‘Like what?’
‘Eliza, I really can’t say.’
She shrugged. ‘And you don’t feel betrayed?’
‘I think Dev was placed in a difficult position.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘Although there was also an inducement he couldn’t resist. Chatur promised him a typewriter and a licence.’
‘Oh God!’
‘Chatur was actually behind it all. He had been wanting to get me out of the way for months, so he manipulated Dev.’
Eliza felt sick. ‘I knew Chatur was cunning. But what about Dev?’
‘I don’t know. Truly. Up until now he’s been a good friend. We have talked.’
‘How can you be so blind? He’s capable of anything.’
‘It’s his father who was like that, not Dev.’
‘What did his father do?’
Jay shook his head. ‘All I can tell you is that, whatever Dev’s father did, it wasn’t good.’
‘So what will happen to Chatur?’
‘Anish is exploring his options.’
‘That’s all?’ she asked incredulously.
‘For the time being. Now I want you to rest, eat and sleep and hopefully clear your head.’
But there was something else pressing on her mind.
‘You know we can’t sleep together while I am still engaged?’
He put a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t talk. Let’s just lie here until it’s time to eat.’
For two days the heat was devastating, and during that time they talked until it was even too hot for that, and then they lay side by side, indolent but not touching, Jay on his back with his hands clasped behind his head and her curled up nearby. The hours blurred together, filled with formless feelings for which there were no words.
‘What is this?’ she said, when they had been silent for some time.
He looked at her for a while. ‘It’s you and me. Need it be more?’
‘It’s so different. I don’t know.’
‘Do we have to call it anything?’
‘I don’t know that either.’
And then Jay told her the water project was almost finished and he had left it in the hands of a very regretful Dev. Eliza worried about Dev’s apparent reformation, but when she questioned Jay he assured her that Dev would do nothing to harm the project. He also told her that the Delhi explosion she had witnessed had been caused by an old oil lamp left burning. It had set fire to badly stored chemicals, so there hadn’t been a terrorist attack after all. Eliza was glad. It really would be too much to have witnessed two bombs, both in Delhi, the latter a shocking echo of the first.
They slept separately, each in their own section of the tent, but on the second night when she heard him moving around it was agony not to go through to him. In the hot stillness of the night she stiffened her resolve, and put up with excruciating longing. In the middle of the night she went out to look at the stars and saw the fire still lit and shining like a beacon in the darkness of the desert. She knew it was to keep wild animals at bay, and felt the crunch of earth beneath her feet as she quickly went back inside.
On the third morning she was sitting cross-legged by the fire, feeling deprived of sleep and waiting for coffee, when he came out, still in his robe. His skin glowed from the light of the fire and his hair was still wet from his bath, but she could see the fatigue in the dark shadows beneath his eyes. He hasn’t been sleeping either, she thought.
As he squatted beside her the top of his robe fell open and she almost, but not quite, reached out to touch his chest. She wanted to feel his heartbeat connecting with hers and feel again the way his breath seemed to be hers and hers his, as it had once been before … Instead she asked him how much of her equipment had been damaged by the fire at the castle.
He looked puzzled.
