by Lynne Graham
‘It’s traditional,’ Jai dismissed when she gaped and commented.
‘But why on earth do you employ so many people?’
Jai frowned. ‘My father raised me to believe that our role in society is to provide employment wherever we can. Yes, I appreciate that we don’t need the five-star triumphal welcome that my ancestors all enjoyed, but you must also appreciate that those who serve us rely on their employment here. One person may be responsible for keeping an entire tribe of relatives. Never seek to cut household costs unless you see evidence of dishonesty,’ he warned her.
‘I wasn’t criticising,’ Willow backtracked uncomfortably, self-consciously skimming her gaze across the lush garden fronting the palace instead. Glorious shrubs were in full bloom all around them. She couldn’t immediately identify even one of the shrubs and was immediately keen to explore a new world of tropical plants. She turned as the other cars drew up behind them and immediately moved forward to reclaim Hari from Shanaya, her heart lifting as her son greeted her with a huge smile.
‘I keep up the traditions as my father did,’ Jai murmured softly by her side, lifting his son from her as the baby stretched out a hand to touch him and screwed up his face at his failure to make contact with his father. ‘I employ as many people as possible. When I was younger, I was less far-seeing. When a household custom seemed outdated, I banned it, but it wasn’t always possible for those involved to find another position on my staff. Modernising is to be welcomed but not if it means I’m putting people on the breadline to achieve it.’
‘I understand,’ Willow murmured, aware of the stares from the assembled staff, whom Jai invited closer to see their son. The level of their appreciation for the little boy in Jai’s arms warmed her from inside out.
One of the gardeners approached her with a beautiful pink and yellow flower and extended it to her before bowing very low.
‘He is proud to be the first to welcome the new Maharani to her home and he swears that even the frangipani blossom is not your equal,’ Jai translated with an amused grin.
They walked into a huge circular hall fashioned entirely of marble and supported on carved pillars while Jai directed her towards the curving staircase and up to the landing. He walked down an imposing corridor lined with portraits of the former Maharajas of Chandrapur and showed her into a room already set up as a nursery for Hari.
Willow reclaimed her son and sat down with him.
‘When you’re free I’ll join you for a late lunch. I have some work matters to take care of,’ Jai told her before leaving again.
Hari needed to be changed and fed and there were innumerable staff hovering, eager to take care of his needs for her, but Willow didn’t want to lose her position of being first and foremost in her baby’s life, nor did she want him exposed to too many new faces and different childcare practices at once. Overpowered by the grandeur of Jai’s home, she also needed a moment or two of doing ordinary things to feel comfortable again. Thanking everyone cheerfully for the help she wouldn’t accept, she saw to Hari herself before finally laying him down for his nap.
When she emerged from the nursery again, a moustachioed man in a bright red turban and traditional attire spread open an inlaid brass door on the other side of the landing and bowed his head in a deferential invitation. Willow passed by him into the most breathtaking interior and her steps slowed as she paused to admire the intricate glass mosaic tiles set into the walls to make superb pictures of a bygone age. Depicted on the walls were hunting scenes with elephants and tigers and grand and very vivid ceremonial processions. Talking on his phone, Jai was striding across the shaded terrace beyond the room that overlooked the lake. In that airy space a table and chairs were arranged.
Willow watched him move, absorbing the elegant grace of his lean, powerful figure as he moved and talked, spreading expressive fingers, shifting his hands this way and that in fluid stress or dismissal of a point. A thrill of desire pierced her soft and deep, making her breath catch in her throat. He was so extremely good-looking and she was married to him now, which still didn’t seem real to her. His head turned as he noticed her hovering for the first time and the heat of his stare sent the blood drumming up beneath her skin.
Willow sank down into a dining chair. A napkin was laid over her lap with a flourish by a bearded middle-aged man.
‘This is Ranjit,’ Jai explained, dropping his phone down on the tabletop and settling down opposite her. ‘He speaks excellent English and oversees our household. Anything you need, you ask him, and he will provide it. After we’ve eaten, I’ll show you around.’
‘It’s a fascinating building and the surroundings only make it more exotic,’ she commented, watching a crocodile slide off a mudflat into the lake, his two beady eyes creepy bumps above the surface as he swam. ‘But I shouldn’t like to meet that gator on a dark night.’
‘For safety we only ever leave this building in vehicles. I’ll take you on a mini safari some afternoon, although it’s amazing how many of the animals you can view from up here. Sooner or later, they all visit the water. He’s not a gator, by the way, he’s a marsh crocodile.’
‘I don’t know much about wild animals,’ she confided. ‘Only what I’ve learned from watching documentaries. Tell me, why so many palaces?’
‘Every generation wanted to be current. Centuries ago this palace and the land around it was for the royal family to hunt.’ Jai grimaced. ‘And now it’s a wildlife reserve. The original fortress above the city is magnificent but could not possibly be adapted to modern life and my grandfather’s deco palace is more of a showpiece than a home. Approximately two thirds of that building is now an award-winning hotel and the remaining wing remains ours. We will entertain my relatives and friends there at a party to be held in a few weeks to celebrate our marriage. Is there anyone you wish to invite on your own behalf?’
