Star of the East: A Lady Emily Christmas Story (2 page)

The Blue Room had been mine once I had outgrown the nursery, and it had always been my favorite in the house. The Chinese Bedroom, named for the elaborate oriental wallpaper brought back from the east by some earlier earl—I believe in the seventeenth or eighteenth century—had always disturbed me when I was a child. It was exquisitely rendered, with hand-painted scenes of a garden, full of beauty, but one of the figures depicted on it, that of a man with a narrow moustache and pointed beard, frightened me. Something in his appearance seemed menacing. My mother, upon learning this from my nanny, had shared with my father her intention of assigning the room as mine once I came of age. She did not want to cultivate any weakness in me. This was many years before I would have a room of my own, but my father, knowing his spouse all too well, was certain that she would not change her planned course of action no matter how many years intervened, agreed in principle. Then, two years later, on a night with particularly vile weather that had coated the roads with a sheet of ice, he insisted that his own mother, the dowager countess, stay overnight after having dined with us. He ordered a maid to prepare the Chinese Bedroom for her, and by the following morning, had made it clear that the room was to be left for her use whenever she did not feel a pressing urge to return to the dowager’s house. On the day I left the nursery for the Blue Room, my grandmamma made a point of staying overnight. I have always believed this to be a sign that my father worried, to the end, that I would be forced into the Chinese Bedroom unless someone else occupied it. Once I was firmly ensconced in the Blue Room, Grandmamma never again spent the night with us.

I paused outside the door to my former room before tapping on it. Loud sobs penetrated the thick wood and seeped into the corridor. A maid in a ridiculously frilly cap opened the door.

“Lady Emily!”

“How very nice to see you, Sally,” I said. My mother, who insisted on calling all of her housemaids
Rose
and all of her footmen
John
, regardless of their names, hated that I did not follow suit. Sally had come to Darnley House a year before I left, which meant that she had now been in my mother’s employ for more than a decade. “Is something amiss?”

She poked her head out the door. “The princess is rather upset, milady. Is she expecting you?”

“Her mother sent me up.”

This was enough for Sally to justify admitting me to the room. There, in the center of the floor, surrounded by a substantial heap of discarded dresses, stood Princess Sunita Deepika Victoria Singh, her eyes brimming with tears. I sent the maid off to fetch tea and introduced myself.

“Your mother is rather concerned about you,” I said.

“Your mother told me how important her dinner is tonight.” She kicked her way through the voluminous pile of fabric and flung herself onto the bed. “I have nothing suitable for the occasion.”

“My mother may have put the fear of God into you, but I can assure you that your choice of gown is inconsequential. You will be the most beautiful girl in the room no matter what you wear.” Her thick hair shone like ebony silk, and her skin, the same alluring shade as her mother’s, was flawless. Her elegant figure was evident even as she sprawled across the bed, and when she turned to look at me, I was taken aback by the brightness of the golden flecks in her large, dark eyes.

“Do you really think so?” She started to sit up, then sighed and flung herself back again. “I promise I am not nearly so awful as you might think.”

“I have no reason as of yet to think you awful,” I said, “so I shall reserve judgment.” I bent down and began sorting through the dresses.

“They are all wrong,” she said. “I cannot bear to wear any of them. I—” She burst into tears again.

“I suspect this is about more than a gown. Will you confide in me?”

She joined me on the floor, crouching next to me, and bit her lip. “A bit more, yes. It is about my marriage, you see.”

“I suspected as much. Who is your groom?”

“There is no groom, not yet, because my mother thinks I am not old enough to wed, which is absurd. Nearly all of my friends are already married.”

This was not at all what I had expected. “Is there a particular young man who has inspired you?”

She shook her head. “I only want to begin my life, Emily. I will happily accept whatever groom my parents choose. If only they would choose one! Can you help me?”

“I fear I would not be the correct person for such a task,” I said. “However—and I say this with great trepidation—my mother would be more than happy to assist you in any way possible.”

“I have already appealed to her, and she has tried, but to no avail. My mother believes that I should wait another two years—two years, Emily! I will be twenty. My life will be nearly over.”

