Page 63 of A Thousand Painted Hours

His smile blazed once more. “You remembered!”

“I practiced,” I admitted.

“Shukriya.” He kissed my hand again, and stood for a long moment, only looking. “You are so beautiful, Elsie. I had forgotten.”

I laughed. “Forgotten!”

“When I read our letters, I do not think of your face, exactly. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes. I think of the ... essence of you, in layers, all of them a little ghostly.”

“Well said, as ever.” He inclined his head. “You do look different.”

“How?”

He lifted a hand as if to touch me, dropped it, tucked his hands behind his back. “Your hair, of course. I thought I would hate it, but I do not.”

I curtsied ironically.

“You’ve learned to dress up, haven’t you?”

I smiled. “I couldn’t be a tomboy forever, could I?” I drank in the breadth of his shoulders, the shape of his mouth. “Yousounddifferent.”

“Do I?”

“Your voice is deeper.” The fluttering sense of faintness returned, and I peered upward, trying to press every detail of his face into memory. The angle of his large eyes, the sooty brows, the warm brown of his skin. “And you have a little bit of beard.”

“And you have become a grand lady.”

“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or a criticism.”

“Only an observation,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder. “Shall we walk, Elsie?”

“Please.”

He held out his arm, and I grasped it lightly, entirely too aware of his size and shape beside me, the flesh of the person behind the words I so treasured. His other hand fell over my fingers. As we promenaded, I could think of not one word to say. Nor did he speak. We simply walked the perimeter of the room, constrained by—what? Eyes? Custom?

“How is Gurdaya?”

“Not well, I’m afraid. She rails against her situation. She fights with her husband.” His fingers over my hand moved restlessly, charged and electric, each tiny brush transmitting the power of the entire ballroom. In Hindustani, he said, “She’s like a caged tiger.”

I paused for a moment to see if I could call up the words for what I wanted to say in Urdu, and tried, “I wish I could rescue her.”

He gave me a sidelong look. “You want to digest her?”

I laughed. “Tell me the right word.”

“Main usay bachana chahti hoon,” he said.

“Ah. I saidpachana,did I?”

“Good. I’m impressed.”

I said correctly in Urdu, “Main usay bachana chahti hoon.”I wish I could rescue her.

“As do I, but it is not ours to do.”

“Who, then? There must be something that could be done. Why can’t she run away to England and live with me here?”