In the Arms of a Marquess (20 page)

“Well,
memsahib
.”

“Really?”

He shrugged a heavy shoulder. “One city is like another.” He wore the same loose cotton trousers, shirt, and tunic that he always wore in Madras. His beard and the small hat topping his hairless head were as neat as ever. He looked perfectly at ease.

“Not really,” she said. “But you do not mind it here?”

“You do,
memsahib
.”

Tavy chewed on her thumbnail, then plucked it out of her mouth and went to the foyer table. Lady Constance’s calling card rested upon the silver tray.

“I enjoyed being in the country again,” she murmured for Abha’s benefit. Constance was back in town already, and calling upon her. If Lady Fitzwarren had seen something between Ben and her at Fellsbourne, then Constance must have as well. But if Constance cared for him in that way, she would not pursue their friendship in this manner.

“Abha, what do you know of the Marquess of Doreé?” She replaced the card on the salver. “I suspect you must know at least a bit more than everyone else in Madras, if not a great deal more. You always know everything.”

“Not everything. I do not know why you ask me about him.”

“Clever. Obviously I have just spent a week at his home, which—I note the extraordinary—shows absolutely no hint of India whatsoever.” Not even his bedchamber. “Extraordinary, you know, when every Englishman I have met in London who has spent two days upon the subcontinent practically wears turbans and smokes the hookah. Isn’t that a curiosity?”

Abha shrugged again. His usual taciturnity did not sit well with her now.

“You have not changed your clothes to look like one of the other servants here.”

“I am not an English lord.”

“He is a great deal more than an English lord, and you know it.” Her cheeks were wretchedly warm. “And there is a very good chance that you and I are amongst the few residents of London who understand to what extent.”

“Do you understand?” His deep-set eyes questioned. It was unusual for him, this man of few words and fewer queries.

“I spent the better part of seven years listening at knotholes and cracks in the walls of bazaar stalls to find out. I should think I do.”

His mouth curved into a grin.

Tavy chuckled. “You and Lady Fitzwarren are quite a lot alike.” Her mood sobered. “Now I must write a note. I need you to deliver it to the marquess’s house here in town. Please make certain that he receives it directly from your hands. If he has not yet returned to town, bring back the note and we will try again tomorrow.”

His brow drew down, but he said, “Yes,
memsahib
. I will make certain.”

“H
ow do you like the new furnishings, Doreé? More lush than all those years ago when you came here as often as I.” Styles waved his whiskey glass in a gesture that took in the entire dimly lit drawing room of Hauterive’s. “Must be the elevated clientele these days. See over there the Duke of Avery, hoping to entice Abigail Carmichael into his bed. But she still has her cap set for you.”

Ben had no interest in these sadly debauched members of the
beau monde
. Not in their
petites
affaires du coeur
, in any case. Styles surely kept the conversation light for his benefit.

But Ben had had enough of this brief trek into his sordid past. He hadn’t heard anything useful in hours of card play and drinking while Styles rambled on about the petty misbehaviors of his set. Nothing concerning Nathans or Crispin, and certainly nothing about that other matter he had kept in a corner of his mind over the past fortnight, the mystery Creighton had shown him.

“You’ve got that look like you are bored to death and past ready to leave,” Styles said.

“Have I? How bothersomely transparent I must be to you.”

“No, Ben, you are not your brother in that. I could always tell what Jack was thinking. Never made a fellow wonder.” Styles’s bright blue gaze met him fitfully. “But you don’t like a man to know what you have going on. Do you?”

“You have had far too much to drink, Walker.”

“Then tell me one of your secrets, Ben. Prove me wrong.”

“If I must engage in such childishness to soothe your spirits. Perhaps you will give me your thoughts upon the matter.”

Styles settled back in his chair.

Ben swiveled his brandy. “I purchased a ship recently from a Frenchman. A fine vessel, but with the most intriguing mystery attached.”

“What sort of mystery?”

“The sort stuffed into a corner of the planking.”

“Illegal goods?”

“Hair. A great deal of it.”

Styles’s brows rose. “Peculiar, rather than intriguing. Did you instruct your man to take it to market? Human hair takes an excellent price, of course.”

“And those are the thoughts I sought from you? You have indeed drunk too much. Which suggests it is far past time I am going.” Ben stood.

A heavy hand clamped onto his shoulder.

“Doreé, is that you?” The gentleman came around him, releasing his grip only to take Ben’s hand in a snug shake. “Is you, I’ll be. They said you used to carry membership here. Never thought I’d see it. Glad to come across you like this, though.” The man’s eyes were glassy, but then, Fletcher James’s eyes were nearly always glassy with some substance, at least in the past four years.

“Sir.” Ben bowed. “I am just now on my way out. If you will excuse me.”

“I’ll go with. Got something to say to you, don’t you know.”

The burly footman gave them their effects and they stepped into the rustling, whistling midnight of London’s hells. Music and light spilled from the gin house five doors down, the same to which Ben had fled the night after Lady Ashford’s party. It seemed much more than a fortnight ago, before he had held Octavia in his arms again.

“Need a ride?” James gestured toward a hackney coach.

“Thank you, no. My horse is stabled across the street.”

“But wait on there. Told you I’d something to say to you specifically.” The man swayed, but his florid face looked earnest.

“Say on, sir.”

He blinked hard. “S’not so easy now I’ve come to it, don’t you know. Makes a fellow downright uncomfortable t’admit he was wrong.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“Got the notion of it, don’t you?” His eyes narrowed. “Knew it was you that helped me out of the bind with that sharp three years ago.” He shook his head. “Should’ve thanked you then, but didn’t like the idea of it. Now I’ve got to.”

