The Betrayal of the Blood Lily Read Free Page B

had strongholds in Mauritius and Pondicherry and a lot of the local rulers had French officers in charge of their armed forces. It’s kind of neat, actually,” I added, twisting my head to look back at Colin. “In Hyderabad, the Nizam—that’s the ruler—employed both an English force and a French force, with their own separate camps on different sides of the river. I guess he thought the competition would keep them on their toes.”
    “Did it?”
    I shrugged. “It kept a lot of spies in business. The French had people in the English camp and the English had people in the French camp and the Nizam had people in both camps.”
    “It sounds like fashion designers,” suggested Serena tentatively.
    “Or celebrity chefs,” contributed Nick, grinning at her, “guarding their top-secret recipes.”
    “The English Resident—that’s a sort of ambassador—persuaded the Nizam to get rid of the French camp eventually, but it was all very touch and go. In fact, Lord Wellesley made it a condition of a bunch of peace treaties with local rulers in 1803 that anyone who had hired French officers had to ship them back to France.”
    “Wellesley as in Wellington?” asked Colin.
    “Right family, wrong brother. This Wellesley was the older brother. He was the Governor General of India right around the turn of the nineteenth century. Little Wellesley—the one who became Wellington—got his start soldiering under him in India.”
    I considered trying to explain about the Mahratta Wars, but thought better of it. People’s eyes were beginning to glaze over the same way mine had when Martin was talking about accounting. I would bore Colin with it later.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, grimacing apologetically around the table. “I’ve been doing background reading on this all week, so I’m a little obsessed right now. I’ve sort of hit a dead end, though.”
    Having exhausted the Institute of Historical Research’s collection of monographs on late-eighteenth-century India, I wasn’t quite sure where to go for the primary sources. It was my time period, but quite definitely not my field.
    “I wonder what happened to all the old East India Company documents,” mused Colin, his fingers tapping against the back of my chair. “They had to go somewhere after they tore the East India House down.”
    “I don’t know. I’ve never done any work with Indian documents.” There was a very nice new professor in the history department back at Harvard whose specialty was eighteenth-century India, but I had only met him very briefly at a department cocktail party the previous spring, hardly enough of an acquaintance to feel comfortable e-mailing and nagging him for advice. I was sure he would have no idea who I was. After the first thirty or so introductions, one grad student begins to look much like another.
    “You could ask Aunt Arabella,” suggested Serena. “She spent a good deal of time in that part of the world.”
    “Really?” I remembered Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s flat, with its chintz and white moldings and unexpectedly exotic accoutrements, relics of the last gasp of Empire. There had been a tufted Zulu spear and many-legged Indian gods sitting side by side with the usual Dresden shepherdesses and Minton candy dishes.
    Because it had been Mrs. Selwick-Alderly who had introduced me to Colin—so to speak—I had warm and fuzzy feelings for her, even if we weren’t quite on “Aunt Arabella” terms yet.
    “Her husband was stationed out there during World War Two,” said Colin. “And they stayed on until the transfer of power in 1947. If nothing else, she should at least have some idea of where you can start to look.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
    Feeling like I had hogged the conversation long enough, I quickly turned to Serena and asked her a question about the party her gallery was throwing for Valentine’s Day. Nick and Martin both pledged their attendance. I knew Serena had invited Pammy, too. This