"I love you," he had whispered, and it seemed to him as she pressed her lips together, that she was imagining whispering it back.
She was imagining it. She thought she could taste the words, all ginger and chili and sugar, fiery and sweet, and she held them in her mouth like candies. It would take more time than this to coax them from her, but something began to happen at that moment. An idea fell like a seed, and over the next weeks it went on growing like a fig vine, lush and conquering, twining round her old beliefs and covering them in new growth until they were as invisible as a tiger in a thicket -- and just as deadly.
There were more musical evenings and more letters, furtive hand-holding at dinner, duets at the piano, more dancing, more whispers in her ear that raised goose bumps on Anamique's neck and sent shivers down her spine. They were never alone, but may as well have been, the way they looked only at each other. Sitting apart from the crowd at whatever party or gathering they were at, James spoke, and Anamique wrote on her tablet small notes that James saved and kept with her letters. She even began to teach him some of the simpler signs of her gesture language, such as those for "thirsty" and "dance." He asked her, eyes merry, how to sign "I love you," just so he would recognize it if she ever gestured it to him, and, blushing, she showed him.
Anamique grew radiant. Other men began to wonder why it had taken that damned James Dorsey to make them see that, silent or not, Anamique was quite the loveliest creature in Jaipur, if not all of India. None of them bothered to court her, though; they couldn't even catch her eye, and she demurred from dancing with anyone but James.
And while they danced, James whispered to her. He urged her to sing for him, to tell him that she loved him. "How can I ever believe it," he asked, his brown eyes pleading, "unless you tell me so yourself?" He knew about the bird in the cage, and he imagined it languishing there like a sad animal in a roadside menagerie. "Birds shouldn't be kept in cages," he told her, his lips warm against her ear. "They should fly."
By and by Anamique formed a resolution: If James asked her to marry him, she would answer him. The first word she would ever speak aloud would be yes.
SEVEN The Gloating Demon
Crouched in the garden muttering, Vasudev saw the light in Anamique's eyes and gave a loathsome gloating chuckle.
The girl was in love! Nothing could scatter caution like love. Nothing could turn a girl silly half so fast as a handsome soldier whispering in her ear! And a soldier begging her to talk, no less! It was so perfect it almost made Vasudev believe in Providence, but he knew the way the cogs worked and whirred in the winding up and down of human lives. Gods though there might be, they cared little for the minutiae. If an English soldier had lived through the bloodiest war the world had ever known and made his way half around the planet to fall in love with this particular girl and goad her into fulfilling her curse, well, Vasudev had only that mad bastard Chance to thank for it, and he did.
It came in the nick of time too. The old bitch wouldn't last much longer. Vasudev gave her a week at the most. He chuckled again. Estella had missed their tea that morning for the first time ever. He had waited for her in Hell, his smile widening with each passing moment that didn't bring her tall, spare silhouette down the black tunnel.
He had her tonic in his pocket now, and went whistling up to her ornate, filigreed palace to deliver it. "Good day to you!" he cried when Pranjivan opened the door to him. With feigned solicitude Vasudev asked, "Is Memsahib feeling unwell today?"
Pranjivan gave him his customary stony stare and said, "Memsahib is very busy and sends word she will come tomorrow at the usual time."
Vasudev laughed out loud. "She hasn't missed a day's descent to Hell since Yama foisted her on me. Not for any illness, not for anything! Busy? My teeth, Pranjivan, lying beggar that you are. If she isn't dying, she'd better come tell me so herself."
Pranjivan didn't even blink. "Have you brought Memsahib's tonic?" he asked.
What Vasudev resented most about the factotum was his stolidness. Even Estella could be made to wince and scowl, but Pranjivan, never. His face may as well have been cast in an expressionless mold. The demon found it extremely unrewarding. Reluctantly he produced the flask and handed it over. "Not that she'll need it," he said. "I imagine the next time I see dear Estella in Hell it will be her soul alone, drawn like a moth to the flames, just like any other pathetic human."
Pranjivan started to shut the door in Vasudev's face and the demon blurted, "And I wager she'll have a whole lot of British company on her way, do you hear me? I'll see that curse through yet!"
The door snicked shut. Vasudev stamped his foot and hollered, "That girl's going to speak! Do you hear me? Any time now her voice is going to burst out of her like a tornado and I'm going to win! She's in love, Pranjivan old devil! Do you hear? A girl will do crazy things for love. Just ask Estella -- she went to Hell for it!"
There was no answer from within and Vasudev was left standing at the servants' entrance, breathing fast through gritted teeth. "Damn Pranjivan," he muttered, giving up and going away, trying to console himself by dreaming up grim deaths for the beggar once Estella was finally dead and not there to protect him. Something painful, he thought.
Something excruciating.
EIGHT The Stolen Shadow
A namique's eighteenth birthday party was the following evening. In his rooms, James slid a small velvet ring box into his pocket, put on his dinner jacket, and took a deep breath. He couldn't afford much in the way of a diamond, much as he couldn't really afford to support a wife, especially a privileged heaven-born daughter like Anamique. It was madness, surely, but of all the madness he had known, it was the sweetest. He patted his pocket and set out.
He had just bought flowers and was walking past the Palace of the Winds when a man loomed up before him, tall, Indian, severe. For a moment James thought he must be a cutthroat, he had such a look of intensity -- almost savagery -- in his eyes, but then he recognized him by his fine English suit. Here was the factotum of the widow called "the old bitch," the one who had filled Anamique's head with fear and nonsense and blighted her young life with silence.
"What do you want, man?" James asked him, drawing himself up to his full height, which, he was pleased to see, was a bit taller than the Indian's.