Rules for Heiresses by Amalie Howard

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The Princess Stakes

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India, 1861

The coppery scent of spilled blood coiled into Princess Sarani Rao’s nostrils as she fled down the corridor toward the courtyard, her slippers soundless on the polished marble. She tugged on her maid’s arm, hefting the carpetbag she’d stuffed full of jewels, weapons, and clothing over one shoulder. Bombay. They had to get to Bombay, and then find a ship. Any ship.

Her stomach roiled with nausea and nerves.

“Hurry, Asha,” she whispered urgently. “Tej is waiting.”

“Where are we going, Princess?” the maid cried when they stopped to make sure the second, less-used courtyard was deserted. Most of the noise had come from the front of the palace, which gave them a few precious minutes, and Sarani had sent Tej, her longtime manservant, with a hastily stuffed portmanteau to ready any transportation he could find. She was well aware that her life could end right then and there, just like her father’s. This was a royal coup.

Sarani let out a strangled breath. “Anywhere but here.”

She’d just seen her father—the Maharaja of Joor—lying on his bed and in his nightclothes with his throat slit. Bile crept up into her throat and she retched helplessly to the side, tears stinging her eyes. The distant sounds of shouting and the clang of steel filled her ears, the acrid smell of smoke permeating her nostrils.

She hadn’t expected the attack. No one had, not even her father or his advisors, despite the fact that India, and in particular the princely state of Joor, had been divided in turmoil for years. Things were becoming precarious with feudal nobility and hostile laborers fighting against British rule, annexation, and cultural practices, and the sepoys in the British army were getting restless.

But Sarani felt deep in her gut that this had been an assault from within. No one but family could get into her father’s private quarters. Her cousin, Vikram, had the most to gain from eliminating the maharaja, and even if Vikram took power, he would always view her—the crown princess—as a threat.

The minute she’d found her father, Sarani knew that she would have to run if she hoped to get out of there alive. The only reason she hadn’t been in her own quarters was because she’d snuck out with Tej to go down to her favorite childhood spot by the river. One last time, for memories’ sake. To do something normal before she was married off like chattel the next day to Lord Talbot, the local regent and a decrepit English earl, whom she’d managed to thwart with an unnaturally long five-year engagement…until time had finally run out.

The single moment of whimsy had been the one thing to save her.

Sarani had known something was off as soon as she had returned. While climbing the trellised vine up to her chambers, she’d seen shattered glass on her father’s adjacent terrace. And then she’d discovered him. Only her years of training with her weapons master had kept her from screaming or fainting at the sight of so much spilled blood.

Her room had been disturbed as well—sheets overturned, doors askew—as if a search had been made in haste. It had struck Sarani again that the assassin had known exactly where to go…exactly which suites had been hers and her father’s.

She’d packed and woken her maid, blessedly unharmed in her own adjacent chamber. “The maharaja’s been killed,” she’d told Asha. “We have to go.”

Tej was their only hope of escape. Locking down her grief and terror, Sarani searched the gloom for her loyal manservant, blood chilling with alarm, until she spotted him waiting with one of the smaller coaches a little way down the drive in the shadow of a cluster of banyan trees.

The boy waved, eyes wide from the driver’s perch. “Get in! They’re coming.”

She and Asha sprinted down the drive and tumbled into the conveyance. It was moving before either of them could sit. Listening to the sounds of Asha’s quiet weeping, Sarani forced back her own tears, her body tense with fear, as the carriage rolled off into the night.

Would they be followed? Had she left quickly enough? Would they be safe? If Vikram was the murderer—or had orchestrated the murder as she suspected—who knew what he might do? He would certainly not leave her alive. He might be a weasel of a coward, but he wasn’t stupid.

The first leg of the journey took several hours. When they stopped to change horses, Sarani felt her dread start to ebb and stopped looking over her shoulder as often. No one chased them, and they’d made excellent time. After they were back on the road, the tears she’d been holding back came like the monsoon. They spooled hot and earnest down her cheeks, and she allowed herself to cry in the privacy of the carriage.

Asha offered her a lace handkerchief, sobbing quietly herself. “What will we do?”

“Go where they cannot find us.” Sarani clasped her maid’s fingers. “Asha, do you wish to come with me or stay? Tej has no family, but you do. We can secure lodgings for you in Bombay until you can safely go back to Joor.”

“No, Princess, my place is with you.”

With a sad nod, Sarani dried her tears and straightened her shoulders. They were on their own now and survival was tantamount. Money was no object—she had a fortune in jewels and priceless heirlooms in her portmanteau and carpetbag—but they would have to leave India until it was safe to return. A tiny voice inside acknowledged that could be never.

With the instability and political unrest, the safest place for her would be off these shores. As far away as possible…which left her with only one option.

