After a restless sleep, Sarani passed the next day in a fugue. Nothing could hold her interest, not even her books. She’d half expected armed officers from the Company to be waiting in the palace courtyard, but there was no disturbance of any sort. Despite her suspicion that Rhystan was neck deep in trouble, she distracted herself with a grueling horseback ride after her studies were finished.

“Princess,” a breathless groom said as she rode, wind-blown and red-cheeked, into the courtyard. “The maharaja commands your presence immediately.”

Without stopping to change her riding habit, Sarani dismounted and made her way to the throne room. Her gaze scanned the occupants of the room, hoping that Rhystan might be there although he’d said he’d been discharged, but his lanky frame was nowhere in sight. Disappointed, she approached the dais, where her father sat.

Sarani curtsied. “You wanted to see me, Father?”

The fact that his normally stern face didn’t break into a smile as it always did when he saw her should have been her first warning. The second was the distant expression in his eyes. “You are of marriageable age, and I have given my consent for you to marry the regent.”

Everything whirled to a violent stop. Marriage to the regent? Sarani’s jaw unhinged, her gaze flicking to the man in question. The regent, Lord Talbot, was an earl, one of the British Crown’s agents assigned to monitor local nobility. He was an aging Englishman who had always sent her lecherous stares that had made her skin crawl. His vile opinions on the locals was sickening, and she knew he viewed them—and her as well—as less than property to be claimed.

“But Rhystan…” She faltered, flushing. “Commander Huntley—”

“Has left for England,” Vice Admiral Markham said, stepping into view, his eyes touching on her, a sneer in his tone. She didn’t like the way he regarded her as though she were a stain on the edge of his cuff and not a princess a far step above him.

“He wouldn’t leave,” she said.

“I had him put in a convoy headed to Bombay myself.”

Clenching her fists, she met the vice admiral’s hard, scorn-filled eyes. “Why?”

“He assaulted me.”

The words jumbled into a nonsensical rush, but something like satisfaction in the vice admiral’s tone rubbed her raw. He was enjoying this. She recalled the blood in Rhystan’s hair and his split lip and smothered her cry. Likely, the vice admiral’s men had beaten him bloody for whatever crime they’d accused him of.

“He would never do that,” Sarani said, her heart in her throat. “Why would you send him away? Because of me?”

“You?” the vice admiral scoffed, his pitch lowering to a vicious whisper for her ears only. “You dress like us and talk like us, but you will never be one of us. You’re nothing.”