Free A King's Trade by Dewey Lambdin

long-engrained English gentlemanly modesty, “spent mostly in places so dreadful, the baubles were the only attractive things worth a toss. I assume you like goat. Do you not, it doesn’t signify, for that’s what we’re having. Keep a flock to dine on…sheep, as well.”
    â€œBut, no pork, nor beefsteaks, either, I’d s’pose,” Lewrie said, with another wry scowl.
    â€œTaboo to Muslims in the first instance, taboo to Hindoos in the second, aye,” Twigg replied, his thin lips clasped together in the sort of aspersion that Lewrie had dreaded in their early days. “Old habits die hard. Well, don’t just stand there like a coat-rack, sit ye down,” Twigg snapped, pointing imperiously at a chair at the foot of the six-place table, whilst he strode with his usual impatience to the chair at the other end, and Lewrie almost grinned to see himself seated “below the salt,” no matter there were only the two of them.
    The elderly servant, Ajit Roy, bearing a brass tray on which sat two glasses of sherry, shuffled in, obviously waiting ‘til they were seated before intruding. Twigg took a tentative taste, looking puckery, as if assaying his own urine for a moment, before nodding assent and acceptance, at which point Ajit Roy came down-table to give Lewrie his small glass.
    â€
Laanaa shorbaa,
Ajit,” Twigg ordered, and not a tick later, an attractive Hindoo woman in English servant’s clothing, but with a long, diaphanous shawl draped over her hair and shoulders, entered with bowls of the requested soup on another tray.
    â€œDhanyavaad,
Lakshmi,” Twigg told her.
    â€œThankee,” Lewrie echoed in English. He’d never learned Hindoo as glibly as his father, Sir Hugo, and had ever sounded
pidgin
barbarian when he did speak it, but it
was
coming back to him, in dribs and drabs. She
was
fetching; did she and Twigg…?
    â€œAjit Roy’s second wife,” Twigg said, with a knowing leer after one look at Lewrie’s phyz. “The first’un cooks. And no, I
don’t.
My tastes these days, well… I also own a place in the City, quite near your father’s new gentlemen’s lodging club, in point of fact. His is at the corner of Wigmore and Duke streets, as you surely recall, while my set of rooms is nearby in Baker Street. We run into each other….”
    â€œOh, how unfortunate for you,” Lewrie sourly commented.
    â€œWe speak rather often, act’lly,” Twigg said with a mystifying smile. “Sometimes dine, drop in for a drink, or play
écarté
with him at his club, with no need for its lodging facilities.”
    â€œAnd does he give you a discounted membership, sir? Or… does he make up for it by fleecing you at cards?” Lewrie cynically asked.
    â€œMy dear Lewrie…no one has
ever
fleeced me at
écarté…
and lived,” Zachariah Twigg drawled, with a superior simper. “Your father and I rub along quite well, together, act’lly. We’re much of an age, and experienced much the same sort of adventures in exotic climes, so…absent the disputes resulting from, ah… ‘boundary’ friction in the expedition against Choundas and the La-nun Rovers …his concerns for his
sepoy
regiment, and taking orders from a Foreign Office civilian, we’ve discovered that we have a great deal in common. Having
you
and your, ah…
follies
in common, as well. How is your soup?”
    â€œSimply grand,” Lewrie sarcastically muttered, though the soup was as close to a Chinese “hot and sour” as a Hindoo cook could attain, and as tasty as any ever he’d had when moored off Canton in the ‘80s.
    â€œAmazing, what a
small
world in which we live, Lewrie,” Twigg went on, carefully spooning up his own soup, and slurping it into his thin-lipped mouth, then daintily dabbing with his napkin. “Sir Hugo is partnered with Sir Malcolm