Ash turned his golden eyes upon her and explained, "Holi begins on Duwadashi, which is the twelfth day of the waxing moon of the month of Phalgun, about the middle to end of March in your Julian calendar. It’s a time for renewal for the whole house, and the preparations begin days in advance. Mothers make new clothes for their children, especially their married daughters, and those daughters’ children.
"We grind and prepare two kinds of coloured powder, gulal and abeer. Abeer is mica-based and so it looks more shiny. We make long syringes called pichkaris and water bladders are bought and filled. Preparations are made to cook the special food items we eat specially for this festival.
"Three days before the full moon is called Rang Pashi and it brings Holi into all Hindu households. All the families get together in the evenings, when people visit each other to perform the formal sprinkling of colour. In the past the household purohit or priest was invited to begin the celebrations, but this task can also be performed by the eldest male member of the family as well, in this case Martin for us."
"Sprinkling the colours?" Ellen asked in confusion.
"A thali or large platter is arranged with coloured powders, and coloured water is placed in a small brass container called a lota. The eldest male member of the family begins the festivities by sprinkling coloured water and powders on each member of the assembled family. It is then the turn of each of the other people in the family to do the same. It’s to symbolise affection, and the blessings shared by all in the family."
"I see."
"The celebrations on this day end with a huge meal of the foods specially cooked for this occasion, called gujjia, papri and kanji ke vade . The first is a sort of dumpling stuffed with sultanas and almonds. The second is a flat bread made of chick pea flour with spices. The third is a black bean dish which we have to make about eight days ahead of time. Sometimes a meat dish like kofta curry is also served for those who are not strict vegetarians."
"Vegetarians?"
"Yes, as I’ve explained, Hindus don’t tend to eat meat, you see. Or any living creature or use products derived from them. The principle is known as Shakahara."
"But I don’t understand. There was meat at the table tonight. Martin, you eat meat, do you not?"
"Yes, but I’m not Hindu. However, I abstain out of respect for their beliefs. And Michael Avenel hasn’t eaten any for years, not since the war."
"I didn’t have any," Ash explained, "because I’m trying to improve myself, be more devout. It’s a matter of personal choice, and nothing for you to be uncomfortable about. You haven’t offended me."
Eswara picked up the thread of the discussion. "The second day of the festival is known as Puno. On this day, the effigy of the demoness Holika is burnt in keeping with the legend of Prahlad and his devotion to lord Vishnu. Ash can tell you the story closer to the time. Vishnu is one of our three main gods."
"Vishnu the protector. I remember."
"Very good," Ash said with a smile.
"In the evening, huge bonfires are lit on street corners at the crossroads," Eswara explained. "Usually this is a community celebration, and people gather near the fire to fill the air with music. Sheaves of green gram and wheat are roasted in the bonfire and eaten."
Martin now said, "The actual festival of Holi takes place the day after this. This day is called Parva. Children, friends and neighbours gather on the streets and a riot of colour takes over.
"The abeer and gulal Ash mentioned are thrown into the air and smeared on the faces and bodies of everyone you can get hold of. The pichkaris are filled with coloured water, and this is squirted onto people. The water bladders are thrown at friends and neighbours.
"Sometimes mud baths are prepared and people are dunked into them for fun. We visit each other’s houses too and carry abeer or gulal to pay our respects to the elders by sprinkling some on their feet. The younger people get drenched with buckets of coloured water and pummeled with the water bladders. Dholaks are Indian drums, and you can hear them everywhere. There are also special songs for Holi."
"There are all sorts of little customs and gift-giving involved too, especially if there is a new bride in the family. It’s basically a festival of joy and colour, a celebration of life, not really tied to any one god, or with any special prayers or forms of worship," Ash said.
"It sound more exciting than May Day. But if we throw colours everywhere, what on earth would I wear?"
"A white muslin gown or sari with pink edging, and with edges of silver or gold if you were a new bride," Eswara told her. "It’s called a dandia. I’m sure we can manage to fit you up with a proper one."
"Oh, I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble," Ellen said shyly. "I’m sure I have a couple of plain white frocks I can put pink trim on."
"And you need to choose your ranga ," Ash told her. "Your colour. The gulal and abeer come in many lustrous shades, pink, magenta, red, yellow and green. New brides again get to use silver or gold, and they mix it with a little coconut oil and store it in a bottle. Then they go around applying it in tiny quantities on the foreheads of near and dear ones, like a tilak or a blaze-like mark on their forehead. Like a special blessing. Of course, those are the colours of luck and good fortune. So you can pick your own colour and adorn everyone."
"Are there only three days to the festival?"
"In some parts they celebrate the coming of spring for nearly a month," Ash said with a laugh. "Especially in the north, since it is so close to the Himalayas, the huge snow-covered mountains almost a mile high."
