Page 28 of A Thousand Painted Hours

He stood, brushing dust from his sleeves, then offered a hand to help me up. I brushed at my skirt, and smoothed my hair. “Anything amiss?”

Taking a small bit of straw from my hair, he said, “Turn around.”

I did so. He brushed the back of my skirt, and tucked a tendril of hair into my bun. “There.”

I turned back slowly, wishing we could stay here in the cool room with the tiger cub and the silence and kiss all day.

He said, holding my hand, “I feel as if I didn’t know what it felt like to be alive before this. As if the world was gray, and I didn’t know that it had color.”

I laughed in startled recognition. “Yes!” But then I frowned, aware that I was missing a piece of our connection, something that might be lost now under the weight of desire. “It scares me to think we are so changed. What if this ruins our friendship, Tanveer? I don’t think I can stand a world where I’ve lost my best friend.”

“Nor I.” He held up his hand, offering his little finger. “Let’s swear it, then. I swear you shall always be my best friend, Elsie Turner.”

“And I swear you shall always be mine, Tanveer Singh.”

The maharaja’s birthday celebration was held that evening in the great hall, set with banquet tables groaning with food, free-flowing drink, and dancers.

I wove along the edge of the crowd, sketching. Mother had not allowed a new dress, saying I’d barely worn the one she’d had made for the school fete, which was true. But it was bland, meant for school, and dreadfully dull in this landscape of glittering scarves and jewel-encrusted bodices and brocaded saris. The Indian women, Sikh and Hindu, worebracelets and earrings and nose rings and heavy collars made of rubies and emeralds and pearls. Their eyes were ringed with kohl, their lips bright with paan.

The men were no less spectacular. The maharaja wore a necklace with an enormous teardrop sapphire at the center, and alternating pearls and diamonds in a star shape. And while the Muslim women were hidden behind screens, the men were lavishly dressed, too.

I sketched as much as I could—the groaning tables of food, rajma and dal, mutton korma with almonds, piles of rotis, naan and puris and rice, towers of jalebis dripping with syrup. I was deeply fond of petha, here sprinkled with rosewater and pistachios, and devoured it as well as sketched it.

Around the courtyard I went, drawing portraits of the laughing men, the swords some of them wore, the turbans adorned with strings of jewels and brooches. I sketched women covering their mouths with the edge of their scarves when they laughed, sketched their heads leaning together to whisper or gossip, sketched the children playing hide and seek amid the draperies and their mother’s skirts.

The maharaja had taken his third wife, a haughty beauty with enormous black eyes, who could not have been much older than Gurdaya. I was appalled when I heard, but the maharani, Tanveer’s mother, only laughed. “Darling child,” she said, stroking my hair, “I was his second wife, and it is no hardship for me. Rather pity her.”

I sketched the new wife, too, and she did not appear to be particularly happy. Like Gurdaya, who sat beside her, she looked weighed down with jewelry and bangles, expression hidden behind a mask of calm.

Also seated at their table was Surinder, Tanveer’s older brother, and the prince who would one day inherit the title and lands. I’d never seen him before, and he did not at all have the same look as his siblings, for his mother had died at his birth. He had none of Tanveer and Gurdaya’s elegant shape, but rather a harsh, squat form and a nose I struggled to capture, finding it lumpish and purple. His eyes were small and sharp, revealing his cleverness, upon which Tanveer had often commented.Officials and other princes deferred to him, and he ate vigorously. One day, I thought, he would be very fat.

It was a strange and intriguing world. I slipped through the crowd practically invisible with my bland dress and schoolgirl hair, eavesdropping. I could make out some Punjabi and a great deal of Hindi, of course, but there were other languages I didn’t know. Arabic, perhaps, or Persian. The speakers all thought themselves protected by the ignorance of a British girl, so I listened avidly, pretending ignorance, drawing a pair of shoes while two women gossiped about a woman who had behaved badly, and sketching the head table while a trio of men spoke seriously about politics. I didn’t know all the players or even what they meant, but it made me feel like a clever spy that they’d never dream I could understand them.

Tanveer, clad in a silvery tunic brocaded with an elaborate pattern of vines, sat beside his sister, listening intently to an old man to his right. I wondered if the man was a relative. He had the look of a seer, with a long white beard and a rich velvet tunic. I tucked myself near a thick drapery to draw them both, first the old man, and then Tanveer. As I followed the line of his arm to the table, his shoulder to his neck, up to his jaw and face, my skin rustled with memory. He never looked my way, so I was able to layer in details I already knew by heart—the shape of his eyes to his eyebrows, the high intelligent forehead, his mouth. Had it always been so rich looking, or was that new?

An old croaky voice said at my elbow in lilting English. “Turn the page, girl.”

Startled, I did exactly that, hiding the portrait so she could not see it, and smoothed the new page as if to start again. My eye fell on Gurdaya, and I loved drawing her, so I began shaping her on the page, wondering how I would mix that exact shade of green from her scarf.

“Hmm,” the woman said. She was ancient, with hooded eyes like a hawk and a nose even bigger than that, and even a pointed chin with a wart on it, like a drawing of a witch from a fairy tale. It startled me.I didn’t believe in witches, but the resemblance made me wary. “She’s a beauty, but she will suffer.”

“She’s my friend.”

Her dark eyes turned on me. “You will also suffer. Beware.”

I turned and ran from her, darting behind the curtain, weaving around the edges of the women, and plunked down next to my mother, my heart racing.

“Whatever is the matter?” Mother asked.

“A strange old woman gave me a bad fortune.”

The maharani laughed. “The crone gives everyone a bad fortune, until you pay her for a good one.”

I glared across the room, and there she was, staring back at me. I didn’t think she wanted money. I feared she might have seen something true.

It was much later that Tanveer and Gurdaya found me. Gurdaya had shed her jewels, and eagerly took my hand. “You must see the stars from the desert!” I allowed her to tug me along to a set of stairs so old their centers were worn away into little half-moons.

“Careful,” Tanveer said when my slick shoes slipped on the stone. “Take off your shoes.”