She apparently noticed his intake of breath. “I’m sorry, Quill,” she said. “May I remain for a few minutes, if I make no further noise?”

Quill was struggling with a sense of surprise. His sense of smell became unbearably acute when in the grips of a migraine. Smells—all smells—made him nauseated. But not Gabby’s. She had just had a bath; he could tell that. Jasmine was floating on the air, jasmine and the silky, innocent scent of Gabby herself.

“Your mother, Lady Sylvia, and Peter just left for Southampton. Your mother sent her love.” Gabby was almost whispering. “I could tell you a story,” she added in a rush.

She was embarrassed. Quill would have bet a small fortune that his wife was twisting her hands together and that a rosy tinge was creeping up her cheek.

“I’m not much good at nursing,” she was saying. “But Kasi is often sick, and I used to distract him by telling him stories.”

Quill let his silence be a yes.

“I thought you might like to hear a tale of India,” she said. “This is a story that my ayah told me, and then I told it to Kasi, and in the process it has changed, because that is the nature of stories.

“The story begins where it ends: in a great palace on the outskirts of Barahampore. On one side of the palace flowed the dark and winding river called the Bohogritee, and on the other was a market for singing birds. The palace was constructed of great arched pillars of marble, decorated all over with pictures of the birds that were for sale outside its gates. Over each of the arches, bands of musicians played on their various instruments, morning and evening, imitating the sweet music of the birds.”

Quill had always thought that Gabby’s voice was sensual, with its husky, uneven timbre. Now he realized that it was an instrument that she used like a harp.

“The prince who lived in the palace,” she continued, “was the greatest songbird of them all, the most skilled musician in all India. His name was Mamarah Daula, and there was no instrument that he could not take to hand and play so exquisitely that the very stones wept to hear him. People thronged from the corners of India to hear his music, and thus he lived in a style of unrivaled elegance and beauty. The very earth poured out her treasures to deck his household. He wore shoes of bright crimson velvet, embroidered with silver, and he never traveled without an escort of twenty or thirty servants. Mamarah Daula was a very fortunate man. He was also extraordinarily foolish.”