“They’d always been there,” I said, with a confidence that came of having spent the last week reading up on the topic. “Well, since the 1660s, at any rate. They had trading posts there, just as the British did. When Bonaparte rose to power, in the 1790s, they still 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.