“Why does it matter?” Sarani—no, Sara—answered. It would be best for him to get used to thinking of her as that. A stranger. One who had conspired to wheedle her way aboard. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. She was a master of artifice. He should know—she’d claimed to love him and then left him in the space of two days.

“You’re right, it doesn’t.” Rhystan took another draught. “How did you get on my ship?”

“Tej paid two of your new crew to take their place.”

His eyes narrowed. “Take their place?”

“You hired new men. We offered them more.”

Rhystan couldn’t control the rise of fury. The sheer arrogance of her. Buying off his crew? A logical voice in his head reminded him that they weren’t truly his men, merely deckhand replacements he’d employed in Bombay, but he was too angry to listen. Shoving off the desk with a force that nearly broke it from its moorings on the floor, he strode to the door, grabbing his discarded shirt at the foot of the bed and yanking it over his head.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Princess, but I won’t stand for it. I am turning this damned ship around.”

“I can pay you.” Her voice shook. “Whatever you want.”

He halted, his shoulders stilling, and turned to rake her person with a contemptuous gaze. “You have nothing on this earth to offer, Lady Lockhart. Nothing I would ever desire in this entire fucking lifetime.”

* * *

Sarani pressed a hand to her throat, feeling her fluttering pulse as the door crashed into its frame. That could have gone worse. She was still in one piece. For now.

She’d never expected to cross paths with him, not in a thousand years.

This duke was nothing like the boy she’d known. Apart from the physical likeness, that laughing, earnest boy no longer existed. In his place was a rugged, hardened man who had no soft edges, no compassion whatsoever. And no laughter in sight.

He’d grown taller, if that were even possible, towering above her, and he’d broadened, too. Significantly. Five years ago, she’d seen him without a shirt and the view had been incredible. The view now was brain-melting. His physique was sculpted to warrior-like perfection by what she guessed would have been years of hard labor on his ships, and his skin had been baked to a mouth-watering hue by the sun. But the biggest change was in his eyes. Those stormy ocean eyes had been unreadable. They’d become hard and unfeeling.

Unforgiving.

She was in dangerous territory.