Her eyes panned between them, incisive, cold, and ever assessing, falling for an instant on the place where his hand gripped Sarani’s elbow with possessive ease. A sharp intelligence glimmered in her gaze, followed by an imperceptible tightening of her lips.

“Who, exactly, is she to you?”

“Why, the future Duchess of Embry, of course.” Rhystan couldn’t quite curb the smug note in his voice. “Do be the first to offer us your blessing.”

He should have been prepared, because honestly, it was to no one’s surprise when the duchess fell back to her cushions in a dead faint.

Fifteen

A week later, an anxious, jittery stomach had become the bane of Sarani’s existence. For every pristinely appointed London home she’d set foot in—one assembly, one musicale, and two soirees—the roiling sea of nerves never seemed to get any easier. In fact, the bloody fretfulness had worsened to sickening proportions. Unease was her constant companion.

At first, she’d thought that maybe it was a premonition or an instinct for danger. Had her cousin’s assassin found her? But Rhystan had insisted that Gideon and a few of his men were watching the harbor for a ship resembling the one that had been tracking them, and nothing out of the ordinary had been reported. That ship had to have been coincidence.

But Sarani couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Perhaps she was sensitive to the foggy airs and false humors of England. It was a distinct probability.

Because, goddess alive, she missed Joor more than she’d thought possible.

She missed the vibrant splashes of color, the singsong chattering of people in the market, the smells of simmering spices. The hot breezes dancing over her skin. The river and secret waterfall. She missed swimming and staring up at the clouds. Even though she didn’t have many friends or extended family, Asha and her other handmaidens had kept her company. She missed their jokes and their palace intrigues with the guards. But most of all, she missed being herself and not having to observe some breath-strangling English drawing room rule every sodding second.

Sit this way. Stand that way. Don’t have an opinion.

Simper. Flutter your eyelashes. Sip overwarm punch.

Be the rose.

She hated the dratted rose—it symbolized everything she could never be. And that had been made evidently clear by the most perfect of roses herself: the Dowager Duchess of Embry.

After reviving from her faint upon hearing of their betrothal, the dowager duchess’s disposition had not improved. She’d looked upon Sarani as one would a bothersome flea when they’d first been introduced, and now Sarani had the distinct impression that the dowager duchess suspected far more than she was letting on. She was much too clever to be tricked.

And that terrified Sarani to no end.