“Sita,” Father mouthed the word as soon as he saw me.
I dismounted as quickly as I could to touch his feet. Then suddenly everyone was there and talking. The soldiers who’d traveled with me were given food, and water was brought for the horses. A crowd of at least a hundred people swelled around me, encouraging me to see what was waiting inside the house. When I stepped into the kitchen, every dish imaginable had been prepared for my arrival. Avani must have worked all day for a week just to cook the sweets. Father squeezed my hand, and words were entirely unnecessary. That moment was possibly one of the happiest in my life. And when I looked for Grandmother, she wasn’t there. I imagined she was pouting in the back of the house.
“Where is Anu?” I asked, searching for my sister. “Anu!” I shouted, but she didn’t appear.
“Anu is hiding,” Avani said. “She’s in her room. There are too many people.”
I found her huddled on her charpai, her knees drawn up to her chest. If it was possible, she seemed even smaller and younger than before. “What are you doing in here?” I seated myself next to her, taking her in my arms.
“I miss you so much,” she cried into my chest. Then she looked up at me through her wet lashes. She was wearing the yellow sari I had sent her; someday she would be a very beautiful woman. “Everybody is happy about you,” my sister said. “But I want you back.”
“Oh, Anu,” I said, and stroked her hair. “I wish I could live here, too.”
I coaxed her out into the crowd of smiling faces from all across Barwa Sagar, and everyone wanted to know the same things. What was the rani like? Was the palace as beautiful as they said? Did the maharaja own twenty-three elephants? What about the food, and the beds, and the baths? Did all women wear angarkhas, like me, or did they wear saris as well? Could I show them my pistol? Had I killed anyone yet?
It was exhausting, and the last of the guests didn’t leave until sunrise, long after Anu had gone to bed. When the house was finally empty, Father came into my room and seated himself at the edge of my charpai. His bald head reflected the rising sun, turning his skin first gold, then orange. We both looked over at Anu, who moved as if she were dreaming. I took his hand and wrote, “I brought more earnings for her dowry fortune.”
He traced over my palm. “You have changed in five months.”
My eyes met his, and there was such intensity in his gaze that I became worried. Did he think I—the girl from the palace mirror—had become unrecognizable?
“You’ve grown more confident,” he wrote. “None of the women in Jhansi keep purdah, do they?”
“No.” I was worried about what he might say next.
“Well, I don’t believe you should keep purdah here either.”
My eyes met his.
“Dadi-ji will be upset,” he predicted. “But when Shivaji and I go out, I want you to come with us.”
Of all the gifts he might have given me on my return, this was the greatest.
Chapter Thirteen
I suppose you have something to say about the quality of your charpai now,” Grandmother remarked over breakfast the next morning. “You will be demanding a fancier bed, I imagine.”
As always, her hair was perfectly combed. It swept over her shapely head like a waterfall, cascading down her back in three silver braids. But her sharp cheekbones, which other women envied, revealed her nature. She was all angles and no softness.
I put down my bowl of yogurt and bananas. “Did you hear me complain?” I said.
Anu gasped, and Grandmother’s eyes widened. I had never spoken to her with such disrespect.
“How dare you!” She rose from her chair and I rose as well. I was taller, younger, stronger. She was not going to intimidate me anymore.
“How dare I what, Dadi-ji? Answer you? Earn my sister’s dowry fortune?”
“And what will you do? Go searching among the imbeciles who beg outside the temples to find her husband? I assume she’s told you how long it took for her to master making rotis?”
“Do not insult Anuja.” I turned to my sister. “Anuja, has Grandmother been unkind to you?” Her letters had never said so.
Grandmother laughed. “Oh, it’s not an insult. It’s the truth.”
“You will never speak about her that way again!” My voice rose, and my sister covered her ears with her hands. “If I learn that you’ve beaten or insulted her, or acted in any other despicable way, you will be sorry.”
“And exactly how will I be sorry?”
“Someday, when your son is too old to work,” I said, “I will be the only one bringing money into this house.”
“And you think he would let you starve me?”