My eyes shot up to find that Mr. Singh’s were equally mirthful. “You cannot—no, it is impossible.”
“Not merely possible but true.” Mirroring me, the butler watched the vortex created by his spoon. “We Sikhs call ourselves the pure ones. You were bemused by our names last night—men belonging to the religion are baptised, you would say, with the surname Singh, which means lion. Women are baptised with the surname Kaur, or princess.”
“Every Sikh female is a princess?”
He took a sip of tea. “You must think us altogether mad.”
“No!” I exclaimed so fast that droplets splashed into my saucer. Embarrassed, I set the cup down. “I mean to say, I think I could grow fond of Sahjara, and I intend to do well by her.”
“That is gratifying to hear. Mr. Thornfield is not incorrect in calling her the Young Marvel, though he sounds ever in jest—her name means daybreak, and she truly does throw the curtains open, doesn’t she? You seem too restless for tea, Miss Stone—no, no, I taxed you with social necessities. Might you enjoy a short tour?”
Eagerly, I agreed, and we pushed back our chairs that I might enjoy a tour of my own estate.
“The music room remains relatively intact, but some minor alterations have been made,” said Mr. Singh, sliding back a glass-paned door a few minutes later.
The walls were covered with scores of minuscule framed artworks which had been rendered in such fine detail that I imagined I peered through an enchanted telescope. In one set, the same cottage was depicted in high summer, brilliant autumn, blue winter, and lush spring; in another, a saint with a beard and turban stared as if the viewer’s soul were being weighed upon his scale; in others, lovers clasped each other with such enthusiasm any governess ought to have been shocked.
I barely remembered to flare my nose in dismay.
“This is Mr. Thornfield’s collection of Punjabi miniatures.” Mr. Singh either had not noted my pretended disapproval or did not care, for he smiled as he reached my side. “His eye for worth is exceptional, having been raised in Lahore. See this portrait of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, the way the furnishings are patterned so lovingly, but his face most carefully rendered of all?”
“Mr. Thornfield is from Lahore?” I asked, latching on to undeniably the most intriguing word in this statement. “How is that possible, the East India Company only having arrived there some five years ago? Or so I read in the newspapers—I supposed Mr. Thornfield English.”
Again I sensed a tick of the clock before Mr. Singh spoke. “He was born there, to a British entrepreneur, but he studied medicine at the British and Foreign Medical School and then Charing Cross Hospital before he returned to the Punjab. Ah, you would not have known he belongs to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of London, of course. Yes, Mr. Thornfield is a man of medicine. This particular painting is moving for us—Amritsar, the Sikh holy city where our sacred book resides.”
It was a gilded palace at the end of a pure white pier surrounded by sapphire waters—an impossible place, a dream breathed from a dawn pillow.
“To have left this behind—you must miss it very much,” I mentioned, wisely refraining from commentary regarding homes from which I myself had fled.
“God has his seat everywhere,” Mr. Singh returned without inflection, as if quoting a text.
“I thought from the advertisement that Mr. Thornfield had been in the wars?”
An invisible shutter closed over Mr. Sardar Singh’s face. “Who has not been in a war? Yes, Mr. Thornfield trained as a doctor but obtained an army commission after military training at Addiscombe.”
Mr. Singh strode off and I pursued, anxious lest I had given offence on my second day. We turned left down a corridor, right down another, until I knew we stood before the billiards room, and he rested his fingers upon the door handles.
“Forgive me, I never meant to—”
Air burst into my face as the butler revealed the room; but I could not enter, such was my astonishment at the narrow fraction I beheld.
“After you, Miss Stone,” Mr. Singh demurred.
A steel palace, the inside of a diamond—how shall I best describe a billiard room transformed into a war display? Swords—straight, curved, broad, tapered—lined every wall, polished to a sheen echoing the pain of the blade itself. Their handles were inset with ivory carvings, their hilts embellished with golden flourishes, their points angled into queer triangles or hollowed into deadly sickle shapes. Shorter daggers hung above the liquor cabinet, and the hearth was festooned with weapons I could scarce comprehend—tri-pronged silver objects with needlelike points, axes so beautiful I could not fathom using them, bizarre metal circlets which gleamed at us like eyes. I had never viewed such a fascinating collection of murderous devices.
“Oh,” I breathed, delighted.