Star of the East: A Lady Emily Christmas Story Read Free Page A

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