After a moment, Cleave resumed, in the tone of one determined to make the best of a bad business. “And there’s more to it than that. We have — ” Cleave’s voice faltered, as though what he was about to say was distasteful to him. “We have reason to believe that Jack has been serving as go-between for the leaders of the French cause in India, lobbying on their behalf with rulers he believes might have cause to break with England. He’s been offering them gold in exchange for allegiance.”

“Gold from Berar.”

“So you have spoken to him!”

The fight had gone out of Captain Reid’s voice. Instead, he sounded bone-achingly weary. “No, Daniel, I haven’t. Not since Christmas four years ago. I heard rumors about the treasure of Berar from other sources.”

“What other sources?”

“If I told you, they wouldn’t remain useful for very long, now, would they?”

“Is that your final word on the matter?”

“Am I on trial now, Daniel?” Captain Reid’s voice was dangerously quiet, but even in her secluded window embrasure, Penelope felt the sting of it. “My record is as solid as yours and my word as good.”

“No, no, nothing like that. Of course, I didn’t mean — But what am I going to tell Wellesley?”

“Whatever you were bloody well going to tell him in the first place. I don’t know, Daniel. I can’t be your conscience.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “I’m my brother’s keeper, not yours.”

“Lady F!” A pair of gloved hands grasped Penelope about the waist, swinging her about to blast Madeira in her face. “What are you doing hiding away in here?”

“Just resting my hem,” said Penelope nonsensically, wiggling away from Sir Leamington Fiske. There was little hope that they hadn’t heard him out on the balcony. Raising her voice, she said, “You haven’t seen Freddy, have you? I’ve been looking for him.”

Fiske struck a heroic pose. He looked like a fish posing for a statue. “I’d rather feast my eyes on you.”

“Watch out for indigestion.”

Fiske blinked at her.

“Later,” Penelope said soothingly, brushing a hand lightly against his sleeve. She had suffered Fiske’s advances for the past week in the hopes of getting information out of him, and had gotten rather good at leading him on while ceding nothing. But right now she wanted to think. “Later.”

“What’s wrong with now?”

“Now,” said Penelope charmingly, “I need to find Freddy. He was supposed to bring me my shawl.”

Fiske released her with good grace. Penelope wondered if he was quite as foxed as he seemed. “When you find him, send him over to me, will you? We have a little wager that wants settling.”

“I shall,” promised Penelope vaguely.

Having told everyone she was going to find Freddy, it seemed that it was incumbent upon her to do so. She set off towards her own bungalow in a gray study, only half-aware of the rich scents of the night flowers, the now-familiar movements of servants moving about their tasks, the slither and rustle of animals in the underbrush.

As she walked on, she wondered whether she might have been wasting her time, these past two days, in attempting to wheedle confidences out of Fiske. Fiske, using every opportunity to fondle whatever came into reach, had implied a great deal, but confirmed nothing. When teased about French tastes, he had made a very crude joke about French letters. When Penelope had deliberately chosen to interpret that as a comment about correspondence, Fiske had made lewd comments about his prior correspondents. She had credited Fiske’s lewdness to cunning. But what if he was simply lewd? The only French letters he received might well be the kind that came in boxes of twenty.

If everything she had overheard was to be credited, this Jack made a far better prospect for agitator than Lieutenant Sir Leamington Fiske.

Before Penelope could pursue that fascinating line of thought further, her attention was arrested by a familiar voice speaking in a decidedly unfamiliar way. It was Freddy’s voice, low and intimate, murmuring something she couldn’t quite hear. He sounded quite intent on whatever it was.

His voice had come from the unused zenana quarters at the back of the house. Semidetached from the body of the house, they opened onto their own enclosed courtyard. Untenanted, there was no reason for anyone to visit them, not even the servants. Penelope hadn’t bothered to look inside since the Resident had first shown them around their new home, well over a month before.

What on earth did Freddy want in the old zenana quarters?

Wiggling through a gap in the shrubbery, Penelope shoved her way into the interior courtyard. There was no door into the encircling rooms, only cane screens that allowed for the air to circulate, while keeping out light and bugs. She could see thin slits of light through one screen, a sign that someone was very much in residence.

“Oh yes,” said Freddy emphatically, obviously quite in agreement with the unknown person.

Lifting an edge of the screen, Penelope slid underneath. And stopped stumblingly short.

When she had first seen the zenana quarters, they had been empty and decaying, with patches of damp on the walls from the recent monsoon rains, falling chunks of plaster, and even a bird’s nest in one corner of the ceiling. Now, gay hangings covered the walls, richly woven tapestries portraying lithesome ladies dancing in gardens much like the one Penelope had just left, sporting themselves beside the waters of cool fountains, or reaching into the air to catch a falcon on the wrist, while a lordly gentlemen in Jacobean costume sat in the shade of arched pavilions, the tip of a hookah resting between his parted lips. Silken cushions lay in careless piles upon richly woven carpets. A stringed instrument sat propped against one wall, the smooth wooden surface inset with precious mother of pearl. On a delicately carved table rested a filigreed carafe and glasses, cool in the warmth of the room, next to a display of honeyed sweetmeats piled in gluttonous array on a silver tray. Everything was rich and rare and lovely, a seduction of all the senses, from the haunting scent of flowers to the lilting song of a dainty songbird in a filigree cage, as pleasing to the eye as to the ear.

But nothing was quite so lovely or so rare as the woman in the middle of the room.

