One elephant had been devoted to carrying nothing but bottles of port, Madeira, and claret, although, from the way Fiske, Pinchingdale, and Freddy had been going, Penelope suspected its burden would be much lighter by the time they left Hyderabad for Mysore. Fiske and Pinchingdale had clearly been partaking liberally already, but of Freddy there was no sign. Showing a marked lack of interest in mummery, he had strolled back to their bungalow with the expressed intention of fetching Penelope’s shawl for her. Since Penelope hadn’t indicated any desire for it, she suspected that his marital solicitude arose out of a desire for a quick cigar well away from the disapproval of the ladies. Altruism was not a part of Freddy’s makeup.

Below them, the buffoons had ceded the stage to a singer, who was singing in mournful tones in a language Penelope didn’t understand at all. Grumbling, Pinchingdale and Fiske pushed away from the railing, wandering back into the Residency to avail themselves of more of the Resident’s Madeira.

“Am I missing anything terribly exciting?” Penelope asked her companion.

“You should ask Reid to translate for you. His Persian is better than mine,” said Cleave apologetically. “I deal mainly in Bengali these days.”

She could see Captain Reid and the Resident standing a little way down the veranda, deep in conversation. The Resident wore his usual garb of a long, stiffened brocade robe over a pair of loose trousers. With a small red cap on his head, and his narrow whiskers cut in the Persian style, he seemed as exotic and foreign as the keening lament of the singer or the scent of tropical flowers from the vast pleasure gardens he had helped to design. Next to him, Captain Reid looked jarringly normal. His evening clothes were as poorly tailored as his riding dress.

Over the past weeks, they had fallen into a habit of morning rides together. There had never been any official arrangement; it just somehow happened that Captain Reid always happened to be trotting past her bungalow at just the same time that Penelope was having her horse brought round. They were seldom very long rides — Reid always seemed to have appointments to get back to — but they had become more the cornerstones of her daily existence than she liked to admit.

When they did speak, they spoke of insignificant things; of the weather, or the scenery, or Mrs. Ure’s latest act of extreme gluttony. Off-limits were Captain Reid’s family, anything to do with Freddy, Hyderabadi politics, and the mysterious movements of French spies. She had never produced the note she had found and he had never said a word more about Guignon. They had never come to any sort of agreement on the topic; it had just sorted itself out that way, by mutual and tacit agreement. Those dawn hours, while Freddy still slept and the parched land rested from the sun, were like the territory outside a disputed castle, a place of truce rather than treaty.

She had never had a male friend before. Lovers, yes. Flirtations. But never a friend. It made an intriguing change.

Catching her eye on him, he smiled at her, a man-to-man, good comradely sort of smile. Penelope caught herself preening and made herself stop.

Mr. Cleave’s light eyes flicked from one to the other with obvious interest. “Are you and Alex — friendly?”

The hesitation in his voice might have been just that, nothing more than the same diffidence that made him look so anxious in declaiming an ability to translate for her, but it seemed to imply something more. Penelope bristled.

“Captain Reid and I ride together,” she said, more curtly than she might otherwise have done. “Horses,” she clarified bitingly.

Deep color washed over Mr. Cleave’s cheekbones. “I certainly never meant to imply — ”

Penelope looked at him assessingly. “Didn’t you?”

Having forced the retraction, she was more offended by the disclaimer than the initial assumption. Why shouldn’t they be . . . friendly? Didn’t he think she was attractive enough? Seductive enough? Penelope glanced sideways at Captain Reid. He stood directly beneath one of the lanterns that had been laced about the veranda. It struck red sparks off his black hair. What would it have been like had their morning rides been something else entirely?

Entirely misinterpreting the speculative expression on her face, Mr. Cleave rushed to defend his old schoolfellow from the calumny he felt he had accidentally brought upon him.

“Reid isn’t anything like his father,” Mr. Cleave said hastily. “At least, there have never been any whispers of it.”

“Like his father?”

“Surely, you’ve heard — oh.” Mr. Cleave broke off in considerable confusion. “You haven’t, have you? Since you had made his acquaintance, I thought you must have known. . . . Well, never mind, then.”

“You can’t just ‘never mind’ me after that,” said Penelope persuasively, leaning towards him in a way that made him go a very deep red. “I might make myself ill with curiosity. And you wouldn’t want to be responsible for that.”