"Really, that huge?" Ellen asked in awe.
"Yes, I’ll show you some pictures."
"I’m sure she’s seen quite enough of your pictures, young man," Martin said with a frown, but his tone was so good-natured they all laughed.
"No, really, they are remarkable. The pictures, I mean. I don’t know about the mountains, but I would be glad to see depictions of them too," Ellen said with a warm smile which made Ash’s heart leap. And a few other parts of him as well.
Forcing himself to concentrate, he picked up the thread of the conversation once more. "Anyway, the fourth day of the festival is called Dhuleti, the day after Holi, and everyone decorates everything with colour, include the statues of the gods and goddesses in the temple."
Eswara told her, "But Ash isn’t telling you the other part of the festival, the role reversal of men and women."
Ellen's brows knit. "Role reversal?"
"There is a mock battle of the genders. In some regions of India the men are beaten with long wooden sticks as they attempt to rush through town to reach the relative safety of the temple. They try their best not to be captured. Unlucky captives can be forcefully lead away, thrashed, and dressed in female attire before being made to dance in front of everyone. Quite a few marriages can come about as a result."
She blushed. "What an odd idea. Men in women’s clothing?"
"Apparently it happened to the great Lord Krishna, one of our prophets, as it were," Ash explained. "He was beaten and captured and made to wear a sari, forced to wear make-up and then to dance before being released by the unmarried women of the town.
"You might also see an orange-red dye called kesudo, used to drench all participants in the race to the temple. Some say it helps to symbolise fertility."
"I see. It sounds quite a riotous occasion," she said rather primly.
"Royal courts all over North India refined the festival into an art form of its own. Rajput warriors of the Rajasthani courts show off their equestrian skills during the festival. They ride their steeds through the white and pink clouds of colour that billow up from the bonfires, throwing coloured powders on each other. Even the members of the royal families are not immune from being drenched by colour."
"And it can be a romantic festival too, of course," Martin said with a wink at his wife.
Ash recited, "‘The weather is most pleasant and the spring flowers are in full bloom. Skies are clear, days are warm and nights are pl
easantly cool. What more could you ask for, except to be covered in the colour of your beloved!’"
"So you all participate?" she asked, surprised and excited, even if a bit nervous at the prospect.
"The food and music and fun are wonderful," Martin said. "You’re welcome to come try it, truly. If you don’t like it the first day, there are all sorts of other things in London which can keep you amused for the duration of your stay."
"Oh, I'm sure it will be fascinating—"
"And so long as she sees me race on the fourth day, and the polo matches," Ash said.
"Not to mention your dancing," his mother pointed out.
"True, but if Ellen is with us, perhaps I shouldn’t-"
"Oh, no, you mustn’t let me stop you from enjoying the festival fully, Ash," she protested.
"Does that mean you’ll come?" he asked, his warm gaze resting on the lovely young woman’s flushed face.
As he gazed at her, he wondered what other things he could do to put the colour in her cheeks, and very few of them had to do with the festival of Holi.
"Yes, yes, I will. Thank you all for inviting me," Ellen said boldly, feeling a wonderful sense of exhilaration at the thought of spending so much time with Ash up and down to London, and in the city itself. Let alone at this exotic festival. "I will come. I see no reason why not."
Chapter Twelve
The month of February seemed to fly by for Ellen, for once she started helping Ash and Eswara with their medical practice, and also assisting her cousin Blake, it seemed she couldn’t stop. She felt a bit unworthy in some senses, for she knew she took delight in the work because it brought her into such close contact on an almost daily basis with the handsome young doctor.
But her work also gave her increasing confidence, in both herself as a woman, and as a caregiver. Her father was delighted that she took so much more of an interest in her mother’s welfare, giving her sponge baths and generally making her take more exercise, which seemed to have alleviated at least some of her paralysis.
"Never underestimate the healing power of touch," Ash said with a smile when he went to look in on her mother, and found her much improved. "After all, it helped me. And Michael was very badly off indeed, yet look how well he walks now, with only a trace of a limp."
She did indeed understand the healing power of touch, for her private explorations of her body in the safety of her bed each night were giving her a whole new understanding of herself as a woman, her needs.
Ash’s handsome face was always in her mind, and she was as a result still shy around him, but he was so easy-going, delightful to be with, she could not hold aloof from him for long.
And his touch made her bloom like a rose. Even something as simple as taking her arm or helping her down from her coach or horse was enough to set her afire.
He escorted her to the County ball at the end of the month, and made so bold as to dance with her three times, first waltz, last, and one quadrille. If she had had any doubts she was falling in love with him, clad in the midnight blue gown he had insisted upon her wearing, she was sure after the first dance.
