by Sonali Dev
“But what about Ma-saheb?” His mother worried about him. Everyone worried about him. “Why does having people worry about you prove that you’re special?” she had demanded.
Bram, being Bram, just yanked her braid anytime she questioned him.
It annoyed her, but she let it go for the sake of their friendship. They’d been friends for a year, ever since their families had spent the summer together in his family’s chalet in Switzerland.
So when her father had asked her to join him on his visit to Sripore she had agreed. Omar had gone back to England last week. She tried not to be one of those filmy melodramatic girls who acted all heartbroken when they were separated from their love. But truthfully, it’s how she felt on the inside. Like someone had smacked a ball into her chest with a bat, and it had become lodged there.
In a stroke of bad timing, her cricket coach was on vacation, so their team got two weeks off. Being plagued with boredom was Shoban’s worst nightmare. Her exams were finished and her applications were complete. This waiting to know if she’d get into Oxford or Cambridge so she could be near Omar was killing her.
She made her way to the cricket pitch. Taking a run down the wicket, she swung the ball into the net, flicking her wrist just as she let go. The ball shot a straight line for half the length of the pitch and then spun out and into a curve. If a batsman could have made contact with it, she would have been thoroughly impressed.
Her spin was getting better, but if her team was to have any hope of remaining undefeated until the state finals, she had to practice until it was flawless. She’d shattered the record for the most wickets at the state level, and if she weren’t off to university she had a real chance at making the national team. Bram had promised to help her practice and now he was nowhere to be found.
“Tai-saheb?” Flora, one of the maids, cleared her throat. She had waited until Shoban had released the ball before speaking.
Shoban smiled at her. “Hello.”
The girl returned her smile politely. The staff at the Sripore palace were impeccably trained. Her braid was pulled tightly back much like Shoban’s, and her kurta was white like Shoban’s. But where Shoban’s was intricately embroidered with white thread and she wore it over blue jeans, the girl’s was severely simple and she wore it over a traditional churidar.
Shoban wanted to ask if she’d mind playing cricket with her, but she wasn’t sure if the girl would consider her too spoiled for assuming she had nothing better to do with her time. So Shoban simply asked what she wanted.
“Your father would like to see you, Tai-saheb,” the girl said in polished Marathi.
The formality of the address made Shoban want to laugh. The Rajes were royalty and still lived somewhat in the style of their ancestors. Shoban’s own family was only second cousins to the royal Gaikwads, and while Shoban was used to the pompousness at her uncle’s palace, her own mother had run a fairly laid-back household before she had died of cancer two years ago. Bram’s mother and Shoban’s mother had gone to boarding school together and been very fond of each other in that way adults claimed to be fond of one another based on childhood friendships.
They had rekindled their friendship only after Ma’s diagnosis. Until then Shoban hadn’t known the Rajes, only known of them. Throughout Ma’s illness Bram’s mother, who was one of the dearest people Shoban knew, visited her regularly, and after Ma passed away, the maharani had taken Shoban under her wing. Then last year she had coaxed Shoban to go with them to Switzerland because she’d believed it would help Shoban make her way out of her grief.
Maya Devi had been right. Switzerland was beautiful in exactly the kind of way that soothed grief, and Bram had kept Shoban entertained with his shenanigans.
“Did you want me to show you the way to the library?” Flora asked.
“I do know where the library is. Thank you very much, Flora.” Shoban took the wet wipes Flora handed her from a silver tray and cleaned her hands. She was about to run to the house but she didn’t want to appear ill-mannered, so she forced herself to walk.
“You’re sweaty, young lady.” Shoban was used to every conversation with her father starting with a criticism, and then pretty much staying in that general realm.
“I was playing cricket.”
As always, he acted as though she hadn’t said those words. If he had his way, Shoban would saunter around the house arranging flowers or painting watercolors or practicing the piano or doing something “ladylike.”
“With Bram?” he asked, proving that he had heard her.
“No, Bram is nowhere to be found.”
