"You're taking me to a mall for dinner?" she asked, unable to disguise her shock at the idea.
She wasn't a snob. She wasn't. But she'd never eaten in a mall.
She'd had snacks from street vendors in India, but never even that in a mall.
Malls were for shopping, buying clothing from the stores that carried her favorite designers. Not for eating.
Particularly not for eating dinner.
"The restaurant is in the mall." He cast her a sidelong glance that wasn't exactly condescending, but it was close. "Real life people eat here all the time."
"I'm just as real as you are."
"Are you?"
"Don't be rude."
His laugh wasn't mean, but it wasn't warm humor either. "You may not be a princess by blood, but there's no question you've been raised in a palace."
"I spent as much time at boarding schools." Her time away from the Singhs had helped Eliza maintain an emotional distance living with them would have made more difficult.
"As did I, but no question my mother had more influence on how I tuned out than the teachers at the school."
"She is your mother, of course she did."
"And were not the Singhs your de facto parents?" He pulled his car into an open spot not anywhere near the entrance.
Eliza couldn't quite believe he was just going to park there. She had to think back to focus on the question he'd asked. "They are (were in Adhip uncle's case) my guardians."
"So, this marriage of convenience has nothing to do with family duty?"
"You know that it does."
"So, the royal family of Mahapatras dynasty are your family."
"I never said they weren't."
"You claimed you were not a princess."
"I will not be a princess until we are married."
"You will like this restaurant." He opened his car door without addressing the possibility of marriage between them. "They serve farm to table, organic Asian fusion. It's very good."
She had no idea what that meant. Wasn't all food farm to table?
He came around to her side of the car and opened the door, offering his hand. She took it, feeling things she'd never felt with Dev at that one simple touch. How was that possible?
Eliza didn't know this man. Not really, no matter how much she might have read about him.
They started walking away from his car, like it wasn't a two-hundred-thousand-dollar vehicle that looked like he'd just driven it off the lot.
He saw her expression and laughed. "It's not going get carjacked while we're inside."
"Are you sure? Wouldn't it be better to use a driver?" They would not have had to park so far away from the mall entrance either.
Eliza didn't mind walking, but she was used to more care being taken with her safety. Surely the man who had built a multi-billion-dollar business should have his own security and be more cautious.
"I prefer to drive myself. Besides, I had a feeling we were going to discuss things we didn't need a driver witnessing."
"But surely your employees are accustomed to being circumspect." Servants gossiped, but they knew the topics that were off limits.
"You really were raised to see the world like a princess, weren't you?"
"I suppose." Because she would never have gone to the mall without a driver, and at least one guard to accompany her.
No wonder Grandfather had been so worried.
"Your parents were American," he pointed out.
She wasn't sure apropos to what? "They were."
"And despite being a foreigner and not a princess by blood, the Singh family find you good enough to be married to their heir? Heirs," Rajvinder corrected himself and acknowledged her commitment to marry Dev.
They stopped in the courtyard outside the restaurant. The parking lot had been full, but it wasn't crowded, though she noticed through the windows that several tables were occupied. The Christmas décor gave the mall a festive air.
Maybe all the people were busy shopping for the upcoming holiday.
She realized that Rajvinder was looking at her expectantly and she had not yet answered his question.
"I'm outside the caste system." Only, really, she wasn't exactly. Her role as ward to the Singhs gave her special status. Surely, he realized that and it did not need to be spelled out.
But Rajvinder frowned. "You're foreign. That's got its own stigma."
"It's the twenty-first century, not the eleventh."
"So everyone keeps telling me." He turned and headed toward the door to the restaurant.
She followed behind, refusing to rush. "You don't sound convinced."
"I'd say the way both the Acharya and Singh families reacted with medieval prejudices when my mother got pregnant with me would say otherwise. At least for those two families."
"But even that was thirty-five years ago."
He didn't reply, opening the door for her to precede him into the building.
"I'll take your word for it." But his tone said that was only until she proved herself a liar.
CHAPTER THREE
The restaurant was surprisingly nice. Its open floor plan with beautiful wood tables and modern Asian influence in the décor felt like it could be any of the nicer eateries the family gave their patronage.
Eliza waited until the host showed them to a high booth style table in the back of the restaurant, after Rajvinder asked for something private and quiet, before adding further to their conversation. "Grandfather said Adhip uncle could not marry outside the caste."
"My mother may have been of the Vaishnav caste, but her family are not only better off than the Singhs financially, but also politically influential in the province. How was she not good enough?"
Despite having lived with her Indian surrogate family for most of her life, Eliza still found the caste system mysterious and often confusing.
So, she said what she could. The truth. "Grandfather admires your mother greatly. I don't think it has anything to do with good enough, more like hidebound restrictions they simply could not let go of."
"They were no better seventeen years ago."
"You shocked Adhip uncle with your arrival." She remembered well the time after Rajvinder had come to visit, so indelibly imprinted on her mind by being so close to her parents' deaths.
"He made that clear," Rajvinder drawled sardonically, sounding very American right then. "And he let me know there was no place in all of India for me to be his son either."
"I'm sorry." At the time, Eliza had been so lost in her own grief, what was happening with Rajvinder's visit did not really register. Only later had she realized that Adhip uncle had rejected his only biological child. "He always regretted his reaction to you. You refused any contact after that."
Rajvinder ignored the menu in front of him and waived away the waiter before he reached the table. "My sperm donor had two opportunities to do the right thing. He failed utterly both times. Life isn't baseball, he didn't get a third swing at the bat."
She wondered if anyone ever got a chance to let this man down more than twice, or more likely one time. She was beginning to understand that his arrival in India at the age of eighteen had been out of character for him and a chance Adhip uncle should never have expected.