Georgiana sat between the rissaldar and St Alban. The rissaldar had good, at times excellent, English. He was perhaps five or six years St Alban’s senior, with – as Hervey observed, and rather to his surprise after the morning’s chase – a ready smile and pleasing manners. He was from Rajpootana, he told her, his father a zamindar who’d engaged a former writer from Fort William as his tutor.

Annie, too, seemed to be finding things agreeable. Every time Hervey looked to see how she and Georgiana were, he saw her talking easily – to her left with a jemadar of the bodyguard, and to her right with the wife of another, whose father was a man of business in Bombay but who’d lived for some time at the Cape, and who spoke English almost naturally.

He’d observed how the Ranee had received her, though, which vexed him – suddenly ‘regal’, as if minded she must display her superiority, show no deference simply because someone was of the gora log – the white people. Though display to whom, puzzled him. Georgiana, on the other hand, she’d received with delight.

Their own conversation was formal, but not stiff. She talked freely of the last time he was in Chintal, and spoke of her father as if her banishment were of no account. He wondered if there’d be occasion during his stay to ask of it, and what truly had lain behind it? He’d wish to understand for completeness, not just what bearing it might have on his mission.

‘You are welcome in Chintalpore, you know, as long as you have care to stay. But how exactly are you come here?’

And now he must practise deceit, the soldier’s art before battle is joined. But it was one thing to deceive an enemy in the field, and rather another to lie to his host. He could only dissemble.

‘Very precisely, I come by way of Guntoor, in the suppression of dacoitee – of thuggee.’

He observed her closely as he spoke. Her expression remained the same.

The dewan said something, which Hervey’s Hindoostanee could not quite catch.

Suneyla obliged. ‘The dewan asks how is the great Lord Bentinck at Fort William.’

‘I have not had the honour of his acquaintance, Your Highness, but I understand that he is well.’

Suneyla explained this to the dewan, though Hervey sensed he’d understood well enough. Yet just as he himself was sometimes reluctant to speak, fearing mistakes, he could hardly condemn the dewan for not wishing to practise his imperfect command of a foreign tongue before two expert speakers. It made, though, for tedious conversation.

The dewan asked if, in that case, he’d not lately been at Fort William.

Suneyla answered that he’d come from Guntoor, but the dewan appeared to want to be certain on the point.

Hervey smiled absently. ‘I’m afraid that I have not been to Fort William in many years.’ (Nine was a number that seemed to him reasonable to number as ‘many’.)