"Oh no, they're very different." He turned with a wink and tweaked her ear. "They don't dance."
"That's even worse. At least most nautch girls have some training."
"You already think English women are wicked, and you've never even met one. That's not fair. But I think you'd come to love England. If we were in London now, right this minute, we could hire one of those coaches you don't believe exist . . . a coach with two horses and a coachman cost scarcely more than ten shillings a day, if prices haven't gone up . . . and ride out to a country inn. Just outside London the country is as green as Nadir Sharif’s palace garden, with fields and hedgerows that look like a great patchwork coverlet sewed by some sotted alewife." Hawksworth's chest tightened with homesickness. "If you want to look like an Englishwoman, you could powder your breasts with white lead, and rouge your nipples, and maybe paste some beauty stars on your cheeks. I'll dine you on goose and veal and capon and nappy English ale. And English mutton dripping with more fat than any lamb you'll taste in Agra."
Shirin studied him silently for a moment. "You love to talk of England, don't you? But I'd rather you talked about India. I want you to stay. Why would you ever want to leave?"
"I'm trying to tell you you'd love England if you gave yourself a chance. I'll have the firman soon, and when I return the East India Company will . . ."
"Arangbar will never sign a firman for the English king to trade. Don't you realize Queen Janahara will never allow it?"
"Right now I'm less worried about the queen than about Jadar. I think he wants to stop the firman too, why I don't know, but he's succeeded so far. He almost stopped it permanently with his false rumor about the fleet. He did it deliberately to raise Arangbar's hopes and then disappoint him, with the blame falling on me. Who knows what he'll think to do next?"
"You're so wrong about him. That had nothing to do with you. Don't you understand why he had to do that? You never once asked me."
Hawksworth stared at her. "Tell me why."
"To divert the Portuguese fleet. It's so obvious. He somehow discovered Queen Janahara had paid the Portuguese Viceroy to ship cannons to Malik Ambar. If the Marathas had gotten cannon, they could have defended Ahmadnagar forever. So he tricked the Portuguese into searching for the English fleet that wasn't there. The Portuguese are a lot more worried about their trade monopoly than about what happens to Prince Jadar. He knew they would be."