In the Arms of a Marquess (5 page)
In the upstairs parlor, Lady Ashford sat beside Tavy’s sister, both cooing over the bundle in Alethea’s arms. It was a cozy scene and peaceful, unencumbered with high emotion. Tavy drew a steadying breath and smiled despite the roiling inside her.
“How is my nephew this morning?”
“Hello, Octavia dear.” Valerie extended her hand to squeeze Tavy’s. “He is perfectly precious.”
“Do you think so?” Alethea tucked a corner of swaddling around the sleeping infant, hazel eyes misty. After nine years awaiting the miracle in her arms, Tavy could not blame her. Alethea was such a sensible person, much more so than she herself, who had spent her childhood dreaming of traveling the world, especially of seeing India, her head constantly in the clouds. Alethea deserved her mistiness now, and Tavy must settle back into the measured temper she had so carefully cultivated over the past seven years.
“It is not merely a mother’s fondness?” Alethea asked.
“Or a father’s?” St. John entered the chamber and briefly passed his hand across the back of his wife’s thick chestnut locks. He often did that, touched Alethea in some subtle way as though conveying his attachment to her with the gesture. Each time Tavy saw it her throat thickened.
“You will always see your son as beautiful and perfect, unless he is being horrid, like mine at the moment,” Valerie said on a laugh. “Steven has been detained in Paris and will not return this week as planned. Max is threatening to stow away upon the first ship that will put him into Calais and reunite him with his father more quickly.”
“Precocious for eight,” St. John commented. “Send him to me and I will find him a berth upon a comfortable vessel.”
The viscountess grinned. “You are all kindness, sir, but when I wish for your help, I will ask for it.”
St. John’s fair good looks and phlegmatic air belied a thoughtful man of business. But when Alethea had entered her confinement while they were still aboard ship sailing north along the Spanish coast, strain had shown on his brow and in his blue eyes. Now he gazed upon his wife and newborn son with evident pleasure, the tension of so many months entirely erased.
“It has been an age since we last saw Steven.” Alethea stroked her son’s tiny fingers. “Just before we left for India, if I recall.”
“Which puts me in mind of an errand I must do now.” Valerie clasped Tavy’s hand again. “Octavia, I am having a supper party on Friday. Only a few close friends. I cannot hope to persuade your sister and Sir St. John to leave this tiny treasure for an entire evening, but you must come even so.”
“I would be delighted.”
“Splendid. Tomorrow I will take you driving in my carriage. But for now I must be off.” The viscountess pecked Alethea upon both cheeks, cast a smile at St. John, and departed.
Tavy bent and touched her lips to her nephew’s brow, then her sister’s.
“I have letters to write. If you need me I will be in the downstairs parlor.” She left her brother-in-law and sister to their private happiness.
Lal perched atop the stair rail awaiting her. She placed her forefinger inside the monkey’s gentle grip.
“St. John’s joy is too new,” she whispered, “his heart so thoroughly bound to them that in the middle of his busy day he is here at home.”
The capuchin tilted his small black and tan head as though considering.
“I cannot ask him to help Marcus. I must leave my family out of this.”
Footsteps sounded in the foyer below. Lal clucked his tongue and scurried down the banister. Marcus appeared. Lal barked a comment and went stiff.
An odd frisson of relief stole through her. “What a lovely surprise, Marcus.”
“I hope not too great of a surprise.” He watched as she descended, his handsome face shaping into a smile. He had laughing eyes, somewhat heavy in shape but bright in expression, and always pleased when he looked at her, except briefly at the theater.
“Not too great. I expected to see you today or tomorrow.”
“You did.” It was not a question, but he looked at her in that way he sometimes did, as though he expected her to say something clever or flirtatious rather than the truth. So it went with everyone she had ever known. Nearly.
“Won’t you join me in the parlor for tea?” She moved toward the door. “I was on my way there to do correspondence.”
“Missing your connections in Madras?”
“I am.” But she could not write letters to the fishmonger or fruit seller or rice merchant. “I used to be great bows with St. John’s half sisters.” She rang for tea. “They are both in the country with their children and families now, but we still correspond.”
He followed her to the sofa.
“Do you look forward to that sort of domestic life yourself?”
Tavy smiled. “I have had that domestic life for years, Marcus, in India with my family.”
“Not your own establishment.”
“No.” Unmarried Company officials and army officers were in short supply in Madras’s small English community. Several had tried to convince Tavy to relinquish the comfort and autonomy she enjoyed in Alethea’s home. But a husband might have made her leave India whenever he desired.
But now she was in England, and Marcus was a friend.
“Octavia, you know how I admire you.”
“I do, Marcus. You have been unfailingly kind and attentive since we became acquainted in Madras, and again since I stepped off ship three weeks ago. I cannot see that as anything but admiration.”
