return, they would slice her to ribbons. Any hope for a suitable match would be lost. Courtland felt an expected stroke of pity for what she would face, even if she’d brought the storm upon herself.
They fell into tense silence.
“What would it take for you to forget you ever saw me?” she asked after a while.
Courtland blinked—she couldn’t possibly be asking what he thought she was. “I couldn’t in good conscience do that.”
“Yet you were willing to throw me in jail an hour ago.”
“You weren’t you!” He glared at her.
She cleared her throat. “Look, I’m serious. You know what awaits me if I’m sent back to London. What will it take? Money? You are welcome to whatever I have. My body? Though I don’t know what good it’ll do—it’s as frigid as they come, or so I’ve been told.”
He ignored the bolt of pure lust at her wicked offer, even as her cheeks flamed. “I’ll protect you.”
“How? Trust me, you can’t.”
“Bloody hell, woman, I can’t let you go off on your own.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and sighed. “Embry would pulverize my bones to meal. My father would turn in his grave if he knew I abandoned an innocent girl to her own foolish devices.”
“I’m not innocent or foolish.”
“Your actions prove otherwise,” he said.
“Then I’m sorry for this.”
A noise that sounded uncannily like a cocking gun made his eyelids snap open. He was right—a loaded pocket pistol was pointed right at his face.
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Author’s Note
Hello, readers. I hope you enjoyed Sarani and Rhystan’s story! When I started this book, I knew I wanted to write a story that would incorporate some of my background (I’m a biracial West Indian-American woman, and have been in an interracial marriage for twenty years), but the journey I went on for this novel was more than I’d hoped for. The questions of identity and self-worth are themes that every woman struggles with—especially in areas of friendship, family, and romance. My heroine, Sarani, who changes her name to fit in when she travels to England, embodies that struggle. I changed my name when I went to college because my first name was difficult to pronounce. It stuck, and later on, I found myself torn between the two vastly different identities I had constructed. It took quite a long time for me to bridge the two. What I’ve found, however, is that the creation of separate personas isn’t isolated to cultural or racial differences. Many women have different faces they share with the world. We become who the world needs us to be at any given time, whether that is at home, at work, in relationships, or even with our own families, and sometimes, it’s hard to reconcile those facets of ourselves.
Lakshmi Bai, the Rani of Jhansi, also known as Manu, whom I mention in this novel as a friend of the heroine and who inspired me so much, was an actual Indian queen in the nineteenth century. Born in 1835, she lived in the princely state of Jhansi (inspiration for the fictional princely state of Joor) and was a fierce leader in the Indian Rebellion in 1857, fighting against British rule in India until her death in 1858. She was raised as a trained fighter, horsewoman, and independent thinker. When the maharaja she married (Gangadhar Rao) died, she became regent to their adopted son. However, the boy was not recognized as a true successor, and under the doctrine of lapse, the princely state was annexed to the British Crown. At a mere twenty-two years of age, Lakshmi Bai refused to surrender to the injustice and even pleaded her case to a court in London. As regent of Jhansi, she was at the forefront of the Indian Mutiny, and despite her bravery, she was killed in combat. In Solapur, Maharashtra, there’s a statue of her riding into battle with her son strapped to her back, sword raised and dauntless, which is just inspirational.
That said, colonialism was a very fraught period in history, and in no way do I want to make light of some of the terrible and unforgivable atrocities that occurred during this time. Having been born in a colonial country (Trinidad and Tobago got its independence from Britain in 1962) and having grown up on one of those sugar, cocoa, and coffee plantations that was taken over and farmed by locals and descendants of former indentured laborers, I have an intimate idea of