Mah Laqa Bai followed his gaze to Penelope, who was swishing her way purposefully to where her husband sat, her high-piled hair like living flame in the light of the lanterns. “She hasn’t a voice like honey, that one.”

“More like vinegar,” Alex agreed. He felt as though he had just bolted an entire glass of the substance. His lips might be permanently puckered from it.

His companion cast him a mischievous glance. “And the thighs like banana stems?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

A slight smile played around Mah Laqa Bai’s much-lauded lips. “That looked very much like a lovers’ quarrel to me.”

Why did everyone keep saying things like that? “Love doesn’t come into it. Or making love, at that. The lady is married. And not to me.”

Across the courtyard, beneath the tent reserved for the omrahs and honored guests, the lady’s husband was watching the progress of the dancers with more than idle speculation. One dancer in particular appeared to have caught his eye, a round-breasted, round-hipped girl with jeweled bands encircling her plump arms above the elbow and at the wrist. Pearls outlined her hairline and a long collar of pearls and semiprecious stones fell between her barely veiled breasts, swinging with the tempo of the music. Lord Frederick watched the sway of the pearls as though hypnotized.

“She’s married to him,” Alex said, indicating Lord Frederick.

As the courtesan danced, she twined a length of orange silk shot through with gold into an elaborate, many-petalled flower. Lifting it suggestively to her lips, she tossed it straight into Lord Frederick’s lap, leaning so close that the pearls, warm with the heat of her breasts, brushed his nose.

Lady Frederick did an admirable job of seeming not to notice, but Alex didn’t miss the slight narrowing of her eyes. Appropriating the flower, she placed it conspicuously in her own décolletage.

Mah Laqa Bai made a moue. “The big blond? He hasn’t taken his eyes off Nur Bai all evening. A poor choice, that. She’s a venal little baggage. She may have breasts like pomegranates, but that’s all there is to her.”

She would know. Mah Laqa Bai had risen to success in her profession by her brains as much as her beauty. Her library was unrivaled in Hyderabad, her poetry was acclaimed as the finest in the land, and as a final tribute, she had been raised to the post of senior advisor to the Nizam, the only woman so honored.

She had also been the lover of Mir Alam, one of the few men with an intellect to match her own. Before the illness had reached his brain, that was.

“There’s not much to Lord Frederick, either,” Alex said caustically, before turning to Mah Laqa Bai, deliberating blocking his own view of both Lord Frederick and his lady. “I’m glad to see you here. I’ve been wanting to speak to you.”

Mah Laqa Bai tilted her head to one side. “I, too, have been wanting to speak to you.”

“I did stop by last week,” pointed out Alex.

Mah Laqa Bai’s eyes twinkled in a way that made her look about half her official age. “But I was otherwise occupied.”

Alex didn’t ask with whom. Sometimes, it was better not to know.

“Whoever he was is a lucky devil,” he said politely.

Mah Laqa Bai lifted a beautifully groomed eyebrow at him. “Don’t flatter me. You don’t do it nearly so well as your father.”

More things Alex didn’t want to know.

“There have been rumors,” he began, moving to the topic he had intended to address.

Mah Laqa Bai’s expression was as pleasant as ever, but he could sense her sudden alertness. “There are always rumors.”

“Rumors about the gold of Berar,” Alex said doggedly. “I had thought you might have heard something.”

It was a very long moment before Mah Laqa Bai answered. In the lantern light, Alex could discern the very faintest signs of lines beneath her carefully applied paint. “May I give you some advice? As a friend?”

Alex lowered his head in a wary nod. Anything that began that way couldn’t end well. Not to mention that the way she had said it made him feel about thirteen years old, freshly arrived at boarding school.

“For your own good, do not go prospecting too deeply into matters that do not concern you. The deepest well may hide the most poisonous snakes.”

“The deepest well?”

“Not the most elegant metaphor,” Mah Laqa Bai agreed calmly, “but none the less true for all that. Watch yourself. This is not a good time to incur Mir Alam’s anger.”

“Does Mir Alam have an interest in the gold?” Alex pressed on. The chief minister had been in exile in Berar when the gold had gone missing. Mir Alam and Mah Laqa Bai were, by all accounts, no longer lovers, but Alex wouldn’t have been surprised to find that the latter still played the role of confidante.

