There was a knock at the door, and she got up to answer it. I looked past the girl’s hands to see Cole peering inside. I waved, but he said something to Lydia and left without giving me a glance, so I let the hand fall back to my lap.
“He doesn’t mean any harm.” Lydia helped the second girl finish braiding thin strands of my hair. The one with the eyeliner gestured for me to close my eyes. “He’s just a little hurt by . . .” I could tell she was trying to phrase it diplomatically. “I get that you’re worried about your mum and that all this is overwhelming. If I were in your position, I might’ve sat in my closet and cried for a week. But Cole doesn’t understand anything other than doing what’s right for the family. He’ll come around. Especially when you fulfill the mandate.”
“Okay,” said the girl in front of me in heavily accented English, and I opened my eyes.
Lydia leaned around to peer at my face. “Ooh! Pretty!” She gestured at her face. “Me too, please!”
“If,” I corrected her as she sat on the bed and the girl began drawing lines of heavy kohl around her eyes, too. “If I fulfill the mandate. Marriage is still a last resort.”
She glanced up at me, one eye partially rimmed in black. “You know all Circle marriages are arranged, right?”
“All?”
“All in the direct line. Even when they don’t change the entire fate of the Circle.” She watched the other girl prepare what must be the sari they were about to dress me in. Lydia told me that I’d be wearing her clothes during some of the visits, but in some cases, it was a sign of goodwill to wear the traditional dress provided by the family. “Purple,” she said. “Fitting. I like it.”
I blinked. The sari was a deep plum color, with a pattern of red and gold metallic vines around the edges. The girl gestured for me to get undressed. “So when you get married,” I said to Lydia, “that’ll be arranged, too?”
Lydia nodded.
“Does that bother you?”
She shrugged. “I’m used to the idea.”
“Wait. Does that mean you’ll marry one of the guys we’re meeting on these trips?” The only thing more awkward than being paraded around in front of ten guys I didn’t care about would be if one of them had already been promised to my sister.
She stood up and inspected her makeup in the mirror, which I hadn’t been allowed to do yet. If it looked anything like hers, it was very dramatic. “No. Circle unions don’t usually cross families in that way. That’s one reason you are such an occasion.”
I’d been trying not to be nervous, but this wasn’t helping. I held my arms out to the side as the girls wrapped the sari around me, and the beaded tassels running along the edges swayed and clicked in the breeze from the overhead fan.
After a few seconds of silence, Lydia came in front of me and smoothed a stray strand of hair back from my face. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I keep forgetting how little you know, and how traumatic it all must be. If I’m being an insensitive arse, just smack me, all right?”
I let out a breathless laugh.
“I’m serious. And we should have a secret signal in case you need anything. Like—” She scratched her eyebrow with her pinky finger. “Yeah? Do that, and I’ll know to come help.” She paused. “I’ll try not to bother you too much about it, but it is fascinating to me. My marriage will never matter much. Cole’s the heir—or he was until you showed up. He’s twelve minutes older than me, you know.” Her confident smile looked momentarily brittle. “And now it’s you.”
I watched Lydia’s fingers—unmanicured, with bitten nails—pull at a thread at the hem of her skirt. All I’d been thinking about was how unfair this was to me. But what if you had to watch someone get all this attention you’d never have—and they didn’t even want it?
“I couldn’t do this without you, you know,” I said quietly. It was all I could think to say, and it was true. “So thank you.”
Lydia smiled.
There was another knock on the door. “Ten minutes,” Jack called, and I started but was careful to not react. I’d convinced my father to let him come with us to India, but it was getting harder and harder to pretend I didn’t care about him more than any member of the Circle cared about the help. Watching him in his element was fascinating. He was laser focused, intense, stern. It was the Jack I knew, magnified. And it didn’t help that I hadn’t been able to so much as talk to him since that moment in the hall last night.
I smoothed my sari. I couldn’t get distracted now, especially not by a guy I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that way, especially not just before meeting somebody who thought they might marry me. I put up walls in my brain. “Anything else I need to know?” I said.
The girls were dressing Lydia in a ruby-red sari, and when they finished, they adorned us both with heavy necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. “Even if you’re nervous, try to have a good time,” Lydia said. “Dev is actually . . . It could be a fun night.”
“What do you mean?”