She stiffened. ‘No matter what?’
He nodded. ‘Does that distress you?’
She remained silently thinking and didn’t reply. He had no idea what Anna Fraser was like nor how it felt to watch her mother commit slow suicide.
‘I tried and I failed,’ was what she eventually said.
He reached out to her with both hands. ‘I’m not judging you.’
‘It sounds like you are.’ Angry and upset, she refused to take his hands.
‘Eliza, come on. I’m only saying it’s different here.’
She turned on her heels and walked away. A minute later he came up behind and wrapped his arms around her. ‘Eliza. Eliza.’
He turned her round and then his lips were on her neck. She shuddered, responding immediately to a hand on her shoulder, her breath shortening and her lips parting. When they kissed it seemed to have always been their fate. Then as they walked back to the palace, hand in hand, she banished the doubts to the back of her mind. He had given her his own rooms, and when they arrived at thedari khana, where a large rug on the floor was piled with several cushions, he ordered her to stand still while he undressed her, kissing the underside of her arms and her belly as he did. He was incredibly slow, and even though she was desperate to be lying on the cushions with him she understood what he was doing.
When at last she stood naked before him, he kissed her breasts. Then he held her away from him. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Crazy. Uncertain. Terrified.’
‘Good,’ he said.
Then she lay back against the cushioned rug. The light in the room had faded and it was almost dark. Wanting to see his face, she wished the lamp had been lit. But now he was on top of her and their bodies were moving rhythmically. She forgot about the lamp. He held back for a moment and explored her face with his fingertips. ‘I can still see your beautiful eyes,’ he said, ‘even in the dark.’
When his fingers slipped inside her she gasped. And then they were making love, in a way that she had never known could be possible: the feeling of connection so strong that it took the breath from her lungs. She tried to speak but could not, and then, when it was over, they lay on the bed, both of them dripping with sweat, their legs interwoven. She had lost the power of thought. She wanted this man, that’s all there was. More than she had ever wanted anything or anyone, she wanted him with every part of her and she was not going to let him go.
‘My beautiful Englishwoman,’ he was saying, as he traced the outline of her jaw. ‘Still uncertain?’
She laughed. ‘You really want to know?’
‘Shall I light the lamp?’
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I want to feel you beside me.’
He appeared to be thinking and then he spoke. ‘You’re brave, my girl. Not sure if I can equal you.’
‘Don’t be silly. Of course you can. I’m not brave at all.’
Before Eliza fell asleep she lay absolutely still, listening to his breath and the silence of the desert night.
When she woke she saw that he was still there. Her heart leapt with pleasure as she took that in and she watched him lying asleep. As she gazed at his immensely long eyelashes, and the beautiful burnished quality of his skin, he looked the same. Everything about him and about her looked the same, and yet everything about them both had changed.
She touched his face, gently so as not to wake him, but just to feel his softness. She moved closer and kissed his earlobe. He stirred. She ran a fingernail down his neck and then to his stomach. He groaned. Her hand went further down and he hardened beneath her grasp. She had never done this with Oliver, but wanting to now, she moved her hand. He groaned some more and she liked the feeling it gave her. That she could do this to him. Maybe there was something to the sixteen arts of being a woman after all, she thought with a wry smile.
Suddenly he pulled her on top of him. ‘What are you doing to me?’ he said.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Who knew that behind all that English reserve lay such a wanton hussy?’
‘And who knew that you are neither an officer nor a gentleman!’
Their days at his palace changed after that. Day after day they worked and made love; ate and made love; walked and made love. And sometimes they spent a day just making love. While they remained at his palace, the rest of the world did not exist. There was just the project and Jay. Eliza had never known such joy. She woke happy and went to sleep with a smile on her face. Why had nobody ever hinted that anything like this was possible? And that thought made her wonder how her parents had been together. Surely if you’d experienced this, even once, you’d be in love with life for ever.
When they weren’t talking of water or their past lives, they read and talked about books. He said that he’d never read any of the Russians and she told him he had to readWar and PeaceandThe Hunting Sketchesby Turgenev. She said that she loved Thomas Hardy and Henry James, but couldn’t get on with Dickens. His favourite poet was John Donne, whom she loved too, and hers was Emily Dickinson, whom he’d never heard of. He asked if she’d read Tagore, and when she shook her head he offered to lend her a book. They both liked the movies. They talked of food too, and their favourite places. He loved the squares of London. Had a friend who lived in Orme Square. She laughed and said she’d never had such grand friends. He said he wouldn’t tell her about his teenage sexual exploits, and she said she didn’t want to know anyway.
He never said that he loved her and she didn’t say it either.
