Chapter 6

The wedding took place shortly before midnight.

The priest placed the small silver container of vermilion before Neil and instructed Tara to lower her head.

For a moment, Neil did not move.

Fourteen years had passed since he had last performed this ritual. He remembered Naina sitting beside him, struggling to suppress her laughter because he had been so solemn throughout their wedding ceremony. She had teased him about it afterwards, telling him that he had looked less like a groom and more like a man attending an important board meeting.

The memory came without warning, painfully clear.

“Mr Oberoi,” the priest prompted gently.

Neil returned his attention to the ceremony. He took a small pinch of sindoor between his fingers.

Beside him, Tara lowered her head. Her thick black curls had been drawn away from her face, revealing the neat parting of her hair. The elaborate gold jewellery she wore caught the flickering light of the sacred fire, while the crimson silk of her Banarasi saree lay gathered around her.

Neil leaned forward and carefully placed the vermilion along the parting of her hair, his fingers brushed her forehead.

Tara closed her eyes.

For her, the moment was almost unbearable. She had imagined it so many times over the past few months, imagined Samar sitting beside her, imagined the happiness she would feel when he made her his wife. She had even wondered whether she would cry.

She had not imagined feeling this hollow.

A little sindoor had fallen onto the bridge of her nose. She could feel its fine powder against her skin, but she made no attempt to wipe it away.

The priest murmured his blessing.

“Lift your head, Tara,” Kavita whispered from behind her, Tara slowly raised her face.

And Neil looked at her.

He had seen her several times that evening. He had spoken to her, listened to her trembling answers, and watched her agree to a marriage neither of them had wanted. Yet until that moment, he had been occupied with the circumstances surrounding them rather than the woman herself.

Now, with the bright streak of vermilion against her black hair and the unmistakable signs of marriage upon her, she looked entirely different.

Not like Naina.

That was the first thing he realised.

There was nothing of his late wife's appearance in the face before him. Naina had possessed Vikram's sharp features, straight hair, fit body and composed elegance. Tara had her mother's softness, large brown eyes, full cheeks, voluptuous body and an abundance of dark curls that refused to remain neatly arranged. Even her expression was different. Naina had always met the world with quiet assurance, while Tara's face seemed incapable of concealing what she felt.

And at that moment, she looked utterly lost.

The sindoor had transformed her appearance in a way Neil found difficult to explain. The girl he remembered from years ago had long since grown into a woman, he understood that perfectly well. But until tonight, she had remained in his mind as Naina's little sister, someone belonging to lost time.

He noticed the slight tremor in her lower lip, the exhaustion beneath her carefully restored makeup, and the way she held herself rigidly, as though the smallest movement might cause the composure she had gathered to collapse.

Her eyes met his.

For one brief, uncomfortable moment, neither looked away.

Neil became acutely conscious of the vermilion still staining his fingertips, he had put it there. Whatever circumstances had brought them to this moment, whatever reasons they had offered themselves for agreeing, it was his hand that had marked her as a married woman.

Tara's gaze dropped first.

Neil withdrew his hand and reached for the folded handkerchief beside him, he wiped his fingers slowly, listening as the priest continued the ceremony.

Across the sacred fire, Vidya watched her grandson. She had seen the brief hesitation, the way his attention had settled on Tara's face, and the unfamiliar gravity that had entered his expression.

She knew better than to mistake it for affection.

Neil was a man who understood the consequences of his decisions, sometimes only after he had made them. And tonight, for the first time, he seemed to be looking at those consequences.

The priest announced that the rituals were complete. Kavita began to cry quietly. Vikram stepped forward to bless the newly married couple, his eyes wet with a mixture of relief and sorrow.

Tara bent to touch her father's feet. When she straightened, Neil found himself looking at the sindoor in her hair once more.

It was such a small thing. A narrow line of red, scarcely noticeable beneath the elaborate bridal ornaments. Yet it had changed the meaning of her presence beside him. An hour earlier, she had been Tara Sen, a young woman abandoned by the man she loved.

Now she was Tara Oberoi.

His wife.

And as Neil watched her accept her father's trembling embrace, he realised that he had spent the entire evening thinking about what this marriage would mean to Naina's family.

He had not once considered what it would mean to come home and find another woman wearing sindoor in his name.

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