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Jay had stopped to talk to a tall man in a western suit who had hailed him. Whilst they were talking Keira spotted an antique shop on the other side of the square and quickly headed toward it. Antiques and bric-a-brac were something she just couldn’t resist.
A tall boy, a teenager, dark-eyed and with the promise of handsomeness to come—was obviously minding the shop for someone else, and welcomed her in shyly. He couldn’t be more than seventeen or eighteen at the most, Keira assessed, and whilst he was looking at her with curiosity, she didn’t feel offended or threatened. He probably wasn’t used to seeing Western women, and she knew he meant no harm.
The shop contained mainly bric-a-brac, and she was on the point of leaving when she saw a box full of black and white photographs on one of the shelves. She went to pick it up but the boy beat her to it, standing very close to her as he reached for the box for her.
Taking it from him, Keira looked through the photographs, her excitement growing as she did so. The box contained a mix of postcard pictures of maharajas and palaces, and so far as she was concerned was a terrific find. Properly framed they would make wonderful and highly individual wall art for the properties.
‘How much for all of these?’ she asked the boy, gesturing to the box.
‘For you, lovely lady, is one thousand rupees,’ he told her.
Keira knew the rules of trade here, and so she shook her head and told him firmly, ‘Too much.’ Then she offered him less than half of what he had asked for.
‘No—is a good price I give you,’ the boy told her earnestly, moving closer to her as though to reinforce his point. ‘Because I like you. You are very pretty. Are you here on holiday?’ he asked her. ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’
Keira’s heart sank. Oh, dear. Perhaps she should have been prepared for this, but she hadn’t been.
‘Perhaps I should come back later—’ she began, but to her consternation the boy grabbed hold of her arm.
‘No, please stay,’ he begged her. ‘I will give you the photographs if you like them.’
This was even worse, and Keira didn’t know what she would have done if a man Keira assumed must be the boy’s father and Jay hadn’t arrived in the shop at the same time, neither of them looking very pleased.
‘What’s going on?’ Jay demanded.
‘I was just trying to buy these photographs,’ Keira told him, unwilling to get the boy into trouble.
Very quickly Jay concluded the sale and handed over the necessary rupees, before hustling her out into the street, rich now with the smell of cooking food from the stalls that had been set up around the square.
Keira could tell that he was angry, but she wasn’t prepared for the storm that broke over her the minute they were back inside the palace.
‘You just can’t resist, can you?’ he challenged her savagely. ‘Not even with a boy who’s still wet behind the ears. The way you were flirting with him was—’
The lanterns illuminating the hallway threw long dark shadows across it. Keira would have given a great deal to hide herself in those shadows, and so escape from the tension between them, but she couldn’t let his accusation stand.
‘I wasn’t flirting with him,’ she told him truthfully, defending herself.
‘Of course you were. You were leading him on. Just like you—’ Jay stopped abruptly, but Keira knew what he had been about to say. He had been about to say just like she had led him on.
Shame burned its hot brand on her pale skin, making her cheeks sting.
She could not defend herself against that accusation. Her shame intensified.
‘I expect the people who work for me and with me to reflect a proper professional attitude.’
‘I was being professional,’ Keira insisted.
‘Yes, and it was perfectly obvious which profession it was you were representing.’
Keira could feel nausea burning her throat, and angry fear flooding her heart. She knew exactly what he was accusing her of being, and which profession he was alluding to: the oldest profession in the world, the profession whereby a woman sold her body to a man for his sexual gratification. Her mother’s profession. The profession she had always sworn she would rather die a virgin than risk following.
