“Mmmm,” Quill said, running his hand down Gabby’s back. He found to his annoyance that she had pulled a length of silk over herself. “I’m looking for my dream wife,” he said. “She’s up there somewhere, waiting for me, with her rosy halo. She would lie here naked in the sunshine without a thought for propriety.”

“Lucky her,” Gabby said. “Let me know when you find her. I want to warn her about the sunburns in her future.”

“There’s nothing in her future but me,” Quill said lazily. He rolled over, half on top of his wife, and murmured, “An hundred years should go to praise thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, but thirty thousand to the rest. That’s a rather lazy poem by Andrew Marvell. With world enough and time, I intend to keep my Dream Gabby busy—just the two of us, through all eternity.”

“Well,” said his wife, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, “then eternity is where the oh-so-lauded Dream Gabby and I part company.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your future on earth,” she said.

“What about it?”

“It won’t be so solitary by this time next year,” she whispered. “Not just you and me anymore.”

There was a moment’s silence. A frog plopped into the deep green depths of the Ganges. Reeds hushed themselves in a faint wind.

Quill cleared his throat. “Are you saying…?”

“Mmmm,” said his wife, her eyes smiling at him.

“Are you certain?”

“Absolutely.”

The Englishman rolled away and stood up, showing his naked self to the whole world, had the world shown any interest. “We’re going home,” he said briskly, reaching for his trousers and pulling them on.

His wife propped herself on her elbows and laughed. “Home to Jaipur or home to England?”

“Home to England.”

“I thought you needed a few more months to consolidate your trade routes to England. And Jawsant has truly appreciated your help with the royal treasury.”

Quill knelt on the grass next to his mischievous wife. “Home to England, Baggage.” He touched her nose with one finger.

Gabby sighed. “I suppose this is your way of telling me that you are outrageously happy?”

Quill nodded. “Of course.”

“Living with you is an act of interpretation, do you know that?”

“Living with you is…bliss. Did you know that?”

Gabby’s eyes filled with tears. A drift of white jasmine that bent over the Ganges succumbed to the breeze and scattered flowers. And Quill’s mouth came to hers as sweetly as the jasmine floated on the water.

A Note about Migraines,
Ecuadorian Frogs, and Indian Princes