“Brilliant,” said Jack, with a clipped diction that was painfully reminiscent of his brother’s. “Just what was needed. A Greek chorus. Or are you meant to be posing as my conscience?”

Penelope looked Alex’s brother straight in the eye. “I never take on thankless jobs.”

“Then why are you here?”

Before Penelope could answer, Alex interjected, in a very tired voice, “What was meant to happen here tonight, Jack?”

“If you hadn’t interfered, you mean?” Having gotten his little dig in, Jack went smoothly on. “There are plans afoot for coordinated ris ings across India. I, as you can imagine, am but a very small cog in this large wheel. Guignon, known in the business as the Gulmohar — ”

“A flower,” Alex explained, for Penelope’s benefit.

Penelope found herself leaning towards that small attention like a flower towards the sun and abruptly made herself look away.

The little byplay was not wasted on Alex’s odious brother, who looked very pointedly from one to the other before resuming.

“As I was saying,” Jack continued coolly, “Guignon was responsible for Hyderabad. The munitions stored here were to be used for a local rising against the English, with the connivance of several of the leading members of the durbar. As you might imagine, I have quite an interesting little list of names in my possession.”

“Including mine?” said Cleave dully.

Jack bared his teeth in a grin. “Your name is on a different list.” Turning to his brother, he elucidated. “Our Marigold over here was meant to coordinate between the various sectors, pushing some forward, urging patience on others, promising bribes all around. How does it feel, Daniel, old boy, to have been the pin in the grenade that could have set all India aflame?”

“I wouldn’t have done it,” said Cleave defensively. “It wouldn’t have happened without the gold. And I would have given the gold to the Governor General. So it would all have come out right in the end.”

“You just keep telling yourself that,” said Jack soothingly. “I’m sure it makes a lovely bedtime story. Puts you straight to sleep at night, doesn’t it?”

“It’s all true!” Cleave insisted. “Without the gold — ”

He broke off as the hideous reality of it all assailed him.

“They would have risen on the mere promise of gold,” said Jack softly. “Just as you did. A token here, a token there. That was all that it took. For them as for you. Pity for Guignon that he had to be the one to break it to you.”

Cleave swallowed hard, his eyes snaking over towards the two kegs that mercifully concealed Guignon’s fallen form from view. “I killed him. I — I’ve never killed anyone before. But I killed him.”

“Never killed anyone before?” asked Jack with all the exasperation of a professional dealing with an untalented amateur. “What did you think happened when you passed on those coded messages? Tea parties?”

“That was . . . different.”

Jack’s lip curled. He regarded Cleave with undisguised contempt. “Just because you didn’t spatter their brains yourself?”

Cleave went an unpleasant shade of green, swaying slightly where he stood. Penelope could almost bring herself to feel sorry for him.

Almost.

How many men had he killed? Even leaving aside those shadowy figures who might or might not have been condemned to early graves by the intelligence Cleave had passed along to the other side, there was still Freddy, Freddy who would have been alive but for the misfortune of learning Cleave’s close-kept secret. Cleave had killed Freddy, and he would have killed her, too, had he believed her a threat.

When it came down to it, Penelope wasn’t entirely sure that cobra in her room hadn’t been meant for her, no matter how Cleave chose to recall it. Penelope tried to remember what they had discussed that night on the balcony, and couldn’t, other than that some of it had been about Alex. But if she had said anything that had triggered Cleave’s sense of self-preservation, he would have sent the groom to do his work for him and then murmured about tragic accidents afterwards. He would probably even have convinced himself that he had never meant it to happen.

“Did you hit Fiske over the head?” she asked coldly. “Or did the groom do that for you, too?”

“I think not,” said Jack Reid. “If Mehdi Yar had done it, Fiske would have been dead as planned. The Frangipani seldom misses his man.”

Cleave looked at him blankly. “The what?”

“You didn’t know that, did you? You thought you were simply slipping a bit of extra to a servant to do your dirty work for you.” Jack shook his head. “No. Mehdi Yar is an old hand at the game. That’s not his real name, of course. He’s been at this so long, I doubt even he remembers what his name once was. Frangipani suits him as well as any.”

Alex was looking decidedly grim around the lips. “In other words, Mehdi Yar is yet another spy.”

“Our superiors weren’t entirely sure that Daniel could be trusted to keep his nerve, so they sent Mehdi Yar to keep an eye on him. If you had showed any signs of weakening, an . . . accident would have been arranged.”

“He went off to Hyderabad when I sent him,” argued Cleave. “How he could he watch me from there?”

“But you followed him, didn’t you? And I’d wager it was because of a message he sent you.”

The dropping of Cleave’s jaw was answer enough. “He’ll kill me, won’t he?” he said after a minute. “When he finds out what happened here tonight.”

“If we don’t shoot you first,” said Jack idly.

Penelope couldn’t tell whether or not he was serious.

Alex sent him a hard look. “No one is shooting anyone. I believe there’s a way out of this. Justice may not be best served by it, but at least fewer heads will roll.”

“Pity,” said Jack. “I enjoy a good rolling head. It was why I originally joined up with the other side.”

Ignoring him, Alex turned to Cleave. “You have to turn in Mehdi Yar.”

“But he’ll denounce me. He’ll tell them I’m the Marigold.”

“No,” said Alex succinctly. “We’ll put it about that Guignon was the Marigold. Our authorities won’t quibble. They’ll simply be happy to have the Marigold out of the way. You might even get that reward you so badly wanted,” he added dryly.

