Chapter 5
The servant quarters sat in the western wing of the Haveli, close to the entrance. Simple, well-kept. Two rooms for the Chauhan family, with carved wooden doors and windows that opened into a smaller courtyard.
Outside, voices drifted across the courtyards. Orders passed from one end to the other. A heavy object scraped against stone as workers moved it into place.
By noon tomorrow, the owner would arrive.
The man who wanted to sell her home.
Meera had been pacing for so long that the movement had become automatic. She stopped before the framed image of Kul Devi, arms crossed, dupatta slipping from one shoulder.
She looked at the goddess as she did when the weight grew too large to bear alone.
She had known for a week. A full week. And she had not slept properly.
She turned and picked up the magazine from her desk. Forbes. She had ordered it the day she learned he was coming. Before that, his face had never mattered. Now it did.
Three days ago, she had promised herself she would stop looking.
She opened it again.
Abhinav Kumar Anand.
Dark suit. No smile.
His face struck her with the same unwelcome pull every time. As if the portraits in the gallery had gathered into one man and stepped out of their frames.
She knew that bloodline. She had grown up studying it.
Men who entered a room and expected it to bend. Men who wore authority as if it were simply a part of them.
And men, she thought with quiet irritation, who were entirely and unnecessarily handsome. As if power and wealth were not already enough.
She shut the magazine and placed it face down.
Those men loved this Haveli. Every single one of them. It showed in the portraits. In the way they stood inside these walls, as if the stone rose from them.
This one wanted to sell it.
That left two options. Either he was nothing like them. Or he was exactly like them in a twisted way.
She was not sure which possibility unsettled her more.
She moved to the window.
The voices had calmed. The fountain kept its rhythm. Lamps glowed low in their niches. The Haveli stood as it always had.
Completely unaware of the fact that tomorrow would be the most difficult day of Meera Chauhan’s life.
She turned back to the goddess.
“Maa,” she began. “I need to say something. And you need to listen.”
Her gaze stayed fixed.
“I know he is an Anand. I know you belong to his family. I know all of that.” She drew in a breath. “But I have been coming to you since before I could walk.”
Her voice softened, but it did not lose its strength. “You have watched me grow up.”
She lifted an eyebrow, just slightly. “So when he walks through that gate tomorrow remember that you have two people in this. Not one.”
The lamp on the windowsill flickered. Meera noticed.
“I don’t have a plan,” she went on. The words came lower, stripped of defense. “I had one for every buyer.”
A breath left her.
“And now he is coming himself.”
Her hands opened, empty.
“I don’t know what he will say. Or what he will decide. I don’t know what I will do either.” Her jaw tightened. “That has never happened before.”
She straightened.
“But I know this.”
Her voice regained its ground.
“This is my home. Whatever paper he holds. Whatever name is written on it. These walls are mine. You are mine. And I am not leaving.”
Her eyes stayed on the goddess.
“And if he doesn’t drop this idea…” Her tone cooled. “I will pack him into his own suitcase and send him back to Dubai myself.”
The words came so plainly that even she paused at them.
She stepped forward and touched the frame. The nail had slipped again. It always did. She fixed it carefully, as she had many times before.
It tilted once more. Of course it did. She left it alone. For reasons she did not try to name, she felt lighter.
The door opened. Gauri entered, took one look at her daughter, and sighed. It was a familiar sound. Years of knowing what Meera could do lived inside it. “What are you planning now?”
Meera kept moving.
Gauri closed the door and came closer. Worry had settled deeper into her face over the past weeks. It showed in the way she held herself, the weight she could not put down. “Your father cannot sleep. He sits with the account books. Pretends to read.”
Meera’s jaw tightened. “Then he should be angry too.”
“He is,” Gauri answered, her voice firm. “But tomorrow, whatever you feel, you keep it inside. One wrong word and we lose everything.”
Meera met her gaze. She saw the exhaustion, the fear that no longer tried to hide. “I know what’s at stake, Maa Sa.”
“Then remember it when he arrives.”
Silence settled between them.
“I won’t create a scene,” Meera’s voice softened.
Gauri studied her face, searching for what remained unspoken. She reached out and touched her cheek. “Check if the family rooms are ready.”
“I will.”
Gauri left.
Meera stood still for a few breaths after the door closed. Then she looked back at the goddess.
“I said I won’t create a scene,” she murmured. “Don’t take his side just because he is an Anand.”
She fixed her dupatta, turned, and stepped out.
Rajan and two maids worked in the family wing corridor, finishing the last details.
“Thakurain Sa’s room?” Meera asked.
“Done, Didi. Fresh linens. Water. Everything.”
Meera opened the door. The brass bowl on the side table overflowed with jasmine.
Too much.
“Add roses,” she instructed. “Half and half. Jasmine alone in this heat will be too strong by morning.”
Rajan nodded and hurried off.
In Naina’s room, the writing desk sat pushed into a corner.
“Move it near the window. Bai Sa will want light.”
They shifted it at once.
The largest room stood at the end of the corridor.
The Thakur’s room.
Abhinav’s room.
Meera stopped at the doorway. She did not step in.
The four-poster bed stood ready. White sheets. A writing desk. Low seating near the window.
The room felt untouched. As if it had been waiting.
“Didi?” Rajan came up beside her, holding fresh towels. “Should I?”
“Yes.” The word came sharper than she intended. She eased it. “Curtains straight. Water jug full. Towels folded well. Check the window latch. It sticks in this weather.”
Rajan nodded and went inside.
Meera stayed where she was.
A thought rose.
‘Leave it. No water. No flowers. No welcome. Let him walk into an empty room and understand.’
But that would not wound him. It would wound the Haveli. That, she would never allow.
“Make sure it’s perfect.” She walked away before her resolve could waver.
Dubai
Abhinav and his family left for Jaipur.
The private jet moved through a clear morning sky, turning south.
Three Anands, returning.
Sarita sat with her hands resting in her lap, her gaze set on the window. Dubai receded under them in clean lines of glass and steel.
She watched in silence.
Abhinav did not try to read her face.
Naina sat opposite, her phone in hand, her fingers moving without pause. Lists took shape, one after another. Ideas followed. Her excitement had no patience.
Abhinav remained still.
A contract lay open on his lap, untouched. The brass key stayed in his jacket pocket. It had not left him since the pagdi ceremony.
He looked ahead.
At nothing.
Below, the view changed. Sand spread across the earth, pale and endless. Then, inch by inch, Rajasthan rose to meet them.
Somewhere ahead, a woman he had never met waited in his Haveli. In his space. With no intention of making any of this easy.
His jaw set.
Good. Easy had never been the point.