At a mere twenty-two years of age, Lakshmi Bai refused to surrender to the injustice and even pleaded her case to a court in London. As regent of Jhansi, she was at the forefront of the Indian Mutiny, and despite her bravery, she was killed in combat. In Solapur, Maharashtra, there’s a statue of her riding into battle with her son strapped to her back, sword raised and dauntless, which is just inspirational.
That said, colonialism was a very fraught period in history, and in no way do I want to make light of some of the terrible and unforgivable atrocities that occurred during this time. Having been born in a colonial country (Trinidad and Tobago got its independence from Britain in 1962) and having grown up on one of those sugar, cocoa, and coffee plantations that was taken over and farmed by locals and descendants of former indentured laborers, I have an intimate idea of the harm that was caused by colonization. My family might have risen out of the ashes of a violent, oppressed past, but we survived and it’s part of my history.
Writing this book also showed me that there are so many facets to a diaspora. One POC’s experience will not reflect another’s. My experience as a woman of West Indian descent will not be the same as someone who was born or raised in the United States, England, India, or elsewhere. I saw this when working through nine sensitivity reads during revisions (three Indian-Americans, two Muslim-Americans, two British-Indians, one West Indian-American, and one African-American) and each reader had a different but equally relevant worldview. This means that as a writer, I might not be the perfect representation for some South Asian readers or other members of a diasporic community. I can only write from my own experience and through the knowledge of my own sphere of existence. History might be shared, but cultural identity is vastly intersectional, and I hope that more diverse voices will be called to the publishing table to represent the amazingly rich narratives in the world.
As a result, I cover some hard ground in this story. Parts of it had to be raw because history is raw. But, you say, historical romance is fantasy. I mean…you aren’t wrong. There are nine million dukes, everyone has great hygiene and health, the aristocracy miraculously got their wealth in a non-oppressive way, and people had sex without care for pregnancy or protection. Suspension of disbelief is part of the canon of historical romance. That said, I felt it would be a disservice to my biracial heroine to be disingenuous about some of the ingrained behaviors of the period. Being a character of color would simply be window dressing if she acted and behaved like everyone else. While I could have taken a less problematic route, sanitizing history wasn’t my goal. That was a creative choice…to go a touch less fantasy for the sake of the story. I truly hope it made for a deeper reading experience.
In my research, one of the really cool things I discovered was how many women of color there actually were in British high society, even though it’s not very well known or documented. Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a displaced West African princess brought to England, was raised and educated at the queen’s decree, and praised by Victoria herself as being “sharp and intelligent.” In the 1860s, she was also said to be an accomplished member of Brighton society who was fluent in both English and French. Her first born daughter was named after Victoria (Victoria Davies) and was the queen’s goddaughter. Later on, in the 1880s, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, a Sikh princess, was a court favorite of her godmother, Queen Victoria. After her father’s death, she was granted a residence by the queen at the Hampton Court Palace and presented to British society as a debutante, along with her two sisters. She was also popular on the aristocratic scene, and loved riding, cycling, dogs, and traveling. Faced with prejudice and bias on account of both her gender and race, she went on to become a women’s rights activist in the 1900s and fought against inequality both in England and India.