—34—
I could barely sleep after the ball, and the morning dragged by as if each minute weighed a thousand pounds. I should have told him to meet me at nine.
At last it was time to escape to Hyde Park.
I wore a rose-colored frock, modern and lean in silhouette, a tidy straw bowler over my hair, and walked briskly to the Underground, which I rode to Lancaster Gate.
I walked the rest of the way in my little boots, my heart skittering and sliding in my chest as if it had no mooring.
Our connection had not slipped in the slightest, but nothing else had changed, either.
I could not make myself care, to weigh it out like a modest female and make considered choices.
I only wanted him, Tanveer, his laughing eyes and his hands on my body and his mouth devouring me and long conversations for as many hours as we could squeeze out.
I feared anyone looking at me would see an overripe peony, desire leaking out of my skin and eyes, staining the air around me a vivid pink.
The day was fine and bright, not yet hot.
Late-spring blooms filled the beds with color, a delicacy of shade that was entirely different from the bolder palette of India.
I sat on a bench to wait, pulling out my sketchbook to capture the blushing tumble of roses on a trellis, the fluttering society ladies of irises, and lush, disheveled poppies.
I hadn’t brought my watercolors out of deference to the fabric of my dress, but I so loved these delicate shades.
One iris bloomed white below and peach above, the beard an extraordinary pale orange. It calmed me to sketch.
I spied him walking from the same direction from which I’d come, tall and straight, unhurried and curious.
In one hand, he carried a book. Again he wore western dress, which was strange for me, but I supposed he wore it for political reasons, as his father did.
He wore a dastaar over his hair, a declaration of his identity, making him stand out in the English crowd.
Women admired him from the corners of their eyes.
I quickly sketched him as he paused to examine a shrub, and as I looked back up, he turned and saw me at the same moment.
His face lit up so brightly that I thought of Nina’s warning, that flames were shooting from our heads, and I tried to school my own face, but it didn’t matter so terribly here, where my brother wouldn’t see.
I stood, shimmering, and waited for him to join me.
He took his time, strolling my way, a very slight smile on his lips.
It was highly pleasurable to stand in his regard, to offer my regard in return.
In my entire life, I had never seen a man so self-possessed.
I thought of him when he was a child, with his too-big nose and knobby joints, and it gave me a rush of happiness that I had known him then, too.
He paused a foot away, tucked the book under his arm, and offered me the greeting of hands pressed together in front of him. In Hindustani, he said, “Your appeal is like that of a bird who takes his blue shimmering color through the sky, shaming the clouds, just like the royal kingfisher.”
Even in that language, it was an extravagant compliment, and I laughed. I thought for a moment, then said, “Your eyes are as wild and deep as the ocean.”
“As a monkey?” he said in English, eyes glittering.
I thought about my word choices and laughed. “Did I say monkey? I meant ocean.”
“Bandar is monkey, samandar is ocean.”
“Samandar,” I said, and raised a hand to my throat dramatically. “Aap ki ankhen samandar ki gerhraiyon si choon jati hai.”
He lifted my hand to his lips. “Good.”
“I miss speaking Hindustani with you,” I said. “One can think different things in different languages.”
“Indeed. If we practice, it will come back quickly.” He gave me the book he carried. “I thought we might read together, if you like. I think you will like it very much. Umrao Jan Ada. It’s a woman’s story.”
“Thank you. I would like that.” I gestured toward the path. “Shall we walk?”
Lacy sunlight fell through the trees, delicate as a whisper. “How are you finding your visit?”
“Frustrating, which was to be expected. My father wants something of me that I find I cannot deliver, and we are at odds over it.”
“What does he want?”
He took a breath. “Cooperation with the British. He feels that is the only way we can move forward.”
“You disagree,” I said, not a question.
“As ever.” He smiled down at me. “But let’s not waste our precious words on nationhood and politics.”
“But politics are part of you. I would hear whatever is on your heart.”
“I shall look forward to discussing such matters with you, because I am learning things here I had not expected, but I’d rather not think of them today. Is that all right?”
“Of course.” The warm scent of him wafted toward me on a breeze, speaking to some invisible field around my body, teasing and alive. “In truth, I am so happy to be with you that we could say peas and carrots all day and it would be enough.”
