“Indeed.” My father made a perfunctory bow and waved his lips over her hand. “Very lucky.”
“You don’t know the half of it, sir! It was quite fortunate the mourning ended yesterday! Why, can you imagine? If the princess had died but a day later, we would have missed the full moon and had to push our party off a whole month. It was bad enough with all that wailing. One could barely think for the clamor! Ah, and Miss Song.” I waited for it—the flick of the eyes, to my face, to my father’s, and back—and she did not disappoint, although she covered well. “So happy to make your acquaintance. My son speaks often of you.”
Blake made a little bow, very formal. He lifted up the lei in both hands. “May I?”
“Ah . . . of course.” I tilted my head, a bit self-conscious. The petals were cool as silk on my neck; I lifted them to my nose and breathed deep. “They’re beautiful.”
“The ohia blossoms are sacred to Pele,” he said.
“The volcano goddess?
“The very same,” he said. “Creator. Destroyer.”
“I see,” I said cautiously. “My thanks.”
Mrs. Hart looked on. “One of the few charming customs the savages have shared with us,” she said brightly. “And you, sir, welcome,” she continued, moving to Kashmir, her eyes roving from his face, down his lean build all the way to his fine shoes. Her pink lips curved prettily. “Are you really an Arab?” The way she said it, the word rhymed with Ahab. “My son tells me you teach mathematics and dance. What an unexpected combination.”
Kashmir’s careful expression barely faltered. “It is certainly unlikely!” he said, kissing her hand. Her cheeks glowed a delicate pink, as if on cue.
“Perhaps you can teach me a few steps later?” Mrs. Hart said. “Here on the islands, we’ve been dancing the same rounds for years. It’s always exciting to have a fresh turn around the floor.”
We were ushered into the grand central hall, which was filled with enough floral arrangements for a wedding . . . or a funeral. With one casual hand, Kashmir lifted the garland of flowers around my own neck, leaning in as if to smell them. “The young Mr. Hart suspects something,” he whispered, then let the lei drop. “But I can’t tell what.” We continued through the hall, quiet for a moment. “Dancing and math?”
“It’s a long story.” I pretended to admire the decor, but I stopped long enough to give him a side eye. “Was she flirting with you?”
He winked at me. “The only thing that’s gone well so far. But no matter. The night is young.”
As we moved through the grand hall, I mapped the house in my head. From the outside, the house was a rectangle with the front of the house and the foyer we’d just entered facing east, to the sunrise. The grand hall behind the foyer was lined with three big mahogany doors to the south, one door to the north, and an open pair of wide double doors on the west wall, through which music and laughter rolled like a tide.
Which door hid our map—door number one? Door number three? But there was no telling from the outside, and I couldn’t linger in the hall.
We stepped outside through the open double doors, and I gaped at the display. We stood under a golden cloud of Chinese lanterns on a stone patio that lay like a stage before a lush lawn silvered by the moon. At one side of the patio, an impossibly long table groaned with dishes that looked decidedly Continental: white-flour biscuits, puffed pastries with a savory onion filling, tiny triangle sandwiches with pale slices of cucumber, fillets of fish in a lemon sauce, roasted chicken with blackened skin, flaky crab cakes, puddings studded with raisins. The only things vaguely local were the halved coconuts, floating like skiffs in a tureen of ice and filled with chunks of fragrant tropical fruit, and the platter of pea-green cuts of cane.
At the other side of the lawn, a string quartet played on a raised platform draped with garlands. Guests danced on the grass: proud men in fine black suits with waxed mustaches, graceful ladies in dresses like bakery confections. What would Bee think of these women and their dancing?
“Why are you smiling, amira?”
“Because it’s beautiful. Why are you smiling?”
“Because I want to dance.” He held out his hand and whirled me into a waltz.
The steps were familiar; I’d done my best to learn the basic patterns of the most popular social dances of the last few centuries, and the waltz had enjoyed a great deal of popularity over the years. But I was not a natural dancer, not like Kashmir. He guided me, gliding across the crowded lawn, sweeping me in wide, graceful circles as though we were the only two dancing, and he did it all while seeming to see nothing else but my eyes.
“You’re making me look better than I am,” I murmured to him.
“It’s not hard,” he whispered. I laughed as he spun me out, brought me back.