Chapter One

Calcutta, Fourteen Years Later

"It is true, then, David shona. You are leaving us." The soft, dulcet, yet unmistakably imperious voice of David's grandmother Meena floated to him on the warm breeze from her open windows.

David closed the door behind him and leaned back against it, his arms crossed over his chest. He could not help but grin, despite the seriousness of his errand in the zenana. His grandmother could have made a fortune treading the boards, if she had not married a wealthy rajah at the age of thirteen and lived all her life in splendid, if isolated, luxury. Her voice, full of doom, and her pose of weak prostration against silken bolsters were pure drama.

"I am hardly abandoning you, Didu," he answered. "You have all my cousins still, and a veritable army of servants at your beck and call at all times. I daresay you will not miss me at all."

"Not miss you! Ish." Meena flung out one dark, slender, bejeweled arm, her ruby and emerald bangles clinking like the lightest of music. "You are my eldest grandson, my darling, departed Gayatri's child. You are the father of my prettiest great-granddaughter. I rely on you so, David. And now you propose to leave me. To abandon your home!"

Some of David's amusement faded at this familiar litany. She knew very well why he had to go.

He pushed away from the door and moved into the room. His grandmother's personal sitting room was, as always, the very portrait of luxury and comfort. The tiled floor was covered with a carpet woven in rich, jewel-like tones of red, blue, and gold. Scattered about were low tables inlaid with intricate mosaics of flowers in mother-of-pearl, as well as silk cushions and bolsters in green, red, purple, and sun yellow. Heavy wooden shutters were drawn partially over the windows, letting in a cooling breeze but shutting out the worst of the warm afternoon sun. Servants hovered in the shadows, waiting on their mistress's every whim. One of them worked the punkah that stirred overhead.

David came to a halt next to the cushions where his grandmother reclined. The rich silk of her green and gold sari shimmered around her, and her silver-streaked black hair and unlined skin, the shine of her black, kohl-lined eyes, belied her age. She could easily have passed for David's mother rather than his grandmother, and that included her vibrant good health and energy as well as her beauty. Yet she so enjoyed playing the helpless elderly female, dependent on her grandchildren for everything.

What a hum that was. She ran everyone's life in their family, and she well knew it.

"Didu," David said gently. "This is not my only home, as you well know. My father has been dead for years now, and I have neglected my estate and duties in England for far too long. It is past time I attended to them. I have told you all of this before."

"You have a manager for that wretched English estate! A most competent one, by your own account. Surely that fulfills any duty you have there."

"It would be remiss of me not to take a personal interest, as the earl. Indeed, I have been remiss. I would not be the honorable man you and Father raised me to be if I did not go back there."

Meena sighed in resignation, as she always did at the conclusion of these disagreements. She sat up against the bolsters, and arrayed the folds of her sari more attractively about her. "You are too tall, David. Sit down before I get a crick in my neck looking up at you, and have some refreshment." She snapped her beringed fingers, and one of the hovering servants brought forth a tray. As the servant melted back into the shadows, Meena arranged the tea things, the bowls of papaya and guava, the plate of sweet shandesh.

"Very well," she said, pouring out fragrant mint tea into paper-thin porcelain cups. "I understand that duty calls you back to the land of your father, and I can even agree that you are doing the correct thing, though I cannot like it. I knew from the moment of your birth that you could not be ours forever. Yet why must you take Anjali as well?"

David sipped at his tea, more to give himself time than for the refreshment. This, too, was an old quarrel, one that had been ongoing ever since he announced his intention to return to England. And it was not a quarrel that was as easy or as clear-cut as his own duty.

"Anjali is my daughter," he answered. "She deserves to know all of her heritage, to decide for herself how she will live in her adult life."

Meena snorted in derision. "Decide for herself! A female cannot decide such things."

"Anjali will be able to, when she is older and clearly aware of her options."

"She is nine years old. We should be thinking of a suitable marriage for her, teaching her more of the female arts such as music and embroidery. You should not be dragging her away to the other side of the world, where she will know little of the customs and manners. The English here in Calcutta are so very barbaric. To think that my own granddaughter will learn their ways!"

David set his teacup down with a sharp click. "I will not argue with you about the manners of the English here. But to learn English ways is precisely why she must come to England with me now. She is just a child—she has time to learn anything she needs to know. Her English is excellent; I will hire an English governess for her as soon as we are settled. She is smart and quick—just as her great-grandmother is. She will be fine wherever she goes. And in a few years, if she wishes it, she can come back here."

Meena slumped back against the bolster, a hint of a pout touching her carmine-red lips. "By then, she will be too old for any suitable Bengali match."

David grinned at her unrepentantly. "Then she will just have to marry an Englishman, won't she?"

"And you, David? Will you marry an Englishwoman?"

His gaze narrowed as he looked into his grandmother's oh-so-innocent expression. This was a new tack of hers. They had not spoken of marriage for him since his wife, Rupasri's, death two years ago. He should have been expecting it. Marriage and matchmaking were Meena's chief delights in life.

He sat back against his own cushions and shrugged carelessly. "I will probably never marry again."

"Not marry again?" Meena's tone was deeply shocked, as if such a thing was utterly unthinkable. "But, David, you are young! You will want a son, to inherit your wealth and title and say prayers for you when you are dead."

"My father has cousins who can have the title, and Anjali can have my money when I am gone. And I daresay she can say a prayer for my soul as well as anyone."

"Of course she cannot! She is a female."

"You forget, Didu," David said, in a deceptively quiet voice, "that Anjali and I are Christian, not Hindu. Even Rupasri was Christian. God will hear Anjali's prayers as well as He would those of any son."

Copyright © 2004 by Ammanda McCabe