Ash was the handsome prince she had dreamed about. She had thought he would be tall, blond and handsome. She had got two out of three. Now she wondered why she had never before appreciated raven black hair, tawny skin, and the most remarkable golden eyes. She was sure no one in the world had eyes quite like that. Every gaze was an intimate caress which shot right down to the apex of her thighs.
Yet Ash always seemed so much in control. But then this was the man who discussed passion as if it were an intellectual exercise, and had said he had no intention of marrying until he was more established in his career.
Ash wished he could subude his roiling passions, but all of the meditation and mortification of the flesh could not subdue his rampant desires.
The more he saw of the lovely Ellen Jerome, the more he yearned for her with an acuteness bordering on agony. When he helped her out of the carriage or off her mount, or waltzed with her, he had all to do not to pull her to his solid male hardness and make his needs known. In both the intellectual and Biblical sense.
To be fair, though, he loved Ellen for her mind too, or at least he thought he did. Each day a new facet of her was exposed to his scrutiny, and thus far he had not found her lacking.
In fact, ever since he had begun to feel the first stirrings of romantic interest in her, he had tried to be as critical of her as any parent would be in testing her suitability as a partner for life of their son, and yet could find nothing which gave him any unease.
All except two things, if he was being completely truthful. Ellen had led such a sheltered life. Perhaps she was just attracted to him because of his novelty value.
And perhaps she would never be able to face the physical side of marriage with any degree of equanimity, let alone passion.
The physical side was the rub, for though he followed the teachings of the Tantra and knew he would always be most worshipful of his partner, abd try not to be selfish, she had been through a great ordeal. He was not so sure she would be open to the discovery of the wonders of her body, for all he had set her feet on the road to exploration.
Since their day in the woods, she had not discussed the matter, or asked any other questions, and he of course was not going to bring up the subject uninvited. It was too delicate a matter even for him to broach.
Yet he knew Blake’s wife Arabella and Matthew’s wife Althea had both recovered from abusive situations, and Althea in particular. With time and patience, he hoped that Ellen could too.
But his doubts only grew when he proposed teaching her martial arts. It all started simply enough, with a rather candid discussion of what his awful uncle and cousin had done to him to try to wrest his fortune away from his mother’s control. They had kept him captive, starved him, beaten him. He had been forced to eat twigs and paper, drink ink, even his own urine to stay alive, he admitted.
He shuddered at the recollections and gave Ellen an expurgated version of the awful events which was nevertheless harrowing enough.
"Poor man, you must have been terrified," Ellen said tenderly as they strolled through Millcote Forest arm in arm.
He shook his head. "I wasn’t really afraid. More angry. And worried about my mother. I knew she was ill and alone, lost somewhere with strangers after she got swept downriver and nearly drowned. My uncle said he had her captive too, but I didn’t believe him. I was concerned she might do something foolish to try to rescue me.
"As it turned out, I wasn’t far wrong. She and Michael Avenel, and Martin and Clifford, mounted two rescue parties with the help of all the Rakehells, and I was saved. My cousin threw me out the window. Mother hung onto me for dear life, bless her heart, and Martin caught me from below by the waist before I fell."
"It’s a miracle she found you in time."
He nodded. "Yes and no. She knew where I was. We’ve always had a special communication of the heart, she and I. If she had been dead I would have known. A little bit of the spark of life would have gone out of my world. It did when Papa died. She feels the same about me. It's a knowledge of the heart, not the head. Intuition, Philip would call it. Now I’m at one with Martin and my new siblings. And shall be with my wife and children one day, when I am so blessed."
She shivered a little at the thought of how close he had come to being killed.
He read her expression correctly, and plastered on his most winning smile. "But this is far too gloomy a topic of conversation for so bright a day. What do you say to a bit of martial arts practice?"
"Are you sure it won’t hurt you or me?"
"I promise that even if you do hurt me, I shall not hold it against you. Nor shall I touch you more than is strictly necessary. After you’ve learned your lessons, it shall be my not touching you, because you’re going to do your best to defend yourself."
"But what if I can’t?" she said, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.
"In that cas
e I shall make you pay a forfeit," he said with a grin.
"Such as?"
"I don’t know. I’ll think of something."
"But surely it would be enough punishment being touched by you."
He glared at her for a moment until she realised what she had said and her face fell. "Oh no, I didn’t mean—"
But he was already half way up the path, and she had to run to catch up with him.
"What about the lesson?"
He never slowed. "You’re right. This was a silly idea and—"
They drew level with the back door of the house and he darted for it. At the threshold he bowed to her. "If you will excuse me, I have some duties to attend to in my own part of the house. Pray ask Nelly for anything you need."
The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 5 Page 48