His Runaway Royal Bride

She opened her eyes when he reached the stone steps that led to their palace, and he felt her stiffen.

‘Where…? What…?’ Her voice tapered off.

‘This is where I live now,’ Veer said inflexibly.

He had moved out of the huge Rajmahal that had been the ancestral home and had begun living in the smaller Jal Mahal that had traditionally belonged to the younger son. Chacha Saheb, his father’s youngest brother, had sold it off to settle his debts, and Veer had bought it for his personal use.

Meethi froze, paralysed with shock, looking at him in disbelief.

He had moved out of the palace of his illustrious ancestors! He had broken the royal tradition. She had begged him once to live in a smaller bungalow because she had hated the lack of privacy and the overpowering presence of servants, but Veer had always been a stickler for tradition and propriety and had categorically refused. So why now had he taken such a step?

And what about her mother-in-law, Maaji Saheb? She also must be here then. She would never leave her beloved son alone.

Her stomach hollowed out with dread at the prospect of meeting Maaji Saheb again. She was the one who… but she wouldn’t think about her.

Forcing her thoughts back to the present, Meethi looked towards the phalanx of retainers lining the entrance, their heads bowed respectfully, dreading seeing familiar faces—faces displaying thinly veiled contempt. But they all looked new and unfamiliar. Her breath escaped in relief, and she struggled to be put down.

Veer lowered her watchfully, keeping a vice-like grip on her arm.

They entered the Jal Mahal.

Meethi had been here earlier in her marriage to Veer and had always liked it better than the palace they had lived in. The Rajmahal was flamboyant and ornate and had always seemed cold and forbidding; this one was smaller, airy and elegantly built.

Meethi felt the eyes of the retainers on her and mortification filled her.

They must be looking down their noses, wondering why their Maharaj Saheb had married her. She wanted to run away but knew she could not; Veer wouldn’t let her. The throbbing in her head intensified.

One look at her pasty complexion and with a muttered imprecation, Veer picked her up and strode off again, his long legs moving purposefully. Entering his suite of rooms, he put her down on the huge four-poster bed in the master bedroom.

Meethi sank down on the bed, trying to ignore Veer’s searing gaze. He told the hovering maid to fetch a glass of water.

‘Have this medicine,’ he said, his tone expecting instant compliance.

Meethi wanted to ignore his grim command but the throbbing in her head made her do as he requested.

She sat up straight. What would he do now? She didn’t want to answer the numerous questions she knew he would throw at her.

Veer looked at her, sitting stiffly, and the tension of her posture screamed out at him. She was apprehensive. Good. She had betrayed him. He wanted her to feel worried and tense.

‘Now, start answering some questions! Why did you run away? You didn’t for a moment think how we would all feel,’ he thundered.

Meethi almost let out a hysterical laugh. She knew how everyone would have felt—relieved at getting rid of her.

She had always been a source of embarrassment to the venerated royal family, and they must have rejoiced. Maaji Saheb would have begun making a list of suitable brides for her beloved son, she thought bitterly. But she didn’t voice her thoughts. Veer refused to hear anything against his family and she didn’t want to get into one of those fruitless arguments again.

Her silence inflamed Veer and he burst out, ‘And to run away in such a manner! Pretending to have drowned in an accident! Not content with merely fleeing, you hatched a treacherous plot with callous disregard for those you left behind!’

The world had tilted on its axis when he had learnt that the wife he had been mourning was actually alive and living happily. He remembered with cruel clarity how devastated he had felt at her heartless treachery. And then anger had filled him. Never before and never since had such anger consumed him. But that day an elemental fury had coursed through his veins, beating at his insides, and he had blindly picked up and smashed things in his study, trying to get rid of the demonic feelings plaguing him. After which he had mounted his horse and gone for a punishing ride till the rage inside him had dissipated a little.