‘No relatives left alive,’ she reminded him. ‘And no friends who could afford to fly out to India just for a party.’
‘I would cover the expense for any of your guests. Shelley?’
Willow winced and coloured. ‘She has no holiday leave left. She had to take time off to help me with Hari after he was born.’
His ebony brows furrowed. ‘Why? Was he very challenging?’
‘No, I was the problem,’ Willow confessed. ‘I had to have an emergency Caesarean and it was a couple of weeks before I was fit enough to look after him on my own. They don’t keep you in hospital after surgery for long these days.’
Jai compressed his lips. ‘And yet you still didn’t think of contacting me for help?’
‘We got through it,’ Willow muttered with a troubled shrug.
‘Why…an emergency?’ he pressed. ‘What happened?’
‘I’d been in labour for hours and it wasn’t progressing as it should’ve done. Hari was a big baby and they had to operate for his sake.’ Willow relaxed a little as the food arrived and relaxed even more when she registered that it was entirely a British chicken meal without even a hint of spice.
Jai’s high cheekbones were prominent beneath his bronzed skin. He could have lost his son without ever knowing he existed. He could have lost Willow as well. The acknowledgement shook him and her lack of guilt on that score annoyed him, no matter how hard he worked at suppressing such negative reactions. Jai was accustomed to being in charge, used to women who were eager to please him, certainly not a woman who shunned his support and thrust her independence unapologetically in his face. Or perhaps it was the fact that she still refused to admit that she had made a mistake in not telling him that she was pregnant. Had behaved as though he could have no possible importance as a father in his son’s life.
Or, more probably, had she thought of her own father’s cruel indifference to her feelings when she’d failed to meet his exacting academic standards? Possibly she had decided that a father figure was not so necessary. Jai, however, had en
joyed a father who was caring and supportive and it was a role he took very seriously. Suddenly impatient, he thrust his plate away and stood up.
‘Let me show you the palace,’ he urged, watching as she rose to her feet, her jewelled eyes bright in her heart-shaped face, her lush mouth pink and succulent. Even as he dragged his attention from her mouth, he was hard and full and throbbing. The result of more than a year’s celibacy, he told himself in exasperation. In those circumstances, it was natural, even normal, for him to be almost embarrassingly wound up. He had not gone that long without sex since he became an adult. There was no reason whatsoever for him to get worked up about the prospect of having sex with his wife when it was a purely practical element of a marriage undertaken simply to confirm his son’s status.
He escorted her downstairs to the two-storey library that had been his father’s pride and joy. Sheltered beneath one of the domes, it rejoiced in a twisting narrow marble staircase to the upper floor.
Willow stopped dead to look around herself in amazement at the towering columns of bookcases. In several places there were alcoves backed by stained-glass window embrasures and upholstered with comfortable cushions, little reading nooks, she registered in fascination, never having entered so inviting a library space. ‘It’s absolutely gorgeous,’ she murmured appreciatively. ‘I may not be academic but I love to read, so it’s ironic that all the books here will mostly be in another language.’
‘No. There are many English books in this library.’ Jai watched her sink down into one of the reading nooks. A tiny delicate figure in a pale blue dress that somehow brought out the peach glints in her hair and the perfect clarity of her porcelain skin, against which her green eyes gleamed like emeralds.
Willow inched back on her elbows until she was fully reclined, her head resting back against a soft cushion, and grinned. ‘I can tell you now… I’ll be spending time in here.’
Jai studied her with helpless intensity. She was entirely unaware of her own appeal, entirely divorced from the reality that her hem had ridden up and a deeply erotic view of the space between her slender thighs was open to him. Without even being aware of it, prompted more by his senses than by anything else, Jai moved closer. ‘You’re the most beautiful thing in here,’ he said in a driven undertone.
‘Less of the sauce, Jai…as Shelley would say,’ Willow teased, coming up on her elbows again and preparing to get up. ‘I’m not and have never been a beauty. You don’t need to say that sort of stuff to me just because we’re married. I don’t expect it.’
Jai moved so fast she was startled when he came down over her, caging her in the nook with his lean, powerful body. ‘I very rarely say anything I don’t mean,’ he rasped, coming down to her to claim her mouth with a hungry brevity that only made her crave him more. ‘It is for me to tell you that you are beautiful, not for you to disagree, because what would you know about it?’
Willow blinked, disconcerted by that sudden kiss. ‘Well…er…’
‘Because you haven’t got a clue!’ Jai growled in reproof, pushing down on her with his lean hips and shifting with sinuous grace against her pelvis to acquaint her with his arousal.
It was the most primal thing he had ever done to her and it set Willow on fire, inside and out. It was as though he’d lit a pulse in the most sensitive area of her body, a part of herself she had more or less forgotten existed after the discovery that she was pregnant. There had been no more lying awake restless in the night hours, shifting in frustration while she wantonly recalled the heated expertise of his body on hers. No, she had shut that sensual side down, recognising that that was what had got her into trouble in the first instance and that, with a child on the way, she had more important stuff to focus on. But in that moment, there was nothing more important than the powerful allure of Jai’s hot-blooded invitation and the wanting took her by storm. Her arms reached up of their own seeming volition and snaked round his neck to pull him down to her.
