‘Let me ask you plainly, dearest: is Lord Bentinck quite to be trusted? I don’t know the particulars, of course, but it seems very convenient for the Company that Chintal be deemed to be in lapse. From what you’ve told me of the place, it wasn’t in the least worth Fort William’s regrets. But now there are rubies – and coal indeed! It is really most convenient. Even if Bentinck does act entirely honourably in this, he’s to leave India next year – you know that – and his successor will be a Whig, and decidedly against these encroachments. Shall you not be … tarnished?’

‘I am a man under authority; I am not responsible for the orders given me.’

She sighed, and put a hand on his. ‘Oh, Matthew; of course you’re not responsible. But I don’t trust these Whigs. They make all sorts of mischief and absolve themselves because it serves a higher principle, they say. And Somervile will be of no help because he too will have gone.’

Kezia was beginning to sound like Henrietta: anxious for his reputation, ambitious for his advancement, mistrustful of any who might do him down – and he loved her even more for it.

But he smiled, intending to reassure her that she need have no fear in that regard. ‘You’ll recall that Bentinck’s a Whig himself. We might reasonably suppose continuity therefore.’

Kezia said nothing. She’d said enough. She knew her husband to be a reflective man. It was sufficient now to plant the question in his mind, for him to contemplate during quiet moments in the coming months, of which there must surely be some?

And there was the reassurance that Georgiana would be with him, a present reminder (and, of course, Annie must go with her). There was also the chance that St Alban would notice and reciprocate her admiration.

PART TWO

THE NORTHERN CIRCARS

XI

Ghufoor Khan

The road to Chintalpore, eight weeks later

Fairbrother was not to be discouraged. In the course of November he’d tramped the road from Guntoor to Sthambadree, and beyond to the border with Chintal, then back again via Bezwada to the east, three times – seven hundred miles in all, perhaps, trailing his coat in the red earth, hazarding the ferries on the Krishna and a dozen other rivers of this vast plain in the hope of tempting thuggee. Not just any band, however: Sleeman’s intelligence was, if not precise, very definite. The man they sought was known to all as Arjan Brar, ‘the last of the Pindarees’, the freebooting horsemen of the Maratha wars, though Brar himself was reputed to be of a noble Jat family. But Sleeman said he’d welcome any encounter with thugs – of course – for there was always the possibility that one of the captives would turn approver, with information that would lead them to their prize. This was how he’d come to know of Arjan Brar in the first place, for four years ago he’d captured the infamous ‘Feringhee’ and turned him approver. It was, he said, like taking the plan of a maze: where before, all he’d seen as he tried to find the route to the middle were high hedges, with Feringhee’s collaboration he now knew his way about blindfold. But there was, he said, another maze – perhaps even two – connected in some way with the first, and for this, Feringhee had told him, he needed Arjan Brar. For Brar was key to the secrets of thuggee in Mysore.