Page 61 of A Thousand Painted Hours

“I see you in this work, Elsie.”

“So do I, actually. I started to let go of what I thought I was or should be, and just started learning what I liked.”

“I would like to take the one of the table down—”

Outside, the sirens began to bleat. “Let’s get you down to the sitting room.”

“Get the painting first,” she insisted, pointing.

It was an Impressionist interior of the desk in the room I lived in whilst at Slade. An open letter lay on the table in a pool of lamplight, with a half-finished sheet of paper with a pen on top of it. Neither letter was legible, but I remembered them clearly. I’d been writing to Tanveer, or he’d been writing to me.

And then he had come to London with his father.

The Maharaja Comes to London

1914

London

Telegram

To: Elsie Turner, The Slade School Of Fine Art

From: Tanveer Singh

We Arrive May 19 Stop Staying Six Weeks Stop Tanveer

—33—

I’d had the telegram for weeks by the time Tanveer and his father finally arrived. A ball was to be held in the maharaja’s honor, and Tanveer would be there with him.

The day finally came. Nina offered me a bedroom in her townhome in which to get ready, aware only that the maharaja’s son was my old friend and I looked forward to seeing him. No one knew of our deep connection, the letters we wrote monthly or more.

I was shaky with anticipation, unable to eat, and had to be helped into the gown I’d had sent up from Herewich for the occasion, one of the frocks made for the parties last summer. It was my favorite, a simple deep-gold sheath with layers of embroidered green gauze over the shoulders and skirt. The square neckline showed off my collarbones and the peacock necklace my mother had given me for my sixteenth birthday, a delicate piece inlaid with small emeralds, shell, and blue topazes, woven of thin cords of silver. She’d had it made before we left India. It was quite my favorite thing in the world.

Rocky and Nina accompanied me to the ball, both invited on their own merits, or rather family standing, and I was relieved to have escorts who knew me. Nina held my arm as we swept up the grand entrance, flanked by footmen. “Why, Elsie, you’re shaking! Are you well?”

“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten to eat all day,” I confessed.

She gave me a sidelong look. I pretended not to see.

The ball was held at a London mansion, hosted by the Countess of Asheworth, who liked to be the vanguard of everything. The maharaja was quite popular with such women. My mother had sent her condolences, for all her attentions were focused on nursing my father. He’d fallen ill with cancer over the winter, and Mother didn’t want to leave him.You must bring Tanveer to visit,she wrote.I long to hear news of his mother.

I promised I would make the trip to Herewich, but in truth I did not know if he would be free to make a social call of that ilk. Or if I would even spend much time with him myself. Or how it would feel between us after so long. Letters, after all, were not the same as being face to face, and we were maturing in very different landscapes.

In truth, I was quite sure the opposite was true. And what then?

As Nina, Rocky, and I entered the grand ballroom, the room swirled with scores of people dressed in jewels and silks and feathers. A quartet played upbeat music, and the air sparkled with conversation and tinkling laughter, all muted by the pounding of my heart.

I halted abruptly, annoyed with my foolishness. It was unlike me to be so rattled!

Rocky and Nina paused with me. “Are you all right?”

I took a breath, settled myself into my body. “Yes,” I said definitely. We walked the long side of the room. I looked for Tanveer anxiously, but did not see him, even as we traversed the lower end of the glittering space. What if he had decided not to come? What if, like the time he’d written that letter trying to end our communication, he was choosing to keep our friendship at arm’s length?

I spied Helen Bonhome from Slade, Diana from Nina’s party, and—I scowled—my brother. “What ishedoing here?”

“Who?”