Her Only Desire (18 page)

“How dare you invade my mother's privacy?”

Shadows twisted the sneer on his face and turned his countenance sinister while Georgie struggled to think of an excuse. She kept hoping some clever explanation would pop into her head in time to reassure him that this really wasn't as bad as it looked.

But of course it was.

“I—” She glanced around in rising terror, trying to spot the best means of escape.

“Foolish woman!” The jewel in Shahu's turban gleamed, and his long golden earrings flashed in the low light, but the hollows of his eyes were in shadow below his brow ridge. “I had hoped for a friendly visit with you,
apsara,
but now…what a waste.” There was a whispery metal hiss as the prince drew his dagger.

CHAPTER

         
EIGHT
         

E
veryone at Johar's table in the banqueting hall froze at the distant sound of a piercing scream.

Ian instantly came to attention and sat up straight, setting down his glass. He could tell it was a woman, though the voice was muffled through the palace walls.

Gabriel and Derek also glanced toward the gilded doorway, the pair of battle-hardened warriors going at once on full alert.

A second scream filled the air, closer now.

“Help!”

Derek and Gabriel shot to their feet and were already tearing out of the banqueting hall as Ian rose in horrified recognition of her voice.

Georgiana…

He was only a few steps behind them, his stomach in knots.
What the hell had she gotten herself into now?

Shahu clenched her in a murderous hold and very nearly succeeded in slitting her throat—indeed, he nicked the side of her neck with the edge of his blade—but flailing against him and fighting for all she was worth, Georgie reached up and ripped the big, dangling gold earring right out of his head.

The prince roared with pain, clutched his torn earlobe, and she broke free. She bolted past him, out the open visitors' doorway through which the prince had entered the maharani's chamber. With terror stamped across her face and blood seeping from the cut on her neck, Georgie raced out into the palace proper, screaming for help, and clutching Queen Sujana's traitorous letter in her hand.

She burst out of the harem, past the startled eunuch guards, Prince Shahu mere paces behind her, chasing her at full speed, his face contorted in a vicious snarl.

The next thing she knew, she saw her brothers sprinting toward her up the central corridor of the palace. She let out a sob of terrorized relief.

Their keen stares homed in instantly on the blood trickling down her neck and chest, and their wrath exploded. They let her run past them and drew their swords, then put themselves between her and the heir of Janpur.

In the blink of an eye they had cornered the prince, who was screaming curses at all of them in Marathi; in another heartbeat, his bodyguards swarmed the Knight brothers, in turn, and then all hell broke loose.

Georgie was knocked to her knees in the eye of the storm, a furious whirlwind of hacking metal blades that spiraled around her within the narrow confines of the corridor. She was crying and trying to tell them all to stop.

Nobody listened.

Oh, what have I done?

Derek and Gabriel kept her between them, fighting with all their skill as more and more palace guards piled into the hallway that had become a battleground.
We're going to die,
she thought. They were too badly outnumbered.

The giant eunuch guards now joined the fray, and as one of the potted palm trees tipped over, Georgie could feel her lungs starting to clench. The sudden shortage of air tripled her terror. The room began to spin.

Gabriel's sudden bellow rushed at her like a thunderbolt:
“Get down!”

She reacted without a second's hesitation, diving onto the floor. A piercing scream arose as a serrated chakra wheel fell to the floor a few feet from her, clattering harmlessly across the polished marble.

She looked up in shock to learn who had thrown it at her and saw Prince Shahu staggering back, a dagger sticking out of his chest.

Gabriel stood, chest heaving, and watched the prince's horror with a black look full of ferocious satisfaction.

The whole brawl dwindled as the stunned guards realized it was their prince who had screamed; Shahu had just received a mortal wound.

Quick-thinking as ever, Derek grabbed Georgie's arm and pulled her toward Gabriel, prepared to help defend both siblings.

One of Prince Shahu's guards, who had been so friendly to her brothers earlier, picked up a long Maratha spear and walked toward them slowly, pointing it at Gabriel's chest.

Others followed.

“Don't, please,” Georgie begged the man.

They found themselves hemmed in by a bristling phalanx of gleaming spearheads.

The spears outreached their swords.

“I'm afraid, dear brother and sis, that we're about to become shish kebabs,” Derek drawled under his breath as the three of them backed slowly toward the wall in a tight cluster.

Georgie swallowed hard. “Maybe you should put down your weapons.”

“Trust in their mercy?” Gabriel growled. “Are you out of your mind?”

Behind the guards, propped up against the opposite wall, Prince Shahu yanked the bloody knife out of his chest with a scream:
“Kill them!”

The warrior Marathas answered with a collective holler, and with crazed fury in their eyes, closed in to skewer them.

At that moment, Ian came barging into their midst with a lordly roar:
“Stand down!”
He repeated the order several times as he shoved his way through the phalanx, jostling the guards out of formation. “What is happening here? Get a hold of yourselves! Lower your weapons, men! Everybody, calm down!”

