And then the maharaja said to me, “Do remove your topee, Captain Russell; you’ll be able to see better.” Holmes tensed, his hand making a fist, his eyes darting to the guards as he prepared to fling himself to my protection.

But a topee is not a turban, and I had been my teacher’s pupil before I became my husband’s wife, learning to my bones that half a disguise is none at all. I lifted my topee, smoothed my regulation officer’s haircut with my other hand, and bent forward obediently to witness the lack of tricks up the magician’s sleeve.

The moment my short-cropped, pomade-sleek, unquestionably masculine hair passed beneath his nose was the closest I’ve ever seen Holmes to fainting dead away.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The magician was led back into the palace, either escorted or under guard, according to the eyes that watched him go. The rest of us drifted away to dress for dinner. My clothing had been ironed and either folded away or hung in the spacious wardrobe, and the safety razor and shaving mug I had borrowed from Nesbit were laid out in the bath-room, ready to lend the verisimilitude of smooth cheeks to my appearance. I launched into the laborious process of donning a man’s formal attire, fumbling with the studs and cursing under my breath at the tie, working for just the correct touch of insouciance. The indicators of quality in a human male are more subtle than those of the female, hence all the more essential to hit it right. Hair combed but not plastered; shoes of the highest quality and shined to a mirror gloss, but clearly not new; fingernails clean but not pampered. When the knock came on my door, I presented myself with all the nervousness of a débutante at her Court presentation.

Nesbit ran his eyes over me, coming up with approval and a trace of amusement, which made me glad, that he was beginning to get past his dislike of the clandestine impetus for our invasion of Khanpur. He did not care for spying on his friend, but he would do so at the top of his bent.

“Shall we go?”

“I didn’t hear the bell.”

“Time for a drink before,” he suggested, and Martin Russell followed him agreeably down to the billiards room.

The atmosphere of the palace had shifted in my absence, although I could not lay my finger on the how or why. Mrs Goodheart had left, off to Bombay to see her “Teacher,” taking Sunny with her; that accounted for some of the change. And although Gay Kaur was there, her hands trembling as she lit a cigarette, I saw neither Faith nor Lyn, who had seemed to me steadying forces in the maharaja’s ménage.