Chapter 5 Savi #2
“As long as you don’t start singing, I think I’ll be all right.” She shared a smile with him, before some of her worries about her upcoming marriage got the better of her. “If you’re attending the wedding, then you must know the groom.”
His head tilted from side to side in an indecisive movement. “As well as anyone can.”
“What’s he like?” The words were almost a whisper.
It was a long while before he answered. “I think his family would say he’s too serious.”
That could mean anything; Savi decided to finally ask the question that had been on her mind ever since her father arranged the marriage.
“Has he mentioned being unhappy about marrying an Indian wife?” She supposed a marquess would want to marry and up-and-coming debutante, not an Indian spinster closer to thirty than twenty.
“Not at all,” he replied vehemently, his brows pulling together in sincerity.
“So he’s not one of these Englishmen who believe the white race is superior to the others? Like Arthur Keith and his hateful ilk.”
“No.” The word sliced through the air. “I can assure you that no member of the family believes that.”
Savi hoped he was right. She couldn’t deny the worry had been edging its way into the back of her mind like bindweed.
She caught sight of the time on her watch; she’d been out for more than an hour.
“I should get back. No doubt it’ll take an age to get ready.
And you must be getting quite wrinkled in the water.
” There was an awkward pause before she realised another potential meaning lying hidden in her words. “Your fingers, I mean.”
The man’s intense gaze was so hot it almost burnt, but she could see him fighting a reluctant smile. “Your concern for my anatomy is positively heart-warming.”
She gave the cat a final stroke before getting to her feet, dusting off her skirt in as ladylike a fashion as she could manage. “Come find me after the wedding. God knows I’ll need someone normal to drink with.”
He leant back in the water, his arms slowly swirling around to keep him aloft. But those dark eyes? She could get lost in those. “I look forward to it.”
The woman looking back at her in the mirror might as well have been a stranger.
Savi’s grip on her snow-white bouquet tightened as she surveyed her wedding dress.
White was not a flattering colour on her, stripping her skin of its warmth and leaving a frowning husk behind.
Growing up in Bengal, the colour symbolised many things; purity, divinity, peace, but to Savi it only symbolised one thing: mourning.
The only time she’d worn entirely white outfits previously had been after the death of her mother.
Her thoughts were a sorrowful storm as she sat at the vanity to work her hair into a singular plait, delicately embedding long pearl strings.
Whenever Savi had thought of a hypothetical wedding day in the past, she’d always—always—envisioned her mother helping her to get ready.
It didn’t feel right to be here without her.
Even if her mother was the reason Savi was marrying.
Her mother. The invoice. The sanatorium. Room EC1.
Savi remembered receiving news of her mother’s death.
It had been the summer she’d finished studying for her degree at Oxford University.
She had signed up for an art history tour scheduled to embark on a ten-week journey across mainland Europe.
They’d travelled from France to Italy without issue; their next destination had been Greece, but it was cancelled at the last minute due to its ongoing war with Turkey.
A few tourers decided to make the long journey back to England afterwards, but Savi was amongst those who chose to extend their trip.
They cut short their visit in Naples to catch the Esperia to Alexandria, before going on to Cairo.
In some cases, it had been a good decision—she had become particularly close to a very handsome gentleman working as an on-site librarian at the Ashmolean, who ended up getting her a job there as an illustrator.
She had travelled down the Nile, explored the Citadel of Saladin, visited the incredible Egyptian Museum, and scaled the colossal pyramids.
The major downside was that she had missed the letter carrying news of her mother’s death. That had been delivered to the hotel in Naples the day after she had left for Egypt.
By the time the news reached her, Ma had already been cremated.
Or so Raj said.
If Savi said it out loud, she would sound insane. Of course, her mother was dead. Why would her father lie about that?
The more Savi thought about it, the more Raj stood to gain after her mother’s death.
Their marriage had been an arranged one, with Ma coming from a far wealthier family.