Meethi kept silent with a great effort of will. She had just wanted to disappear; hadn’t cared how. But wise counsel had prevailed and she had realised that, for the break to be final, she needed to have a convincing story. She couldn’t have just simply disappeared. Veer had married her and in his book that meant that he owned her. He wouldn’t have let her simply escape. He would have tracked her down and found her. As he seemingly had done….

But she couldn’t say any of this. Ever since the miscarriage she had suffered, she had felt cut off from her surroundings, enclosed in a bubble of aloneness. She had given up on Veer and their marriage.

Seeing her silence as an admission of guilt, Veer tore into her. ‘You played with our emotions in the worst possible manner! And you didn’t once think what would happen when you were found? I would be made a laughing stock when it became known that my wife had run away, pretending to be dead! You have tarnished our family’s name and honour and shamed your father’s memory! But all this wouldn’t matter to you, would it? You only know how to behave selfishly, to think about yourself, your feelings and your convenience.’

‘What do you want from me?’ she asked in a subdued voice, ignoring his diatribe.

Veer looked at her in shock. She hadn’t uttered a word of explanation and neither did she seem a whit ashamed or regretful of what she had done. Far from apologising for her deception, she was skating over her wrongdoing, acting like a victim.

‘I want answers. Will you tell me why you ran away like this? You had everything a girl wants—a life of comfort, wealth, riches, jewellery, clothes and a titled family! But clearly this wasn’t enough for you—what else did you want?’ he rasped, feeling tightly wound up inside.

Meethi was quiet. He would never understand her reasons. He never had and he never would. On the surface her life had been perfect but she had lived through it and knew how the undercurrents had trapped her and almost drowned her.

‘Why does it matter? I thought you would be relieved to be rid of me—an unwanted burden,’ she said miserably, the words forced out.

‘Did I ever make you feel unwanted or treat you like a burden?’ he demanded disbelievingly.

‘You left that day without speaking to me,’ Meethi whispered, her face white.

Veer stiffened. That last day had been burnt into Veer’s memory. He recalled the events clearly.

It had been two months after she had suffered the miscarriage. When six months pregnant, Meethi had tripped and fallen down the stairs, losing their baby. Two months of coping with gut-wrenching loss and seeing his vibrant wife turn pale and wraithlike, a shadow of herself.

After the miscarriage, Meethi had totally withdrawn into herself and become completely unresponsive. He had been at his wits’ end as to how to cope and had gone to consult a renowned doctor.

On his return he had found Meethi in the arms of his younger cousin, sobbing uncontrollably.

The sight of her wet cheeks and his cousin’s consoling hug had maddened him and something had snapped within him.

He had marched her to their suite of rooms and had turned on her, accusing her of behaving indecently, shunning all propriety and decorum.

Meethi, in turn, had retaliated, accusing him of being insensitive and unfeeling and, before he knew it, he had her in his arms and had begun kissing her hungrily and the fire between them had blazed gloriously as Meethi had kissed him back passionately. After months of abstinence, the feel of her in his arms and her soft encouraging cries had made him lose all control and the doctor’s orders that sex was off-limits had been forgotten by both of them. Tumbling her down onto the bed and egged on by her passionate kisses, he had taken her quickly, furiously.

But afterwards, as he looked at her lying spent in his arms, his shirt askew where she had tugged it off and her clothes torn when in his impatience he had ripped them, he had felt self-disgust overwhelm him.

He had behaved like an animal, intent on slaking his carnal pleasures, not even caring for the well-being of his sick wife. He always lost control whenever she was around and it had happened again.

Overwhelmed with guilt, he had left full of self-castigation for being so weak-willed where she was concerned. And that was the last time he had seen her.

He looked at Meethi now and some of his guilt returned. His behaviour had been despicable.

‘You said that you were going mad and you seemed totally disgusted!’ she said softly, reminding him. Something had died inside her that day when she had seen the disgust on his face. She had never felt so unwanted and useless in her life. She knew then that she would have to leave.

He froze in shock. Had she mistakenly thought that he was disgusted with her?

‘Was that why you ran away?’ he asked grimly.

