The Betrayal of the Blood Lily (14 page)

Tajalli made a resigned face. “Naturally. The Marigold sent my father a very nice ring as a token of his esteem.”

“In exchange for—?”

“My father’s influence with the other members of the durbar. At least, so far as I know. I am not,” he said, and Alex glimpsed a hint of something steely behind his friend’s pleasant mask, “exactly in my father’s confidence.”

“If you were,” said Alex, with an equal measure of steel, “you would not be here.”

Tajalli inclined his head in acknowledgment of the point. His father, Ahmed Ali Khan, had been one of the most vociferous supporters of the French faction at the Nizam’s court during those tense days not so long ago when both the French and the English maintained corps of troops outside the city of Hyderabad, each vying for the Nizam’s favor. But Ahmed Ali’s political opposition had only reached the level of personal vendetta when news came out of the English Resident’s secret marriage to a Hyderabadi lady of quality, Khair-un-Nissa. Apart from his revulsion at a descendant of the Prophet marrying an infidel, Ahmed Ali had a more personal reason to be affronted. Khair-un-Nissa had been promised in marriage to Tajalli’s older brother. The girl’s marriage to the Resident was an insult that made the Montagues and Capulets look like good neighbors.

Alex sometimes wondered how much his own friendship with Ahmed’s son owed to the son’s desire to flout his father. He liked to think there was more to it than that, but there were times when he found Tajalli as difficult to decipher as the intricately penned verse on a Persian scroll.

“Whoever it was knew to go to your father,” said Alex. “Whoever it was knew that he would be sympathetic.”

“He hasn’t made any secret of his sympathies.” Tajalli held out both hands, palm up. “You know how word travels.”

His expression very clearly indicated that further discussion about his father would be unwelcome. Tajalli might be allowed to criticize him, but for an outsider to do was to cross an unwritten line.

Fair enough. Alex felt much the same way about his own father. Turning back to George, he asked, “Did you see this man when he waited upon the Begum?”

“Man, woman, camel—no idea,” said George, shaking his head. “The Begum is too canny to allow me near anything like this. Doesn’t want to expose me to temptation,” he added, with a grin.

“But she trusts you to relay her letters,” pointed out Alex.

“All in code,” countered George without rancor. “You can’t expect her to trust me that far. It’s rather nice of her, really, not to put me in positions in which my loyalty would be tested.”

“Nice” wasn’t quite how Alex would have put it, but he decided to let it go. The Begum Sumroo hadn’t risen from dancing girl to ruler of her own state by being nice.

“Fortunately for you,” George continued cheerfully, “Fyze doesn’t feel at all the same way. She was the one who told me about the orange flowers and all that.”

“I see,” said Alex slowly. George had for some time had an understanding with one of the Begum’s favorites, an association that had served to cement his position in the Begum’s court. It helped that George appeared to be genuinely fond of the girl.

Tajalli grinned. “Nicely done.”

“It’s not like that,” protested George, looking hurt. “I wouldn’t have asked her if I hadn’t thought she would volunteer.” Being George, he actually believed it. “She said there was something odd about the syntax of the letters.”

“Odd how?” asked Alex.

George squinted at the gaily striped canvas of the tent. “Slightly awkward. As though the writer weren’t quite proficient in the language but was trying to sound as though he were. Although,” he added, “that could be a result of it having all been mangled into code and back again.”

“What language was it written in?”

“Persian,” supplied George. It was the official language of the Mughal court, the common tongue of aristocrats and scholars across the Islamic world. It certainly wasn’t definitive, but it strengthened Alex’s suspicion that the source of the notes was probably Marathi. And why wouldn’t it be? Holcar was currently engaged in a struggle against the British; if his resources were secretly failing, he might be looking to drum up allies.

An even more convincing case might be made for Scindia, Britain’s primary adversary in the recent Anglo-Maratha war. He would still be smarting from his humiliation at the hands of the British, reluctant to allow Holcar to seize all the glory. Like Scots clans, the Marathi tended to spend their time intriguing against one another as much as their enemies. It would be very like Scindia to attempt to scrape together a new confederacy so that he might complete what Holcar had begun, seizing the leading role for himself.

“Presumably a Marathi, then,” said Alex.

“Or a European,” suggested Tajalli. “Imperfectly schooled in the language.”

“To what end?” demanded Alex. “I don’t see what a European would have to gain.”

The topaz rings on Tajalli’s fingers glinted in the lamplight like Lady Frederick’s eyes. “Captain Raymond had grand plans for uniting the states of India against the British.”

“Yes, I know. And for handing them off to Bonaparte, all tied up with a pretty bow.” Alex dismissed the ambitions of the former French commander in Hyderabad with a wave of his hand. “But Raymond is dead. There’s a large mausoleum to prove it. And Piron went back to France with his tail between his legs.”

“As far as we know,” interjected Tajalli. “He was told to do so and he promised to do so, but what a man may promise and what a man may do may be two very different things.”

“Marvelous,” muttered Alex. “That would be all we need. Frenchmen lurking about in disguise, modeling themselves after marigolds.”

His money was still on Scindia. Raymond and Piron might have made a nuisance of themselves conspiring with other French commanders in India, training large numbers of troops under the revolutionary
tricolore
, and flaunting their Caps of Liberty, but their dreams of conquest had died with Bonaparte’s aborted mission to Egypt more than five years before. James had put paid to the French force in Hyderabad and Wellesley had dealt with the rest by treaty, making it a condition of the Marathi leaders’ surrender that they dismiss from their service any Frenchman. Despite General Perron still throwing his weight about in the service of Scindia, as far as Alex was concerned, the French threat was long over.

Alex said as much.

