Chapter 13
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Thirteen
Adam Bates was feeling pretty damned fine. His body hummed with the after-effects of his time with Ellie. Finding her in the hall after his cool immersion in the pool had been a gift—and Adam had made good use of it.
He was already hungry for more.
Laying his woman out on the floor and giving her everything he had until she was groaning with pleasure had rapidly become one of Adam’s favorite hobbies. He’d had far too few opportunities to enjoy it.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever get enough—not unless he somehow stole Ellie away to a cabin in the woods for a month.
Or two.
Maybe three, Adam thought, his mind bursting with ideas for how the pair of them could use that time—especially if he got hold of that contraband she’d asked him about.
Granted, these weren’t the sort of things Adam ought to be thinking about while sitting at a maharaja’s dinner table.
Vijay had opted to make the evening meal a casual family gathering…
which was good, as Adam had left his only dinner jacket in a broom closet at the Puri Beach Club.
Kalb hadn’t been invited to join them, because while Adam had been giving Ellie a thorough re-education in the arts of mutual pleasure, the dog had been rolling around in a swampy puddle at the bottom of a broken fountain.
He was being thoroughly scrubbed down by the palace staff.
Adam wondered what it’d be like if he and Ellie got muddy together. He supposed he could haul her into that pool he’d found earlier to rinse off. Watch the water slide over every one of those fantastic curves…
“More pilau, Mr. Bates?” Constance’s auntie asked the question in a tone that implied she’d done it once or twice before.
“Huh?” Adam returned blankly.
“She means the rice.” Constance elaborated wryly. “Or did you want something more spicy?”
“Rice,” Adam blurted out. “Rice is great.”
“I’ll take the spicy stuff,” Neil cut in cheerfully.
Adam froze with the spoon of rice suspended in midair.
“The Andhra chutney?” Parvati offered helpfully. “Or the chili dosa?”
“Both?” Neil asked hopefully.
Parvati loaded the pancakes and crimson peppers onto his plate. Neil dug in with obvious relish.
Constance shifted a surprised and questioning look to Adam.
Adam shoved the rice into his mouth—which kept him from needing to say a damned word.
?
After dinner, Parvati and Balaram took their leave for the evening, and the rest of the party retreated to Vijay’s study.
Kalb was delivered back to Adam, thoroughly groomed and clearly miserable about it.
The dog immediately plunged behind Adam’s legs and hid there as though Adam’s shins were capable of concealing sixty pounds of quivering Seluki.
The generously sized room was hung with antique tapestries and paintings that even Adam could tell were worth a small fortune.
Bookshelves showed off an assortment of objects that looked to have been chosen out of personal interest rather than value.
Musical instruments accompanied well-tended orchids, and tattered novels were stacked beside a wind-up bird that glittered with jewels.
To the left of the bird sat a rock. As someone who’d once had a particular attachment to a rock, Adam strolled over to check it out while the others settled in.
“Look, Princess,” Adam said as Ellie came into the room. “The maharaja’s got a lucky rock.”
The rock was less ordinary on closer inspection.
One side of it had been sheared off to form a flat surface that was covered in lines of carved text.
The glyphs reminded Adam of Neil’s transcription of the Tulsidas manuscript.
He leaned in to read aloud the small type on the card next to the stone, where a translation of the script was written in both English and Odia.
“Two and a half years have passed since I became openly a Sakya…”
Ellie’s focus sharpened with rabid interest. “That’s one of the edicts of Ashoka—the earliest evidence for the existence of the Buddhist faith in the world.”
“Definitely lucky then,” Adam concluded.
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Don’t even think about stealing it to replace the one you lost.”
“I didn’t lose it,” Adam reminded her. “You threw it in a river. And anyway, I don’t need to. I’ve got Kalb.”
“The dog?” Ellie looked down at the animal with obvious skepticism.
Kalb wagged his tail hopefully in response.
“He’s lucky, too. Aren’t you, buddy?” Adam gave the Seluki a vigorous rub between his ears. Kalb panted blissfully as he absorbed the attention.
“That one’s from a ruined stupa at Deomali.” Vijay sprawled across one of the chairs in a manner that perfectly balanced comfort with regal elegance.
The way Ellie fixed her attention on him reminded Adam of how Kalb looked when he spotted a pigeon. “Were you able to date the site?”
“There were other engravings with references to the Kalinga War.”
“The Kalinga War?” Ellie’s eyes glittered avidly.
She was cute when she was excited. Adam fought back a smile.