Her father outright smiled at that, and Shoban wondered if he’d been drinking in the daytime. When Ma was alive, his drinking had been restricted to one scotch before dinner. After her mother died, she had no idea what his routine was. She barely saw him a few times a month at the dinner table, where they tended to eat in silence.
“You’d better get used to keeping track of the young prince. I hear he’s not an easy one to rein in,” he said, still smiling in that way people did when a pet or a child made them proud. Shoban hadn’t seen him smile much since her mother’s death.
“Why would I—”
“Sit down.” He cut her off.
She sat. It was just the two of them in the library. The somberness of the place highlighted their usual awkwardness.
“How do you like the palace?”
“The Sagar Mahal? It’s beautiful. But I’ve seen it before.” She’d been here a few times. It was the very symbol of the Indian royal palace, and photographs of it were all over magazines and television. What was not to like?
“Is something wrong, Daddy?” she asked, because despite all her mother’s training to be seen and not heard in his presence, she had only so much patience for mysterious behavior.
He didn’t look angry, so it couldn’t be something she’d done. If Shoban recognized anything in the world, she recognized her father’s disapproval.
She was a great believer in knowing his moods, because information was power. If she knew what to expect she could work it to her advantage. Another thing her soft-spoken yet whip-sharp mother had taught her.
“I would say it’s the opposite of something being wrong.” A smile tugged at his mouth, making discomfort nudge at Shoban.
“Stop looking so worried. I have a feeling this is going to make you very happy.”
“Did you hear from Oxford?” she said excitedly.
He laughed. “Well, now even if you did hear from Oxford, I won’t be the one deciding if you go.”
What on earth could he possibly mean? She dabbed her sweating upper lip with the back of her hand.
“The Rajes have asked for your hand for Bram. This is—”
Her father was still speaking, but Shobi’s ears were ringing and she could only see his lips move.
“Asked for my hand?” she said. “What for?”
“Why, your hand in marriage, of course,” he snapped. “Are you feeling all right?”
Shoban jumped out of her chair. She was laughing. She had no idea why, but there was a maniacal panic in her chest and laughter was the only way to breathe around it.
Her father looked confused. She tried to tamp down her laughter. “Bram doesn’t want to marry me.”
Bram liked models and actresses, and wasn’t he going out with that tennis player from France? She was Shoban, plain old Shoban, with thick brows and oily skin and hips too wide. What interest would someone like Bram have in her?
“As a matter of fact, he does. This is his idea.”
The walls closed in on her. “I’m eighteen years old, I haven’t even thought about marriage.” What a liar she was. If Omar came to her door today, she would run out barefoot and marry him right then and there in the cotton kurta she was wearing. And he’d write a beautiful sonnet about the heartbreaking simplicity of it all, of her! Which explained why she would rather die than have this conversation. “I’m going to university this year.”
>
“I don’t think Bram will stop you from doing that. It’s just a betrothal.”
She was going to kill Bram. He’d always had a strange sense of humor, but this was going too far. This had to be a prank.
“I think there’s been a mistake.” She paced the room and tugged at her braid. It was too tight. There was a strand of hair pulling at her scalp and she needed to untie the whole thing so it would stop pinching like that.
Her father seemed to register that things were not going the way he expected them to. He studied her face with more than his usual disgust. She had to get her features under control or she was going to make a hash of everything.
What to do?
Shoban wanted to wring Omar’s neck too. She had told him that they should talk to Daddy before he left for England this time. He’d wanted to wait until he made something of himself. A stupid law degree was not going to help them now. What was she to do? “But I don’t want to get married!”
Her father’s only reaction was to lean forward in his wing chair and glare at her as she paced the library.
He had no idea about Omar. He probably didn’t even know that his estate manager had a brilliant son who was his daughter’s best friend, her everything. He barely even knew that his daughter existed.
