Her Only Desire Read Free

but Ian hesitated. If he was being watched by foreign powers, he did not want to bring danger to his friends.
    On the other hand, with two military officers in the house besides himself—Gabriel and Derek, waiting to join him on his mission—any spy would think twice about coming too close. Besides, old Lord Arthur might have something useful to tell him about the renowned Maharajah of Janpur.
    His mind made up, Ian tucked the note into his breast pocket, nodding to the footman. “Thank you. I will come.”
    â€œThis way, my lord.” But as the servant began to show him over to the carriage, a slight shift in the wind suddenly carried the strong scent of smoke to his nostrils.
    Something was burning.
    He turned to look and saw a change in the crowd’s shifting currents; the people in the market were surging toward the west.
    â€œWhat’s happened?” he asked quickly, worried a fire had broken out somewhere in the cluttered bazaar. His instant reaction was to begin looking for a way to stop pandemonium from breaking out, fearing people would get trampled if there was not a swift and orderly evacuation of the old tinderbox of a market.
    Ravi halted a passerby and asked what was happening, then turned back to Ian in relief. “It is only a funeral, sahib. Some local dignitary has died and is being cremated. His ashes will be scattered on the river.”
    â€œAh.” Relief washed through him, and he gave his servant a cautious nod. “Very well, then. Let us be on our—” His words broke off abruptly, for at that moment, without warning, a rider came barreling into the market.
    Astride a magnificent white Arabian mare, she came tearing through the bazaar, careening nimbly through the crowded zigzag aisles and leaving a tenfold chaos in her wake. Chickens went flying, vendors cursed, a tower of handwoven baskets crashed down, knocking over a fruit stand, and people flung themselves out of her way.
    Ian stared.
    In a cloud of weightless silk swathed exotically around her lithe figure, the woman leaned low to murmur in her horse’s ear. Above the diaphanous veil that concealed the lower half of her face, her cobalt eyes were fierce.
    Blue.
    Blue eyes?
    As he watched in disbelief, she leaped her white horse over a passing oxcart—and then she was gone, racing off in the direction of the fire.
    Ravi and Ian exchanged a baffled look.
    He and Ravi and both coolies, along with the Knight family’s footman, stared after the girl for a moment, dumbfounded.
    There was only one sort of woman he knew who could cause that much chaos that quickly.
    Aye, in an instant, somehow, deep in his bones, Ian knew exactly who she was.
    The footman had turned pale and now started forward in recognition, but Ian stopped him with a sardonic murmur.
    â€œI’ll handle this.” With a cautionary nod at Ravi, he walked away from the servants, and followed irresistibly in the direction the young hellion had gone.
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    Georgiana Knight urged her fleet-footed mare onward, dodging rickshaws, pedestrians, and sacred cows that loitered in the road until, at last, she reached the riverside, where a gathering of some fifty people surrounded the funeral pyre.
    Towering flames licked at the azure sky.
    The sickening, charred-meat smell made her stomach turn, but she would not be deterred. A young woman’s life depended on this rescue—more than that, a dear friend.
    The relatives of old, dead Balaram now noticed Georgie’s approach. Most of them still milled about the funeral pyre, sending up all the spectacle of mourning for the respected town elder, wailing and waving their hands, but a few watched her uneasily as she arrived at the edge of the crowd. They knew the British detested this holy rite, and she quite expected that at least a few of them would try to stop her.
    The self-immolation of a virtuous and beautiful widow not only pleased the gods,