“Of course, he might not be French,” suggested Tajalli, watching Alex closely. “He might as well be one of your own.”

“You mean one of our half-breeds,” said Alex flatly, not looking at his brother. “Banned from any useful occupation and out for revenge.”

“Do you think Jack—,” George began.

“No.” The negation was ingrained reflex. “No. What does James say about all this?”

Tajalli smiled at him. “Like you, he says it is a fairy story, a—what was the phrase?—a tempest in a teapot. He does not believe in the Rajah of Berar’s gold and he thinks that the Marigold is merely an attempt at agitation, and not a concerted conspiracy of which one should take notice. He had other matters to concern him.”

The Special Envoy among them, Alex was sure. Kirkpatrick didn’t react well to Wellesley’s rooting about in his private life.

For a moment, Alex found himself confronted by the image of the Special Envoy’s wife, standing forlornly outside the canvas walls of a tent, while her husband drank and gamed within. Kirkpatrick’s wasn’t the only private life that didn’t bear close examination.

How in the hell had she come to be married to him?

“Alex!”

With the patience for which he was known, his brother poked him in the arm. Hard.

Alex grimaced. “Was that entirely necessary?” he inquired, rubbing the offended appendage.

“You were a million miles away,” complained George.

“Not quite that far,” said Alex. Just a stretch down the road and a hundred leagues out of his depth.

I waited until Colin had gone back to Sussex before calling Mrs. Selwick-Alderly.

I told myself it was because I didn’t want to waste any of our time together trawling through old archives, but it wasn’t really that. Despite the fact that it was those archives that had brought us together in the first place (well, that and a fair amount of spilled champagne), I didn’t want Colin to be my conduit to the Pink Carnation papers. I wanted him to be my boyfriend. The fact that the one had come through the other only made me all the more determined to keep them separate in future.

The weather had repented of its good behavior over the weekend and reverted back to form, a mizzling drizzle that stung my cheeks as it fell. It wanted to be snow when it grew up, but it wasn’t quite cold enough for that, so instead it fell in small pellets of icy rain, gray and cold and miserable. I made a mad dash from the South Kensington Tube stop to Onslow Square, my frozen fingers sliding numbly off the buzzer when I tried to press it.

I was a little nervous as to what my reception would be, now that Colin and I were officially an item. Even though it was Mrs. Selwick-Alderly who had put me in his path in the first place, people are funny, especially about things like family. However much she liked me as a perky, independent researcher, she might feel otherwise about me as a girlfriend for her favorite great-nephew. That was another reason I had preferred to come alone,
sans
Colin. We had spoken very briefly on the phone when I had called to ask for advice about matters Indian, but it’s always hard to read tone accurately on a telephone, and even more so on a cell phone. If she had deeply disapproved, I imagined she wouldn’t have invited me over.

Then again, what if she wanted to take the opportunity to warn me away, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh inviting Lizzy Bennet for a turn in the shrubbery? She, too, had been an aunt. Although, as far as I knew, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly had no daughter she wished to marry off to Colin. I didn’t even know if she had a daughter. And if she did, that daughter would be a generation too old for Colin.

Swiping my damp hair off my cheek, I realized I had reached whole new levels of paranoia.

Upstairs, a door opened and a perfectly coiffed white head peered down through the stair rails. “Come along up!” she called gaily.

Maybe Colin hadn’t told her.

“Hi!” I called back up, trying to wave and push back my hair all at the same time, which I do not recommend as a technique. My slushy boots skidded on the stairs and I had to clutch at the railing to keep from pitching ignominiously upwards. There’s nothing quite like falling up stairs for really embarrassing yourself.

Inside, all was accustomed and ceremonious. In honor of the hideous weather, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly had a fire crackling in the drawing room, beneath the mantel where the picture of Colin that had first caught my interest three long months ago jostled with a beautiful studio portrait of Mrs. Selwick-Alderly in her debutante year, and a cheerful array of other family photos. As always, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly was impeccably dressed, even for a day at home. Her wool blazer was a deep navy, with pretty braiding on the cuff and lapels.

There was no tea tray on the drawing room table this time.

“I had thought you would want to get stuck in right away,” said Mrs. Selwick-Alderly knowingly, leading the way past the drawing room and down the long corridor that led to the back bedrooms. I knew that corridor well; I had blundered down it in the dead of night once when Mrs. Selwick-Alderly had kindly put me up.

“Thank you for helping me—again,” I said incoherently, as I followed her down the hall.

“It’s no bother,” she said, leading me into the bedroom in which I had stayed on my first visit. The squat African statue on the dresser beamed at me like an old acquaintance.

Flipping on the light switch, she made for the closet, moving aside a tufted spear that wobbled next to the frame. “It should be in here,” she murmured, as she shoved aside a molting mink coat and several dresses swathed in plastic.

I hurried to help her as she dragged out a battered cardboard box. Together, we set it down on the bed. Mrs. Selwick-Alderly tossed a faux leather-bound album onto the cream-colored counterpane. Sending a second album the way of the first, she dove down into the box, the way one does, muttering distractedly to herself.

“Not this one, then,” she said firmly, frowning down at the box. “It must be the other box. Oh, bother, that’s the phone. If you’ll excuse me . . .”

There was no extension in the spare bedroom. I could hear the slap of her flat-heeled shoes as she hurried down the hallway to her study and the click of the study door closing behind her. For a moment, I simply stood as I was, like a schoolgirl left in the headmistress’s office, hovering next to the bed, my hands clasped behind my back. The Dresden shepherdess on the dresser smirked at me scornfully.

I stuck out my tongue at her, then glanced guiltily over my shoulder at the open door. No, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly hadn’t seen.