She was a stranger to him. Between chess, golf, and polo she barely even knew what he did for a living. He’d never had a job, never gone to work. He managed money for their wealthy relatives, Ma had once told her. He had always been this remote person who lived in the same home, and Shoban had never given him much thought. He’d returned the favor.
The first time he’d shown any interest in her at all was when Maya Devi asked her to go to Switzerland last summer. Now it all made sense. Well, not sense exactly. But it all seemed to fall into place in this rusty-slots-and-gears sort of way.
“What if you fall in love with that prince?” Omar had asked when she’d left for Switzerland, excited despite the fact that she would miss him terribly. They’d always sworn to be each other’s kite lines, strings with enough give that they could fly. Never ropes and chains. “I don’t think that prince is single,” she’d teased him, then added, “I think my heart might be too full with someone else.” Because no matter how secure you were, you needed to hear it.
She’d been right. Bram had spent most of their vacation talking about his many girlfriends. “What a waste,” she’d said to him. “To spend all this time on so many women you don’t care about. Imagine if you could spend all that emotion on someone you really did care about.”
She’d been a good friend to him. Tried to get him to stop whiling away his life when he could do so much with it. This was how he repaid her? By playing an ugly prank on her?
“Shoban?” Her father snapped his fingers in her face. “I hope this is all just shock and excitement. I’m having a hard time understanding you.”
“There’s nothing to understand. I don’t want to marry Bram.”
Her father threw a look around the room, then marched to the door and locked it.
“Have you lost your mind?” he said in a voice so soft it rumbled in his chest. “Do you realize who the Rajes are?”
“I don’t care. I can’t do it.”
“What is that supposed to mean? You put on a damn bridal sari and you walk around a fire and say vows. It isn’t rocket science.”
“I’m in love with someone else. And I will only marry him.”
The slap landed across her cheek, fire exploded across her skin, numbing one half of her face, replacing every thought in her head with disbelief.
“If you were in love with someone else, you shouldn’t have cavorted with Bram for the past year. I did not raise a whore.”
That stung harder than the slap. “Bram and I are . . . we’re . . . friends. I never gave him cause to believe anything more. I swear. I’ve only ever been in love with Omar.”
Her father grabbed her arm and dragged her closer until his face was inches from hers. She wouldn’t have believed the force of his grip, but the slap was still stinging her cheek.
Something in his eyes told her that he knew exactly who Omar was after all.
“Omar? Is that Aijaz’s son?” He shook her by the arm. “You let that . . . that son of a servant touch you?”
I let him touch my soul, she wanted to tell her father, but the inside of her ear was in agony; it felt wet. She wondered if it was bleeding.
He pushed her into a chair and stood over her. His always neatly slicked-down silver hair had come askew, giving his rage a wildness.
“Since when has this been going on?”
Since forever, she wanted to say. Since the world was a twinkle in God’s eye. That’s what Omar always said: I’ve loved you since the universe was a twinkle in Allah’s eye.
“That shameless, ungrateful son of a bitch.”
She tried to stand up, but her father pushed her back down. “After everything I’ve done for him,” her father mumbled almost to himself. “I will make sure he lives to regret the day he dared to step out of his measly gutter and look at my daughter.” He started pacing. Shoban’s heartbeat sped up with each step he took. “I paid for his daughter’s wedding, for his wife’s treatment and wake, his son’s education, and he does this to me? Is the bastard stupid? He owes me millions of rupees.”
Omar’s father was in debt to her father?
Her father reached for the phone on the sideboard.
“Who are you calling? Daddy, wait. Please.”
“I’m firing that son of a bitch. He will get out of my house and return every penny he owes me. I will make sure he ends up naked on the streets.”
“Aijaz Uncle has worked for you for thirty years. How can you talk about him like that?”
“He’s worked for me. Now he wants to use his son to make his way into my family?”
“It wasn’t like that. He doesn’t even know. Please don’t call him.” She needed to think. “Just give me a little time. I can fix this. I swear.”
“Fix it?” he spat. “If you so much as step out of your room I’ll make sure your precious Aijaz Uncle lands up in jail.”
