Page 62 of A Thousand Painted Hours

I pointed with my fan. “My brother.”

“No doubt looking for a suitable husband for you,” Nina said with some amusement. “Shall I distract him?”

My brother fawned over Nina, both for her beauty and social standing. “Please,” I said.

But Rocky halted. “Is that your maharaja?”

I whirled. “Where?”

“Nearby the punch bowl.”

I scanned the crowd and located him. My heart plummeted, for it was only the maharaja himself, wearing a spectacular turban hung with strings of pearls and fastened with a great ruby. His mustaches were as showy as ever, wings across his lower face, and he wore a brocaded suit. A tiny woman held out her hand to be kissed, and he made a grand show of bending over it. As a child, I’d always thought him rather fat and jolly, but I now saw a virility that would have escaped me as a girl.

“That is indeed the maharaja. My friend is his son, the prince.”

Then, as if Moses parted the waters, a path broke in the crowd, and I saw Tanveer. He was far more simply dressed than his father, in a Western-style dinner jacket cut impeccably, his hair hidden beneath a simple dark-blue turban. For a long moment, the world halted, and all my attention fell on him.

In that exact instant, he spied me, too, and a smile broke across his face. He started toward me, and it shook me from my daze. I hurried toward him as if he were a torch high in the night sky.

We met with outstretched hands.

With greed, I drank in his face, dark brows, and graceful cheekbones and the nose it had taken so many years to grow into, and his eyes, wide and deep and full of a light that I knew must be reflected in my own.

At last I managed a single word, his name. “Tanveer!” Afraid I might weep, I gripped his hands fiercely.

“Elsie!” The word held a dozen layers. His voice was his voice, but it had deepened over two years, and he was taller, even, than when I had left him. “You are so entirely yourself. I am so glad to see you!”

I only managed a nod, feeling my friends join us, their curiosity a living creature winding around us.

Tanveer and I held on to each other’s hands, tightly. He abruptly lifted one of mine to his lips, a gesture courtly to outsiders. I found myself focused on his eyelashes, sweeping down. At the brush of his mouth, even over my gloves, a wild joy swelled in my chest.

“I cannot believe you are truly here,” I breathed, blinking.

He said simply, “Nor I.”

I felt quite faint with the reality of his physical presence. Ridiculous. Steeling myself, I introduced my friends. “Prince, may I introduce my cousin Lady Nina Pendry and my friend Lord Richard Draycott, Rocky.”

“Very nice to meet you,” he said with a nod. “Lady Turner has written about you both.”

“Has she indeed,” Rocky said, raising his brows at me.

“You are the sculptor, I believe?” Tanveer said, and again I was startled by the layered sound of his voice.

“I am. Wonderful to meet you, Your Highness.”

Tanveer said to Nina, “And you have been very kind, yes?”

Nina nodded, swished her skirt in a little half curtsy, half flirtation, giving me a quick sideways glance. “Delighted to make your acquaintance. We must have you out to the country. The weather is perfect this time of year.”

“I should enjoy that,” he said, still using his courtly voice.

“Wonderful.” She gestured toward my brother. “I’m away. Perhaps we’ll speak later.”

He nodded.

Rocky simply said, “Excuse me.”

And then we were alone, face to face. We only looked at each other, lost, in this moment, now. “I am so glad you’re here,” I whispered in English, and then in Hindustani: “I wish I could hug you.”