“Peas and carrots?”
“Never mind.” I gestured around us. “What do you think of England?”
“It is beautiful. Everything is softer here. The flowers, the clouds, the air.”
We came to a thicket of trees, some as wide as a cart. “What are these trees?” he asked.
“Rowan. They were sacred to the Druids and maybe to witches. Powerful, aren’t they?”
He pressed a palm to one, looking up, and I liked that he was a person who would think to do such a thing, befriend a tree another might simply walk by. He looked back at me, and then over his shoulder to the deserted path behind us. He held out his hand.
We dashed into the shadows, hidden by the great tree, and he backed me against it to kiss me. “I could not wait another moment,” he said, and then just as quickly pulled me back to the public side.
I clutched his hand tightly. “How have you been so far away all this time? I feel like the world has suddenly straightened itself.”
“It feels no time has passed, and too much.” He tucked our hands into my skirts as we walked the public path. “I do admire your park, Elsie, but I am quite keen to see your paintings. You speak of it so often in your letters that I long to see the work. Is that possible?”
A swell of happiness strained the confines of my skin. “Yes. Of course. Do you mind taking the Underground?”
“Not at all. It should be an adventure.”
We made the journey back to Slade, Tanveer admiring the carriage and the stations of the Tube. It somehow calmed my nerves to engage in a simple, ordinary task. “A very helpful invention in a city of such size,” he said. “It must be safe if women ride alone.”
“Yes. As safe as anything is for a woman on her own.”
“And yet you want to move about freely.”
“I wish for men to treat women with the respect they offer each other, so women needn’t worry.”
He raised a brow. “Will that ever be a truth?”
“It will be if we insist upon it.”
“Perhaps here. I do not know if that can be true in India.”
“Why not?”
He took a breath. “The Guru said we are all equals, men and women, and people of all castes. But many structures will need to be changed and dismantled for that to be true in practice.” He glanced over his shoulder at a man pretending not to listen and switched to Hindustani.
“We have other pressing struggles just now.”
“Why not restructure it all at once? Free women from their chains, abolish caste?”
He gave me a droll glance. “That should be simple enough.”
I laughed. Our stop arrived, and we disembarked, Tanveer offering a courtly hand as I stepped out. For a single moment, again I felt swamped at his presence. I shook my head to clear it.
Truly, would I spend all these days in a swoon? Ridiculous.
Briskly, then, I led the way to the school, which would likely be fairly empty on a late-spring Saturday as lovely as this one.
As we crossed the courtyard, he looked around but said nothing, simply absorbing.
I had forgotten this, too, his willingness to simply be quiet.
Rocky and Nina chattered continually, and although I was not so much a talker as they, I had been drawn somewhat into the habit.
It was cheering to remember there was more to me.
As we entered the building, cool shadows enveloped us.
“This way.” I led the way up the stairs to the studios, and he walked behind me, then beside me in the hallway, taking my hand in the folds of my skirt.
I gripped him back, feeling nerves return.
What if when I saw my work through his eyes, I hated it?
What if I could sense he was only being polite?
Outside the room, I halted, my hand on his chest. “I will only show you if you are completely honest in your opinions.”
He covered my hand. “Of course. Why would you expect anything else?”
“Very well.” I hauled open the door and led the way into the studio. It was, unsurprisingly, empty. “My place is over here.”
In the few months since that searing day I had lined up my paintings to see what I could learn about my voice, I’d been painting in a fury. “Sit here,” I said, pulling over a stool. “Beware of paint. It’s everywhere.”
“I shall be aware.” He folded his hands comfortably, at ease here as everywhere.
I mentally captured the memory for future reference, quickly gathering details, the angle of thigh, the ease in his torso, light falling across his face.
Perfect portrait light. I itched for him to sit there long enough to capture it. Perhaps a sketch in a moment.
Instead, I flung off my hat, took an apron from a hook to pull over my head, and started lining up the paintings.
First the ones I’d decided to discard or paint over, what was left of them, the Nainital market and the people in India.
Then came the first one I wanted to keep, of Gurdaya, and then the night sky in the desert when we’d been at his father’s palace.
