“Lady Dewland, naturally I speak hypothetically, but if you were to receive any letters from the Holkar court in the future—oh, say from Tulasi Bai—would you be willing to share information with the British government?”

“Perhaps,” Gabby said. “I will always be glad to help in any way that I deem suitable, my lord.”

Lord Breksby’s sigh indicated that he knew precisely how much information the Foreign Office could expect to garner from the viscountess’s correspondence. “This has been a most interesting evening, Lady Dewland,” he said. “Did you know that I am retiring from my post in the very near future?”

“I believe that my husband informed me of that happy event,” she said, giving the retiring minister a sweet smile.

“And I’m pleased to be doing so,” Breksby said with a chuckle. “I would be worried that you’d turn me into a figurehead and run the Foreign Office yourself.”

Gabby’s enchanting, husky giggle escaped. “Fie, sir! All I did was protect my sweet Kasi, as you well know. I have no ambitions to interfere with British foreign policy.”

There was a moment’s unconvinced silence in the carriage.

Gabby leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder. They might not believe her, but she was being absolutely truthful. Her next project was Quill.

Chapter 22

SUDHAKAR STEPPED OFF the Fortitude onto English soil with a sense of profound relief. The journey had been exhausting. He found Calcutta to be conspicuously unpleasant, a great mass of people running this way and that. Each private gentleman was attended by twenty servants at least, if you counted the footmen who ran before his palanquin and the bahareas who carried it. Shouting and screaming echoed in the streets. One couldn’t take a stroll without being nearly burned by torchbearers or pushed aside by nakeeves clearing the way for their masters. He found the number of elephants plodding down the streets particularly irksome, given their propensity to void while in motion.

And he had to admit that he missed his village. At home there was only one such elevated personage—Richard Jerningham. And Jerningham employed only one nakeeve to clear his way and one page to carry an umbrella to shade him from the sun. Sudhakar had always thought that Jerningham was a pompous bore. Now he realized that he hadn’t even guessed the pomposity of which Jerningham might have been capable.

In contrast, life on the Fortitude had been a familiar experience. The four passengers appeared to be trapped in a small floating village, ensnared by their anxieties, prejudices, and sentiments. At first, the English gentlemen ignored Sudhakar, viewing him with supercilious disdain, as such types surveyed all those they believed to be in a humbler walk of life. To Sudhakar, this was familiar, since Jerningham had affected the same sneering contempt—until he realized that Sudhakar was the only English-speaking chess player in the village.