Excerpt from The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The woman reached for the peonies. "Where did you find these?" she asked.

I had to wrest my eyes away from the young man; he reminded me so much of my late husband. Dev's eyes, gentle and sharp-edged at the same time, much like this man's, had wooed me, loved me, made me feel safe.

When I turned to the woman, I was startled by her eyes, as well. She was a handsome woman made beautiful by those blue orbs, the color of the mountain sky after a night's rain. "In a ravine about a mile from here," I told her. "It plunges sharply from the cliff. There is a grove of them at the bottom." Revealing my find did not concern me. I was used to scaling steep slopes, and I was confident that no one so refined would follow me there. When our tribal elders called one another "old goats," they were referring to the way we trotted so easily up mountains alongside our herds.

Chullu cried out and the woman's attention fell on him. Her eyes flickered and her mouth opened slightly. I rubbed a finger along Chullu's aching gums to soothe him. The woman's face broke into a wondrous smile. "I see he has grown."

Did I know her? If I had met her before, I didn't remember her. She saw my confusion and nodded her chin toward Chullu. "Dr. Kumar and I helped you with his birth a few months ago." She glanced at the top of the ridge. "Several miles on the other side of that peak."

So this was the doctrine who had attended to me! She was responsible for saving my Chullu; I owed her a great deal. I brought my hands together and reached down to touch her feet. "Thank you, Doctor. If not for you—"

She bent to stop me, covering my hands with hers. That was when I noticed the finest henna work I had ever seen on a woman's hands. It looked like the elegant bead-and-sequin work on a wedding chunni—almost as if she were wearing gloves made of an intricately patterned chiffon fabric. It was with an effort that I tore my eyes away from her hands. She was speaking again.

"It is my husband, Dr. Kumar, you have to thank. Up at Lady Bradley Hospital," she said. "I'm not a doctor. I work with him to help ease the pain during and after childbirth. I'm glad to see you and the baby so healthy."

I noticed that she made no mention of my husband, for which I was grateful. The intense pain I had felt upon first losing Dev had narrowed now into a trickle of hurt, perceptible only at certain moments—like when my eyes fell upon the amulet of Shivaji that Dev used to wear around his neck and that I now draped around the statue of the god in my home.

Turning away from the woman and my thoughts of Dev, I began wrapping peonies in old newspaper. I heard the young man ask my children which creature they would like the balloon vendor to make for them. I glanced at him, crouched in front of the children's basket. Chullu stared, mesmerized.

"Please...it is not necessary," I said.

The man with my husband's eyes turned to me and said, "No, it is not necessary." He kept smiling at me until I had to turn away, my face flushed with heat.

I busied myself with the flowers. When the woman tried to pay me, I waved her money away. "I could never repay you enough, Ji."

But the woman pressed money into my palm anyway and said, "You can repay me by feeding them well," pointing at the children, who were now playing with the elephant balloon the young man had bought for them.

The doctrini asked, "Will you make sure you have some peonies for me tomorrow, as well? And I should take some yarrow while I'm here."

As the couple began walking away with their purchases, I called after them, "MemSahib, may I know your name?"

Without breaking her stride, the woman with the blue eyes turned her head and grinned at me. "Mrs. Kumar. Lakshmi Kumar. And yours?"

"Nimmi."

She pointed to the young man, who had turned to face me and was now walking backward to keep pace with her. "This is Malik—Abbas Malik—who will pick up a regular order of flowers from you every few days."

Excerpted from The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi. Copyright © 2021 by Alka Joshi. Excerpted by permission of Mira. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.