Page 208 of Claimed By the Maharaja
He looked at the next canvas.
Summers came and went. Yamini visited Rewa most years.
She ran through the gardens like she owned them. Photographed the staff with a new camera. Laughed too loudly. Climbed walls she had been told not to climb.
He watched.
From balconies. From shaded corridors. From distances that let him study her without being noticed. More than once, he postponed his summer trip to Jogra by a week, just to stay while she was there.
She never noticed how often he was nearby.
He never approached. He was never in her vicinity again after that day in the cave.
He simply kept a record.
But there was one other time when he had once again seen her up close. She was sixteen then, and he was nineteen.
Devara Province
Twelve years ago.
Bharat was attending the bull racing festival for Ram.
Crowds pressed close. Noise roared. Dust lifted in waves.
He endured it.
Then he heard a laugh. It was bright and unrestrained.
He turned.
Sixteen-year-old Yamini stood among the spectators, dressed as a young man in a turban, deliberately blending in because royal women weren't supposed to be there. She was with her brother. But he knew it was her, even with the disguise.
He knew, even then, that she had no idea he was less than twenty feet away.
Her eyes burned with excitement. She leaned forward as the hooves thundered past.
She didn't carry herself with decorum. She carried life.
She was the same as she had been at six, just taller.
He watched her longer than he should have.
Bharat looked at the next canvas.
This one was larger. Formal. The colors were heavier. Deep blue and silver, the kind of palette reserved for ceremony.
It was from five and a half years ago. But he remembered every detail of that day with the same precision he remembered everything—the weight of the sherwani, the exact angle of the afternoon light through the carved windows, the sound of the priests' chanting layered over conversation.
And Yamini.
Yamini was wearing a blue-and-silver lehenga with heavy diamond jewelry. She was sitting close enough that he could hear the small, careful breaths she took between attempts to speak to him.
She had tried thrice.
All three times, he had not answered. Not because the room overwhelmed him. By age fifteen, he had learned to manage that. He had sat through state functions, investor meetings, and royal ceremonies. He knew how to remain present in noise.
It was she who undid him.
