‘Commander Sandilands. Good morning,’ she called. ‘I was surprised not to see you exercising earlier.’

‘I overslept, Your Highness,’ he said with a disarming smile. ‘Unused as I am to Rajput hospitality I indulged too recklessly in all the good things the palace has to offer.’

Oh what the hell! If the palace grapevine was all it was cracked up to be she’d probably heard he’d defeated a Russian grand master and slept with a whole boardful of chess pieces.

‘Then I recommend a short canter.’ She turned and spoke to her syce who dismounted and led his horse over to Joe. ‘Shall we?’

Luckily for Joe the horse was well into its morning exercise. He thought he would have had quite a struggle to control the magnificent animal coming straight from the stables.

Shubhada led the way at a canter along the polo field and Joe began to enjoy himself, thankful that he’d remembered to put on the topee against the sun. It occurred to him that he was taking part in a very unusual scene. Maharanees like Shubhada would at any time in the past and, as far as he was aware, in the present, be kept well away from the eyes of any man and yet here she was riding off with him with the ease of any Western girl.

She stopped and dismounted at the far end of the polo field in a shady grove of acacia trees and Joe joined her, hitching their horses to a branch. He was curious to know why she had arranged this time alone with him. He wondered whether she knew the true nature of her husband’s illness. He would have very much liked to know how her own future would be affected by his death. He asked none of his questions. Even in riding clothes she was regal and a Scotland Yard officer knows his place.

She went to sit on a fallen tree trunk and pointed a finger at the other end. Joe sat down and waited.

‘I wonder if you are aware, Commander,’ she said finally, ‘of the seriousness of my husband’s condition?’

Perhaps this interview wasn’t going to be as awkward as he had anticipated.

‘I am, Your Highness, and may I offer you my –’

‘Yes, you may,’ she interrupted, ‘but when the time comes. You will hear more from his physician, I am sure, but we are thinking that he will not last out the summer. We ought, of course, to have moved him to Switzerland where we would normally spend the hot season but his doctor has advised against it. Udai would not survive the journey apparently. And, naturally, as ruler, he prefers to die where he has lived, here at the heart of his kingdom.’

‘A devastating loss for many people,’ Joe murmured.

‘Far more than you can ever know,’ she said. ‘But the ones who suffer most at these times of change are the ruler’s wives. And, of these, the youngest, childless wife has most to lose.’

He looked at her, taken aback by her sudden frankness.

She smiled. ‘I think you don’t like me very much, Commander. There is no reason why you should. You are a stranger here, you owe me no loyalty or affection but – I’ll tell you something – I’m very glad that you’re here! I was educated in Europe and, believe me, in the small academic and aristocratic worlds in which I moved in London, Paris and Geneva one came to accept the security of a well-policed community. I know you have no jurisdiction here in Ranipur but, by your presence, you remind me that the ordered world in which I grew up is still available to me should I need to retreat to it.’

What was this? A veiled request for another ticket out of the state? In a few gallant phrases, Joe encouraged her to depend on him to do whatever was in his power to ease her burden.

She smiled. ‘Remember you said that, Commander! I shall!’

Emboldened by the new, more approachable persona she was showing him, he dared to ask her how she had come to meet the maharaja.

Her smile broadened. ‘I wish I could tell you it was a romantic meeting . . . you know . . . his eyes caught mine across the crowded floor of a hunt ball . . . I hurried to help him up when he fell from his polo pony . . . but no. It was an arranged marriage.’

Sensing she had her audience in the palm of her hand, she continued. ‘My father is himself a raja in a southern state. An enlightened man where gender is concerned. His own mother, my grandmother, ruled the state during her son’s minority with frightening efficiency for many years . . .’

She saw Joe’s surprise and added, ‘There are one or two states where the succession is through the female line – Travancore and Cochin, for example, and women have ruled in Bhopal for generations. Indeed, the Tiger Queen of Bhopal came out of purdah the more efficiently to work with her people when the country was in the throes of a dire famine and that not so many years ago. Many ranees followed her example. My father saw no reason not to raise his three daughters – I’m the eldest – out of purdah and with all the advantages available to his sons. We girls learned mathematics, science and languages alongside our brothers. I rode and hunted with them. Indeed, I do believe I was a much better sportsman than any of them.’ She frowned. ‘Oh, dear! I don’t know the feminine of “sportsman”!’

Joe pretended to reflect for a moment. ‘I rather think it’s “sportsman”, Your Highness.’

She gave him a sideways look. ‘So, it wasn’t until I was shipped off to a girls’ academic establishment in Brighton that I learned that girls were considered a different and inferior race. I have never accepted that. More importantly, nor did my father. He had many requests for my hand in marriage and consulted me on each. He was perfectly agreeable to refusing them all as it would have entailed a life of indulged slavery. I would have disappeared into a zenana where I would have led the life of a recluse.’

Joe was stricken by the idea of this beautiful and vital young girl being hidden away for the sole pleasure of one man.

‘By my twenty-first birthday with my younger sisters conventionally married off (to their satisfaction – they were not coerced) my father and I had acquired a reputation for choosiness and the offers began to dry up. Then Pa met an old friend in London. Udai Singh, he remembered, was an easy-going soul, well travelled, clever, and enlightened when it came to the position of women. My father had not until then considered him as a suitable match for me because he was of my father’s generation, comfortably married with two wives already and grown-up heirs. He was not looking for a third wife. But he was introduced to me and,’ she smiled at a memory, ‘that was that. Coup de foudre. On his part at any rate,’ she added bluntly. ‘It was not ideal. I was destined to be more than just a third wife but . . . well . . . Udai is very rich – and, as you see, he lets me live exactly as I want to live.’

‘You enjoy the best of both worlds, Your Highness,’ he said and dared to add, ‘But how long will it last? Is there anything in the future that could alarm you?’

‘I’ll say!’ she said with unexpected energy. ‘This freedom you see me enjoying is an illusion! When Udai dies and the men are at each other’s throats fighting for their place on the gaddi what do you suppose happens to the widows? We cannot remarry, you know. In the past there was always the funeral pyre as a quick solution to the problem and I’m sure it is an option that First Her Highness would choose if the interfering British still allowed her to do that. They outlawed the practice many years ago.’ She looked at him enquiringly, wondering how far he understood India with its rules written and unwritten, its customs upheld or suppressed according to Western morality. ‘Royal wives tend these days to find themselves under guard – oh, a very discreet guard, of course – when their husbands die. Udai will go alone to his funeral pyre. And rightly so.’

‘But you would say that his wives will be left more than usually forlorn?’ Joe prompted.