But her parents hadn’t been having problems in their marriage; Savi had spoken to her mother thrice a week on the phone. Ma would have mentioned it, surely.
But after Ma’s death, her family’s business transferred to Raj, the ruling of which had always been a source of conflict between her parents.
With Ma gone, Raj could finally run it as he wished.
Was that really worth faking Ma’s death?
Especially when they’d been running it together for more than a decade.
Then there was the speed at which Savi’s father had remarried—to a baroness, no less.
She wasn’t na?ve enough to believe that was by chance.
And now little George was next in line to be the Baron de Vere.
But then hadn’t Katherine been left penniless after the death of her first husband.
Savi had been furious at the speed at which Raj remarried after Ma’s death, but on paper it could have read as Raj helping her in her time of need.
Whether it was coincidental or deliberate, Raj had obtained everything he wanted. His son was heir to a noble family. He was in full control of the business.
Savi hadn’t suspected her father of foul play—until she found the sanatorium’s invoice when looking for a pot of ink to pinch.
It was the perfect place to hide someone.
Stories of disobedient wives being committed to asylums were hardly uncommon.
She shuddered as she thought of the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper, creeping around on all fours, having been driven mad by her confinement.
What if her mother had fallen victim to the same fate?
Determination flooded through her veins as she finally finished plaiting her hair, tying it with a white ribbon.
She opened the case in which her father had packed her wedding jewellery, expecting to find the two items she’d specifically requested on the telephone a couple of weeks ago, but was perplexed to find a jumble of diamond-encrusted pieces she’d never seen before.
With an exasperated huff, Savi crossed the room, her skirts whispering over the carpet. Outside, she could hear George running up and down the corridor, his laughter getting exponentially louder as she threw the arched door open.
She narrowly dodged being used as a racetrack as George ran a small wooden car up and down the stone walls with exuberant vrooms. He was dressed in the most adorable little suit she’d ever seen in her life.
“Morning, Georgie,” she said, darting through the open door to Raj and Katherine’s apartments.
She found her father sitting on an armchair by the vanity, bending down to tie his shoelaces.
“Savitha.” He straightened as he saw her, revealing that he wore a white tie—a stiff, uptight style that Savi thought ought to belong to the last century.
“The dress looks wonderful. Are you ready to go down? Katherine’s just changing Albie. ”
“Where is Ma’s jewellery?” she demanded.
His brows pinched together in confusion. “There’s a diamond parure in a box next to the shoes—”
“No.” And what the fuck was a parure? “The jewellery I asked for. Ma’s jewellery. The peacock bangles. The little gold Jhumka earrings, the ones shaped like a bell.”
“I bought those for your mother back before I’d made any real money. The parure in the box easily outshines them, Savitha. You would have made me look like a beggar with those hideous bangles.”
For fuck’s sake. “Fine.” She held her hand up to cut him off.
If the Jhumkas and bangles weren’t here, getting into a shouting match with him wasn’t going to make any difference.
In any case, she was hardly the shouting type.
“I’ll meet you outside the ballroom.” She stormed back towards her apartments, briefly wiping her anger from her face as she passed her half-brother.
“Are we going downstairs now, Savi?”
“Soon, darling.” She smiled, disappearing back inside the arched door to her rooms. Ten o’clock was when she was supposed to arrive at the ballroom, and that was only a few minutes away, according to the carriage clock that sat on her vanity. “Your baba will come and get you when it’s time.”
She walked straight past the diamond-laden box her father had packed, throwing it a filthy look. Jewellery, as a general rule, had never particularly appealed to her. She could appreciate a pretty necklace, but most of the time she found them to be too…precise. Too uniform.
The jewellery that did appeal to her were pieces with meaning—like the chipped peacock bangles and Jhumka earrings Ma wore to her wedding—or pieces with history.
Savi bent down to search her trunk, tearing through carefully folded piles of fabric to find what she was looking for. She had never bought jewellery specifically to wear, but rather as pieces of historical interest to own.