She was cute when she was excited.Adam fought back a smile.
“Not that I was able to take a very good look at them,” Vijay added.“The whole place is infested with pit vipers.”
“Pit vipers?”Constance moved closer to her uncle, delighted by the idea of her dashing relative stumbling across a colony of deadly snakes.
Vijay leaned in.“There I was with a boy from the village and a trained mongoose named Tipu Sultan—”
Mr.Chowdhury cut in smoothly from where he stood behind Vijay’s chair.“Perhaps we should discuss the translation?”
Vijay flashed him a boyish and thoroughly unrepentant grin.
Yeah, Adam thought distractedly.There was definitely more going on between those two than legal advice, even if the solicitor did play it safe with his formal demeanor.
He wished them well of it.Adam had never had much tolerance for the rabid wolves who salivated at the chance to grind someone else down because they happened to be different.
That had gotten him into trouble once or twice.
Well—maybe more than twice.
Padma took the other chair, settling into it with regal grace.Mr.Mahjoud stood in attendance behind her, wearing a freshly pressed suit and a dapper fez.Ellie positioned herself on the settee, her back straight with the posture of an attentive student.
Adam left the seats to the others, leaning against the bookcase.Kalb collapsed into a pile of lanky golden limbs by his boots, worn out from the day’s exertions.
Neil wandered into the study and immediately pivoted toward the rock.“Hold on—is this Ashokan?”
“It’s the maharaja’s lucky rock,” Adam informed him.
Neil blinked at him through his spectacles.
“How well do you four know the story of the Ramayana?”Mr.Chowdhury asked, reining in the conversation with a practiced air of authority.
Neil reluctantly tore his attention from the rock.
“My brother and I have both read Mr.Dutt’s English translation,” Ellie replied.
“I didn’t need to read it,” Constance asserted, plopping down on the sofa beside her.“I’ve only been hearing about Lord Rama all my life, thanks to Aai.”
Mr.Chowdhury shifted a questioning gaze to Adam.
“I figured I’d let them do the reading,” Adam filled in.
“How much do you recall about Lord Rama’s exile?”Vijay pressed.
Neil adjusted his spectacles, falling easily into the mode of an oral report.“It came about as a result of the treachery of Rama’s stepmother, Kaikeyi.She leveraged a past oath the king had made to her and used it to force him to banish Rama to the forest of Dandakaranya, which was known as the abode of the rakshasas—demons with great powers.Rama’s loyal brother Lakshmana went with him, as did his wife, Sita.”
“For all the good she did,” Constance grumbled.
Adam cocked a brow at her dry tone.
Padma’s eyes glinted dangerously.“Do you disapprove of Lady Sita, Kondi?”
“She follows her husband into the forest, gets herself kidnapped, and then sits around waiting for a rescue,” Constance rattled off.“Why would anyone be impressed by that?”
“Had she not been kidnapped, Sri Rama might never have gone to war against Ravana and stopped his tyranny,” Vijay countered reasonably.
“That doesn’t make Sita any less useless,” Constance stubbornly retorted.
“She certainly isn’t treated very fairly by her husband,” Ellie added with a disapproving frown.“Even after she’s rescued, Rama forces her to walk through a fire to prove that she was faithful to him while in captivity—as though her virtue was more important than the fact that she’d managed to stay alive!”