“Oh, well.” Mr. Cleave inserted a finger beneath his collar, as though his cravat had grown too tight. “It’s just that the Colonel has a somewhat checkered reputation with women. It wasn’t that unusual at the time,” he added, accidentally heaping coals on the fire. “Many men took up with Indian women. But Colonel Reid — well, he was rather flamboyant about it. One of them killed herself. It was all,” he said, with obvious distaste, “rather unpleasant.”

“Not Captain Reid’s mother?”

“Oh no,” he hastened to assure her. “Not his mother. Jack’s mother. She was a Rajput lady, you see. Rather highly born. Her family disowned her when she took up with Colonel Reid.”

“He must have been quite dashing in his day,” said Penelope speculatively, recalling a pair of twinkling blue eyes in a weathered face, volubly disclaiming any interest in games of chance. “A charming rogue.”

In the corner of the veranda, Captain Reid grinned at something the Resident had just said. For a moment, Penelope saw a very fleeting resemblance. Then it was gone, and Captain Reid was himself again, the very antithesis of roguishness. He might, Penelope suspected, have had his own share of charm had he not tried so very hard to suppress it.

“Not so charming for his wife — Reid’s mother,” said Mr. Cleave, flicking at a mosquito.

Penelope could see that it wouldn’t have been. That, she thought practically, was the problem with charming rogues. They seldom confined their charm to one target.

“He was unfaithful to her?”

“Only at the very end,” said Mr. Cleave, with painstaking justice. “Mrs. Reid was ill for some time. India didn’t suit her.”

He spoke as one who had seen it all personally. “How do you know all this?”

“My mother was quite close with Mrs. Reid. They came here together as brides. This country is not kind to Englishwomen, Lady Frederick.”

“Perhaps that depends on the Englishwoman,” said Penelope tartly.

“My mother’s health wasn’t equal to it.” There was no mistaking the bitterness in his tone. “India reduced her to a state of perpetual invalidism and provided her with none of the riches she was promised. This is a country that makes some, but ruins untold others in the process.”

Penelope brushed aside his philosophical musings. “What happened to the boy? The one whose mother killed herself?”

“You mean Jack.” He pronounced the name as though it were synonymous with pitch.

“And what does he do?” asked Penelope, amused. “Cattle-rustling? The odd bit of highway robbery?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Mr. Cleave, with more animation than she had seen him show so far. “He’s — ”

“Still telling tales, Daniel?” Mr. Cleave started guiltily, banging his elbow against the balustrade. Captain Reid cocked an eyebrow at him. “You’re not still smarting over the incident of the toy soldiers, are you?”

Clutching his bruised elbow, Mr. Cleave flushed a bright red. “That was over twenty years ago, Reid! And they were my soldiers.”

“You must forgive Daniel. He was an only child.” The casual comment made the other man sound about five.

Penelope could feel him squirm against the stone balustrade. “Come, now, Reid,” Mr. Cleave protested. “Jack was a bully, whichever way you look at it.”

“Aren’t we a bit old to be refighting schoolroom battles?” Captain Reid said lightly, but his expression didn’t tally with his voice. Penelope had the impression that beneath his casual demeanor he was angry, deeply angry.

It would be rather nice, she thought, to have someone come to one’s defense like that. It was impossible to imagine either of her brothers, aged twelve and thirteen respectively, doing anything of the kind.

Mr. Cleave’s expression was painfully earnest as he looked up at his old schoolfellow. “It’s not schoolroom battles that are the problem, Alex.”

A palpable tension crackled between them. Penelope saw Captain Reid’s lips press tightly together, closing over whatever it was he wanted to say — but wouldn’t, while she was there to hear.

“Will you excuse me, gentlemen?” she said, whisking neatly between them. In her flat-heeled slippers, she was nearly as tall as Mr. Cleave. “My husband seems to have disappeared with my shawl.”

Both gentlemen offered their assistance, as by rote, but it was clear that they both wanted nothing more than to be allowed to get on with their argument. Fair enough. Penelope was rather keen for them to get on with it, too. She wanted to know what they had to say. She swished past them with as much rustling, swishing, and fluttering as she could muster.

Once inside, she abruptly stopped swishing, gathering her skirts close to her legs to minimize the noise of her passage. Long windows, open for the circulation of air, looked out onto the veranda. Dragging over a chair, Penelope positioned herself beside one. If anyone asked, she was simply . . . resting her feet. No, inspecting her hem. Yes, that was it. A snagged hem was always a popular excuse. Scooting a little closer, she leaned her cheek against the white wainscoting.