“Being twenty is not nearly so bad as you fear, I assure you,” I said. “Many girls in England are not married before then. Earlier in the century—”

“You do not understand. For me, there is nothing to do until I am married. Here, you go to parties and balls, but when I am at home, I am bored. I want my own house and my own family. Would you please speak with my mother and tell her that you do not think I am too young?”

“Would you consider remaining in England for a while? I could invite you to stay with us. You might enjoy the season in London.”

“I have been told it is like an unending party,” she said.

“That is an apt description,” I said. “If you like balls—”

“I am not sure that I would. That is to say, of course I would adore the dancing, but I have no acquaintances in London. Would I enjoy the company? And what if I found that an unending party comes to feel relentless rather than engaging?”

This was the most intelligent question I had ever been posed about the season. “I admit that it does become exhausting and I much prefer afternoons in the British Museum to ones spent at garden parties, but it is not essential to attend every soiree and ball to which one is invited. You could choose the ones that sound enticing and spend the rest of your time with friends, whom I am certain you would make quickly. Whatever your interests, you would be able to find many like-minded young ladies in London.

She seemed to perk up at this. The creases in her forehead smoothed and her sulky scowl disappeared, but almost as soon as I started to see the signs of potential happiness bubbling in her, she shook her head. “Your offer is extremely kind, and I do appreciate it greatly, but I cannot accept it. I want a home of my own.”

* * *

My mother had volunteered to host Maharaja Ala Kapur Singh’s family almost the moment that she had learned they would be traveling to Osborne for Christmas. My father, who had many connections to the subcontinent, had spent several happy months there before he married, and I always believed that his sentimental attachment to the country and its people stemmed, at least partially, from the freedom he enjoyed there during his last days as a bachelor. He took an active interest in the government of the Raj, and frequently sent pointed letters to the Viceroy, who rarely disagreed with the earl’s advice.

This party marked one of the few—if not the only—occasions on which my parents took equal pleasure in playing host. My mother thrilled at the idea of hosting exotic foreign royalty, particularly as they were friends of the queen, and my father was eager to discuss all manner of things with the maharaja. Because it was so close to Christmas, only a handful of guests, all of whom lived nearby, were invited, but they had been chosen with great care. Invitations were issued to Lady Ackerman, her husband and their three daughters, all of whom would be appropriately impressed that my mother was hosting royalty, as well as to Mr. Lucius Benton, a single gentlemen who, as my mother described him, knew something about India. The latter was strictly to appease my father.

When Sunita entered the drawing room where we had gathered for drinks before dinner, everyone turned to look at her. After much debate, she and I had decided she ought to dress in a sari rather than an evening gown, and the silks worn by the rest of the ladies paled in comparison, literally as well as figuratively. The bright emerald green fabric, heavily embroidered with gold thread and sparkling gems—rubies and diamonds—shimmered. Heavy gold bangles adorned her arms from wrist to elbow, and she wore rings on nearly all of her fingers. Large rubies dangled from her ears, set in gold to match her necklace. Suspended over her forehead, almost as if by magic—although I knew it must have been woven somehow into her hair—was a spectacular
maang tika,
featuring an enormous diamond surrounded by smaller stones.

“The diamond is the Star of the East,” the maharini volunteered, seeing my mother’s reaction to the ensemble. “It is my most prized possession. It has been part of our family’s collection for centuries. This is the first time I have let Sunita wear it.”

“It is exquisite,” I said, “and no one could better appreciate being allowed to wear it. Sunita told me it makes her feel like a bride.”

“She ought not be so eager to marry,” the maharini said. “There are other things she must learn first. Running a household is not so easy as she thinks.”

“You are fortunate, Parsan, to have a daughter so eager to fulfill her duties,” my mother said. “Not all mothers are so lucky.”

“Catherine, you are too kind, and I know that Sunita has begged you to plead her case to me, but she is not ready to be married.”

