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“Okay, I’m going to say something that I should have said years ago, babe. Talk to him about the past. Ask him why he did what he did. Start this new chapter in your relationship on a clean slate, Diya. Because you won’t be able to write this marriage off as easily as you’re thinking. Don’t shut the door on your happy ever after, that’s all I’m saying.”
“There’s no happy ever after in my destiny, Isha,” I said bleakly.
“Don’t say that,” she began, but I cut her off.
“But it’s true! My life has come full circle with the same man who betrayed me before, and I won’t give him the chance to betray me again. As for talking about the past, I don’t care why he did what he did. He broke my heart. He broke me. And I won’t let him do it again. This time, I’ll be the one who breaks off the relationship. I’ll be the one who walks away without a backward glance,” I vowed.
CHAPTER 13
DIYA
Iturned sound of a throat being cleared and smiled uneasily at the butler waiting to speak to us. I wondered how much he had heard. After all, I didn’t want my marriage to become the hot topic for the palace gossip.
“Princess, your mother has asked the two of you to join her in the attic,” he said politely.
I followed Isha to the attic that occupied the whole of the fourth floor.
“Promise me there’s no Manjulika hiding in the attic,” I muttered as I wheezed my way up the stairs.
“The only crazy in this house is you, sweetie,” said Isha, shaking her head with disgust. “Throwing away a chance at finding true love.”
“If that chance ever comes my way, I’ll jump at it,” I promised her with a crooked smile. “This isn’t true love, Isha. This is a compromise.”
“But you’re two of my favourite people. I want to see you happy together,” she wailed.
“We don’t need to be together to be happy, honey. For one, I’ll be happy as soon as this nightmare goes away. See? I’m very easy to please.”
“Like I said. Delulu Queen,” she replied, pushing open the heavy double doors of the attic.
I was expecting it to be a dark, dusty space with cobwebs and the promise of ghosts, but the attic at Trikhera Palace was clean and filled with light streaming in through the big floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Bhai Sa had the attic redesigned after Baba Sa passed away,” remarked Isha as she led me all the way to the back.
The room spanned the width of the house and looked like a vintage store with separate sections for furniture, books, artwork, jewellery and clothes.
“I could happily get lost here for hours,” I squealed. “This has to be my favourite room in the house. And look, it’s all so well-organised.”
“Ohmigod! You can take over the space if you like it so much. Bhai Sa pays someone to keep it decluttered and organised, and we rotate all this stuff around the house throughout the year. You can take on that job,” said Isha with a grin.
Decluttering and organising a room full of antiques? I almost swooned in delight at the very thought.
“It could give you some ideas for your home staging business, Diya,” said my mother, examining a kundan choker closely.
She sat inside a huge wall safe full of trunks of jewellery. All palaces had a tijori room that kept their ancestral jewellery safer than a bank locker. Of course, a lot of royal tijoris these days were bare because most royal families had sold their jewels to stay afloat, but we had managed to hold onto our heritage, as had Dheer’s family. And seeing how a lot of the trunks seemed new, it looked like his family had added to the jewellery that they had inherited from their ancestors.
“What business?” asked Isha in surprise.
I rolled my eyes at my mother and began to browse through the ancient poshaks preserved so carefully for years.
“Ma thinks I need a backup plan since I will soon be too old to keep modelling. Her words, not mine,” I said drily.
“There’s no expiry date for a model as long as she looks the way Diya does, Aunty,” said Isha.
“I’m thinking about your future, Diya. You will have to give up your career now anyway, and home staging is a good career option for you,” argued my mother.
I turned to gape at her, wondering what new nonsense this was.
“Why would I give up my career? I’m booked through for the next nine months, Ma.”