Then more—a vivid, even exaggerated palette expressed in a garden of tulips beneath a spring sky, my mother bent kneeling in her garden; one of Nina, insouciantly draped over a chair, her dress the pink of bougainvillea flowers, and one of Rocky swimming in a lake.
“I haven’t worked everything out yet,” I said when they were lined up, side by side. “After you challenged me to consider my own colonialism, I admit I had a bit of a crisis.”
“And?” His dark eyes held no judgment, only curiosity.
“I discovered that you were right, of course.”
“Not ‘of course.’ I was not offering judgment, only prodding you to find your truth.”
Looking back at the paintings, I pointed to the first ones and explained how I’d felt when I realized that they were painted in order to make an appeal to the “exotic,” rather than exploring deeply.
“But I believe my sense of color is honest. And I do love portraits. I think I am able to see people in a deep way.”
“Yes,” he said. “I am moved by the painting of Gurdaya. She is so mighty there. Is it the first day we swam?”
I nodded. “I painted it when you wrote that she’d married.”
He held out a hand, and I went to him. He looped an arm around my waist comfortably, and I had the deepest sense of home, of rightness. “I love this work, Elsie. Even the vegetable wallah, truly. But Gurdaya and your mother are both filled with such love. I feel peaceful looking at them.”
“Oh, dear. That sounds so bucolic. Shouldn’t I strive for challenge, or something utterly new?”
“I don’t know. Should you?”
I leaned into him, my hip against his side. “The art world would say yes. That this is safe work.”
“You’re learning, Elsie. Perhaps you don’t have to know everything immediately.”
I laughed. “What? I’m allowed to be a student for now? What a relief.”
He smiled up at me, and he was right there, so close, so I bent to kiss him. Gently, once, twice, and then pulled away, my palms against the line of his beard. “Would you allow me to sketch a portrait of you?”
“I might be persuaded,” he said, a twinkle in his eyes, “if you will kiss me again.”
I did, lingering this time, falling into the world that belonged only to us, this meeting point of our lips, his hand on the small of my back.
“One more,” he said when I raised my head. And then again: “Once more.”
“The light will fade!”
“Very well.” He released me. “Paint away.”
I smiled gently. “It will give me a chance to simply look at you.”
“And I will look at you in return. If looking is what you wish.”
I feigned innocence. “What else could there be?”
So I painted him looking at me, his hand on his thigh, and I knew even as I sketched it quickly that the resulting painting would always be important to me. When the light grew long, he sighed. “I am expected at a function this evening.”
I wiped my brushes clean and washed my hands. “I would rather you could spend every moment of your visit with me.”
“As would I. But I think my father would object.”
We walked down the stairs, holding hands. “Nina has sent out the invitations for her house party,” I said. “Did you receive one?”
“Yes.” His fingers tightened. “Will this be a bohemian orgy?”
“What?” I laughed. “No, no orgy, or at least not that I know of.” I looked up as we emerged into the courtyard.
“It will likely be very eccentric.” Memories of recent gatherings tumbled through my memory.
“And, yes, perhaps a bit more liberal than you are accustomed to. Shocking, even.” I winced. “Will you hate it?”
“Hmm. Will there be nudity involved?”
“No.” I reconsidered, thinking of the edict to dress as fairies for dinner on Saturday. “Er, well, there might be some very thin coverings.”
He looked around the courtyard, then pulled me close. “Will I have time alone with you?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “That is certain.”
“Then I do not care what else occurs.” He pressed his forehead to mine, paused. Then, quietly: “Is it too much to hope that we might lie together again?”
A flash of our limbs entwined, our skin bare and sliding, sent heat through me. To counter it, I said lightly, “As I am already ruined, I suppose it would be all right.”
He lifted his head, stricken. “Ruined! By me?”
“No!” I cupped his face, touched his ears. “By me, and willingly.”
“That is not ruination,” he said softly, brushing his nose against my cheek. “That was our souls weaving together.”
The words gave me a vision of a loom, silver and gold threads looped and tightened into a cloth of great strength.
“Then we shall weave again.” The heat of anticipation rose beneath my skin, enlivening every inch.
Then I gripped his shoulders tightly and looked him in the eye. “But we must take precautions.”
“Of course.” He brushed my hair off my cheek. “It feels a hundred years until the weekend.”
“A thousand.”
He kissed me, slowly, a promise.