A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)(4)
God save me from a woman’s tears, for I’ve no strength against them. That’s what my father would say if he were here now. My father with his twinkling eyes and bushy mustache, his booming laugh when I please him and far-off gaze—as if I don’t exist—when I’ve been less than a lady. I can’t imagine he’ll be terribly happy when he hears how I’ve behaved. Saying nasty things and storming off isn’t the sort of behavior that’s likely to win a girl’s case for going to London. My stomach aches at the thought of it all. What was I thinking?
There’s nothing to do but swallow my pride, make my way back and apologize. If I can find my way back. Nothing looks at all familiar to me. Two old men sit cross-legged on the ground, smoking small, brown cigarettes. They watch me as I pass. I realize that I am alone in the city for the first time. No chaperone. No entourage. A lady unescorted. It’s very scandalous of me. My heart beats faster and I quicken my pace.
The air has grown very still. A storm isn’t far off. In the distance, I can hear frantic activity in the marketplace, last-minute bargains being struck before everything is closed down for the afternoon shower. I follow the sound and end up where I started. The old men smile at me, an English girl lost and alone on Bombay’s streets. I could ask them for directions back to the marketplace, though my Hindi isn’t nearly as good as Father’s and for all I know Where is the marketplace may come out as I covet your neighbor’s fine cow. Still, it’s worth a try.
“Pardon me,” I ask the elder man, the one with a white beard. “I seem to be lost. Could you tell me which way to the marketplace?”
The man’s smile fades, replaced by a look of fear. He’s speaking to the other man in sharp bursts of a dialect I don’t understand. Faces peek from windows and doorways, straining to see what’s bringing the trouble. The old man stands, points to me, to the necklace. He doesn’t like it? Something about me has alarmed him. He shoos me away, goes inside and shuts the door in my face. It’s refreshing to know that it’s not just my mother and Sarita who find me intolerable.
The faces at the windows remain, watching me. There’s the first drop of rain. The wet seeps into my dress, a spreading stain. The sky could break open at any moment. I’ve got to get back. No telling what Mother will do if she ends up drenched and I’m the cause. Why did I act like such a petulant brat? She’ll never take me to London now. I’ll spend the rest of my days in an Austrian convent surrounded by women with mustaches, my eyes gone bad from making intricate lace designs for other girls’ trousseaus. I could curse my bad temper, but it won’t get me back. Choose a direction, Gemma, any direction—just go. I take the path to the right. The unfamiliar street leads to another and another, and just as I come around a curve, I see him coming. The boy from the marketplace.
Don’t panic, Gemma. Just move slowly away before he sees you.
I take two hurried steps back. My heel catches on a slippery stone, sending me sliding into the street. When I right myself, he’s staring at me with a look I cannot decipher. For a second, neither of us moves. We are as still as the air around us, which is either promising rain or threatening a storm.
A sudden fear takes root, spreads through me with cold speed, given wings by conversations I’ve overheard in my father’s study—tales over brandy and cigars about the fate of an unescorted woman, overpowered by bad men, her life ruined forever. But these are only bits of conversation. This is a real man coming toward me, closing the distance between us in powerful strides.
He means to catch me, but I won’t let him. Heart pounding, I pull up my skirts, ready to run. I try to take a step and my legs go shaky as a calf’s. The ground shimmers and pitches beneath me.
What is happening?
Move. Must move, but I can’t. A strange tingle starts in my fingers, travels up my arms, into my chest. My whole body trembles. A terrible pressure squeezes the breath from me, weighs me down to my knees. Panic blooms in my mouth like weeds. I want to scream. No words will come. No sound. He reaches me as I fall to the ground. Want to tell him to help me. Focus on his face, his full lips, perfect as a bow. His thick dark curls fall across his eyes, deep, brown, foot-long-lashes eyes. Alarmed eyes.
Help me.
The words stick fast inside me. I’m no longer afraid of losing my virtue; I know I must be dying. Try to get my mouth to tell him this but there is nothing but a choking sound in my throat. A strong smell of rose and spice overpowers me as the horizon slips away, my eyelids fluttering, fighting to stay awake. It’s his lips that part, move, speak.
His voice that says, “It’s happening.”
The pressure increases till I feel I will burst and then I’m under, a swirling tunnel of blinding color and light pulling me down like an undertow. I fall forever. Images race by. I’m falling past the ten-year-old me playing with Julia, the rag doll I lost on a picnic a year later; I’m six, letting Sarita wash my face for dinner. Time spins backward and I am three, two, a baby, and then something pale and foreign, a creature no bigger than a tadpole and just as fragile. The strong tide grabs me hard again, pulling me through a veil of blackness, till I see the twisting street in India again. I am a visitor, walking in a living dream, no sound except for the thumping of my heart, my breath going in and out, the swish of my own blood coursing through my veins. On the rooftops above me, the organ-grinder’s monkey scampers quickly, baring teeth. I try to speak but find I can’t. He hops onto another roof. A shop where dried herbs hang from the eaves and a small moon-and-eye symbol—the same as on my mother’s necklace—is affixed to the door. A woman comes quickly up the sloping street. A woman with red-gold hair, a blue dress, white gloves. My mother. What is my mother doing here? She should be at Mrs. Talbot’s house, drinking tea and discussing fabric.