‘You weren’t happy in our marriage,’ Meethi said, sadness colouring her voice.

She was pretending to have left out of concern for him. Accusing him of being the unhappy one in their marriage. Her duplicity fuelled his anger.

‘So, you are shifting the blame on to me now? You claim to have run away because I was unhappy, but if you really wanted to spare my feelings then why the charade of your death? Did you think I would be happy to hear that my wife had drowned?’ Veer replied.

‘I thought it would be better in the long run…’ Meethi said weakly.

‘Better for whom? You and that old man of yours?’ he said crushingly through bloodless lips. He had had enough of her lies and deception.

‘What old man?’ she asked with a look of incomprehension.

Meethi’s look served like a red rag to his anger. She was an actress beyond compare.

‘Stop acting the innocent! Did you think I wouldn’t come to know? You ran away because you didn’t want to stay married any more. You ran away to your teacher, didn’t you? I had always suspected you were infatuated with him and finally you decided to go to him!’ he said vehemently.

Meethi looked at him, stupefied. Did he really believe that she could have betrayed him with her guru?

As a child, Meethi had loved art and her work had caught the attention of Yogesh Hussein, a renowned artist who had begun tutoring her when she was ten. He’d claimed she had ‘unusual artistic talent’, and Meethi had revered him, looking up to him as another father figure. She was aghast and stunned at Veer’s insinuations.

‘I didn’t run off to be with him!’ she said tightly.

‘Why do you persist in lying? You ran from here straight to him. Didn’t you?’ Veer thundered.

His blood had boiled when the detective had reported that she had gone to Hussein’s house in Delhi and from there to his farmhouse, where she had stayed secretly for about three months before she had gone to Kolkata.

‘I went to him because there was no one else I could turn to,’ Meethi said heavily. Her baba had passed away and she had no other relatives she could go to.

Guruji had been shocked but supportive, and she had stayed with him for the first three months but Meethi had been terrified that Veer would trace her and so she had begged him to send her away somewhere else.

Veer felt as if she had slapped him. The unpalatable fact that his wife considered him ‘no one’ and had preferred to turn to another man and betray him stung his formidable pride.

‘So, even knowing that you had run away duplicitously, he abetted your perfidy? What sob story did you tell him? How did you justify your running away? Is this what he teaches his students? Or is it only you? Did he encourage you to run away?’ he said, words flying out of his mouth with ferocious precision.

‘He didn’t encourage me. In fact, he told me to talk to you but…’ Her voice tapered off.

Guruji had tried to convince her to talk to Veer and iron out their problems. He had even offered to talk to Veer himself but she had been so hysterical in her refusal that he had relented.

‘But you didn’t think my reputation was anything to care about. Family honour, propriety, decorum—all these are foreign words to you. They don’t matter to you at all,’ Veer thundered bitterly.

It had been difficult for him to accept that not only was Meethi alive but that she had meticulously planned her escape down to the smallest detail. She had wanted to leave him.

And she would have been successful at staying hidden if he hadn’t come across her painting at the exhibition.

His eyes grew cold and his face turned grim when he recalled how, a year after her supposed accident, he had gone to a painting exhibition organised by one of the charities he supported, featuring the works of Hussein.

As he’d walked around the exhibition one painting had made his blood run cold. He had stood, stunned, in front of the painting of a puppy sitting atop a car. The car was his Jaguar and the puppy was the one that Meethi had once dived to save as it had run in front of his car.

The painting didn’t bear any initials but he knew that no one apart from Meethi could have painted it. But when had she painted it? How could she have painted it? Questions had inundated his mind but a gut feeling bloomed inside him, filling him with the cold clarity that Meethi was alive.

When he’d asked the organisers about the painting they’d said that Hussein had donated the entire collection of paintings to the charity. He had immediately tried to contact Hussein but discovered, to his frustration, that the man was untraceable. He had visited his office, his house and even his farmhouse, but he seemed to have vanished.

