She looked up at him. ‘You can relax. I have none.’
‘It’s important you understand that your life is in your own hands.’
‘And what of destiny?’
‘You make your destiny.’
‘Is that what you really think?’
‘It’s what I believe. You know we believe in karma here. What you do now affects the future, whether in this life, or the next.’
‘So if I’m a good girl I might come back as an Indian Princess. Somebody a Prince could be with. Is that what you mean?’
‘Of course not.’ He gave her a broad smile. ‘You’d hate it anyway. Being an Indian wife, I mean.’
She didn’t smile and wanted to glare at him. But whatever either of them were to say now, it would make no difference. She’d always be a widow from a dubious background and he’d always be the glamorous, inaccessible Prince Jayant Singh Rathore. A man whom countless women would adore. She’d never get below the surface of the palace, of India, or of him. Beads of sweat broke out on her brow and she swiped her fingers across to wipe them away. The back of her neck felt hot too.
‘Eliza, what’s wrong? Tell me.’
She drew in her breath. ‘Actually I do have something to tell you. Clifford has failed to obtain funding for your water project.’
She steeled herself, longing for him to beg her to turn down the offer of Shimla, and tried not to falter under his gaze.
There was only silence and the air seemed to chill.
‘Why are you staring at me?’ she asked eventually, still hoping, though in her heart she already knew.
Her heart sank as he sprang to his feet.
‘So that I can remember everything about you after you’re gone,’ he said.
She struggled not to crumple beneath a bewildering feeling of disappointment, strangely tempered by something almost resembling relief. That was it. All over before it had begun.
He made for the door. ‘If you forgive me, I have some thinking to do. Don’t trouble yourself about it. Now that I have the bit between my teeth I shan’t stop. I have to finish before the rains and I still have a few months. Thank you for your help. Goodnight.’
He bowed and left the room.
21
Eliza slept badly and woke with her gut churning. But one thing became clear; she couldn’t just leave it like that. She ached to see Jay, needed to talk with him again, though how much of this was genuine and how much the attraction of forbidden love she couldn’t be sure. She washed and dressed quickly and then with a racing heart and sweating palms went to find him. After repeatedly knocking at the door of his apartment and getting no reply there was really only one place left, and that was his study.
She marched back along the main corridor, feeling increasingly that she was making a mistake, but as she approached the study she saw that the door had been left slightly ajar. No going back now! So she gathered her courage and pushed it open, expecting of course to see Jay. Inside the room a startled-looking Dev seemed to have risen hastily from where – judging by the angle of the chair – he’d been sitting at Jay’s desk and typing. Eliza took the scene in and assumed he was waiting for Jay, though something about it niggled.
‘How did you get in?’ she asked.
‘The door was unlocked. Jay lets me use his typewriter sometimes.’
‘When did you arrive?’ she asked, but now noticed that he looked genuinely ill at ease, as if he’d been wrong-footed by her arrival.
‘Last night,’ he said, with a quick smile, and, recovering his composure, he folded the papers he’d pulled from the typewriter.
‘Where’s Jay?’
‘Who knows? He went off on his motorbike at the crack of dawn.’
‘Really? Where to?’
Dev shrugged. ‘Didn’t say. He does this from time to time, usually when he has something on his mind. Or if he’s out of sorts. He might have gone to see how the irrigation project is coming on.’
