Quill strolled over so that he could stand behind his wife as she sat at the delicate little dressing table. He ran his fingers down her hair. “I’m afraid that I am still not quite following, my dear. I understood that Sudhakar is an elderly gentleman. It must have been quite an arduous voyage for him. Why is he paying us this visit?”

“Oh, he’s doing it for me. Because I asked him to,” Gabby answered promptly.

“And why did you ask him to visit?” Quill’s long, clever fingers stroked through his wife’s golden-brown hairs as if they were strands of silk to be separated before weaving.

She hesitated.

“Could it be that Sudhakar is bringing his own little miracle concoction with him?”

Gabby bit her lip. “You needn’t put it like that.”

“And how else shall I refer to his medicine?”

“I…I don’t know what it’s called,” she admitted.

“What we do know is that it is in the same genus as those medicines I discarded. I believed that we had a firm understanding, Gabby. No more. I will never take another potion—not from an English apothecary, nor from an Indian miracle healer. Regardless of Sudhakar’s skill or his friendship with you, I will not take his medicine. Under any circumstances.”

“But this is different,” Gabby said unhappily. She met her husband’s eyes in the dressing-table mirror. “Sudhakar is not a fraud, like those apothecaries I visited. There’s no hemp in his medicine.”

“Given that Mr. Moore boasted of using Indian hemp, the ingredient may well appear in Sudhakar’s potion as well.”

Gabby twitched her shoulders under Quill’s fingers and then forced herself to sit quietly.

“The real point is that you promised not to buy any more medicines.”

Her heart was pounding. “I wrote to Sudhakar long before I made that promise.”

Quill’s voice was steely, implacable. “You said—and I quote, Gabby—‘I promise not to buy any more concoctions.’”

“I didn’t have to buy his medicine,” she muttered. Her face was burning.

“That is beside the point.” Quill turned abruptly and walked away, stopping with his back to the window. “What I find truly objectionable is the fact that you lied to me, Gabby.”

“I didn’t really—”

“You lied with foreknowledge. We can distinguish that from lies such as those you told me about Kasi Rao.”

“I didn’t tell you any lies about Kasi!”

“Lies of omission,” Quill said. “Yesterday when Lord Breksby announced that Kasi Rao had been found by the East India Company, you said naught to me of Jawsant Rao Holkar and your kingmaking activities.” His voice had a bitter twinge, and his shoulders were squared as he looked into the black garden. “I gather you didn’t trust me not to contact Breksby.”

Gabby took a shuddering breath. “That wasn’t it at all! I didn’t lie to you—”