Her mother’s birthplace.

The thought of faraway London, known only from secondhand stories, made a knot form in her throat, but the alternative was much worse. If she stayed here, her fate would be the same as her father’s. No, she would go to England and take on her mother’s maiden name of Lockhart.

Pretending to be an English countess wasn’t the worst thing in the world. She had fortune enough to last a lifetime. She had her wits. She had her training. And she was of aristocratic blood. Mostly.

She could do it…be English.

Sarani caught a hint of her reflection in the carriage window. A wild-eyed woman with dark-lined eyes and a bird’s nest of black hair stared back at her, arguably more a mess of a girl than a highborn lady. She bit back a choked laugh. Her old French governess would be in a lather at the sight of her. Even with the aid of a bath and a comb, she wouldn’t pass muster. Thanks to her mixed heritage, her complexion had changed throughout her life, and right now, it had taken on a brown glow from recent days spent outdoors. She might love it, but English aristocrats were more critical.

And they were quite dependably so…

Over the years, she’d witnessed many curious and disparaging looks by other English lords and ladies in her own court…ogling her as though she were an oddity. A princess of hybrid origins led to scrutiny, and not always the good kind. People saw what they wanted to see. Once, when she was twelve and sick of such intense observation, she’d hollered boo and made three visiting ladies spill Madeira all over themselves. Their reaction had been hilariously gratifying, but her punishment wasn’t—she’d been forbidden from riding for a month.

Sarani blew out a breath. Plenty of Europeans had darker, olive-toned complexions. She would brazen it out if she had to. Besides, Lockhart was a common enough English name, and Sarani had been raised as a royal, if not a lady of quality. With an English earl for a great-grandfather, she had some claim on her mother’s family—even if her half-Scottish, half-English mother, Lady Lisbeth Lockhart, had fallen in love with an Indian prince and renounced all ties with her home of birth.

The thought of England was daunting, but there was no one else she could turn to, at least not in Joor. Her father’s relatives didn’t accept her, not truly, and she couldn’t put her trusted handmaidens in more danger. And besides, she had no idea who her enemies were or who supported her cousin. Though she despised the fact that the British had barged into her people’s lands like conquering heroes, ironically, to escape a murderer, Britain was her only hope.

Sarani inhaled a brittle breath, folding her hands in her lap. She could do this. She would get the three of them to safety.

She would just have to hide Princess Sarani Rao.

And not yell boo to any frail English ladies.

* * *

“Your Grace!”

Rhystan looked up from the length of sail he was inspecting aboard the Belonging, brushing a clump of sweat-soaked hair out of his face and squinting into the hot Indian sun. He scowled. Not at the person addressing him but at the use of his title. Two years and he still wasn’t used to it. One would think as the youngest of three sons, he would have been spared the monstrosity, but no, sodding fate had had other plans. His scowl deepened as the identity of the man approaching became clear. The harbormaster.

“Thornton,” he said, wiping damp palms on his breeches, one hand curling lightly over the end of the flintlock pistol tucked into his waistband. He walked to the edge of the rail and propped a booted foot onto the rigging. “What can I do for you?”

The man was red and sweating profusely when he came to a stop at the gangplank. Rhystan noticed a wiry local hurrying behind Thornton’s bulk but did not recognize him. “It’s of grave import, Duke.”

“Captain,” Rhystan corrected through his teeth and fought a sneer. The man was full to the brim with his own consequence, though he wasn’t above taking extra coin to line his own pockets from time to time. “Spit it out then, this matter of grave importance.”

“Immediate passage is required,” he said. “To England.”

“We will make it worth your while, sir,” the boy standing behind Thornton piped up.

Rhystan frowned, his eyes on the harbormaster. “The Belonging isn’t a passenger ship. And might I remind you that you have your own steamship, Mr. Thornton, which I suspect is much better equipped for comfort than this one.”

“Not for me, Your Grace,” Thornton spluttered, wiping a handkerchief over his perspiring cheeks. “For Lady Lockhart.”

“Lady who?”

“Lady Lockhart, Captain,” the small manservant replied. “She needs passage to England and can pay handsomely.”

Rhystan frowned, racking his brain for a face to match the name, but none came to mind. Either way, the Belonging was no place for a lady. The ship was fickle enough as it was, having once been a converted auxiliary steam warship that had belonged to a dodgy American privateer, and the living quarters were less than lavish. Enough for him, of course, but nothing compared to the guest accommodations on the rest of his fleet.

He waved an arm toward the rest of the ships docked in the harbor. “I don’t care if she’s the queen herself, I’m not taking any passengers. Find someone else.”

Thornton shook his head. “None of the other packets are due to leave port tonight for England. Yours is the only one. She must depart without delay.”

