She studied his face. “You are not sorry to have come?”
“No.” He sounded certain. “It is time. I stayed away too long.”
“You must have come back someday. Your family is here, and India is in your blood.”
His arms tightened. “You are in my blood.”
“I know you did this because I wanted to, and you are a prince for it.” She smiled. “But it will be good for the business, even such a brief visit.”
“Six months is sufficient time.” He bent to touch his lips to the side of her mouth, then again to the other side. Sweetness coiled through her at the light caress, the need he always roused in her rising full-bodied and soul deep. She wound her arms about his neck. The sailors were accustomed to these displays of affection by now, and if anybody complained, Abha would glower them into submission, or Lal would scold.
Welcoming her husband’s kisses, she struggled to order her thoughts. “Sufficient time to reestablish allies and make new contacts?”
“Sufficient time to make love to you in every place I once imagined doing so.”
“You did? Where?”
His hands slipped to her lower back and he pulled her flush to him. “Everywhere.” His voice was husky, the evidence of the vitality of his imagination delightfully tangible against her.
“In the garden, I suppose.” She lifted her lips.
“Yes.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. She shifted to meet him, but he teased, turning his attention to her lower lip with tantalizing little bites.
She sighed, a throaty sound of sheer bliss. “Where else? Never tell me the bazaar.”
“Yes.”
“The bazaar?” She gasped, the tip of his tongue turning her joints to jelly. “And the park?”
“Yes.” He kissed her full upon the mouth.
“The cotton fields?” She laughed in sheer happiness. “Company headquarters? Or, no—my aunt and uncle’s drawing room?”
“Yes. But mostly your bedchamber. I fantasized about you in your bedchamber.”
She smoothed her palms across his chest. The apricot-colored gem on her ring finger glittered alongside the gold embroidery of his waistcoat.
“I have a bedchamber here aboard ship, you know.” She took her lower lip between her teeth. “A rather fine cabin, actually. I know the owner, you see.”
“Do you?” His hands rounded her waist again. “And do you think he would mind if I used you quite thoroughly in that cabin momentarily?”
“I daresay he would not mind it at all. He is a generous sort.” Her voice came forth breathy. Silly for a woman married so many months, but there it was. His gaze and words did things to her inside. Very fine things.
He brushed his lips across her palm. “You will not regret missing our approach?”
His mouth did things as well. Even finer things.
“I have already seen the view.” Her pulse was quite rapid. “And we will not dock for another hour, will we?”
One black brow lifted. “About an hour.”
“Oh, then.” She grinned and gripped his hand to pull him toward the stair. “No time to waste.”
He laughed, the sun shone hot and delicious upon her skin, and she was home.
Author’s Note
Mughal princes in India decorated their palaces with pictures and sculptures of tigers to show their supreme power. This symbolism caught the imagination of the English who subjugated these native rulers through treaties and warfare. They imagined India as a tiger, a great fearsome beast that only the mightiest foe could vanquish—the regal lion, England as conqueror.
When England lost its colonies in North America to revolution in 1783, full attention turned toward its eastern prize. Sparkling like a familiar yet ever-mysterious jewel upon the threshold of the Far East, India was replete with riches and opportunity beyond imagining. Through steady conquest of the subcontinent and the sea routes around it, England gained enormous wealth that enabled not only its strength in the war against Napoleon but also the decadence of the Regency period.
A small note on one not-so-throwaway comment by Tavy: Although attributed to Byron upon its 1819 publication, The Vampyre was written by Byron’s physician, John Polidori. While Polidori’s elegant, enigmatic vampire did not shy from the daylight per se, he enacted wicked deeds upon innocent females, most certainly at night.
My humble thanks go to my university colleagues for research guidance on the East India Trade Company, to Dr. Joel Dubois for assistance with Hindi and Sanskrit, and to Gordon Frye for his vast knowledge of firearms. Special thanks also to Marcia Abercrombie, Elizabeth Amber, Anne Calhoun, and Sheetal Trivedi. Finally, many thanks to Faith Bodley for her fabulous trilogy title, Rogues of the Sea.
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WHEN A SCOT LOVES A LADY
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Katharine Ashe’s new series
Coming in 2012
from Avon Books
Prologue
London, 1813
A lady endowed with grace of person and elevation of mind ought not to stare. At two-and-twenty and already an exquisite in taste and refinement, she ought not to feel the pressing need to crane her neck so that she might see past a corpulent Louis XIV flirting with a buxom Cleopatra.
But a lady like Katherine Savege—with a tarnished reputation and a noble family inured to society’s barbed censure—might on occasion indulge in such minor indiscretions.
The Queen of the Nile shifted, and Kitty caught another glimpse of the masculine figure at the ballroom’s threshold.
“Mama, who is that gentleman?” Her smooth voice, only a whisper, held no crude note of puerile curiosity. Like satin she spoke, like waves upon a gentle shore she moved, and like a nightingale she sang. Or so her suitors flattered.
Actually, no longer singing like a nightingale. Or any other bird, for that matter. Not since she had lost her virtue to a Bad Man and subsequently set her course upon revenge. Vengeance and sweet song did not mesh well within the soul.
As for the suitors, now she was obliged to endure more gropes and propositions than declarations of sincere devotion. And for that she had none to blame but herself—and her ruiner, of course.
“The tall gentleman,” she specified. “With the dog.”
“Dog? At a ball?” The Dowager Countess of Savege tilted her head, her silver-shot hair and coronet of gem-encrusted gold glimmering in the light of a hundred chandelier candles. An Elizabethan ruff hugged her severe cheeks, inhibiting movement. But her soft, shrewd brown eyes followed her daughter’s gaze across the crowd. “Who would dare?”
“Precisely.” Kitty suppressed the urge to peer once again toward the door. Of necessity. If she leaned too far to the side she might lose her gown, an immodest slip of a confection resembling a Grecian goddess’ garb that her mother ought never have permitted her to don let alone go out in. But after thirty years of marriage to a man that publicly flaunted his mistress, and with an eldest son who’d long been an unrepentant libertine, the dowager countess was no slave to propriety. Thus Kitty’s attendance at a masquerade ball teetering perilously on the edge of scandalous. Truly she should not be here; it only confirmed gossip.
Still, she had begged to come, though she spared her mother the reason: the guest list included Lambert Poole.
“Aha.” The dowager’s penciled brows lifted in surprise. “It is Blackwood.”
To Kitty’s left a nymph whispered to a Musketeer, their attention likewise directed toward the tall gentleman in the doorway. Behind her Maid Marion tittered to a swarthy Blackbeard. Snippets of whispers came to Kitty’s sharp ears.