The renowned artist had always exhibited a soft spot for Meethi and he had called Veer a couple of times after their wedding, trying to persuade him to send her abroad for her degree. Veer hadn’t liked the other man’s possessive tone when he’d spoken of Meethi and had kept putting off his request. He hadn’t mentioned anything to Meethi because she adored her guruji and blindly followed what he said. And Veer had always felt irritated and, though he didn’t admit it, slightly jealous.

And so, his suspicions thoroughly roused, Veer had hired the services of a private detective to trace Meethi.

As he’d waited for the detective’s report, questions had plagued him. Why had Meethi fooled him? Why had she feigned her death? What had she hoped to gain? Had it been a sign of her wilful immaturity? Or was there a deeper reason behind her disappearance? Was the reason connected to Hussein?

It took the detective more than a year to gather clues and put them together and then some more months to trace Meethi’s exact whereabouts. She had been in hiding for a full three years before the detective ferreted out her current address, a cottage in Santiniketan, near Kolkatta. And his report confirmed Veer’s worst fears. She had run off to Hussein.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Meethi protested.

‘Then what was the reason for this deception? And if Hussein was so concerned about you, why didn’t he come and talk to me? I tried to contact him and left innumerable messages at his house but he had disappeared!’

‘Why did you try to contact him?’ Meethi asked hesitantly. How had Veer discovered her deception? She knew that Guruji would not have contacted him because he knew how adamant she had been about not returning to Veer. But why hadn’t Guruji mentioned anything to her about Veer trying to contact him?

‘Because I saw your painting of the puppy,’ he said searingly.

So that was what led him to her. But how could he have seen the painting? It was with Guruji. After she went to live at his farmhouse, Guruji had compelled her to begin painting again. And, once she began, it had been the only thing that had kept her sane and afloat, saving her from drowning in a morass of despair. She had poured out her anguish on canvas and it had helped her achieve a sense of closure. But she had painted mostly abstracts or figures that in no way revealed her identity. The painting of the puppy was, in fact, the only one that was in any way connected to her past and she had left it with Guruji because it was too painful to face the memories it roused.

‘How did you find it?’ she asked.

‘He donated it to a charity I patronise. He must’ve been ecstatic when you ran to him. It is, after all, what he always wanted. He always had a vested interest in you,’ Veer said condemningly.

Meethi looked at him with dismay. ‘How can you even think such thoughts about Guruji? He has always been unselfish in his support and encouragement.’

After high school, Guruji had helped Meethi win a scholarship to a prestigious art college in London, and she had been thoroughly excited at the prospect.

But, to her dismay, her ever-supportive father had put his foot down, saying he wouldn’t let her stay abroad alone. She had been trying to convince him to let her go to college when her marriage to Veer had come about.

Veer had promised he would let her go to art college but she’d gradually realised that he hadn’t wanted her to go either. He had spoken to the college authorities and they had agreed to hold her place for a year but, as the months rolled by, there was always some excuse why she could not take her place. And her duties would keep her so busy that she found no time during the day to paint.

A few times when, late at night, she painted at home Veer would find ways of distracting her. Low heat coiled deep down inside when she remembered how he had often carried her off to bed in the midst of painting.

Guruji had been disappointed at her inability to go but he would bracingly tell her to continue painting. He had, in fact, been the only one who had supported her passion unstintingly.

Veer looked at Meethi with dark scorn. ‘His support was never unselfish. He wanted the fame of being known as your teacher, the one who spotted your talent and trained you. He encouraged you to the extent of ignoring your responsibilities and vows of marriage. And so you spun your web of lies and ran away. How you must have laughed at fooling me! I have never in my whole life come across such a duplicitous person. You have besmirched my honour and the family name!’ he castigated her.

Meethi listened to his diatribe, and bitterness filled her. He hadn’t once mentioned his feelings on losing her. It was only about his loss of face, his honour, his reputation. It would always be the same.

Family name and honour were the only codes he lived by and that still remained unchanged. He simply considered her another of his possessions, an object he owned that would be relegated to a back corner the moment she outlived her usefulness.