He glanced at the houseboy behind Thornton. “Why can’t she leave tomorrow or the next day?”

“It’s a matter of some expediency, sahib, sir,” the boy stammered, and Rhystan frowned at the Eastern form of address he’d heard frequently when he’d been stationed as an officer.

“Who is your lady? Lady Lockton, you said?”

“Lady Lockhart, Captain.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar, though he could not place it. Then again, he hadn’t set foot on English shores in a while. All the names of the peerage sounded the same. “Tell your mistress to speak with Captain Brooks. He sails the day after next.”

“That’s too late.”

“Why does she wish to leave so desperately?”

“There’s been a death in the family. Your ship is the soonest on the ledger.”

The reason struck an unexpected chord of understanding and sympathy within him. Death had a way of upsetting everything. This unknown lady was racing against time for closure, while he was doing the same, only he was trying to beat the clock to get to his purportedly ailing mother in time. Rhystan could empathize more than anyone.

The boy must have noticed his hesitation because he started forward and bowed deeply. “I implore you, sahib. Please, reconsider.”

“Where are you from?” Rhystan asked, curious.

“Joor,” the boy replied and then gulped as if it was something he shouldn’t have disclosed.

But Rhystan was too stunned to dwell on his reaction. Joor. What were the odds?

Unwanted and unwelcome memories, long buried from Rhystan’s youth, rushed up to greet him. He shook himself hard and ground his jaw. What was in the past was in the past. He hadn’t thought about Joor—or what had happened there—in years. And for good reason.

A feminine lilt rose in his head: I’m yours, Rhystan.

He throttled the recollections with brute force. Sarani Rao had never been his, not when she’d jilted him for an earl. Rhystan appreciated the irony, considering he now held the most venerated title of the English aristocracy, a half decade too late. Joor and that faithless princess were parts of his past that needed to remain dead and forgotten.

“Captain Brooks of the Voyager,” he said to the servant, dismissing him and turning on his heel. “Tell him I sent you.”

* * *

Sneaking onto a ship in the dead of night wasn’t ideal. Or ladylike. Or sane.

Especially for one newly nascent Lady Sara Lockhart. But Sarani was desperate, and since the Belonging was the only one on the manifest leaving Bombay for England in short order, she didn’t have much choice.

Tej had explained that the captain had been inflexible. Sarani would have gone herself to beg, cajole, or argue, but she was short of options and time. And she couldn’t shake the sensation that one of Vikram’s men had followed them from Joor.

“Where is the captain now?” she whispered to Tej.

“At the tavern with his men.”

“Are you certain the ship is unguarded?”

Tej shrugged. “He’s a duke. No one would be foolish enough to board this ship.”

Except for them, clearly.

A half hysterical chuckle rose in her throat. She’d questioned Tej thoroughly, but the boy had been adamant that this was the only way if she wanted to leave Indian shores in short order.

“Won’t those men waiting onboard stop us?” she asked as they crept up the footbridge where two deckhands were waiting.

Tej’s pale teeth glimmered in the gloom. “I told them it was all arranged with the duke earlier and that he gave orders to settle you aboard in the meantime. I also learned that they were hired here for the journey so I convinced them to give up their places.”

Sarani worried the corner of her lip. “And they agreed?”

“They’ll live like kings with what you gave me to pay them,” Tej whispered when the two men in question took their trunks.

Sarani winced. If this recalcitrant captain-duke found out that members of his recently added crew had absconded with a better offer, he’d be furious. He would be even more furious to discover his new, unwanted passengers. But Sarani hoped the ship would be long at sea before that happened. In any case, the amount of money she planned to settle upon him would be enough to convince him not to toss them overboard.

She hoped.

Sarani sucked in a breath, the briny waters of the harbor carrying a hint of salt on the wind. It smelled like rain. Though it was two months shy of the start of the monsoon season, if a cyclone was brewing, they would be stuck here for who knew how long and at the mercy of whoever had murdered her father. She shivered. No, this was the only viable alternative.

Then again, this duke might kill her, too, once he discovered the deception.

Sarani swallowed her fear and hiked her skirts. Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

The two scruffy-looking men led the three of them down into the hold and deposited them in a cabin the size of a closet. A lumpy bed took up one side, a small chest and a chair the other. The lodgings didn’t matter. She and Asha could sleep together, and she hoped Tej would find a space in a hammock with the rest of the crew.

A frisson of doubt assailed her as she thought of the weapons she’d packed in the base of her bag: a brace of pistols, several daggers, a pair of polished sabers, and her precious kukri blades. All deadly, should she need to use them. And she might. Four months on a ship she had no right to be on and whose captain already sounded like an unforgiving sort.

Goodness, am I doing the right thing?

England was an entire world away, and fitting into life there would be a struggle. But she had no choice.

It was either that or die.

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