“Not that I was able to take a very good look at them,” Vijay added. “The whole place is infested with pit vipers.”
“Pit vipers?” Constance moved closer to her uncle, delighted by the idea of her dashing relative stumbling across a colony of deadly snakes.
Vijay leaned in. “There I was with a boy from the village and a trained mongoose named Tipu Sultan—”
Mr. Chowdhury cut in smoothly from where he stood behind Vijay’s chair. “Perhaps we should discuss the translation?”
Vijay flashed him a boyish and thoroughly unrepentant grin.
Yeah, Adam thought distractedly. There was definitely more going on between those two than legal advice, even if the solicitor did play it safe with his formal demeanor.
He wished them well of it. Adam had never had much tolerance for the rabid wolves who salivated at the chance to grind someone else down because they happened to be different.
That had gotten him into trouble once or twice.
Well—maybe more than twice.
Padma took the other chair, settling into it with regal grace. Mr. Mahjoud stood in attendance behind her, wearing a freshly pressed suit and a dapper fez. Ellie positioned herself on the settee, her back straight with the posture of an attentive student.
Adam left the seats to the others, leaning against the bookcase. Kalb collapsed into a pile of lanky golden limbs by his boots, worn out from the day’s exertions.
Neil wandered into the study and immediately pivoted toward the rock. “Hold on—is this Ashokan?”
“It’s the maharaja’s lucky rock,” Adam informed him.
Neil blinked at him through his spectacles.
“How well do you four know the story of the Ramayana?” Mr. Chowdhury asked, reining in the conversation with a practiced air of authority.
Neil reluctantly tore his attention from the rock.
“My brother and I have both read Mr. Dutt’s English translation,” Ellie replied.
“I didn’t need to read it,” Constance asserted, plopping down on the sofa beside her. “I’ve only been hearing about Lord Rama all my life, thanks to Aai.”
Mr. Chowdhury shifted a questioning gaze to Adam.
“I figured I’d let them do the reading,” Adam filled in.
“How much do you recall about Lord Rama’s exile?” Vijay pressed.
Neil adjusted his spectacles, falling easily into the mode of an oral report.
“It came about as a result of the treachery of Rama’s stepmother, Kaikeyi.
She leveraged a past oath the king had made to her and used it to force him to banish Rama to the forest of Dandakaranya, which was known as the abode of the rakshasas—demons with great powers.
Rama’s loyal brother Lakshmana went with him, as did his wife, Sita. ”
“For all the good she did,” Constance grumbled.
Adam cocked a brow at her dry tone.
Padma’s eyes glinted dangerously. “Do you disapprove of Lady Sita, Kondi?”
“She follows her husband into the forest, gets herself kidnapped, and then sits around waiting for a rescue,” Constance rattled off. “Why would anyone be impressed by that?”
“Had she not been kidnapped, Sri Rama might never have gone to war against Ravana and stopped his tyranny,” Vijay countered reasonably.
“That doesn’t make Sita any less useless,” Constance stubbornly retorted.
“She certainly isn’t treated very fairly by her husband,” Ellie added with a disapproving frown.
“Even after she’s rescued, Rama forces her to walk through a fire to prove that she was faithful to him while in captivity—as though her virtue was more important than the fact that she’d managed to stay alive! ”
Constance waved a hand at Ellie. “See?”
“And what do you know about the astras?” Mr. Chowdhury pressed with a note of mild exasperation at the digression.
Neil answered from where he hovered by the bookshelves. “Divine weapons. They were gifted by the gods to those they deemed worthy.”
“But the astras aren’t physical objects,” Ellie clarified. “They’re invocations. Once someone has been granted the sacred mantra by the gods, they can summon the power of the astra into any vessel they choose. A spear, a stone, a blade of grass…”
“Or an arrow, obviously,” Constance piped in. “Lord Rama was an archer.”
“Each invocation of the weapon can be used precisely once,” Ellie noted. “After which the astra must be summoned into a new object to be wielded again.”
“And the Brahmastra?” Vijay prompted with uncharacteristic solemnity.
Neil shifted uncomfortably. “I was left with the impression that the Brahmastra could kill anyone that it was directed at.”
“It can do a great deal more than that,” Padma corrected him. “When Sri Rama invoked it against the god of the sea and was then deterred from killing him, he shot his arrow into the wilderness instead and created the Thar Desert.”
Neil adjusted his spectacles. “How big is the Thar Desert?”
Mr. Chowdhury met his gaze from across the room. “It covers a significant portion of Rajasthan.”