“What? You can’t do that.” She stood.
They were face-to-face. For a moment she thought he’d hit her again, but he just leaned closer to her. “Try me, then. The man owes me more money than he can ever repay. He has access to my estate. You can’t even imagine the things I can accuse him of. I can have him locked up until his dying day. If you don’t believe me, try me.”
“Please, Daddy. Don’t do this. Be fair.”
He laughed at that. “Fair? You think I want to destroy a man I’ve taken care of all my life? You’re the one who holds the power to destroy him and you want me to be fair?”
She sucked in a breath. Tears burned in her throat, but crying would help no one. She had to think. Think. “What are you going to do?”
“The bigger question, beta, is what are you going to do? What will you do to make sure a man doesn’t have his life destroyed?” He walked to the door.
She followed him. “How can you do this?”
“Do what? Be a father and make sure you don’t throw your life away on a servant’s son from a religion that seeks to annihilate ours? When you can have the life of a princess and not shame our ancestors?”
“You know Aijaz Uncle doesn’t believe anything of that sort. Omar doesn’t even believe in organized religion.”
“Oh, he doesn’t, does he? Then why does he want to marry a Hindu girl to bear him Muslim babies? Go ask Aijaz if he would ever let his own daughter marry into a Hindu family. I’ll give you the answer to that. He wouldn’t. His wife, Shakeela—that boy’s mother—was Hindu. Did you know that? She was born Sneha. If your Aijaz Uncle doesn’t believe in religion, why did he make the woman he married convert?”
Omar had never told her that. He never talked about his mother. She had died when he was just a boy, so the story of how or why she converted was hardly relevant.
/> “I would never let you forsake your religion and heritage.”
“I’m not going to.” Omar would never expect her to.
Her father pushed open the door and beckoned to the servant waiting outside. “Good. Then we’re on the same page. Now Ramesh will take you to your room.” He turned to Ramesh, who had been his shadow for as long as Shoban could remember. “Take Baby to her room. She is not to leave there until I let her out myself.”
Chapter Thirteen
Rico watched as Ashna left the room. Or, more accurately, she tore out of there the moment they announced that they were twenty minutes from shooting their first cooking segment. It was as though she were making a break for it after someone had locked her up for years. Granted, the set was a bit chaotic, but everyone other than Ashna seemed to enjoy it. This was just their second time on set, yet laughter rippled around them. Ashna swung wildly between being warm and fuzzy with the cast and crew (with obvious exceptions) and toppling headfirst into misery.
What had possessed him to start down this insane path? There was a reason you weren’t supposed to make decisions at emotionally overwrought events like bachelor parties. If that wasn’t a thing, it needed to be. Someone needed to warn sods everywhere to keep their heads when their friends were getting hitched.
How hadn’t Rico anticipated quite how miserable his presence would make her? Or had he? It’s not like he meant her any harm. All he needed was to move on. To convince his stubborn subconscious that there was nothing to hold on to. Meanwhile the darned thing was holding its poker face and giving Rico nothing.
When he followed Ashna into the lobby outside the staging area, he was at least eighty percent certain that it was to make sure she hadn’t passed out or something. He was being a good Samaritan, that’s all. Before he could catch up with her, DJ Caine, their host, stepped into the lobby. Rico had never heard of DJ Caine—not that he was up on the chef stardom business—but evidently Ashna had more than just heard of him.
The moment their eyes met, they flew at each other like lovers at the climax of one of those rom-coms Rico suddenly found himself inside. DJ wrapped Ashna in a hug. Ashna, who had been icy enough to give Rico frostbite, melted into this giant. Apparently being a fancy chef left you with enough time to be a gym rat. Who knew? Not that Rico wasn’t fitter than everyone in the building. Who cared that he wasn’t as tall as this guy. The best thing about football was that you didn’t have to be tall or big, you just had to know what to do with the damn ball. That’s why it was the most played sport on earth.