—18—
My father arrived unexpectedly from Lucknow late on a Thursday evening.
I saw him from my bedroom window, but he asked immediately for my mother.
They were cloistered away until supper, which was laid in the courtyard to take advantage of the breezes from the hills.
As happened in late August, there was a hint of the coming season beneath the heat of the day, nothing so overt as a chill, but a crispness in the corners, a whisper of cool along the flat tiles.
I’d been out sketching with Gurdaya most of the day and arrived at the table famished.
Mother had not yet fully recovered from a recent malarial flare. Her skin held a pale-blue undertone, and at the neckline of her dress, her collarbone stood out too boldly. I kissed her head as I passed. “I’m glad to see you at the table tonight.”
My father said, “Have you been as ill as that?”
“I am much better,” Mother said, waving a hand. “You know the heat sometimes wears on me.”
“Indeed. All the better—”
Mother interrupted. “All in good time,” she said. “Elsie, have you been sketching?”
I stabbed a chunk of melon. “Gurdaya and I walked to the lake.” I pulled my book from my deep pocket and flipped through to show a drawing of a red-billed magpie in all its drama. “The birds are beginning to migrate, so we saw quite a few things. We saw stilts, too.”
“Such an eager naturalist,” my father said. “I was the same as a boy.”
“Were you?” He rarely shared anything about his life. “Did you like birds?”
“Indeed.” He gestured for his plate to be filled with roast mutton. “My favorites were the swans and ducks. There are a lot of ducks at Herewich.”
“The estate where you grew up?” The melon barely dented my thirst, and I drank water greedily. “I’ve seen a painting of it.”
“Yes, it’s quite beautiful, and old, for England, anyway. It was built in 1532.”
“That’s old,” I agreed, “but not as old as the maharaja’s palace.”
“It’s far older than the palace.” He looked at my mother, and I suddenly felt a warning.
“Elsie,” Mother said. “Your father has had some news.”
I looked at him, feeling the pit of my stomach give way.
He cleared his throat. “My brother, the earl, has been killed in a hunting accident.”
“Oh no! Father, I am so very sorry.”
“Yes, well. The second part of the news is that I am now the Earl of Herewich.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it?”
My mother said, “We shall be returning to England forthwith, Elsie.”
The words made no sense. “What?”
“I’ve booked passage from Bombay on the third of October,” my father said.
“That will give us time to pack both houses and wrap up our business here in India. My replacement will need to be trained, and I’d not like to leave that for some imbecile who understands nothing of the delicacies of the position. ”
My mother patted his arm approvingly.
I continued to stare at him. What language was he even speaking? What was he talking about? “Leave India?” I said at last. “I don’t want to leave India. This is my home.”
“I know it will be a challenge,” my mother said, “but it’s time.”
Something in her gentle gaze made me think she knew my secret, that she was relieved that we would be leaving. “You’ve never lived in England!” I cried. “This is your home, too.”
“India is trying to kill your mother,” Father said. “The climate in England will be so much better.”
A howl whirled around my spine, gathering power until it tore from my throat.
“No!” I cried. “No. I won’t go. I will not leave my friends and the landscape and—everything.
” I stood up, and my knees caught the seat of my chair, sending it backward.
The violence of my move knocked the table, too, and a glass of wine spilled red over the flowers and vines of the tablecloth. “I won’t.”
“Sit down,” my father said, as close to a shout as he ever came.
It startled me enough that I took the seat a servant had righted.
“You will be going to England with us, your parents. And you will learn to live the English way, as befits the daughter of an earl. Do you understand me?”
I glared at him, my eyes filled with tears. I could not speak.
“Do you understand?” he repeated, steely, his eyes boring through my body.
“Yes,” I whispered, tears spilling down my face. “May I be excused?”
“Elsie,” my mother said.
But I fled.
An hour later, Mother came to my room. I was flung over the bed, exhausted from weeping, and she sank down beside me. “I know it seems terrible now,” she said in her soothing voice, “but you will come to see how well it works out in time. You’ll love England.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to.”
“I know.” She stroked my hair. “I was once fifteen, you know.” I heard her smile. “Things feel enormous, but that doesn’t mean that they are enormous.”
“That helps ever so,” I said sarcastically. “Why don’t you just tell me I’m being a foolish child? That will ease my sorrow.”
“I knew you would be desperately upset, Elsie, but in truth, there is no place for you here. Your friends are royals and soon will take their own path, leaving you behind. What then? Will you marry some boorish INC officer? Some middling bureaucrat who wants you only because you’re pretty and will make him shine? ”
“No! That sounds terrible.”
“What then? Here, in India? What?”
I plucked at a loose thread on my coverlet, taking a savage pleasure in the way it ruched the fabric. “I don’t know. Surely there is a way to study art? To make a life here without marrying some awful person?”
“Perhaps.” She took a breath. “I have allowed you a great deal of freedom, my dear. I was loath to constrain your mightiness.” She paused.
“But I fear that was not in your best interest. For all that I wish it to be true, this world is not an easy place for women.” A glimmer of tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, and it pierced me as nothing else could have.
“As a girl, you have some freedom, but as a woman, you must be strategic.”
I sat up. “That is not fair.”
“No,” she agreed. “It is not fair.”
Fresh tears welled in my eyes. “So how will it be any better in England? I only trade a boring officer for boring country Englishman. How is that better? At least here, I’d be in the landscape that I love.”
She looked away, as if considering her words, then back to my face.
“If you stay here, your soul will be shredded by all that you want to be, and all that you are not.” She took my hand.
“In England, you will have some modest standing, and therefore some measure of power. In England, I will have more ability to sway your father to what you wish, not what he wishes.”
I held her gaze, and felt a fool that I thought she had not noticed my liaison with Tanveer.
I blushed, thinking that she imagined I wanted to be his wife, when I clearly knew I would not.
But in some small part of me, had I not been thinking there was a way around the roadblock, the dire future he predicted, that she now also predicted?
“I don’t want to be anyone’s wife,” I said, fiercely, leaving the truth unsaid: if I cannot be Tanveer’s wife. “I want to paint.”
“I know.” She smiled. “In England, perhaps you might study art. And in a few years’ time, perhaps you’ll be less opposed to marriage.”
I scowled. “I doubt it.”
“Hmm. Well, I daresay that between now and that possible day, you’ll learn much more about the ways of the world than you know now and perhaps will change your mind.”
Seeing that I would not escape my fate of leaving India, I closed my eyes, letting grief fill my being. “I can’t bear it,” I said.
Mother allowed me to collapse against her. “You can,” she said. “And you shall.”