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“Mrs. Mac,” he said, rising quickly to his feet. Had I been inclined to believe such things, I might have said that his eyes drank me in, but I had no patience for nonsense, so instead his eyes examined me. “Olivia,” he added in the smooth tone of voice.
“Do not trifle,” I snapped quietly, peevish that my resistance to him was so fragile.
“You wound me,” he said with an even bigger smile. Then his gaze slipped past me, and he gave a little bow. “Jess, a pleasure to see you this morning.”
Jess had emerged from the house with Charlotte behind her. Jess nodded to Dhruv with an expression that was, if not an actual smile, at least not a scowl. “Inspector, may I present my guardian, Mrs. Charlotte Devereux. Charlie, this is Inspector Lestrade.”
Charlotte stepped forward and held her hand out to him in a graceful gesture. He shook it warmly. “Mrs. Devereux, I am honored to meet you.”
“Inspector Lestrade,” she said, searching his face, perhaps with the gift she seemed to have for assessing character, and then finally smiling, “you will take care that Mrs. Mac and Jess stay safe.” It was an expectation, not a question.
“I will, Madam,” he answered simply.
“Thank you. They are precious to me.” I was surprised to be included in such a sentiment and schooled my expression with effort.
Charlotte favored Dhruv with a kind smile, then bent to kiss Jess on the cheek. “I expect stories, please, with all the details that make the scenes come to life.” Then she looked up at me with a wink. “Good luck,” she said with a cheeky grin as she turned to go back into the house.
Covent Garden was not the closest market to Grayson House by any means, but the variety of foodstuffs there was far greater than in any of the local markets, and it made the thirty minute walk well worth the effort.
This morning, however, Dhruv led us on an entirely unfamiliar route to Covent Garden. He told us that he was fascinated by the stories of historical people, and proceeded to take us past 1 Devonshire Terrace, where Charles Dickens had lived and written his most famous works. We then followed him into Jacob’s Well Mews, where the scientist Michael Faraday had lived as a young boy, and Blandford Street, where Faraday was apprenticed to a bookseller at age fourteen. Jess shot me a quick look of surprise that he knew about Faraday, as she and Mr. Devereux, a peculiarly inventive young man, had been developing at Grayson House their own means, like Faraday had, of generating electricity.
We strolled past number 25 Brooks Street, where George Handel had lived and died a hundred and fifty years before, and then wandered to 38 Brewer Street in the area formerly known as St. Giles Field, where Dhruv told the story of Chevalier d’Eon, born in 1728, who had lived as a woman for thirty-three years after having worked as a male spy and diplomat for France. He explained that interest in the Chevalier’s gender had reached prurient degrees in the late 18th century, and that after the Chevalier’s death in 1810, there had been an autopsy to lay the questions to rest. Dhruv relayed this story with the same enthusiasm for history as he’d told all the others, and though I watched for a meaningful glance or a pointed look, there were none, except the one he gave me over Jess’s head when he declined to mention the results of the autopsy.
Jess absorbed the fascinating tales like a sponge, while I found myself luxuriating in Dhruv’s soothing voice. He was a natural storyteller, and I wished I could close my eyes and let his words embrace me.
Upon our arrival at the market, Jess melted into the crowd. Dhruv started as if to go after her, but I put a hand on his arm to stop him. “It’s what she does,” I said. “Trying to keep her safe only makes her more determined to take risks.”
He wrapped my arm around his and held my hand there with his own with a pat. “Sounds remarkably similar to my own childhood,” he said.
“In India, France, or England?” I asked recklessly.
I felt his answering smile all the way to my toes. “All three, I suppose. When my mother discovered she was pregnant with me, she moved to live with my aunt in a Hijra village, so full of Aunties that it was almost my duty to escape into mischief.”
“You were related to an entire village?” I asked in wonder.
He smiled fondly. “I called them Auntie because they all looked after me.” But his expression became distant as he continued. “After my mother died, my aunt wrote to my father and he took me to Paris first and then to England, where his wife and legitimate children lived. There, escape was a necessary part of surviving my upbringing, which is why my choice of profession is such a baffling mystery to my family.”
“How old were you when you left India,” I asked, “and have you been back?” Dhruv’s hand was warm on mine, and I couldn’t summon the willpower to extract myself from him.
“I was probably about as old as Jess is, and no, I could not have returned to my aunt’s village even if I’d been able to book passage for myself. The British government had been actively separating children from Hijra even before the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 made the Hijra completely illegal. It was pure luck that I wasn’t taken before my father came for me.” His words were spoken evenly, as though the events had happened to someone else.
“How can people be illegal?” I asked, even as I knew the question was foolish. In the eyes of English law, I was unnatural, a designation I rejected with ferocity.
Dhruv scowled. “The British have a particular need for classification. It is at the heart of the way they control colonized people, and Hijra are too difficult to classify in the English language Therefore, they are not allowed.”
He led me around a cart that was stuck on a rock and left me standing safely to one side as he called to the driver to turn the horse as he pushed the corner of the cart. The rock dislodged and the driver called back a thank you as he plodded on. Dhruv brushed his hands off on his trousers and then returned my hand to his arm with a smile.
“Tell me more about Hijra,” I prompted, reluctant to admit my ignorance of people clearly so important to him, but I suddenly felt the significance of the conversation and wanted to hear more.
“In pre-colonial times, many Hijra held positions as guardians of the harem, or they were military commanders and political advisors,” he said. “They are considered another gender, and are often assigned male at birth, as in the case of my aunt, or they are physically both male and female, while they dress, look, and behave in traditionally feminine ways. Many of the terms the English found to classify them were simplified to mean castrated men.” He turned to meet my gaze. “Forgive my directness, but I find that accurate language is the most efficient. If it is offensive to you, I’ll stop.”
“Please do not stop,” I said, nearly breathless with my sincere wish to know more.
His smile soothed my turbulent feelings about his words as he continued. “Because many Hijras find love with men, the British called them homosexual and outlawed them as human beings, despite the fact that gender complexity has been recognized on the Indian continent for over a thousand years.”
It took every ounce of my will to continue walking calmly next to Dhruv, my hand wrapped around his arm, and every ounce of my strength to pretend his description hadn’t just simplified a lifetime of complicated feelings.
I was still reeling from Dhruv’s revelation as we turned the corner to King Street, which was lined with shops doing brisk business. We spotted a large-framed man with straw-colored hair, wearing a pea coat, and strolling casually. We had seen three men of a similar description on our stroll around Covent Garden, getting close enough to each one for Jess to determine they weren’t the kidnapper, so it was automatic for us to follow this one as well. From the back, he walked like the grown version of every boy I’d gone to school with, and I felt a momentary collision of past and present. Then the man stopped at a chandlery and seemed to peer into the window just as a black hansom passed us and rounded the corner.