Her dark hair, perfect black, tumbled down her back, loosed more than held by the pearl band that circled her forehead. There were bangles on her arms and little else. Aside from the fall of her hair and the long necklace that fell between her breasts, she was entirely naked. She had the sort of figure Penelope had seen in temple friezes on their journey, all breast and hip, as smooth and round as well-worked ivory, carved to excite a man’s lust. She was balanced on one leg, as graceful as an opera dancer. The other was wrapped around Freddy’s right hip.

Freddy seemed more than happy with that disposition. His large hands were tangled in the wanton fall of her hair, his head thrown back and his eyes half-closed. His chest, bared by his open shirt, expanded and contracted in time to his uneven breathing. His companion rose farther up on tiptoe, bringing a delighted gasp to Freddy’s lips and a contraction of his fingers in her hair.

Penelope emitted a squeaking noise.

She hadn’t meant to. It just came out, like the last bubbles on the deck of a sinking ship.

An expression of extreme alarm crossed Freddy’s face. She could see his eyes shift back and forth, mark the exact moment he had spotted her, standing at the back of the room. He stumbled violently back, sending his houri tumbling flat on her rump in a decidedly indelicate position.

Not quite so indelicate as his. The flap of his breeches dangled open, like a bad joke in a third-rate farce.

“Um, Pen.” Freddy pinned a wobbly smile on his face. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

Chapter Fifteen

“I don’t expect you did,” said Penelope distantly. “You might at least have secured the screens.”

She looked contemptuously at the woman on the floor, who returned the expression with interest, no mean feat while lying entirely unclothed on one’s back. But, then, thought Penelope with freezing scorn, she had probably had some practice at that.

“Um.” Freddy had the grace to turn a deeper color of red, though he still contrived to look more affronted than affronting. Ignoring the woman at his feet, he cast Penelope a reproachful look. “Shouldn’t you be watching the mummers?”

“Why should I, when there’s such entertainment to be had here?” Without waiting for an answer, she said, in a cold, hard voice, “I want her out.”

It was unclear how much English the courtesan understood, but she certainly understood that. Drawing a length of cloth over her nakedness, she sat back on her heels with the expression of one prepared to engage in a lengthy spot of squatter’s rights.

“Now, Pen — ” Freddy held out a conciliatory hand, the same hand that had, a moment before, been supporting some of the more rounded parts of the other woman’s anatomy.

Penelope looked at it with an expression of pure loathing. “I want her out. Out now .”

Freddy made a shooing motion — not to his mistress, to Penelope. “Let’s discuss this outside, shall we?” he said hopefully, shoving his shirt into his breeches as he spoke. Penelope was surprised he knew how. She had only ever seen him remove clothing, usually in conditions of extreme haste. Not that he always removed all his clothing. Or hers. Sometimes . . .

Penelope yanked back her wandering thoughts. What did it matter? It wasn’t as though she could stake her claim by a catalogue of the quantity and variety of his lovemaking. It wasn’t a matter of earning one’s position, so many tumbles to security.

Letting herself be herded through the screen, she said, in a tight voice, “You can’t install a mistress in the same house as your wife. It’s in poor taste, if nothing else.”

“She’s not a mistress,” countered Freddy, with a bright-eyed enthusiasm that might have been either inspiration or afterglow. “She’s a bibi .”

“Calling it by another language,” said Penelope, through clenched teeth, “does not render it any less offensive. I should have your balls for this. Oh, don’t look so shocked. We both know you have them. And now,” she said, flinging an arm in the direction of the screen, “so does she . And why,” she continued, her voice rising dangerously, “am I the one standing outside like a . . . like a beggar, while that strumpet gets to lounge about inside?”

Looking nervously over his shoulder, Freddy made soothing, hushing noises, as though she were a horse who had just balked at a fence. “Don’t cut up rough, old girl. This is just how it’s done out here.”

“Not in my house, it’s not,” Penelope said militantly.

“Your house?”

“Don’t,” warned Penelope. “Not when you’ve already spent my dowry. Possibly on drabs like her. How many have there been, Freddy? None on the boat, I suppose. You would have had to ship them in on little dinghies and that wouldn’t have been terribly convenient. But in Calcutta, there were all those nights you were playing cards with Fiske. What were you really playing at, Freddy?”

It had been a bolt in the dark. Penelope hadn’t expected confirmation until she got it, in the shifting of his eyes from hers, the working of his mouth as he tried to contrive a creditable explanation.

Penelope’s stomach contracted as though she had been punched. Her tongue felt too thick for her mouth; she could feel it gagging her.

Freddy’s hands moved in quick, impatient gestures as he worked himself into a soothing state of self-righteous indignation. “This is absurd,” he blustered. “Why are we fighting about this? I’m married to you, however it came about. Anyone else is only a — ”

“Diversion?” supplied Penelope, forcing her too-heavy tongue to move.

“Precisely,” he said, nodding emphatically, pleased that she understood so well. “It isn’t that you aren’t, well, satisfactory, old thing — ”

“Much obliged, I’m sure,” said Penelope, white-lipped.

“ — but a man does need a little variety. It’s like having toast for breakfast every morning.” Freddy warmed to his theme. “Toast is all very well and good, perfectly filling and all that, but sometimes you want a nice, big piece of ham.”

“Which one of us is the toast?” asked Penelope. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. Next I suppose you’ll be wanting marmalade, too.”