—12—
When we arrived in England, I found out I had cousins.
So many cousins! Everyone wanted to meet the family of the new earl, so all through that first year we were invited to garden parties and dinner parties and balls and weekends at one country house or another.
It was a bewildering and exotic whirl, and if the rituals seemed odd to me, I was delighted by the new wardrobe which my brother insisted was de rigueur.
I found myself draped in whisper-thin silks and elegantly beaded bodices, wearing shoes with T-straps and little kitten heels. The ensembles made me feel beautiful.
Which was lucky, as the manners and customs here seemed impenetrable.
The local girls had all known each other from the time they were children and didn’t allow room for me to settle in.
Mostly I didn’t mind their cuts and sharp snickers, and found them thoroughly awful, but I’d been used to the closeness of friends I’d enjoyed in Nainital, and the lack made me lonely.
At a garden party at a manor house, a particularly horrid knot of girls had trapped me into a silly little revelation of something I couldn’t know.
When I realized the trick, I flushed with fury and my temper rose so dangerously that I stormed away into the shade beneath an enormous spreading oak.
There, I let myself weep in my fury, wishing I could just go home. “I hate this place!” I cried aloud.
“Oh, dear,” said a young woman. I hadn’t seen her sitting on a bench on the path. “Is it so terrible?”
I straightened, hurriedly sluicing tears from my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.”
“It’s all right.” She stood. “Come, sit with me. Don’t worry about those awful girls. They’re all ninnies, angling for the right husband and afraid you’ll capture someone they want.”
This woman was a bit older than I, perhaps twenty to my sixteen. She had very dark hair smoothed back from her heart-shaped face. Large blue eyes dominated her features. “I’m Nina,” she said. “I believe we’re second cousins, through my mother and your father.”
I sank next to her. “I suppose you know I’m Elsie, then.”
“Yes. Tell me what you hate about this fair land.” Her eyes twinkled. “Is it the rose gardens, the wide lawns, the beautiful summer skies?”
I laughed. “Of course I like those things. And my new frocks.” I smoothed my skirt, took a breath. “I miss India, that’s all. It’s the only place I’ve ever known. This is quite a change.”
“Tell me, darling,” she drawled, “what is one thing you miss the most?”
A dozen things tumbled through my mind—the sound of music, the marketplace, the mountains holding down the entire horizon, Tanveer, monkeys, Gurdaya, the way the light fell into blue hues at evening.
“I was free there,” I said at last. “Here, I am the earl’s daughter, and everyone wants me to be someone I don’t know how to be. ”
“Hmm.” She regarded me silently. “It isn’t only that, you know, suddenly finding yourself in a position you had not prepared for. You’re a young woman now, and eligible, and they wish us to behave in a certain manner.”
“To find a husband!” I exclaimed. “I do not want a husband!”
She laughed, and the sound was as delicate as her features, a sound I did not realize until later that she had cultivated as carefully as she’d cultivated everything else about her persona, to hide her secret in plain sight.
“Certainly an understandable sentiment, but hardly practical.” She raised one arched dark brow.
“The trick is to find a husband who will not limit you too terribly.”
“No,” I said. “I’m going to be married to my art. Husbands, families, all those things will distract me.”
“An artist!” she cried. “How marvelous! You must meet my friend Rocky. He’s not here today, but I shall write to him immediately.”
Her kindness suddenly made me suspicious. I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you being friendly?”
Her grin flashed. “Good. Be wary of everyone in this world, my little doe.” She reached up and brushed a lock of hair from my face. “I like your fire. It’s so refreshing.”
A young man emerged from the patch of forest nearby. “Hullo!” he called. A red-and-white dog trotted alongside him.
“Peter!” Nina called. “Come, meet my cousin.”
He was tall and graceful, with a thatch of blond hair, and the regular, pleasing features I’d come to expect from this lot. His eyes brightened when he looked at me. “How do you do?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“Elsie is the new Earl of Herewich’s daughter.” She gestured toward him. “Peter is the third son of a marquess, so he’ll be looking at a life as a barrister.”
He didn’t seem to mind the rib. “Not a barrister, darling. My grandmother has left me a fortune, you know.” He winked. “We wouldn’t want our new friend to think I’m poor.”
I smiled.
Nina jumped up. “Luncheon will be served soon. You must both come sit with me.”
Peter offered his arm as we headed back to the house. For the first time, I felt I might not wither away in despair in this new land.