In the Arms of a Marquess (2 page)

Chapter 1

HORIZON. That circle which seems to bound our view, or limit our prospect, either at sea or on land.

—Falconer’s
Dictionary of the Marine

Madras, 1821

M
iss Octavia Pierce came fully into her looks at the advanced age of five-and-twenty, several thousand miles away from England and in the midst of a monsoon.

Lounging in a shadowed parlor, hand wrapped around the stem of a fan in an attempt to stir the moisture laden air, her elder sister, Alethea, noticed the softening of Octavia’s sharp jaw, the gentler curve of lips no doubt due to less biting upon them, and the lengthening of fine, red-gold hair that should never have been cut short to suit fashion. She noted too the elegant, stiff set of her sister’s slender shoulders, the once-wild chestnut brows now plucked into perfect submission, the smooth cheeks and rather too temperate brown eyes.

“Tavy,” Alethea said, “when did you stop laughing aloud?”

Octavia’s gaze remained on the letter in her hand. “What on earth are you talking about? I still laugh aloud.” The sheet of foolscap was crossed and recrossed with their mother’s spindly scrawl. Her brow beetled.

“No, you do not. I wonder when it happened.”

“During some monsoon over the past eight and a half years, I daresay.” Tavy glanced up again. “This is the third time this week you have asked me some silly question like that, Thea. The rain has sunk you into the dismals. Would you like me to fetch a glass of tea for you? Cook made some with mint and fennel this morning.”

“You have become a beauty, Octavia.”

Tavy lowered the letter. “Oh. You’ve gone batty.”

“You have. Look at your elegant gown straight from Paris, your shining hair, your lovely figure. And it is not only your appearance. Everyone in Madras adores you.”

“They pretend to because I am the only one who tells the truth around here, and they are all afraid I will tell the truth about them someday too. Behind my back, they crucify me.” She wrinkled her nose. “Now, you are making me ill with this line of commentary. Cease.” She put a hand to the shuttered window and pressed it open to allow in more light along with a whorl of damp air. Returning her attention to the letter, she took her lower lip between her teeth. “Thea, what did you write to Mama about me most recently?”

Agitated chatter an octave higher than either woman’s voice erupted from the banister along the covered porch. Tavy extended her arm through the open window and a tiny black and brown ball of fur and limbs streaked up it, settling atop her shoulder.

“Hello, Lal. You are back early. Did you find anything tasty in Lady Doreé’s kitchen today?” She stroked the monkey as it curled its spindly arms around her neck, and glanced at her sister again. “What did you write, Thea?”

“She asked me how you were getting along.”

“She asked why I am not yet married.”

Alethea’s fanning slowed. “It is time to go home, sister.”

Tavy stilled, not allowing her reaction to show—the jump in her pulse, the frisson of panic across her shoulders. Her sister was correct in one respect. She had grown nearly expert at hiding her emotions. On the outside.

“Why now? Finally?”

“There is malaria in the old quarter.”

“There has been malaria in the old quarter before, and the new. We did not leave then.”

Alethea’s palm slipped over her abdomen. “This time I have greater reason for caution.”

Tavy’s mouth popped open. Alethea smiled, hazel eyes sparkling. Tavy threw herself across the chamber and her arms about her sister.

“Finally. Oh, finally.” She pulled back, gazing with delight and wonder at Alethea’s lap. “When did you know?”

“March.”

“March?” she exclaimed. “And you did not tell me? But that would explain St. John’s distraction lately. Well, more than his usual distraction.”

“After so many years, it seems too good to be true.”

Tavy grasped her sister’s hands. “I am so, so very happy for you. For St. John. For me! I shall be an aunt. How positively lovely. But you will have this baby on board ship.”

“Perhaps. The doctor is coming along, and we will make few stops. St. John is seeing to the arrangements now. There is something to be said for one’s husband having influence over a number of fast vessels.” Alethea’s gaze sobered. “You will not mind going home?”

Tavy stood and moved toward the window again, an odd restlessness slipping through her. She reached to her shoulder, and Lal curled his tail around her fingers, a comforting gesture. But she did not need comforting, she reminded herself firmly. She had always known she would someday go home.

“When Father allowed me to come to India, it was only to be for a year or two, living with Aunt Imene and Uncle George,” she said with forced lightness. “That I remained so much longer after you and St. John came astounds me as well as anyone.”

Alethea took up the letter Tavy had set down on the sofa. “I see Marcus Crispin has been awarded a title.”

