The Game - Laurie R. King [85]
“Perhaps you should stick to the lemonade,” I suggested. “If you take it in a champagne glass, nobody’ll know.”
She giggled, and I decided it was probably too late to worry about her sobriety. “Where is your mother?”
“Feeling a bit under the weather,” she confided. “Mama went on a barn-storming ride once at a fair and the aeroplane landed sort of hard. Well, crashed, really. So she’s not too keen on them, anymore.”
“That’s understandable. Thank you,” I said to the uniformed entity who appeared at my side with a tray of champagne and gin fizzes. I took the wine. “Your brother, though—he seemed more experienced.”
“Oh yes, Tommy’s flown a lot.” Sunny giggled at nothing much, then leant forward to whisper, “Have you talked with His Highness yet?”
“No, I’ve been in my rooms.”
“Neither have I. Isn’t he dreamy?”
“He seemed very nice,” I agreed somewhat noncommittally; actually, I thought his brisk abandonment of his lady guests at the air field, and his absence at our arrival in The Forts, rather unusual.
“Do you know, are all these people house-guests, too?”
“I haven’t a clue. There are rather a lot, aren’t there?”
“I’ll never keep them straight,” she moaned, although having seen her in action on the boat, I thought they’d be eating out of her hand by evening’s end.
She turned to the young man at her side, while my eyes strayed to the gathering. They were a remarkably attractive collection of individuals, the majority of them male, most of them between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, although a handful had grey heads. Now that I was actually among them, I saw that there were a greater number of Indians than I had originally thought: I had moved among the country’s rural inhabitants for too long for my eyes immediately to interpret as Indians the man in Oxford bags and tennis sweater, or the young woman with crisply shingled hair and knee-length skirt who was smoking a cigarette in a long enamelled holder. Such was the young lady Sunny was now talking with, and to whom she introduced me, more or less.
“Mary, this is my new friend, she’s from the Punjab.” Sunny sounded infinitely happy that she could bring us together.
I held out my hand. “Mary Russell. How do you do?”
“Gayatri Kaur, call me Gay.” Her perfect upper-class English drawl was betrayed only by the faintest lilt of accent.
“What part of the Punjab?” I asked politely. Why on earth had I come here to make inane conversation that I’d never have put up with in England? Damn Geoffrey Nesbit, anyway.
“Farathkot, along the southern border of Patiala state. You know it?”
“Unfortunately, I’ve only seen the western portions of Uttar Pradesh. And Simla, of course, that’s where I stumbled on Sunny here.”
“If you have nothing to do, let me know. My uncle’s the raja, he’d be happy to put you up for a while.”
“Oh, well, thank you.”
“He adores Englishwomen. Nothing improper, you understand—none of his wives are English, not even his concubines—he just enjoys their company. A dear, really.”
“I’m sure,” I murmured, and drained my wine and looked around: When faced with Sikh Flappers, I felt a sudden need for a full glass.
My search for strong drink was interrupted by a ripple that travelled through the room, set off by the arrival of our host. Perversely, the “Dress: Casual” notice had passed him by, for he was resplendent in a gold brocade achkhan coat, high of neck and snugly buttoned to the waist with amethysts, its tunic skirts flaring to the knees of his white trouser-leggings. He didn’t look like an undergraduate now, not even one in fancy dress—no European could wear that exquisitely wrapped white turban with such aplomb, no mere scholar would possess those dark and captivating eyes.
In a word, dreamy.
The room surged gently towards him, leaving me with Gay Kaur beneath an archway. I asked her where she had gone to school, and listened with half an ear while I watched the maharaja work his way through the guests, shaking hands, gracing