—69—
Tanveer walked so quickly, I had to hurry behind him, my little heels clicking on the tiles.
Once we left the dining room, the noise of the storm was even louder, but only the corridor was lit with lanterns at regular intervals.
Tanveer did not let go of my hand as he strode through one corridor, and then to another, which was only lit by a single lantern at the foot of a staircase.
He turned there, and pulled me behind him, up and up, and up.
At the top, another lantern burned nearby a door, one I recognized as a twin to my own. We were heading for the tower opposite mine, which housed his bedroom.
My heart suddenly pounded in my ears. “Tanveer,” I said.
He halted, and I felt the fury pulsing from his limbs.
He broke away and paced for a moment, back and forth, back and forth beneath the shelter of the corridor.
Just beyond, on the open balcony, the rain poured in wild splendor.
“They’re all so bloody arrogant,” he said finally, hands on his hips.
“How can they still believe they’ll hold on to their power? ”
“I don’t think they do,” I said mildly. “They know their time is nearly finished here.”
He measured me. “Do you believe that?”
“Of course I do.”
“Because I have brainwashed you.”
“No,” I countered. “Because you’ve taught me. And because I’ve been observing for years. The old ways are crumbling.”
“So they are.”
I leaned on the wall, hands behind me. “And it reminds you that I am a daughter of the empire,” I said with some despair.
He sighed. “Yes.” He shook his head, but suddenly seemed overcome with strong emotion.
I waited.
He moved toward me, drew my hands out from behind me. “And no. It does seem there should be room for the intimate and the personal as well as the political.”
“It does,” I whispered.
He lifted my hands to his lips and kissed my fingers. Pent-up emotion swelled through my chest, up through my throat, and I could not hold back a wash of tears. I bowed my head, trying to hide them. “I am ever weeping with you.”
“I do not mind it.” He kissed my wrists, my inner arm. The lantern glistened over his beard and glittered on the jewels of his turban, his rings. “If I were not so manly, I would weep myself.”
I laughed, something easing as I flowed closer to him. “Would you?”
He moved my hands to his chest, and covered them with his hands. Our eyes met, and I did not feel I had to look away for fear of revealing the truth of my emotions. “It seems a miracle that you’re standing here, with me, tonight. There is color in the world again.”
I moved closer and pressed my cheek against his coat. He held me close, his hands on my back, touching bare skin, and then away. And then back, his palm flat against my spine, gliding up and down.
“Sugar in my tea,” I said. Against my cheek, his coat was rough and smelled of clove. I rubbed my face against it. Beneath my hands his waist moved infinitesimally. Our thighs brushed.
“I have tried so hard not to think of touching you,” he whispered, and brushed his chin over the top of my head. “But tonight, I could think of nothing else.” His hand slid down the back of my dress, smoothing over my hips. “This dress is decadent.”
I smiled. “It is meant to be.”
“Did you wear it on purpose, then?” His hand moved again up the bare flesh of my back, upward to my neck, into my hair, back down.
“To distract the colonel,” I said. “From politics.”
“Only the colonel?” Hands spreading sparks of light over my back, my hips.
“Not really him at all.”
Light moved up through us, leaping from one to the other, setting every cell ablaze. “I’m going to kiss you now, Elsie.”
It had been so long. So very, very long, and yet I knew just how our mouths fit together, how precisely we knew to press and tilt, to open and sigh.
We moved into his chamber and shut out the rain, and shed all the things keeping our flesh apart.
For one blazing second, as we pressed skin to skin, at last, I lifted my head.
I touched his face, his beard, his chest, living in this moment, this very one, and then we tumbled into each other, remembering what we had forgotten.
And then we were prone and tangled and made love as if we had invented it.
When he was buried in me, over me, he lifted his head. “Elsie,” he said. “Look at me.”
I met his eyes, held him close, and he breathed.
“We are one soul. One heart.”
“Yes,” I whispered. “One.”
And as one being we moved into the place only we could ever occupy, our own land.
The rains stopped abruptly toward midnight, and the moon rose, spilling into the room to creep across our bodies, sweaty and naked. “All this hair,” I said, teasing, touching his chest with my palm, his shin with my foot, raising my hand to his thick beard. “It is quite thrilling.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. When I saw you on the balcony, I very nearly swooned.”
“I wanted you to. I saw you out there, reading a letter.”
“How wicked!”
His hand moved on my back. “Channan has asked about you a thousand times. I think she might have found some of your letters from when we were young, before I came to London.”
“She is not what I expected.”
“I know.”
A ripple of worry coursed over my heart. “I worry that my relationship with her will change.”
He smiled. “Have you known her to say a thing she did not mean?”
I could answer honestly. “No.”
“There is more than one way to live in the world,” he said. “We war when we insist it should be this or that, when I tell you how to live, or love, or worship. If we make it so that each being is able to choose, the trouble disappears.” He snapped his fingers in the air. “Like Nina and Jonathan.”
“Hmm. Yes. As it would have been for Rocky and me if he’d lived.” I sighed. “I will always miss him. What a lively character.”
“You were a bit blind about him, but I agree that he was a cheerful soul. A prat, but cheerful about it.” He paused. “It would have saved you a great deal of trouble if you’d been able to marry him.”
I nodded, thinking of the loss of Herewich and the extremity of financial trouble that had led to marrying Peter. A bolt of pain shot up my spine.
“What was that?”
“Memory,” I said. “Nothing.”
His thumb moved over my collarbone. “You were so exhausted when you arrived. Did Peter hurt you?”
“What does it matter now?” I said lightly. “Here I am. He’s a broken man and deserves pity, which I only know because I nursed you through your injuries.”
His eyes rested on my face. Then he nodded. “We all have things we cannot bear to say.”
I kissed him. “Thank you.” I pulled the thin blanket over our bodies and settled into the curve of his shoulder. “Will you tell me a story? In Urdu.”
And he did, weaving a tale of clever gods and men who outsmarted them, though I do not think either of us made it to the end.