might have chanced to cross her path. He waited for the desire she had aroused within him to be chilled by the distasteful idea he had deliberately conjured up, and frowned with the recognition that it had not done so.
He was even more stunned when he heard himself asking her, ‘Bride or groom?’
‘I’m sorry…’
‘I was asking which side of the wedding party you belong to,’ he told her.
His choice of the word ‘belong’ stung her pride and her mind with the familiar pain of knowing that there was no one in this world to whom she ‘belonged’, but it was somehow overwritten by the intoxicating fact that his question suggested that he wanted to prolong his contact with her.
He was undeniably handsome. Tension bit into her, as though some instinct deep inside her had pressed a warning button, but to her shock her senses were refusing to listen to it. How old was she? Certainly too old to stare in open awe at a man, no matter how good-looking he was. And yet, like a child hooked on the adrenalin kick of sugar, despite knowing that it wasn’t good for her, she just couldn’t stop looking at him.
He was wearing a light tan linen suit of the kind favoured by wealthy Italians, and everything about him breathed cosmopolitan upper-class privilege, education and wealth. His skin had the right kind of warm olive tint to it to carry off the suit, just as his body had the height and the muscles. Were his shoulders really that broad? It looked like it from the way he moved.
And yet, despite everything about him that proclaimed old money and social position, Keira could sense within him another darker side, a marauding, dangerous ruthlessness that clung to him so powerfully she could almost smell it.
She fought not to be drawn into the aura of magnetism that surrounded him. If anything was intoxicating her then surely it must be this most wonderful of wedding venues.
Originally a summer palace and hunting lodge owned by an ancient maharaja, it had been converted into a luxury five-star hotel. Formerly an island palace, it was now connected to the shore by a handsome avenue, but the impression created as one approached was that the palace and gardens floated on the serene waters of the lake that surrounded it.
If it wasn’t the venue then perhaps it was the sensual scent of the lilies resting on the still water of the pools that was having such a dangerous effect on her senses? Whatever the cause, it was in her own interests to remember that she was supposed to be a rational adult.
Keira took a deep, calming breath and told him firmly, ‘Both. I’m a friend of the bride and the groom.’
A swirl of activity refocused her attention on the wedding party. Late afternoon was giving way to early evening darkness, and preparations were almost finished for the evening reception. The small flickering flames of hundreds of glass-covered tea lights were scattered artfully around the large courtyard and floating in the pools and fountains, and the lights reflected in the lake beyond it giving it a magical aura of romance.
Richly embroidered pavilions in jewel colours were being erected as though by magic, their gold threadwork catching the light, and the branches of the trees in the gardens beyond the courtyard dripped strings of tiny fairy lights, illuminating the paths that led to individual guest suites in what was now one of India’s most exclusive hotel and spa resorts.
Soon the newly married couple and their families would be changing for the evening, and she needed to go and do the same, she reminded herself, and yet she made no move to step aside, thereby ending their conversation and allowing him to walk away from her.
Perhaps it was something to do with the late-afternoon sun that was transforming the sky above them from deep turquoise to warm pink, or the languorous heat turning the air soft with a sensuality that was almost like a physical touch against her skin that was causing her heart to thud with heavy-laden beats. Or perhaps it was the effect the man standing so close to her was having on her.
Something inside her weakened and ached. It was India that was doing this to her. It had to be. She was beginning to panic now, caught off guard and out in the open with nowhere to run by the shockingness of her own vulnerability to instincts over which she had previously believed she had total control.
She needed desperately to think about something else. The wedding she was here to attend, for instance.
Shalini had used the magnificent venue for her wedding as the inspiration for her choice of traditional clothes. Tom had thrown himself into it, and had looked amazing in his red and gold turban, his gold silk sherwani suit and scarf embroidered to match Shalini’s gold and red embroidered lehenga.
Keira would have wanted to attend Shalini and Tom’s wedding wherever it had been held; they, along with Shalini’s cousin Vikram, were her closest friends. And when Shalini had told her that she and Tom had decided to follow up their British civil marriage with a traditional Hindu ceremony here in Ralapur, nothing could have kept Keira away.
She had been longing to visit this ancient city state. It had captured her imagination immediately when she had first read about it. But Keira hadn’t just come here for Shalini’s wedding and to see the city. She had business here as well. She most certainly hadn’t come looking for romance, she decided, before elaborating on her presence at the wedding.
‘I was at university with Tom and Shalini,’ she explained, before asking curiously, ‘And you?’
It was typical of her type of woman that her voice should be low and husky, even if the slight vulnerable catch in it was a new twist on the world’s oldest story. He had no intention of telling her anything personal about himself, or the fact that his elder brother was the new Maharaja.
‘I have a connection with the bride’s family,’ he told her. It was after all the truth, since he owned the hotel. And a great deal more. He looked out across the lake. His mother had loved this place. It had become her retreat when she’d needed to escape from the presence of his father the Maharaja and his avaricious courtesan, who had turned his head so much that he’d no longer cared about the feelings of his wife and his two sons.
Jay’s mouth, full-lipped and sharply cut in a way that subtly underlined its sensuality, hardened at his thoughts. He had been eighteen, and just back from the English public school where both he and his brother had been educated. That winter the woman who had stolen away his father’s affections with her openly sexual touches and her wet greedy mouth, painted with scarlet lipstick to match her nails, had first come to Ralapur. A ‘modern’ woman, she had called herself. A woman who had refused to live shackled by outdated moral rules, a woman who had looked at Jay’s father, seen his position and his wealth, and had wanted him for herself. A greedy, amoral harlot of a woman who sold herself to men in return for their gifts. The opposite of his mother, who’d been gentle and obedient to her husband, and yet fierce in her protective love of her sons.
Jay and his elder brother, Rao, had shown their outrage by refusing to acknowledge the existence of the woman who had usurped their mother in her husband’s heart.
‘You must not blame your father,’ she had told Jay. ‘It is as though a spell has been cast on him, so that he is blind to everything and everyone but her.’
His father had been blind indeed not to see the woman for what she was, but he had refused to hear a word against her, and Rao and Jay had had to stand to one side and watch as their father humiliated their mother and himself with his obsession for her. The court had been filled with the courtiers’ whispered gossip about her. She had boasted openly of her previous lovers, and had even threatened to leave their father if he did not give her the