“Did you hear what he did to the widow of Aristu Jah?” Mah Laqa Bai countered. Without waiting for Alex to respond, she said, “He sent five troops of the Nizam’s guards to ransack her home. They dragged her bodily from her house. And that because her dead husband had incurred his enmity. Take care.”

Alex attempted to make light of it. “I have too little in the way of worldly goods for him to bother with me. I heard he made a pretty haul when he confiscated her belongings.”

“It is not only Sarwar Afza Begum against whom he has moved,” Mah Laqa Bai said reprovingly. “But Rajah Ragotim Rao and any other he believes has crossed him. Do not allow yourself to be added to that company.”

No need to tell her that it was too late for that.

Having delivered her warning, she added, in a more conversational tone, “You might also be interested to know that Major Guignon has been seen in Hyderabad.”

Brilliant. A mad ruler, a demented First Minister, a sultry Englishwoman bent on accusing him of everything short of barratry (and he had no doubt she would get around to that once it occurred to her), and now a rogue French officer.

He ought to have stayed in Calcutta.

“He’s banned by treaty.” Frowning, Alex remembered Tajalli’s theories about French plots. If Louis Guignon really had crept back into the city, it lent considerably more credence to Tajalli’s suspicions.

“By your treaty,” countered Mah Laqa Bai.

“Signed by the Nizam.”

“By the former Nizam.” Mah Laqa Bai spoke in her capacity as omrah . “I fail to see why we should have to relinquish the services of a talented commander — ”

“Guignon wasn’t that talented,” murmured Alex. “The man was a pastry chef back in France.”

By all accounts, he made a tantalizing brioche, but his soldiering left something to be desired.

Mah Laqa Bai shot him a reproving glance. “I fail to see why we should relinquish the services of any commander we might choose to employ, whatever his individual merits, for the sake of people who can’t be bothered to keep their treaties.”

Her words bit like a steel-tipped lash. And they were fair. Alex had to acknowledge that.

Closing his eyes, he said, “The guns.”

“The guns,” Mah Laqa Bai agreed. “And the men. The Nizam, true to his promises, has paid the money owing on his part. Where are the men and arms your government has promised us? When the Nizam called upon them to restore order in the town during the festival of Muhurram, not half of those promised appeared, and of those who did, they had not sufficient firelocks among them.”

Ollie Plowden had told him the same, adding, on top of it, that not only were munitions missing, but also tents, carriages, and artillery, all listed as purchased and accounted for on the official record, none actually in place in the storehouses. The most likely explanation was that the commanders of the Subsidiary Force were pocketing the money the Nizam had sent them. James had caught them at it before, adding to the deterioration of a relationship between Residency and cantonments that was already strained.

It wouldn’t be the first time James had discovered discrepancies in the equipment and muster rolls, but never before had the graft approached anything like this scale. There was no getting around it. The commanders of the Subsidiary Force were robbing the Nizam blind.

Alex turned a troubled gaze on Mah Laqa Bai. “You do know that — ”

Mah Laqa Bai’s expression softened. Silencing him with a finger to his lips, she said, “I know. If it were up to you, it would not be so. But . . .”

“But it isn’t up to me,” Alex finished for her. “Or, in the event, to James.”

Both looked to the tent where the Governor General’s new emissary sat sprawled on a pile of shot-silk cushions.

“Will it help if I say I’ll do what I can?” said Alex wryly.

Mah Laqa Bai laid a hand lightly on his arm. “All I can do is promise you the same.”

The smoothly polished stones of her rings were cool against his palm as he squeezed her hand. “You would tell me if there was anything afoot, wouldn’t you? Anything dangerous?”

“Haven’t I just?” she said lightly, but Alex noticed that she didn’t quite meet his eyes.

Alex’s stomach sank. He hadn’t realized how much he had been relying on her help until she had denied it.

Fair enough. If their positions were reversed, he would have been expected to do the same, to place his loyalty to his country before personal affection.

It sounded simple enough in theory. In practice, Alex wondered what it was like to have such marvelously unclouded loyalties. Mir Alam might talk of men torn between their mother’s lands and their father’s, but what of men like him? British by blood, but born in India, raised in India, more comfortable with curry than claret, more at home at a nautch than a ball. He had spent his four long years at school in England talking about India, writing to India, planning his return to India. If it came down to it, which would he choose?