“For his service in that Singapore affair.” Tavy told herself not to chew on her thumbnail then did so anyway, cringing when her sister’s gaze narrowed.

“He called upon Papa?”

“I shall have to marry him now.” Her shoulders jerked in a peculiar little spasm. The monkey grasped her ear for balance, clicking its tongue.

Alethea’s head came up. “Have to?”

Tavy pursed her lips. “It is one thing to be a spinster here in Madras, where my brother-in-law is the highest Company official for miles and miles and I can do whatever I like.”

“And quite another to be one back home,” Alethea supplied.

“A mere ‘miss,’ receiving an offer from a bona fide lord of the realm, a baron for heaven’s sake. I wonder if he truly means to wait for me to return, as he told Papa?” She lifted her brows but the effort cost her. A sliver of discomfort worked its way between her eyes to the base of her neck.

“But you do admire him, don’t you?”

“Marcus Crispin? Intelligent, handsome, successful? Oh, and charming.” Tavy waved an airy hand as though it did not concern her in the least, an affectation she had years ago intentionally adopted that now seemed as natural as breathing. “I certainly admire him. Who wouldn’t?” She stared out at the heat rising in the garden.

“You are not hoping for more than admiration?”

Tavy shot a sympathetic smile toward her sister, turning again to the window before Alethea saw it fade.

“Thea, your happiness with St. John is all I could wish for. But love matches are not for everyone.” Her gaze lingered upon the banyan tree at the back of the garden, its trunk enormous and branches spreading. She drew in a deep breath and turned away. “Marcus Crispin is a fine man. I believe I can be happy with him.”

No response met her for a time.

“We will sail for London in a month,” her sister finally said. “It should be a comfortable journey if all goes smoothly.”

The trip in the other direction years earlier still lingered in Tavy’s memory with all the delicious vibrancy of a girl’s fantastical memory, the months of shipboard adventure and pauses at ports along the way. With her young heart full of excitement, her dreams finally coming true, everything had sparkled.

She stroked the monkey’s tail curled around her palm and her gaze traveled across the chamber. The cloud cover parted briefly, and motes of dust wandered through the dappled sun sprinkling through the shutters. Palm branches brushed against the veranda outside, dark and dripping with moisture. The heat-filled air stealing from the kitchen wing was redolent of cardamom, citrus, and myriad other subtle aromas.

A shallow breath stole from her lungs.

“I will miss this. I will miss India.”

But deep in the pit of her belly a tingle of nerves stirred, hidden for so long and so thoroughly it should have by all rights vanished by now. A frisson of awareness best left buried but reawakened, as persistent as on each day the London journals arrived in Madras, months out of date, welcome nonetheless by the English residents hungry for
on dits
. Tavy searched those journals, her face slightly averted and eyes narrowed as though to fool herself into believing she was not searching at all. Merely glancing. Only curious of the old news that often seemed so irrelevant in this world apart from England.

Three times her searches had been rewarded. Three breath-stopping, painful times in nearly seven years.

Those instances had almost made her afraid to pretend not to search the next time the journals arrived. Almost. But each month she pretended again, and each month the announcement she awaited did not appear. Nor did she hear it gossiped amongst Madras society, English or natives.

He had not yet wed.

Now, however, the journals would print her own betrothal announcement. And when she became the baroness of Crispin, she would stop pretending not to search. It was far past time, and she was not the person she had once been. The girl who cared about that expected announcement no longer existed.

She lifted her gaze. Her sister’s thoughtful regard was trained on her, oddly sorrowful. Tavy’s throat thickened. She shook off the sensation. Too much rain made her maudlin too. In the morning she would walk to the bazaar to work out her fidgets and say goodbye to her friends there.

“I hope you will live with us in town instead of with Mama and Papa,” Alethea said. “St. John’s aunt, Lady Fitzwarren, can introduce you into society.”

“I would like that.” Tavy moved toward the parlor doors to the terrace. “In the meantime, I shall begin packing the house,” she said with purpose. “You mustn’t strain yourself. Leave it all to me.”

“Thank you, dearest. Octavia?”

She glanced back.

“Is this acceptable to you?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” She passed out onto the veranda.

A man sat against the wall beneath the broad awning, cap drawn over his dark face, his loose cotton trousers, shirt, and long tunic neat as a pin.

