Her Only Desire by Gaelen Foley Page B

little uncertain of the status of their meeting given the interruption. He knew King Johar would need time to think and that the advisers, too, would want to debate their response to the British proposition, but between Shahu’s outburst and the trumpets’ hail, everyone except for him seemed to have lost focus.
    The whole court had turned into hubbub. Even King Johar had beckoned a minister over and now they were conferring in low tones, using the interruption to discuss the idea of neutrality.
    Ian curbed his annoyance with the disruption and, leaving them to their murmurings, exchanged stoic glances with the Knight brothers as he returned to the table to take a quick swallow of water. The men needed no words to communicate their displeasure with the unexpected halt in these highly delicate proceedings.
    Suddenly, Prince Shahu came rushing back in. “Father, a caravan’s coming—it looks like a royal entourage! There are twenty soldiers on horseback, and servants, and musicians, and many camels laden with gifts—and a princess, riding on an elephant!”
    â€œA princess?” King Johar rose, frowning as the young man dashed back out again.
    Ian’s first thought made him blink.
    No—it couldn’t be!
He shook it off.
Impossible.
“Was Your Majesty expecting visitors?” he inquired with studied calm, on his guard.
    â€œNo.” The maharajah’s rugged face darkened with mistrust. He looked at Ian, and Ian looked skeptically at him.
    â€œMost irregular,” Ian opined, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. He would not have been at all surprised if it were some sort of ruse from the court of Baji Rao.
    â€œHm,” Johar murmured, almost as though he in turn suspected that the British might have had something to do with it.
    Irked with the interruption and unsure what mischief was afoot, Ian frowned. Perhaps the royal advisers had some deviltry up their sleeves. “With your leave, Sire, I should like a moment to appraise the situation.”
    Johar waved his hand, inviting him do as he pleased.
    Eyeing his hosts warily, Ian bowed to the maharajah and then left his post, striding out onto the windy ramparts to see this “royal princess” for himself.
    Though he had not yet laid eyes on her, he had half a mind to wring the woman’s neck. Ah, but it took a female to muck things up properly—a principle as unfailing in his experience as Newton’s laws of motion.
    The rushing breeze tousled his hair as he strode out onto the lofty battlements. Beneath an endless azure sky, Janpur Palace sat atop a sun-baked precipice, its mighty ramparts and soaring outer walls carved from the mountain’s lustrous ocher sandstone. Fantastical rounded bastions topped with airy cupolas guarded the approaches, each tower adorned with bands of glazed tiles made of brilliant lapis lazuli.
    From its craggy peak, the ancient stronghold dominated the surrounding rugged vastness—tiger country—hills clad in teakwood forest and bamboo, swift rivers swollen with the end of monsoon, rushing waterfalls crashing through ravines.
    As Ian rested his hands on the rough, sun-warmed stone and leaned forward, peering over the crenellated battlements, his vantage point directly overlooked the steep stone road that came winding up the mountainside in tight meanders, doubling back on itself, snakelike, as it approached the ominous main gate.
    Prince Shahu had painted an accurate picture.
    Ian counted twenty armed sepoys on horseback flanking the caravan. There were camels, too, a full dozen, their humped backs laden with glittering treasures. Six musicians in an ox-cart were already playing as their resplendent party approached, beating drums, playing ecstatic ragas on the sitar, accompanied by a reedy pipe.
    But the centerpiece of this extravagant party wending its way slowly, musically, joyously up the road had to be the painted elephant. The creature’s gray face and