“The discussion of my sister’s nuptials, impending or not, is quite possibly even less interesting than a lecture I was forced to attend at the end of last term. We would all be more amused, Mother, if you would explain the very great difficulty that comes from wearing the Star of the East.” Ranjit, the maharaja’s eldest son and heir, a tall, slender man, stood next to me. Like his sister, he was dressed in traditional attire. His narrow coat, a
sherwani
, made of pale blue silk, fell below his knees, and was buttoned snugly from the waist to the collar. The matching
churidar
trousers were extremely narrow and bunched elegantly around his ankles. His turban, of the same silk, was decorated with a spectacular diamond
sarpech
that held in place several tall egret feathers. The
sarpech
, combined with the rest of his jewelry, a long triple-strand pearl necklace and a tight diamond-and-pearl choker that was fastened around his jacket collar, was just as stunning as the one worn by his sister. “The diamond is cursed, you know, so I should not bother to covet the stone, Emily.”

“Oh, sir, my daughter would never covet—” The look on my mother’s face suggested that she did not believe her words, which I found rather unfair. Coveting other’s possessions had never been included in the catalogue of my many sins, even by her reckoning.

“I did not mean to offend, Lady Bromley,” Ranjit said after his mother had excused herself to go to her husband’s side. “Emily would brighten the stone more than the reverse. It would look quite lovely with her eyes.”

This comment left my mother speechless, but only for a moment. “Cursed, you say?”

“Yes, a dreadful matter, really,” Ranjit said. “Apparently, the diamond was originally set into the
tika
for the wedding of a princess in the sixteenth century—someone who, according to legend, was nearly as beautiful as my own sister. It was part of her dowry. She resisted the marriage, having fallen in love with some unsuitable person, and tried to persuade her parents not to force the match.”

“She sounds like a great deal of trouble,” my mother said.

“Oh, she was, Lady Bromley, I assure you,” Ranjit continued, his eyes dancing. “Her parents would not cave to her pleas, and the wedding occurred as scheduled, at the appointed auspicious hour. The bride wept through the entire ceremony and the next morning, when her servants came to bring her breakfast, she was dead, clutching the diamond
tika
in her cold hand.”

“Dear me,” my mother said.

“No one could explain why she had died,” Ranjit said, the tone of his voice rich. We hung on his every word, and I realized I was leaning in to better hear him. “There was no sign of illness or poison or foul play of any sort. The prince, her husband, agreed soon thereafter to marry his dead wife’s sister.” My mother shifted uncomfortably and Ranjit nodded at her. “I agree, Lady Bromley, it was not a desirable course of action. The second wedding took place after a suitable period of mourning, but within a year, the poor prince had lost a second wife, again with no obvious explanation as to the cause of her death. Like her sister, she was found clutching the Star of the East.”

My mother shuddered.

“This time, the prince sought the advice of a wise man, who told him, after consulting or praying or whatever it is that wise men do, that his first wife had cursed the stone, and anyone who wore it would fall dead within a year.”

“How terrible,” my mother said. “Yet your sister wears it.”

“As did my mother before her,” Ranjit said. “The sage old man gave the prince a golden bangle. Engraved on it were the words of a spell of protection. If one were to wear the bangle on her left arm at the same time as she wore the diamond, no harm would come to her.”

“Would any bangle with the correct spell on it serve?” I asked.

“No,” Ranjit said. “This particular bangle was fashioned from gold said to have been worked by the gods themselves. No other bangle could offer the slightest protection.”

“And the prince believed this?” I asked. “Gullible man.”

“Don’t be rude, Emily,” my mother said.

“I would agree with your daughter if I did not know the rest of the story,” Ranjit said. “The wise man’s words proved true. When the prince’s daughter—born before the death of his second wife—grew up and was a bride, she wore the diamond with the bangle, and lived to see her grandchildren’s children. From that time on, our brides have always worn the combination when they are married, and sometimes, as you see tonight, before then.”

“What a lovely story,” my mother said.

“Lovely?” I asked.

“Quite,” she said. “The end is perfectly agreeable.” She gave Ranjit a little pat on the arm. “You are good to keep us so well entertained. And I suppose your sister is wearing the bangle tonight?”