“You have no doubt heard the news already, Abha.” She curled into a chair. Lal leapt from her shoulder to the windowsill. Droplets of rain pattered from edge of the roof to the tiled floor.

Abha pushed the cap back on his bald pate. He was a large man, thickset and heavy-eyed, with an Oriental flatness to his cheeks and brow. When her uncle hired him on her eighteenth birthday, Tavy thought it excessive to keep a servant principally to attend her when she went about Madras. But Abha had remained even after Uncle George left for Bengal.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what do you thank me now,
memsahib
?” he rumbled.

“For putting up with me for so many years. In case I should forget to thank you later when everyone is busy getting ready to depart, I wanted to do so now. Or perhaps simply twice. Will you go now to work for my uncle in Calcutta?”

“I will go to London.”

Tavy sat up straight. “Has my brother-in-law asked you?”

Abha did not respond. He often did not when she asked questions to which the answers seemed obvious. To him, at least.

Tavy shook her head. “London is not like Madras. Englishwomen are not kidnapped and held for ransom there, and I am not royalty. Far from it. I can go to the shops or call upon my friends with only a maid.”

He put a thick palm on the ground and pushed himself up to stand, silent as jungle birds at the onset of a storm.

“Well, you won’t like it, I daresay,” she said. “It is horridly gray and cold. Sometimes, at least.”

He moved toward the kitchen entrance.

“Abha, you cannot come. India is your home.”

He halted and looked over his bulky shoulder. “As it is yours,
memsahib
.” He disappeared around the side of the house.

Lal landed on Tavy’s shoulder and pressed his tiny hand against her cheek.

“You smell of rosewater.” She stroked him beneath the chin. “You have been in our neighbor’s kitchen, after all.”

He clucked his tongue.

“Lal, will you come to London and stay with me when I become Lady Crispin?” Tavy’s gaze strayed to the wall between the garden and the neighboring villa. Vines twined around the gate, especially thick where they tangled about the rusted latch. Her heart beat hard and fast. “You see,” her voice dimmed to a whisper, “except for Abha, I will not know anybody else there.”

Chapter 2

To IMPRESS. Where no other adequate mode can be substituted, the law of imperious necessity must be complied with.

—Falconer’s
Dictionary of the Marine

Cavendish Square

“I
have no need to hear the details, Creighton.” Benjirou Doreé, Fifth Marquess of Doreé, set his elbow atop the broad mahogany desk, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose between a manicured thumb and forefinger. “Indeed, I would rather know nothing about it at all.” He looked up and lifted a single black brow. “As I have told you ten score times. No, I must correct myself. Twelve score. But perhaps your memory fails.” His smooth voice seemed unperturbed.

His secretary knew better than to trust in that tone. While the marquess remained deceptively calm, his black eyes saw everything and his mind never rested. It had been this way ever since Creighton came to work for him seven years ago. A man of Lord Doreé’s wealth and power had no other choice, even if he liked to pretend otherwise.

Of course, everyone knew of that wealth, but few in English society knew of the power. For the sake of the projects the marquess pursued, that was best.

“My lord,” Creighton murmured, “I would review the matter with Lord Ashford were he here. But he has not yet returned from France—”

“And damn him for it and leaving this to me.”

“Very good, sir.”

The marquess glanced at his secretary’s poker face. He had, after all, hired Creighton after a night of cards in which the fellow won a pony from a veritable sharp.

The tug of a grin loosened the knot in Ben’s jaw, but the tension in his shoulders persisted. He rolled his gaze to the massive, gilt-framed canvas across the chamber. Afternoon sunlight striped his study in lines of gold and shadow, like the great beast depicted in the painting. But the portrait of the tiger remained fully in the dark. As always.

“Have you already inspected this—” He glanced at the papers Creighton laid before him. “—
Eastern Promise
?”

“Partially. The master was off visiting his family, and the quartermaster wouldn’t allow us belowdecks.”

“You suspect they are hiding something. Faults in the hull, or cargo?”

“Either.” Creighton’s brow crinkled. “Or neither. The pratique-master gave it a clean pass.”

Ben flashed his secretary a look suggesting his opinion of the honesty of quarantine officials. “A man has no need to protect himself from prying eyes when he has nothing to hide, Creighton.”

“Quite so, my lord.” Creighton’s puddle-brown eyes glimmered and his narrow chest puffed out. Ben nearly rolled his eyes again. He should never pontificate; his secretary enjoyed it far too much. Devoted fool. Excellent employee.

“Sir, atop I did see some evidence of human—”

“Enough.” Ben took up his pen and scratched his signature onto a bank check. He pushed it across the desk and stood. “Take Sully with you.” Creighton was a tough man of business, but the former dockworker and his crew of miscreants who served Ben’s interests in other capacities were tough in quite another manner. “Allow the quartermaster no more than thirty minutes to clear out his crew and their personal effects.”

“But, sir, don’t you wish to see the vessel for your—”

“No.” Ben’s voice was unyielding. “If you find illegal goods aboard her, incinerate them. If she proves unseaworthy, scrap her for materials and find another vessel to serve our current needs.” He gazed steadily at his secretary. “Now, Creighton, leave before I become inordinately displeased that you have disturbed my leisure in this manner again.”

One corner of Creighton’s mouth quivered, but nothing more. Wise man.

“Right, my lord.” Creighton pulled an envelope from the collection of papers in his satchel. “This arrived at the office today.”

Ben barely glanced at the sealed missive before slipping it into his waistcoat pocket. He picked up the sword he’d set upon the table when he entered his study, hands perfectly steady despite the familiar uneven rhythm of his heart.

Every three months like clockwork such a letter arrived, brought across half the world along the fastest routes. A punishment he willingly self-inflicted, it was the sole remnant of the single reckless moment of his life. A moment in which he had lived entirely for himself.

Gripping the hilt of the épeé, he strode through his house. A liveried footman opened a door into a broad, high-ceilinged chamber.

“Bothersome business matters. My apologies, Styles.” He drew on his fencing glove.

The gentleman standing by the rack of glittering swords chuckled, a sound of open camaraderie.

“I wish I had that particular bother.” He took a weapon from the collection. “How much did you net this quarter, Doreé? Ten thousand? Fifteen?”

“You know I never concern myself with that.”

“You merely live lavishly on the proceeds.” Styles gestured to the elegant fencing chamber Ben had converted the ballroom into after he succeeded to the title six and a half years earlier and had the whole house gutted. His father had been enamored of India, and his town residence reflected that. Just as his third son did, in his very person.

The opulent style had not suited Ben.

“Just so,” he murmured.

“Come now, give over,” Styles cajoled. “We have been friends far too long for you to continue denying your extraordinary influence at India House. And I think it’s about more than all those manufactories and plantations and whatnot you own over there. Your family connections give you an unfair advantage over the rest of us struggling traders, don’t they?”

Not the advantage any of them imagined.

“I am a mere proprietor in the East India Company, just as you. No particular advantage to speak of.” Ben studied his former schoolmate from behind lowered lids. Walker Styles came from an old Suffolk family ennobled in the era of Queen Elizabeth. His aristocratic pallor, blue eyes, and narrow, elegant frame were proof of it. The latter also happened to make him a devilishly fine fencing partner. And his sharp competitive edge kept Ben on his toes.

Ben swiped his blade through the air.

The baron cocked a brow beneath an artfully arranged thatch of straw-colored hair. “Are you certain you don’t thoroughly control those fellows over at Leadenhall Street, despite your lack of apparent involvement?”

“Good God, quite certain,” Ben lied as smoothly as he had been taught as a boy. “There are those at Whitehall and Westminster who would be horrified at the mere suggestion of such a thing.”

“You are just like your brothers, Ben, all honorable self-deprecation. Jack of course was not so close-mouthed, the good-natured sod.” Styles laughed, digging a familiar burrow of grief through Ben. He still could not bear to hear his half brothers spoken of casually, even by the one man who had been as close to them as he himself.

“So be it.” The baron lifted his blade in salute. “The secret of your empire is safe with me, whatever it is.”

L’Empire de la Justice
—the name Ben’s uncle had given it. An empire born of his uncle’s education in France in the years before the Revolution, nurtured by his horror over the massacre at Mysore, and supported by a vast fortune in cotton, spices, and saltpeter. Groomed his whole young life to someday rule it, for years Ben had danced like a puppet on strings at his uncle’s insistence in service to that empire. As the progeny of a lord, even a third son and foreign-born, he had entrée into certain sectors of European society that his Indian uncle never would.

His uncle hadn’t any idea what that entrée had truly entailed. Or he hadn’t cared.

But for seven years now Ben had been master of the empire that operated below the notice of polite society and most governments. And he was no longer a third son. Other men, like his associate Ashford, now did the dirty work.

His steel tip clicked on the polished floor.

“Allez,”
Styles announced.

The play remained light at first, then grew more intense. But it lasted little time, no longer than it took Ben to disarm his friend.

Styles flexed his wrist, breathing heavily from his exertions. “I must learn that useful little maneuver.”

“In the normal course of things, you haven’t any need of it.” Ben wiped his face with a cloth and racked his sword.

Styles’s eyes flashed. “You haven’t either.”

“I will always have need of such skill, Walker. Your longtime loyalty blinds you to that, I think.”

“Humanity is a savage lot, Ben.” The baron’s voice was tight, his brow uncustomarily clouded.

“Perhaps. But exceptions to the rule do exist.” He extended his hand. With a moment’s hesitation, Styles clasped it. Blue-veined ivory met bronze.

Styles’s palm slid away. “Is it to be the theater for you tonight?”

“Lady Constance insists that I escort her.”

“Apron-led fool.”

“You could ferry her about instead. She has been hinting at it for months now, or haven’t you noticed?”

“I’m not yet ready for parson’s mousetrap.” Styles smoothed a fingertip along the flat of his blade. “And she is meant to be a marchioness.”

Ben did not respond. His understanding with Constance Read was no one’s business but his and Constance’s alone. If the
haut ton
believed them to be set on marriage, let it. After the fire, gossips had whispered it was even more suitable that she wed him rather than the man she had been betrothed to from the cradle. With Jack Doreé in the grave, an alliance between the heiress of a Scottish duke’s East Indies fortune and a wealthy half-Indian peer seemed destined.

Savage humanity, indeed.

“I will be heading over to Hauterive’s later tonight.” Styles’s tone was a shade too casual. “Join me after you see Lady Constance home?”

Ben buttoned his waistcoat. “You know I don’t care for that sort of sport any longer.”

“That’s right. You prefer swords and horses to cards and dice now. But Hauterive’s offers more than dice.”

“Allow me to recall.” Ben smoothed a hand over his coat and straightened his cravat. “Drunken lords, unhappily married ladies, and sharps hoping to have their way with both? Yet more reasons not to accompany you.” He walked toward the door.

Styles grinned. “You sang quite a different tune, once.”

“A man changes.” Recklessness could cause that. Standing beside a pile of ashes could too.

The baron clapped him upon the back. “If you reconsider, you know where I will be.”

Unease prickled across Ben’s shoulders as he watched his friend move off along the corridor. Styles had encouraged him to return to their old haunt before, but never so insistently. But Ben hadn’t any interest in renewing his university days—rather, nights. He had never wished to live those nights in the first place. Duty and blood had guided him then. Always, then.

His hand moved to his waistcoat pocket and he withdrew the letter. He scanned the missive and his breathing slowed.

She was in England.

Long ago, he had ceased anticipating this day with any feeling whatsoever. It should not now take him by surprise. But for a moment he could not move.

Drawing in a cool breath, he walked into the parlor to the hearth. His hand extended over the grate. The flames seemed to reach forward, urging. His fingertips gripped the paper. As planned, this would be the last such note he received.

Jaw tightening anew, he cast the letter within. Fire licked at its edges for an uncertain instant then consumed it in a breath.

Without another glance, Ben went to change clothing for the evening. He was no longer twenty-two and just up from university, no longer the boy his uncle had controlled from four thousand miles away then again from the grave. In the intervening seven years he had fought and struggled in quite a different manner from the back-alley brawls Styles still seemed to enjoy. That moment, the brief slice of eternity when he had known her, might as well have been a lifetime ago.

“S
he is an Original.” The lady garbed in turquoise taffeta and turban with an ostrich feather poking from the nest lifted her lorgnette and nodded sententiously. “Tell everyone you heard me say it first.”

“Sally Jersey said it already, only yesterday morning at Kew when Lord Crispin escorted the girl there.”

“No. She came to my notice before that.”

“I am certain you wish she had, darling.”

“She is hardly a girl,” a third matronly voice interjected. “Five-and-twenty, I understand, and brown as a berry.”

“The East Indian sun will do that,” the first pronounced dismissively. “I call it charmingly sun-touched. Enormously elegant.”

“And refined.”

“And what taste! Did you see the gown she wore to Lady Alverston’s fete? Silver tulle over emerald silk, with mother of pearl and diamonds sewn into the sleeves. I have never seen its like.”

“Her sister’s husband is despicably wealthy from his East Indies interests.”