Cleave had the grace to flush.

“There is a quid pro quo, I imagine,” his brother drawled.

“Naturally,” said Alex. He looked to Cleave. “In exchange for our silence, you maintain yours. Not a word about Jack, one way or the other. As far as anyone was concerned, he wasn’t here tonight. And neither were you,” he added, looking full at Penelope for the first time in a very long time. “Cleave and I came alone. We cornered the Marigold. He fought back. We prevailed. In the struggle, he gasped out the name of a confederate. If Mehdi Yar attempts to implicate Cleave, it will be taken as sour grapes, revenge for capture.”

“All very neat and tidy, brother. As usual.” Jack turned to Cleave, who looked more dazed than anything. “You will have to leave the country, of course. If Mehdi Yar doesn’t finish you off, someone else will.”

“That is part of the deal,” said Alex. “You go back to England. You stay in England.”

“But . . . ,” Cleave began.

“You’ll have your life,” said Alex in a tone that extinguished all further protest. “Perhaps even your pension. It’s more than you could otherwise expect.”

As if to underline the finality of it, he gestured towards the stairs, indicating that Cleave should precede him.

“I’m sure your mother will be delighted to see you,” commented Jack, as they began to mount the stairs. “She might even have found a nice girl for you.”

Cleave’s look of consternation would have been amusing but for the trail of dead bodies in his wake. It was a bit much to cut up stiff about a few dances when one had, until recently, been lobbing snakes into people’s bedchambers.

Penelope found it hard to muster much sympathy. By all rights, Cleave ought to have been shackled, bound, not walking freely up the stairs of his own accord, his life and his reputation intact. Alex had been more than generous. But that was Alex, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t all generosity, though. Penelope could see the logic behind it. If Cleave were brought to trial, he would waste no time in implicating Alex’s brother. In that event, one of two outcomes was certain. If Jack maintained his cover, he would hang as a French spy. If the truth came out, the English wouldn’t kill him, but the French probably would. Once again, Alex was pulling his little brother’s fat out of the fire.

He probably wouldn’t fare too badly out of it either. They could blame Guignon for the attack on Fiske — Cleave would have to back Alex up on that, or risk exposing himself. The capture of the so-called Marigold would probably merit a promotion for Alex as well as a reward for Cleave. It was the perfect solution all around.

The only person left out in the cold was Penelope.

Outside the night was cool, the air fresh. Penelope hadn’t realized quite how fetid it had become below until she breathed the clear, cool air above. The stars were out, glittering like diamonds from the Gol conda mines, like the jewels for which Cleave had been willing to perjure himself and sell his country.

There was something a bit flashy about their brightness, a bit mocking. Penelope looked away, following the others away past the obelisk that marked a former French commander’s passing, down the crest of the hill to where they had tethered the horses. By tacit agreement, the two brothers had disposed themselves on either side of Cleave, ready to grab him should he lose his nerve and try to bolt. For all their differences, there was a bond of long understanding between the two that made Penelope feel like an outsider or, worse, an interloper.

Funny, the things one took for granted. That whole long journey back from Berar, she had taken it as a matter of right that she should have Alex’s undiluted attention, watching her, looking out for her, worrying about her. She had taken it so for granted that it had seemed like nothing to shrug it aside, in the smug assurance that she could rebuff him and rebuff him and rebuff him and he would still come back for more. But this — Penelope glanced sideways, watching how like his brother he moved. They might be dissimilar in other ways, but they couldn’t hide the similarity in gait, in inflection, in tone, all those relics of a childhood in common. This was Alex’s real world, and it was a world in which she had no place.

For a wonder, Alex’s horse was where they had left her, with the addition of Jack’s gelding, which was eyeing Bathsheba with an expression uncannily reminiscent of his master’s. Cleave, shrunken and dazed, couldn’t remember what he had done with his horse, and a vague squint from side to side did little to refresh his faulty memory.

“She’s probably run halfway back to the Residency by now,” he said, as if it were a matter of supreme indifference. Penelope noticed that Cleave kept rubbing his hands against the tails of his coat, like Lady Macbeth and her damned spot. She doubted he even realized he was doing it.

“You’ll have to ride pillion with Alex,” said Jack to Cleave, with barely concealed amusement. “I would offer,” he added mendaciously, “but I’m going off in the opposite direction. It wouldn’t do for me to show up at the Residency. Officially, I don’t exist, you know.”

“You do exist,” said Alex tiredly. “You’re simply not here.”

“Oh, right,” said his brother. “Such an easy mistake to make.”

Folding her arms across her chest, Penelope looking challengingly up at him. “You’ve dealt very neatly with everyone else,” she said, in a high clear voice. “What of me? What are my orders?”

Alex looked down at her, and a rueful smile creased his lips. “I would be a fool to order you anywhere,” he said. “I’ve made that mistake before.”

The word “mistake” set a series of warning bells ringing in Penelope’s ears. Rue hadn’t been quite the reaction Penelope had been angling for. She gathered her resources for one last offensive.

“You don’t have to order,” said Penelope. “But you might consider asking.”

She held his gaze and her breath, feeling the world slow and still around them as she waited for his answer. Their companions seemed as remote as the silent obelisk on the hill above them. They might have been there alone, in the middle of the Hyderabadi night, with only the skeptical stars keeping score.

“Asking what?” said Alex, and the entire fragile structure came crashing down around them.