“Have you ever noticed how gentlemen think that bathing means dabbing oneself with copious amounts of perfume and calling it done?” Ravenna had wrinkled her nose with an affected huff of disgust. “It’s bloody awful. Like putting rose water on a pile of refuse and expecting a perfectly clean lady to dance with it.”

Sarani had burst into laughter, though a part of her had wondered whether Ravenna’s marriage prospects had all been put on hold because of Rhystan. He’d been gallivanting who-knew-where while his sister languished in a state of painful limbo, waiting to be presented to society by her only remaining brother, the duke. And he had not been there.

Then again, Rhystan had been running from his own demons. From expectation.

Daughters and sons of the aristocracy were pawns to be played at will—to increase fortunes, to gain a title, to strengthen an alliance. Even she had not been spared from the crushing weight of duty, until she’d had no choice. She had run from Talbot and Vikram, unwilling to be prey either to a smarmy rotter or an underhanded assassin.

Rhystan had run from his birthright and mother.

That didn’t mean she trusted him, just that she empathized.

Swallowing past the growing lump of nausea in her throat, Sarani stood at the threshold of the staircase of the dowager duchess’s home leading down into the lavish ballroom, her stomach in its usual knots. This “intimate” welcome home party was yet another ploy by the duchess to make her son come to his senses and select a woman of her choosing. Sarani could feel it.

She hadn’t seen Rhystan in days. Apparently, he’d been busy dealing with some estate issues with his solicitor. Though he hadn’t shared anything with her, she could see the strain of it in his features whenever she did see him. Admittedly, the burden of the charade was wearing also on her. Pasting a smile on her face, she approached Fullerton.

“Lady Sara Lockhart,” the butler intoned as she descended.

She felt the gazes flock and settle on her as though she were some circus oddity or breed of rare creature that the Duke of Embry had brought back from his travels. It was India, for heaven’s sake, she wanted to scream, not some uncivilized hellhole. Even as she thought it, she almost laughed. Most of these narrowminded people likely viewed her birthplace and home as worse than that.

Propaganda…it was a dangerous weapon.

Though the people in this room might not suspect her mixed origins, she knew they had already judged her harshly for having been raised in the colonized east…a place full of murderous heretics, according to the Times, which would undoubtedly have tainted her somehow. British news commentary denounced colonial society everywhere, often portraying its people, even in their own colonies, as mad and promiscuous.