“Welcome to Matta Palace, Shivina. Isha and Diya have been here many times since we were at school together, so I’m sure they’ve told you a lot about it. I hope you enjoy your stay with us.”
“Oh, I’ve heard so much about your palace, Meher. Especially about the leopard reserve behind it.”
I laughed lightly, and the sound struck me as completely fake for some reason. What was wrong with me? Everything I was now was hard-won, forged through years of pain and heartbreak. Why did it seem hollow all of a sudden? As if I were roleplaying the persona of a textbook Rajput princess. The polite, quiet, and dignified woman that my mother had always wanted me to be.
For a crazy second, I wanted to throw off that awful persona and go back to being mad Meher, who used to race up the stairs of Matta Palace with her best friends in tow, slide down banisters, and make enough noise to dislodge the spirits of all her ancestors from their resting places in the royal cenotaph.
Then I remembered that I was not a child anymore. Or a naive, twenty-two-year-old girl with stars in my eyes. Those stars had turned to dust long ago, and now, I was a cynical, bad-tempered woman who knew exactly what she wanted from life. Iwas a woman on a mission. Too bad my mission had brought me back into the world I was so desperate to escape eight years ago.
“I’ve heard so much about your plans to turn Matta Palace into a heritage hotel,” Shivina went on, and my shoulders relaxed at her words.
I had been dreading my first public outing in eight years. But my old friends and their new friend had put me at ease. A chubby toddler ran out of Diya’s car with a nanny hot on her heels and jumped into her mother’s waiting arms.
“Kuhu, say hello to Aunty Meher,” said Diya, and the little darling gave me a shy smile before she buried her face in her mother’s shoulder.
“She’s adorable,” I cried, as I stroked her gorgeous curls.
“And this is Jiya,” said Isha, reaching for the baby another nanny carried out of her car. “She’s just woken up from her nap, so Her Highness might be a little grumpy.”
“She is not! Don’t listen to your Mommy, princess. You’re not grumpy at all, are you?” I cooed as I held the cuddliest baby I had ever met.
Jiya shot me a happy, toothless grin and babbled something in reply. My heart clenched as I realised I wanted one of these more than anything in the world. But - in our world, at least - you couldn’t have a baby out of wedlock. And there was no way I was going to let a man into my life ever again. Once was bad enough.
Jiya snuggled into my shoulder as the staff gave my friends a traditional welcome with dhol, nagadas, and the puja thali. Kuhu looked delighted at the welcome as I led them all up the stairs into the palace.
“I’ll leave you to get settled into your rooms and see you in an hour on the third-floor terrace for lunch,” I said, reluctantly handing Jiya back to her mother.
“Is that the terrace with the killer view of the Aravalli mountains?” asked Isha.
“Yes, the same one that you tried to rappel off using nothing but bedsheets when your Dadi Sa showed up for a surprise visit,” I reminded her.
“Can you blame me? She was here for my monthly weigh-in, and your chef had been fattening me up for the two weeks I’d been here with his famous ghevar and boondi laddoos. If the scale had shown any more weight gain, my grandmother would have banned me from eating carbs for the rest of my life,” said Isha with a shudder.
“Ugh! What a beastly woman! I’m so glad she’s dead and can’t hurt you anymore,” I exclaimed.
“Well, she did try to hurt me from beyond the grave, but I foiled her efforts, thanks to Veer,” she replied with a wink.
I had heard all about the twisted clause in Isha’s grandmother’s will, where she had tried to cheat my friend out of inheriting her dream house, Gulab Mahal, and how Isha and Veer had entered into a fake marriage to circumvent the will. I was so glad their fake marriage finally turned real and that they got their happy-ever-after.
“When do we see the leopards?” asked Shivina. “I’ve never been on a safari before!”
“Aww! I look forward to being your first, babe,” I said, and she batted her eyes at me.
“Look at you with your sweet words! I’m glad I held off doing it until I met the right person,” she shot back, and I grinned widely. It was easy to see why Isha and Diya liked her so much.
“Are we doing the evening wilderness drive?” asked Diya excitedly. “I loved it the last time we were here.”
“We sure are,” I replied. “Followed by a sundowner on the roof of the palace. The city lights look gorgeous from up there.”
An hour later, I supervised the table settings for an alfresco lunch, wondering why I was so nervous. These were my friends. They weren’t going to inspect the monogrammed silver thalis, bowls, and cutlery for scratches. But I couldn’t quell the restlessness that plagued me as I adjusted the decorative floral table frame to just the right height.
“Seema, get me the fabric with the roses and berries,” I said thoughtfully. “These peonies hanging from the frame are overpowering the table. Let’s get rid of all of them and keep it simple.”
I wound the gauzy white fabric with the pink roses and berries all around the frame and smiled in satisfaction.
“There! That makes it look much more cheerful. And lower the height of every alternate flower arrangement so that we can see each other’s faces.”
My assistant scurried around replacing the tall vases with smaller ones as I tied the perfect bow on the rolled-up handwritten menus.
