Page 14 of The Art of Theft
“Her Highness the Maharani of Ajmer wishes to see you, ma’am.”
Mrs. Watson bolted upright. No, she must have heard wrong. The Maharani of Ajmer had not come to call. How did she evenknow where Mrs. Watson lived? And why would she, after all these years?
“Ma’am, are you at home to her?”
Mrs. Watson leaped off her bed, nearly knocking her shoulder into a bedpost, and shoved her arms into the sleeves of her dressing gown. She was still tying the sash when she opened the door. “Are yousureit’s her?”
Mr. Mears looked only a little less stunned than she felt. “It’s her,” he said in a whisper.
When she didn’t say anything else—she couldn’t—he asked quietly, “Shall I say that you are not at home?”
She grimaced. “No, no, please show her to the morning parlor.”
Mr. Mears hesitated. “Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Watson grimaced again. “But before you do that, first send the Bannings to me.”
?In her daily life, Mrs. Watson was perfectly capable of seeing to her own toilette. But this was not daily life. She was a woman of more than half a century, roused abruptly from a heavy slumber, her face pillow-creased, her hair askew, and she needed to look her very best since her wedding day.
Which, of course, took longer than she expected, as she agonized over a choice of dresses.
“Ma’am, you look good in all of them!” said Polly Banning.
Yes, she knew that. But which one made her appear closest to her twenty-five-year-old self?
A look in the mirror disabused her of such aspirations. The lines around her eyes, the slackness in her lower cheeks, the deep grooves extending down from the sides of her nose—no frock, however comely, could strip half a lifetime from her face.
She exhaled, thanked her maids, and marched down to meet her past.
But her footsteps slowed as she neared the morning parlor. Whatif—what if she walked in and it was as if nothing had happened and no time at all had passed? What if they rushed into each other’s arms? What if they held on tight and sobbed incoherent apologies?
Would that be so terrible?
She bit her lower lip and pushed open the door.
The afternoon parlor was the cozy, comfortable spot where she took tea and met her friends. The morning parlor, in contrast, was where she’d received Miss Charlotte, the first time the latter came to call. It was what would be deemed a proper drawing room, its walls covered by dark blue silk with tracings of silver. A large landscape surmounted the fireplace. And portraits of her late husband’s ancestors—all conveniently dead before he decided he wished to marry a former music hall performer—declared that this was the sort of home where residents had ancestors who had the means and the leisure to commemorate themselves in oil on canvas.
Generations of respectability, in other words.
She’d always enjoyed the irony. But suddenly she wondered whether the maharani thought the portraits pretentious. She might even believe that Mrs. Watson had acquired them wholesale somewhere.
Mrs. Watson walked in, scarcely able to feel the floor beneath her feet. Her caller stood with her back to the room, looking at the street below. She was dressed in a white, long-sleeved blouse cut close to the body, a white floor-sweeping skirt, and a diaphanous long white shawl that seemed to wrap all the way around her, draping her as if in a nimbus of mist.
Mrs. Watson’s heart pounded wildly. From the back, the maharani looked exactly the same. Exactly.
The woman turned around. Mrs. Watson blinked. Had the maharani sent a terribly severe-looking aunt in her place?
The next moment she recognized those remarkable eyes. But it was as if the same bouquet of flowers was now encased in a block of ice, in which case, it was not the bouquet one noticed, but the ice.
There would be no embrace, no tears of either joy or sorrow.
Mrs. Watson steeled herself and curtsied. “Your Highness.”
The maharani inclined her stately head.
Mr. Mears brought in the tea tray and left. The two women remained standing. How imposing the maharani appeared—and how statue-like. Whereas the young woman Mrs. Watson remembered had been all softness and mobility, her eyes deep wells rather than shuttered windows.
“May I offer you a seat, Your Highness?” said Mrs. Watson.