‘No, not here…perhaps some other day but not on what is virtually our wedding night,’ Jai specified authoritatively.
Willow pushed him back from her, the taste of humiliation burning in her cheeks and souring in her mouth, which had so readily, so eagerly opened for his. She came upright, smoothing down her rucked-up frock like a bristling kitten. He was always so much in control that it infuriated her at that moment. One minute he was luring her in, the next pushing her away! It bore too many reminders of how much he had craved her that first night in contrast with his cold withdrawal the next morning.
‘One of the servants is sweeping rugs on the upper level,’ Jai added in an undertone. ‘I could order him to leave but it seems unnecessary when we have a bedroom.’
‘I suppose by the time you get to your age you get settled in your ways!’ Willow snapped back at him tartly, because she was mortified and not really listening, had been so far gone to common sense indeed for several seconds as she reached for him that she wouldn’t have noticed if a trumpet band had marched past her. ‘I’m more of an al fresco kind of girl!’ she added, even though she wasn’t quite sure that those two words matched what she had intended to convey: an image of her being more sexually brave and adventurous than he was, which was of course ridiculous when he was the only man she had ever been with and his experience was presumably much greater than hers.
‘No. I know that my bride deserves a level of care and esteem from me that she did not receive on the last occasion we were together,’ Jai countered flatly, wondering what other sexual expectations she had of him, coming to grips with that apparent challenge with a shot of adrenalin charging through his veins.
In reality, Jai had never been challenged or questioned in the bedroom. Women invariably reacted as though everything he did there was incredible and told him so repeatedly. For the first time he wondered if it was a fact that he was too conservative, raised as he had been by a rather elderly parent from a different generation from those of his peers, a father with a distinctly Victorian take on the opposite sex.
Willow rolled her eyes at him, eyes that turned a darker catlike green in temper, he noted, marvelling that he had gone twenty-nine years on Planet Earth without ever before meeting a woman prepared to disagree with him. On the surface she seemed so mild in temperament and shy, although she was a wild woman in bed, Jai acknowledged, reaching for her hand, finding she snatched her fingers back, smiling because he was genuinely amused.
And that sunlit smile of Jai’s steamrollered the temper out of Willow as though he had thrown a bucket of water over her because, deep down inside, she knew she was being childish, bitter and insecure and that he hadn’t earned that response. She looked up at him and those eyes of his were bright between lush black curling lashes and her heart literally went ka-boom inside her and clenched. She slid her hand back into his and in silence they left the library.
‘I’ll show you the rest of the place some other time,’ Jai told her, walking her along the corridor to the double doors at the other end of the landing. A servant somehow contrived to snake at phenomenal speed round from the other side of the landing and throw the doors open for them and quietly shut them again in their wake.
The main bedroom was another awe-inspiring room, all of a glitter, with flowers and foliage hand-painted in shades of cream and gold with tiny inset mirrors everywhere on the walls, reflecting light into an interior that could otherwise have seemed dark because there were no windows. Instead there were densely carved stone screens open to the elements to filter in fresh air.
‘It was remodelled a century ago. It used to be part of the zenana where the royal women lived in purdah, only allowed to be seen by male family members. My father could still remember elderly relatives who grew up in that lifestyle, men and women living separately,’ Jai told her softly as she fingered the screen to look out through the tiny holes to the courtyard below, trying to imagine what it would have been like to only have a view
of a life one was not allowed to actively share.
‘It must’ve been horrible,’ she whispered, her tiny nose wrinkling up expressively.
‘Perhaps not if it was all a woman knew. Going back only a handful of generations, we are talking mainly about women who couldn’t read or write or really do anything without a host of servants. Of course, there were exceptions, the educated daughters of more enlightened men, who were able to establish more equal relationships with their husbands. Women prepared to shout back…like you.’
Willow whirled round. ‘Like me?’ she gasped. ‘Jai, I’m one of the most easy-going women you’ll ever meet!’
Ice-blue eyes gleamed, sentencing her to stillness. ‘Not in my experience…and I like it,’ he completed almost as an afterthought.
Was your mother like that and was that why your parents divorced? she suddenly wanted to ask, and her teeth worried at her lower lip before she could make that mistake. ‘You…do?’
‘If I have expectations of you, naturally you must have expectations of me,’ Jai traded, settling his hands to her slender hips in the smouldering silence that seemed to be filtering through the room.
Her heart was banging so hard inside her chest that even catching her breath was a challenge. She gazed up into those extraordinary pale blue eyes welded to her and her heart hammered even faster while a clenching sensation assailed her between her thighs. Sometimes he struck her as so beautiful, he left her breathless. No points for that inane thought, she tried to scold herself, but her body wasn’t listening when right at that moment she craved Jai’s mouth more than she had ever craved anything. And he gave it to her, hot and hard, exactly what she wanted and needed, the urgency of his lips on hers, the tangling of their tongues, the sudden tightening of his strong arms around her quivering form. She was only dimly aware of her feet leaving the floor and being brought down on the wide low bed.