“That sharp held your vowel on a cargo that rightfully belonged to me,” Ben said mildly. “It was in my interest to see the situation rectified.”

“You beat me at cards fair and square, cleared me with the sharp, and I thought you didn’t deserve the time o’ day. But when Sally told me—”

“You needn’t continue.”

“Damnation, let a fellow make an apology! Don’t know if I’d do it if I weren’t drunk as a David’s sow, but now’s the time.” He nodded for emphasis. “When my wife told me how you asked her permission b’fore you stepped in, I was madder’n Old Nick that you’d gone to see her. But she brought me ’round to it, and I know now the fine thing you did.”

“Your wife is gracious.”

“Still dreams of dancing. Barely anyone calls now. Doesn’t let it bother her too much, though. Busy enough with all those orphans. But it was a fine thing, you taking that business to her. Wasn’t that tea you cared about, but that damned hospital. Didn’t want Sally to lose it because of my bum luck, did you?”

“It was rather a question of whether your wife wished to lose it.”

James’s brow beetled. He peered at Ben for a moment, eyes abruptly keen.

“Know where a man’s life is, don’t you, Doreé?”

In Fletcher James’s case, it was with his young wife upon her wheeled chair, her legs rendered useless by a carriage accident four years earlier that abruptly ended her days as a vivacious darling of the
ton
. That moment began her existence as the sole patron of a small but busy foundling hospital not two streets from where her husband now stood.

“I daresay,” Ben murmured. “Good evening, then, James. Give my best to your wife.”

“You could give it to her yourself,” James said hesitantly, as though shy of being rebuffed, “if you care to call someday.”

Ben crossed the street to the mews, his cravat peculiarly tight. So rarely he had involved himself in the minutiae of his businesses—public businesses and those belowboard alike. Occasionally, however, he hadn’t been able to resist, as in the case of Sarah James, whose spirit he had understood merely by crossing the threshold of that hospital. He did not need her husband’s gratitude, or even an invitation to call.

Her happiness, however . . . that was something else entirely.

It felt good.

Ben rode home with an unfamiliar sense of peace settling upon his shoulders. As he came into the foyer, Samuel met him.

“My lord, a certain person has been waiting some time to speak with you. He is in the blue parlor.”

“Thank you.” A brace of candles lit the corridor, but Ben had no need of light to know who awaited him. Samuel’s unusual tolerance in allowing the visitor to remain needed no decrypting.

“Hello, Abha.”

Towering half a head taller than Ben and thick about the neck and chest like the bales of cotton he had hauled as a youth, the man stood and came forward. He bowed deeply.

“My lord.”

Ben’s jaw flexed. “Cut line with the excessive formality. You are no longer in my employ.”

“You honor me,
sahib
.”

Ben repressed a scowl, his chest tight. Abha could only be here for one reason. “Have you a message for me?”

The hulking man produced a folded slip of foolscap from his tunic. Ben slid it into his waistcoat pocket. Abha did not move.

“Well?” Ben’s voice sounded edgy. He’d known this man his entire life, spent more of his childhood in Abha’s company than any other human. Eighteen years had taken their lives far from the narrow alleyways of the Madras bazaar and the cotton fields around Mysore where Abha usually lived. But the clear intent in Abha’s eyes was the same as it had been two decades ago.

“Good Lord, you haven’t changed since you were fifteen,” he said when Abha remained silent. “What is it? What do you wish to say to me now?”

“That which, out of honor, I could not say while you paid me for my service to you.”

Ben waited.

“I say this, Benjirou. Once I saved your life. I can take it away as easily, or . . .” He paused. “ . . . make you wish I would.”

Chill slid through Ben’s veins. “Son of my mother’s brother,” he said with intention the Japanese half-caste could not mistake, “your mother who suckled me, and mine who treated you as a son, would not look kindly upon such a deed.”

“Son of my father’s sister,” his uncle’s bastard replied, “your mother and mine would never know.”

Silence stretched through the dark between them.

“Of what wrongdoing do you accuse me?”

“That which you paid me for seven years to prevent.”

“I intend her no harm.”

“Then leave her be.”

Ben met his gaze straight. “I cannot.”

Abha’s heavy eyelids sank down. “Then tread carefully, my cousin.”

Ben’s spine unlocked. Abha would not call him that if he truly meant him ill. He had enormous respect for Abha’s ability to carry through on a threat. It was the very reason he had hired his foster brother to watch over Octavia all those years ago. While Ben had returned to England, Abha remained with her, the man Ben trusted most in the world to protect her.

After that, four times a year for seven years, Abha had punished him for that sublime arrogance by sending the same message across thousands of miles. Each time, three short words only:
She is well
.

Ben nodded. “I will take care.”

Abha turned and without further words disappeared into the rear of the house, where he would depart by the servants’ entrance.

Ben passed his palms across his face, took a deep breath, and went into the parlor. At the sideboard he poured three fingers of whiskey and carried his glass to a chair before the fire. He sat, set the crystal on the floor by his foot, and drew out her missive.

I am once more betrothed, and in possession of part of that which you desire.

It was unsigned. She must trust Abha as he did, but still she had not endangered herself by committing details to paper. She would tell him in person at Lady Fitzwarren’s gathering.

He leaned back into the chair and stared at the fire. Flames licked at the coals, drawing life from the hard black chunks of dead matter. He tried to recapture the contentment of remembering Lady James and her hospital. But he could not. This business he had become involved with hadn’t a shred of altruism to it. He did not deserve any gentle swell of satisfaction for now being on the verge of learning what he must to carry through. He deserved the terse diffidence in this single line of script.