I stopped dead, brought up short as much by the intense beauty of the room as by the crowd it held; there had to be thirty people in the room already, drinks and cigarettes in their hands, the inevitable empty talk of the cocktail party on their tongues. Three flighty German girls nearby chattered madly about the lake-birds they had seen, two American men debated the relative merits of two makes of shotgun, a mixed trio of Italians seemed to be trying to sell a race-horse to another American—and that was the mixture within earshot. Only a handful of the guests appeared Indian, and none of those wore traditional dress. I was glad I hadn’t put on the lovely garment the Simla durzi had made for me—I’d have been as out of place as a caparisoned camel.

Sunny stood across the room, her face flushed with excitement and, I thought, with the drink she held. She spotted me an instant later and began to wave furiously, so that half the people in the room turned in amusement to watch me come in.

“Ooh,” she burst out, “isn’t this just the superest thing? Isn’t my brother just the darlingest?”

I looked up and around the jewel-box of a room, its walls and ceiling of creamy white marble inlaid with semi-precious stones, predominantly jade and lapis lazuli with spots of coral. The upper level was obscured by carved marble screens, designed for the use of the women in purdah, I supposed, and the colours made it feel as if one stood in a tropical sea, blue-green waters sparkling with the bright colours of the fish. “It certainly is impressive. What are you drinking?”

“It’s something called a White Lady,” she said, peering doubtfully into the glass. On the boat, I’d never seen her permitted drink stronger than a single glass of wine.

“Perhaps you should stick to the lemonade,” I suggested. “If you take it in a champagne glass, nobody’ll know.”

She giggled, and I decided it was probably too late to worry about her sobriety. “Where is your mother?”

“Feeling a bit under the weather,” she confided. “Mama went on a barn-storming ride once at a fair and the aeroplane landed sort of hard. Well, crashed, really. So she’s not too keen on them, anymore.”

“That’s understandable. Thank you,” I said to the uniformed entity who appeared at my side with a tray of champagne and gin fizzes. I took the wine. “Your brother, though—he seemed more experienced.”

“Oh yes, Tommy’s flown a lot.” Sunny giggled at nothing much, then leant forward to whisper, “Have you talked with His Highness yet?”

“No, I’ve been in my rooms.”

“Neither have I. Isn’t he dreamy?”

“He seemed very nice,” I agreed somewhat noncommittally; actually, I thought his brisk abandonment of his lady guests at the air field, and his absence at our arrival in The Forts, rather unusual.