I glanced up at Jack, who studiously avoided my eyes. “Where are we going first?” I said, like it was a vacation and not an arranged marriage.
My father looked pleased. “How would you like to visit India?”
Now Jack did look up, catching my eye ever so briefly. “I’ve always wanted to go there,” I said, and the smile that spread across my father’s face was so genuine, I felt guilty again.
• • •
After dinner, my father had Jack escort me to my room. No doubt the family wanted to be alone to discuss my future. Jack walked a little farther than a respectable distance ahead of me as we padded down the hall. He glanced up at a camera on the ceiling, its little red light following our progress. We continued past it, and suddenly, Jack grabbed my hand and squeezed.
“Are you really going to let them do all the work while you’re wined and dined by a bunch of Circle suitors?” he whispered.
I looked back down the hall toward the dining room, where the door was firmly shut. “Of course not,” I whispered back.
The camera down the hall was swinging toward us. We sprang apart and continued walking, like we’d never stopped.
CHAPTER 4
The next afternoon, I was in another massive house, on the other side of the world.
The Rajesh family lived near the center of Kolkata. Their compound’s high walls sheltered a secret garden of palms and orange trees and overgrown ivy and moss-covered fountains that looked like they’d been running for centuries. The home itself was white marble, with columns all across its front, grand enough that I would call it more palace than house. We’d been ushered straight to our suites, and I was perched on a tall stool, with Lydia and two Rajesh servant girls flitting around me.
“There,” Lydia said, putting the finishing touches on my eyes. My sister had done my makeup while telling me about the Rajesh family—the names and ages of all their kids, even how far their territory stretched, making it seem like us sitting here in a bedroom in India was the most normal thing in the world.
She had hardly left my side since the moment I woke up this morning back in London. I’d thought there might be a little tension after I didn’t immediately agree to their plans last night, but Lydia just seemed excited for the adventure, and it was making me feel a little better about it, too.
One of the servant girls hovered in front of me, squinted at my face, and frowned. She took the eyeliner out of Lydia’s hand and nudged her out of the way—the girls didn’t seem to speak English, and neither of us spoke Bengali, so the girl gestured for me to look up and went at my eyes with small strokes of the pencil. Lydia gave a bemused smile and sat on the edge of the bed. “Like I was saying—”
There was a knock at the door, and she got up to answer it. I looked past the girl’s hands to see Cole peering inside. I waved, but he said something to Lydia and left without giving me a glance, so I let the hand fall back to my lap.
“He doesn’t mean any harm.” Lydia helped the second girl finish braiding thin strands of my hair. The one with the eyeliner gestured for me to close my eyes. “He’s just a little hurt by . . .” I could tell she was trying to phrase it diplomatically. “I get that you’re worried about your mum and that all this is overwhelming. If I were in your position, I might’ve sat in my closet and cried for a week. But Cole doesn’t understand anything other than doing what’s right for the family. He’ll come around. Especially when you fulfill the mandate.”
“Okay,” said the girl in front of me in heavily accented English, and I opened my eyes.
Lydia leaned around to peer at my face. “Ooh! Pretty!” She gestured at her face. “Me too, please!”
“If,” I corrected her as she sat on the bed and the girl began drawing lines of heavy kohl around her eyes, too. “If I fulfill the mandate. Marriage is still a last resort.”
She glanced up at me, one eye partially rimmed in black. “You know all Circle marriages are arranged, right?”
“All?”
“All in the direct line. Even when they don’t change the entire fate of the Circle.” She watched the other girl prepare what must be the sari they were about to dress me in. Lydia told me that I’d be wearing her clothes during some of the visits, but in some cases, it was a sign of goodwill to wear the traditional dress provided by the family. “Purple,” she said. “Fitting. I like it.”
I blinked. The sari was a deep plum color, with a pattern of red and gold metallic vines around the edges. The girl gestured for me to get undressed. “So when you get married,” I said to Lydia, “that’ll be arranged, too?”
Lydia nodded.
“Does that bother you?”
She shrugged. “I’m used to the idea.”
“Wait. Does that mean you’ll marry one of the guys we’re meeting on these trips?” The only thing more awkward than being paraded around in front of ten guys I didn’t care about would be if one of them had already been promised to my sister.
She stood up and inspected her makeup in the mirror, which I hadn’t been allowed to do yet. If it looked anything like hers, it was very dramatic. “No. Circle unions don’t usually cross families in that way. That’s one reason you are such an occasion.”
I’d been trying not to be nervous, but this wasn’t helping. I held my arms out to the side as the girls wrapped the sari around me, and the beaded tassels running along the edges swayed and clicked in the breeze from the overhead fan.
After a few seconds of silence, Lydia came in front of me and smoothed a stray strand of hair back from my face. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I keep forgetting how little you know, and how traumatic it all must be. If I’m being an insensitive arse, just smack me, all right?”
I let out a breathless laugh.