Sometimes Amala would allow her mind to wander to her childhood memories, sifting through them to hold only to the good ones—the beauty and wonder and strangeness. It was all so unlike England, that the older she got the more her memories had come to feel like dreams—elusive and unreal. She realized now that her conversation with Henry Beckenridge felt very much the same—dreamlike and difficult to grasp. She thought of a hundred questions she wanted to ask him but couldn’t settle on where to begin. Then the noise of other party guests talking and laughing grew very near and Amala’s mind went to her biggest concern.

“You shouldn’t be seen with me this way,” she muttered and grabbed her shoes and hurried away, deeper into the garden that was splotched with a vast array of flowering shrubberies and rose bushes in full bloom.

“I do wish you’d stop running away from me,” Henry said, showing up at her side while she walked briskly. “You forgot this,” he said, holding up her fan. “It’s apparent you need me to follow you around and keep track of your belongings.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking the fan from him.

“Why should I not be seen with you?” he asked. Amala looked around, seeing that they were alone and that a high wall of shrubberies blocked their view of the veranda.

“My presence at such events is only tolerated because no one would dare offend my father by excluding me. But no gentleman would ever be caught in my presence longer than to participate in an obligatory dance here and there or to be moderately polite. At dinners I am always seated between my family members so that no one else will be required to be in close proximity to me.” She heard him mutter a noise of disbelief, but she kept talking in order to say what she knew needed to be said. “If you have lived in India, then you should be well aware of the lines that are clearly maintained between your kind and mine. Those lines are the same here—if not even more vividly defined. My parents made a huge sacrifice to take me on when my mother and father were killed; they knew they would always be judged and criticized for it. Perhaps if they had me scrubbing floors and cleaning fireplaces, their caring for me would be considered acceptable. But they’ve told me that doing anything less than treating me as their own daughter would be dishonoring my parents. Yet, for all their kindness and efforts, they cannot change the society in which we live. I am different and I always will be, and you are a fool if you think that you can come back here and somehow magically change all of that. You’ve been very kind, but you must . . . seek conversation elsewhere.”