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clouded.
    â€˜You disagree with him?’ I asked.
    â€˜No. I agree with him entirely. Only it’s going to make a lot of trouble.’
    â€˜I think that’s what he wants.’
    A cab came. When we got down in Adam’s Mews, Tom escorted me to the foot of my staircase but wouldn’t come up.
    â€˜I’m supposed to be back at East India House. They get worried if I’m out of their sight for long. They haven’t told me not to talk to Griffiths, but they’d like to.’
    â€˜As bad as that?’
    â€˜They’re all worrying about what I’m going to say to this confounded committee. They know how I hate giving evidence against Griffiths.’
    As he turned to go, I said: ‘Do you think Mr Griffiths meant it, about wanting to see me again?’
    â€˜If he says it, he means it.’
    â€˜So we’ll be going again?’
    â€˜If this committee business allows, yes.’
    I was surprised how eager I was to see Mr Griffiths again. I’d liked him, but it was more than that. He’d piqued my professional curiosity with a puzzle I couldn’t see how to solve and I knew I couldn’t let it rest.

FIVE
    F or the next ten days or so, Tom and I existed in a state of more or less amicable truce. Once, he escaped from his duties at East India House to come riding in the park with Amos and me. We raced along Rotten Row and although Rancie and I easily beat him on his hireling hunter, we ended our race breathless and laughing, much as in the old days. But I couldn’t help noticing his suspicious looks when gentlemen recognized me and raised their hats, though he said nothing. At least he had the sense to treat Amos as a friend. It might be ‘Thank you, Legge’ and ‘Yes, Mr Lane’ in the stable yard, but out in the park they rode side by side and talked, mostly about India. Amos was endlessly curious about it, and not only the horseflesh. He couldn’t have enough of the sights and customs of the country.
    Tom had seen the Gurkhas from the hills with their curved knives, a line of a hundred jewelled elephants in procession, the dervishes whirling. Once, when they thought I couldn’t hear, he told Amos about the religious processions called
carkh puja
with men dancing with iron spikes stuck through their tongues or knives in their arms and legs, to win favour of the gods.
    â€˜Would you believe that one of them had made a hole in his arm with a dagger and threaded a live snake through it? But when his friends drew out the snake and bound up his arm, the wound hardly bled at all, no more than from a cut in your finger.’
    And then again: ‘. . . the most beautiful women in the world. They wear a light silk garment called a sari, and have a way of drawing it across their faces, just so, with their eyes looking out at you over the top. And such eyes . . .’
    But mostly he talked to Amos about the beauty of the country, the wonder of riding out in the cool of the morning into a world that seemed new-made, the variety and beauty of the people, the Bombay sunrises. I knew that was meant for me as well and, just as Tom hoped, it did make me want to see them for myself, only not on his terms. Sometimes, too, it made me think of another traveller in a distant country. When Robert set out on his travels, he’d written to me every week. We’d come close to each other through a dangerous time and he’d wanted me to marry him. I thought we should wait, not sure that he knew his own mind, and he’d gone abroad on a journey that would keep him away all year. He should be near Athens by now. I hadn’t heard from him for two months.
    Tom came to tea in the parlour with Mrs Martley and me several times. I’d taken the trouble to buy the finest China tea and served it without milk. He said it was almost as good as his
khitmutgar
made in camp over a fire of dried horse dung when they were travelling. I took that for a