“You’ve a generous nature, Jane.” He stopped, turning back to me. “Apologies, I don’t know how that slipped, only I’ve come to think of you . . . Blame it on my upbringing, if you please.”
A sting pierced my chest; hearing my actual name was meaningful, as if he had taken my mask off and glimpsed my real face.
“You may call me Jane if you like.”
He cocked a brow. “You don’t find it overfamiliar?”
“Not from you.”
Had he been anyone else, I should have dreaded making so bold a declaration; as it was, my heart thrummed major chords within my ribs as I watched him blink.
“Thank you—as you might gather from the Young Marvel’s example, you may call me anything you damn well please.” The empty expression he affected did not hide the fact his mouth was pinched at the corners. “Jane, I’ve apparently a deal of unnecessary physical training to undergo tomorrow—shall we retire?”
Breathlessly, I agreed; but he only carried me up to my room and bid me the usual polite Good night, then, Jane, and I pretended the strange sweetness upon my tongue when I bid him the same was due to expensive whiskey. I then assured myself that my symptoms merited a diagnosis of simple lust, and I fell asleep repeating that Charles Thornfield had stolen nothing more serious than my attention.
? ? ?
The air crackled and clawed the afternoon of Sahjara’s demonstration; it had snowed again, and an inch of powder lay glimmering upon the grounds, awaiting the performers as the pale January sunlight bent down to kiss the top of the trees. I sat in my wheeled chair wearing my cloak as well as two blankets, hot-water bottles at my lap and feet, upon the terrace at the side of the house; surrounded by Singhs and Kaurs, who spoke excitedly to one another in Punjabi and stamped their feet against the cold, I awaited the performers.
I will not attempt to describe the dexterity with which Sahjara on Harbax navigated the jumps the grooms had built and strewn about the lawn. She was dazzling, and Mr. Thornfield’s face as he watched her mirrored Sardar Singh’s in a potent combination of glad mouths and strangely anguished eyes. Neither can I conjure the impassioned cries of “Khalsa-ji!” from the Sikh household as Mr. Singh, left arm loaded with serrated metal circles and right forefinger spinning a disc in the air, threw ten chakkars in rapid succession, cutting ten distant poles into splintered halves. His servants screamed their approval, and I thought I glimpsed a tear in Mrs. Garima Kaur’s eye, reflecting sunlight just as her scar did.
Should I not at least essay to capture the spectacle of Mr. Thornfield wielding the aara outside my childhood home as the sun sank, however, I should consider this entire memoir a failure. He joined Mr. Singh on the lawn with a set of double-tongued metal whips about five feet in length, both wearing very loose cotton trousers fastened at the calf and nothing more, bare shoulders gleaming like cliffsides, and at a nod from his friend, they began what can only be called a dance.
They did not merely flick the deadly tongues at targets, for there were no targets; they leapt from foot to foot, sweeping the flexible steel over and under and above themselves, vicious blades passing within inches of their heads and arms. The snow exploded as they struck it, plumes flying with the sharp snaps of a thousand firecrackers, and the servants and Sahjara screamed encouragement in their native tongue. Faster and faster they whirled, sometimes falling bodily back to catch themselves, sometimes balancing on a palm after throwing themselves forward headlong, and all the while the aaras sang and snapped.
Mr. Sardar Singh was the superior; his lightness of foot and the detached technicality with which he performed a madcap dance was unsurpassable.
I could see, however, why he wrongly claimed Charles Thornfield was his better when it came to the aara, because he was riveting; he silently snarled as he flayed the ice and mud, surged from foot to foot as if a demon possessed him, and following this onslaught of fury, could flick the tip of the blade to send a scant few snowflakes delicately soaring.
I can assure the reader that I did not do anything so asinine as to fall in love with Mr. Thornfield by watching him demonstrate the aara; I had already fallen in love with him, and on that day, a feverish sheen upon my brow despite the winter’s chill, I elected to admit it, if only to myself. For the thought of confessing as much could only mean confessing far more about myself, if I truly cared for him, and I could not bear the idea that he should ally himself with evil unawares.
TWENTY-ONE
It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid.