In the Arms of a Marquess (34 page)

Ben nearly laughed. But the pistol still pointed over Abha’s shoulder, and Styles seemed paralyzed.

“In your arrogance,” Ben said quietly, “you never imagined he would turn on you, did you?”

“Lord Styles cannot be blamed, really. It is not to Lord Crispin’s advantage to have done this.” Octavia’s tone seemed pensive. “But Marcus is not an evil man at heart. Simply a weak one, I think.” She did not remove her gaze from Styles, but her lashes flickered.

“Show me the document,” Styles said.

“I may not have a head for figures, my lord, but I am not a complete idiot. Do you think I would bring it here so that you could take it from me and destroy it? Really.”

“Does she bluff like this with you, Ben?” he said in a peculiar voice, as though they were sitting across a table at the club together, glasses of brandy in their hands.

“No.” Ben’s grip tightened around the hilt of his sword. “Never.”

Styles’s shoulders moved up and down in a jerk of a breath. Silence streamed across deck.

“It is over, Walker,” Ben finally said. “You know it is.”

Styles’s arm dropped. The pistol cock snapped closed, echoing in the close space, and Ben released his breath.

“Abha, relieve Lord Styles of his firearm.”

The big man moved forward and took the pistol from the baron’s open palm.

“Now, if you will, Abha, escort Miss Pierce off the ship.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Ben could feel Octavia’s gaze on him as she ascended. Styles turned to him. Ben lowered his sword.

“So you will turn me in, will you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Ah. You have something else planned for me.”

“I want you to go, Walker.”

“Go?” Fear flickered in the blue eyes. “Where?”

“Wherever you wish.” Ben spoke slowly. “But go far. If I hear of you, I will let you know, and you will then be obliged to take to the road again.” He paused. “And, Walker, I have ears in many lands. Unless you prefer a life of wandering, you would be best to choose from the outset a distant location. Perhaps even one in which the people are nothing like you, where you are the alien, foreign and mistrusted. Hated.”

Styles stared at him, face white. “You cannot mean this.”

Ben laughed and shook his head. “Of course I do, old friend.”

“Isn’t the knowledge that I will be humiliated before my equals sufficient for you? That I may rot in prison?”

“You said yourself you have friends in Parliament who would not allow that. It is no doubt the reason you did not use that pistol just now. You expect your friends will wrest you out of this. But, Walker, I don’t want you to have friends ever again. I want you to know what it is to be stripped of everything you hold dear—title, status, wealth, authority over others. That is the humiliation I wish for you now because I know that will be worse for you than any other punishment.”

“And if I refuse? Or if I go then return someday?”

“Then I will do what I must.”

Boot steps sounded upon the overhead deck. Abha would have summoned help.

“Now it is your turn to decide. Choose, Walker.”

“Let me go.”

Ben nodded.

Young Jimmy and two of Sully’s other men appeared on the steps.

“Take Lord Styles to my ship at the end of the dock, Jimmy, and see that he is introduced to the master. Let Captain Agrieve know that the baron will be paying his way to Tunis with labor, and that he should drop him at the port there.”

Jimmy tugged his cap, eyes bright. “Yessir, milord.”

“And, Jimmy, remain with the ship until it disembarks. We do not want Lord Styles to miss his boat, do we?”

Jimmy smiled. “No, sir.”

Styles swung around to Ben, shock in his thick breaths. “You would not.”

“What did you think, that I would allow you to return home and pack your trunks? Visit your bank?” Ben shook his head. “Go, Walker, and do not return. And remember, if I hear of you, I will take the law into my own hands, as you are so fond of doing.”

They led him away, Styles’s back rigid, his face a hard mask of pride, even now.

For several moments Ben stood motionless, allowing the truth to settle over him. The finality. He drew in a long, deep breath. A cleansing breath, steadying himself.

Then he vaulted up the stairs.

The afternoon had cleared and thin sunlight shafted through the rigging, casting shadows onto the dock. Sully, Creighton, and Abha stood at the end of the gangplank as though they lingered about together every day, appearing for all the world like they were studying the
Sea Bird
’s moorings. Octavia was not with them.

Ben crossed the bridge in long strides. “I told you to keep a watch on her. I told you not to allow her from your sight. I told you—
Where is she
?”

Sully’s thick brows rose. Creighton drew the tip of a pen out from between his teeth and pointed it down the dock.

“Right there, my lord.”

Ben’s heart halted, then stumbled to life anew. She stood beside the next vessel along the quay, looking up at its decks, her carriage erect, the hood of her cloak tossed back onto her shoulders. Sunlight poked through the loosening cloud cover, slanting across her face and form and rendering her almost ethereal.

But she was far from that. She was the single true reality Ben had ever known, the most precious, recklessly steadfast, and divinely beautiful creature imaginable. Even with a monkey perched on her shoulder.

The animal’s head turned toward him. Octavia’s gaze followed, lit with emotion. Ben moved forward.

“My lord.” Creighton cleared his throat. “Your weapon?”

Ben grinned, shoved the sword into his secretary’s hand, and headed toward the only past, present, and future he had ever wanted.

Chapter 26

HOMEWARD BOUND SHIP. A vessel when returning from a voyage to the place from whence she was fitted out.

—Falconer’s
Dictionary of the Marine

T
avy struggled for breath. Ben’s face was flushed with life and so beautiful it hurt to look at him.

Lal jumped from her shoulder and skipped along the planking to meet him. With a gentle hand, Ben put the animal off him and halted before her. His gaze scanned her then came to her eyes. He smiled, and Tavy’s heart opened, a blossom beneath sun.

“You rescued me,” he said.

“I thought it was about time I returned the favor.” They stared at one another. “He capitulated so easily. You did not really need rescuing, did you?”

“I think I have needed rescuing by you my entire life, Octavia Pierce.”

“That is a very nice thing to say, but I don’t imagine it is true.” She spoke to prevent herself from leaping into his arms, like the monkey.

“Is Crispin’s confession real?”

She nodded.

“He gave it to you and you came here to help me. What did you imagine you would find?”

“I had no idea. I did not even know you would be here. But I had to come.”

“Octavia, I am sorry.”

“For what? Leaving me in the middle of the night to go carry on with another woman?”

He looked surprised for a moment, then his measured gaze said all.

“Priscilla Nathans told me,” she said. “And, no, I did not believe her. Not for more than a minute, anyway.”

“A minute.” He seemed to consider the notion. “I suppose I should be glad for the brevity of your mistrust this time.” His lips crept into another slight curve.

Octavia’s heart turned over. “You were in danger because of what I asked. Because Lord Styles hoped to harm me. I do not want to be a liability to you, Ben. I could not bear it.”

“Liability?” His voice deepened. “You are the reason those girls will not die on their way to India, the reason they are not being shipped away from home and into unwilling servitude. You are the reason I have put my father and brother’s deaths to rest, that their murderer will finally pay for it. The reason Constance can now live her life as she should. I would not have done any of it had you not shown me.”

“But I am not good at deception. I cannot play these games any longer.”

“This is not a game, Octavia. This is my heart that you stole and I can no longer live without. I have done many things I do not like in service to others, and I finally understand why, and why I must continue. But I cannot if losing you again is the price.”

She barely breathed. Words would not come. Remarkably.

“I am sorry, Octavia, not only for leaving you in the middle of the night but for leaving you seven years ago.”

“S-Seven years ago?” she whispered.

“I was head over heels in love with you then. I still am, more and more each day.” His mouth shaped a gentle smile, the flash of white teeth like that first day in the Madras market. “How could I not be?”

A sob of joy caught in her throat. The air all around seemed to shimmer, golden and dazzling in the crisscrossed shadows. She stared at his perfect face, his beloved face, and the present embraced the past in a sumptuous tangle. Early evening breeze rattled lines against spars, sailors called to one another across planking, a bell tolled and the scent of brine rose from the river, a cacophony of sensation Tavy melted into, every pore in her body opening fully to life again, finally.

“I know about Abha,” she somehow managed to utter.

“He told you.” Ben’s shoulders seemed to relax.

“All these years from thousands of miles away you have been protecting me,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He stepped close, his black eyes glimmering in the setting sun, vulnerable, his soul crystal clear through them. “Because until last night I was not certain the news would be welcome to you. Put me out of my misery finally,
shalabha
. Accept me. I am yours, as I always have been. I need you to be mine.”

“Oh, Ben.” She rested a palm upon his chest, then her brow. “I feel weak all over.”

He drew in a deep breath, touched his fingers beneath her chin and lifted her face to meet his gaze, wrapping his arm about her. “Then allow me to hold you until you regain your strength.”

“Rescuing me again?” A quivering smile. “You know, it is very difficult for a woman to resist a man who rescues her so many times.”

“I suspected that.” He pulled her to him tight and his heart beat hard and steady beneath her fingertips. “I love you, Octavia,” he murmured against her cheek. “I love you.” He captured her lips and kissed her so sweetly and with such sublime seduction of heart and body that she could only surrender willingly, happily, as she had at the beginning with him, when the world was wide and love could be plucked from the heavens if one were adventuresome enough to reach for it.

Her smile was radiant. “Take me home, Ben.”

“Where to? Madras or Kent?”

“Wherever you are.”

“You have my promise,
shalabha
. Forever.”

Epilogue

T
he marchioness leaned into the main deck rail and loosened the ribbons on her bonnet, setting a flurry of gold-red locks free. Sea spray and smoke from the Madras manufactories ahead tangled in the tropical air and in her nostrils, beckoning. Sprawled in a comfortable pale mass on the East Indian coast, Fort St. George commanded the harbor, surrounded by palm trees and town houses and screened by dozens of ships. She loved this sight, the sight she craved and that held her spellbound now, as on that first time she sailed toward it a decade ago.

She sensed her husband’s approach from behind. He slipped his hands around her waist, then his arms, and she leaned back into his warmth.

“So, we arrive.” His voice was peaceful.

“I have been thinking,” she said, months of shipboard contentedness now transformed into jittery anticipation. “What if you are unhappy here? What if it all seems horridly alien to you after so many years?” She turned from the scene of tropical heaven before her to an even more intoxicating sight.

His eyes sparkled beneath the equatorial sun, his expression pacific. “Then you will remind me and it will become familiar once again.”

She studied his face. “You are not sorry to have come?”

“No.” He sounded certain. “It is time. I stayed away too long.”

“You must have come back someday. Your family is here, and India is in your blood.”

His arms tightened. “You are in my blood.”

“I know you did this because I wanted to, and you are a prince for it.” She smiled. “But it will be good for the business, even such a brief visit.”

“Six months is sufficient time.” He bent to touch his lips to the side of her mouth, then again to the other side. Sweetness coiled through her at the light caress, the need he always roused in her rising full-bodied and soul deep. She wound her arms about his neck. The sailors were accustomed to these displays of affection by now, and if anybody complained, Abha would glower them into submission, or Lal would scold.

Welcoming her husband’s kisses, she struggled to order her thoughts. “Sufficient time to reestablish allies and make new contacts?”

“Sufficient time to make love to you in every place I once imagined doing so.”

“You did? Where?”

His hands slipped to her lower back and he pulled her flush to him. “Everywhere.” His voice was husky, the evidence of the vitality of his imagination delightfully tangible against her.

“In the garden, I suppose.” She lifted her lips.

“Yes.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. She shifted to meet him, but he teased, turning his attention to her lower lip with tantalizing little bites.

She sighed, a throaty sound of sheer bliss. “Where else? Never tell me the bazaar.”

“Yes.”

“The
bazaar
?” She gasped, the tip of his tongue turning her joints to jelly. “And the park?”

“Yes.” He kissed her full upon the mouth.

“The cotton fields?” She laughed in sheer happiness. “Company headquarters? Or, no—my aunt and uncle’s drawing room?”

“Yes. But mostly your bedchamber. I fantasized about you in your bedchamber.”

She smoothed her palms across his chest. The apricot-colored gem on her ring finger glittered alongside the gold embroidery of his waistcoat.

“I have a bedchamber here aboard ship, you know.” She took her lower lip between her teeth. “A rather fine cabin, actually. I know the owner, you see.”

“Do you?” His hands rounded her waist again. “And do you think he would mind if I used you quite thoroughly in that cabin momentarily?”

“I daresay he would not mind it at all. He is a generous sort.” Her voice came forth breathy. Silly for a woman married so many months, but there it was. His gaze and words did things to her inside. Very fine things.

He brushed his lips across her palm. “You will not regret missing our approach?”

His mouth did things as well. Even finer things.

“I have already seen the view.” Her pulse was quite rapid. “And we will not dock for another hour, will we?”

One black brow lifted. “About an hour.”

“Oh, then.” She grinned and gripped his hand to pull him toward the stair. “No time to waste.”

He laughed, the sun shone hot and delicious upon her skin, and she was home.