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It is unlikely he would have been as intrepid a diplomat as I made him by sending him to the Punjab, Sind, and the Afghan, as well as Java, but he is a hero so I figured he could have done so. The Governor General of India at the time, Lord Minto, did indeed secure treaties with Ranjit Singh, the ruler of Punjab, Amir Shah Shuja of the Afghan, the Amirs of Sind and of Persia, effectively halting any potential French encroachment into the region.
I also decided that while Thayne was in India, he developed a passion for Indian sculpture and brought home a large collection. This allowed me to indulge my own passion for Indian sculpture, developed during my college years when I made a serious study of it. I even went so far as to give Thayne's collection my own favorite piece of sculpture, which he proudly shows to Beatrice in one of my favorite scenes. Shown on the left, it is a red sandstone figure of a woman, about 3 feet high, that was once a railing pillar. It is from Mathura circa 2nd century, and belongs to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Many years ago, as an art history graduate student, I had the pleasure of touring the storerooms where the enormous LACMA collection of Indian sculture was then housed. (Their Indian art collection is so huge there is no way to display it all in the galleries, so the pieces are rotated.) The storerooms were packed to the ceiling with works of art, many simply lying about on the floor or stacked against a wall. I remember stepping carefully over a beautiful Gupta head of Buddha, and then seeing this elegant lady leaning against a wall. I was transfixed by the tactile quality of the carving. It really looked as though the skin of her belly would give when touched, so I broke the rules of the tour and surreptiously touched her. I gave Beatrice the same reaction to the piece. And I also gave Thayne an appreciation for this type of voluptuous figure, which is one of the things that attracts him to the very curvacious Beatrice!
My pubisher once again came through with gorgeous cover art for Just One of Those Flings. Many of you may recognize it. It is a detail from the portrait of Madame
Récamier by Francois
Gérard, painted in 1805. It is an actual detail of the painting and not a re-painted or re-imagined version, as was the cover for In the Thrill of the Night. I presume this means that the artwork is in the public domain, or else the Museé de Carnavalet in Paris, where it hangs, is very generous with reproduction rights, as it has been used on several other book covers over the years. You can see the crackling of the paint if you look closely at the cover.
Several readers have decided that the cover represents Beatrice leaning up against Lord Thayne's knees. I hate to disabuse anyone of such a romantic notion, but as you can see below in the image of the full painting as well as a larger detail, it is simply a cushion with a shadow and not a pair of legs!
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