And she had proved a failure. She couldn’t provide the heir that he wanted. A heart-rending cry almost left her throat as painful memories of her miscarriage threatened to inundate her, but she ruthlessly pushed the door shut on them.

There was no point trying to sort out the convoluted mess of their relationship. Let him rave and rant and say what he wanted to, but when the time came she would run away again. She let his acrimony wash over her, wiped all expression from her face and turned away slightly.

She was dismissing him. She had run off. Fooled him. Her betrayal had blown a hole in his soul. And she didn’t care! The heartless manner in which she had tricked him by concocting the story of her fatal accident slammed into his memory and his fury reached mammoth proportions.

Veer wanted to demand further answers but he didn’t trust himself around her any more. He walked out of the room, leaving her alone. He had always been clear-sighted and decisive but Meethi managed to disturb his cool and left his thought processes completely tangled and in disarray. His formidable control always deserted him when she was around and she had managed to do what no one else had ever managed to do—hurt him where it mattered most. His head was spinning and he needed to put things in perspective.

CHAPTER TWO

MEETHI CURLED UP on her side, utterly drained and trying to stifle the sobs rising in her throat. She had been so happy when they got married. It had seemed as if she had found her sapno ka rajkumar—the prince of her dreams.

She remembered their first meeting, when she had saved a puppy from being run over by his car.

When he’d alighted from the car, his dark, smouldering looks had taken her breath away. He’d stood there, broad-shouldered and so tall that she had to crane her neck to look into the midnight-black eyes staring out of a chiselled face. He had been the most handsome man she had ever seen and, for a moment, her voice had threatened to desert her.

But his haughty, disdainful expression and regal air had angered her. She had sensed he was royalty by the way he carried himself and by the subservient attitude of the three men who had jumped out of the car with him. She had dismissed him as a typical royal, full of swagger and self-importance. And, not being kindly disposed towards royals in general, despite her thudding heart she had lambasted him.

Later, when she’d encountered him at a wedding she had gone to, she had felt his eyes following her and had tried her best to ignore him, feeling breathless and nervous. Inexperienced though she was with men, her senses had been aware of his dark sex appeal and the charged heat which seemed to shimmer whenever their glances met.

He had approached her the next morning when she was out early jogging and, striking up a conversation, had apologised for the car incident. Floored by his sincere apology, she had acquiesced to his invitation for breakfast and, before she knew it, they had driven down to a nearby heritage resort.

He had proved an interesting conversationalist and, over a sumptuous breakfast, they had talked about a variety of subjects. Though there was a difference of nine years between them, they had discovered a common love of music and cricket and there had been humorous bickering over favourites.

She had so thoroughly enjoyed herself that time had flown and she had been aghast to realise that it was already afternoon when they returned.

On their return, Veer had met her father and asked for her hand in marriage.

Her father had been ecstatic. Veer’s impeccable lineage and spotless reputation had bowled him over. He had approved wholeheartedly of the match.

But Meethi had felt piqued at what she considered Veer’s high-handed, archaic behaviour. The entire morning, he hadn’t given a single hint of any such interest and then he had suddenly gone behind her back to talk to her father.

She was also upset because she didn’t want to get married at nineteen.

Since she’d been seventeen her father had been inundated with proposals from well-meaning relatives. But her father had withstood the pressure from family and relatives and remained firm that she would complete her studies first.

Meethi had wanted to go to college and graduate with a degree in Fine Arts and Baba had always supported her desire but, worryingly, he had recently started hinting at finding a suitable match for her. And now he was serious about Veer’s proposal.

Though his dark good looks had mesmerised her and her heart beat loudly when he was around, she was deeply scared of giving up her life as she knew it. She knew life changed for a girl when she married. She had seen her friends married off young, freedom curtailed, circumscribed within the four walls of their sasural—their marital homes. Their lives revolved around their husband, in-laws and huge joint families and they had no independence or say in the running of their own lives.