Taking up a position between the two embattled sides, Ian turned to face the guards and all those deadly spears, one unarmed man, his hands up in a calming gesture.

The Marathas immediately began yelling at him to get out of the way, not to get involved in this, but he fearlessly refused to budge, and Georgie knew in that moment that he had just saved their lives.

“Let's all just stop and think for a moment and get this sorted out. Somebody send for a doctor. The prince needs help and others are wounded. Derek, Gabriel, sheathe your swords.”

“Lord Griffith—”

“Do it!”
he bellowed harshly just as King Johar came striding onto the scene with a look of outrage.

“Father,” Shahu croaked.

Johar looked down and saw his son leaning against the wall, his face ashen, blood seeping past the hand pressed to his chest as he tried to staunch the wound. “My son!” the king shouted, rushing over to him.

“Be careful, Your Majesty! He is a traitor!” Georgie yelled, taking a step forward.

From the corner of her eye, she was aware of Ian's stare at the cut on her neck. His sweeping glance checked to see if she was all right, scanning her from her rumpled hair to her feet as she walked past him, bravely going toward the maharajah, and holding out the letter that was their only hope of survival now.

Especially Gabriel's.

Her hand trembled as she offered it to him with a lowly bow. “My brothers only fought in my defense, Sire. His Highness tried to cut my throat to stop me from giving you this.”

Shocked murmurs rippled through the crowded hallway.

“She lies!” Shahu protested weakly, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

With a dark look, Johar straightened up from his crouched position beside his heir. He snatched the letter out of her grasp, opened it, and read.

He did not move for a long moment, but when he glanced over at Ian, he looked grimly unsurprised.

At that moment, Queen Sujana rushed in, saw her son, and let out a bloodcurdling scream. “Shahu!” To their collective shock, the queen tore off her veil in front of everyone and flew to his side, using the cloth as a bandage to press to Shahu's chest.

The guards gasped and all tried to look away, but her husband was icily silent.

“Get him a doctor! What is the matter with you, why are you just standing there?
Hurry!
” she screamed at the men in Marathi.

The royal physicians had already been sent for and now came bustling in. They moved Shahu onto a litter and quickly sped him away to try to save his life. Sujana ran after them, staying with her son.

Johar shook his head at his men, who looked at him in question, awaiting orders.

Obviously the queen did not yet know her treachery had been found out, but Shahu might stay conscious long enough to warn her. Georgie scarcely dared wonder what might happen then.

“Your Majesty?” Ian murmured.

They all waited for his response, Georgie with her heart in her throat, for she knew perfectly well that for anyone who attacked a member of an Indian royal family, the customary punishment was beheading. She held on to both her brothers.

King Johar slowly turned and pointed a jeweled finger at Derek and Gabriel. “Throw them in the dungeon,” he ground out.

Georgie let out a frightened cry, but Gabriel sent her a stoic look.

“You two.” The maharajah gestured at Ian and Georgie. “Come with me.”

         

From a room in the harem's labyrinth, down the hallway from where the surgeons tended Shahu, Queen Sujana in a state of ice-cold rage watched the drama in her husband's private audience chamber unfold. Johar obviously had forgotten that the room contained a high peephole camouflaged amid the gilded frieze.

While her boy's breath turned to a death rattle in his throat, she tried to glean whatever information she could from their exchange.

Hateful Meena had been summoned to comfort her cursed, meddling British friend, while the tall, sly diplomat argued for all he was worth to win back the forfeited lives of his two condemned men.

Murderers.

She had not dreamed the depths of betrayal her husband was capable of until she heard him finally give in to the diplomat's demands, agreeing to let the Knight brothers be released into their old colonel's custody until their execution, instead of remaining in the dungeon where they belonged.

How could he give their son's killers a chance to escape? Sujana swore she would be damned before she'd let the Knight brothers live.

Johar ordered their brazen sister to get out of Janpur, and then Sujana was forced to witness the disgusting sight of the oh-so-touching good-bye between the diplomat and that horrid girl as they embraced near the doorway.

Her husband used to hold her like that, ten or twenty wives ago. Bitterness curled her lip as she saw the tender kiss the tall Englishman pressed to the girl's ivory forehead.

By Kali's sword, I want them dead. All of them.

They could not be allowed to get away with this.

Sujana knew by now that she was caught, for Shahu had recovered hazy consciousness long enough to warn her that the Knight girl had broken into her chamber and had discovered one of her letters to Baji Rao. She swore to herself she'd have revenge. All of these scheming English would learn the meaning of a queen's wrath.

After the girl had gone, Sujana heard Johar order one of his servants to make ready the upper room in the old tower.

So. That was to be her fate, she thought cynically. But of course. Johar didn't dare kill her, or Baji Rao would retaliate by unleashing the Pindari Hordes on Janpur.

“Now you know who your real friends are,” Lord Griffith was saying to her husband in the room below, wasting no time in hammering away at him once more to get his damnable treaty signed.

“Your Majesty!” One of the doctors hurried over to Sujana and whispered to her in urgent alarm: “You must come! It is time.”