He shook his head. “You never say what I expect.”
“I beg your pardon. My mother always says my tongue goes before my thoughts. But really they go at quite the same moment, which can be inconvenient at times.”
“Octavia, may I have the honor of your hand in marriage?”
She regarded him carefully then stood and moved to the window. The day without seemed to be clearing, thin striations of pale blue in the gray canopy.
“A fortnight ago—no—in fact, yesterday afternoon I would not have hesitated to accept your offer.” She turned to face him. “But last night I heard something with which I cannot be comfortable.”
He approached her. “I am overjoyed to hear that only a small matter deters you in accepting me.”
“I do not believe it is a small matter. That man was trying to blackmail you, wasn’t he?”
“My dear,” he took her hands, “I assure you he meant only to encourage me to complete a negotiation I did not agree with. But I have already decided to take my business elsewhere and have informed him of that. You needn’t be concerned.”
“Really? You seemed quite overset about it last night.”
“I was irritated that he disturbed my enjoyment of your company. Octavia, I have waited over a year to bring my suit to you. Will you have me wait longer?”
She looked into his green-gray eyes, convivial on the surface, but a shadow lurked.
“I beg your pardon, Marcus, but I don’t know that I trust you on this matter. I think you are not telling me everything, and that cannot be a good place to begin a marriage.”
“Octavia—”
“I only wish to help, you know, whatever it is. I could, but not if you will not be honest with me.”
He released her hands and took a half step back. “If this is all that inhibits you from accepting, I cannot take it as a refusal.”
“And that is another thing. I haven’t asked before because it would have seemed precipitate, but why are you so set on marrying me? There must be any number of ladies who could make you an inestimable bride.”
He chuckled and shook his head again, his handsome face wreathed in a rueful smile.
“You do know how to depress a man’s confidence, don’t you?”
Tavy laughed, despite herself. “Not intentionally, and I truly doubt your confidence is pricked by my hesitation.”
“Then a list you shall have. You have intelligence and steadiness of character. You understand the work I am engaged in. We enjoy each other’s company.” He traced a fingertip along her cheek. “And you are a beautiful woman. I would be proud to have you at my side.”
His touch moved nothing within her, not even a hint of the craving the mere sound of Benjirou Doreé’s voice did. But she liked Marcus, and he seemed attached to her for all the reasons that would make him a good husband.
She ignored the unease gathering at the base of her spine. She would be a fool to refuse such a suitor, and she was through with foolishness.
“Then I ask you for more time. Forgive me, but I do not feel entirely in charity with you now, Marcus. If I were to accept you at this moment I would not be true to either of us.”
“The moment would be tainted? Your romantic sensibilities are stronger than I had imagined.” He smiled. “How much time do you wish?”
She frowned. “Aren’t you irritated with me?”
“Why would I be?”
“Well,” she floundered. “It is only that it may require several weeks for me to—”
“Weeks?”
She laughed at his pained look, then she sobered. “But I have given you my reply. If you cannot accept it, I will not fault you for withdrawing your offer.”
“As always, you are steady and straightforward. I could not withdraw my offer.” He gave her his most winning smile. “We will do well together, Octavia.” He took her hand and lifted it to his lips. “Now I will leave you to your monkey and letter writing and be off to Leadenhall Street. Good day, my dear.”
Lal entered the parlor as soon as Marcus departed, jumping up to Tavy’s shoulder and patting her hair. Tavy went to the window and watched the baron’s carriage down the street. She had surprised herself in refusing him. But her instinct for honesty had only failed once in her life. In this case her emotions were not deeply engaged, nor her baser nature. The girl who once allowed dreams of adventure to color her perception of men was, after all, long gone.
To LABOUR. To roll or pitch heavily in a turbulent sea.
—Falconer’s
Dictionary of the Marine
“O
ther fellows run around here in a heat these days, Doreé, but you always seem so at ease.” Styles cocked a curious brow. The corridor of the East India Company’s London headquarters bubbled with activity, traders moving from one chamber to another, one deal to another. “Why is that?”
“I suppose I have no desire to draw attention.”
“Then you should not look as confident here as the king ensconced at Carlton House.” The baron laughed.
“I should hurry along as well, do you think?” The East India Company and its desperate attempts to stay afloat beneath the pressure of Parliament’s finicky rule meant little to Ben. His fortune had never depended upon the Company’s successes, nor his principal endeavors. He maintained an active membership for the sake of connections and appearances only.
“Court’s in session, don’t you know, Doreé,” a gentleman announced as they approached the Directors’ Court Room. “G’day, Styles.” He nodded. “Trapper’s hearing. Lost a bundle in that Bengal fiasco. Going in to gawk at the poor sod?”
Ben lowered his lids. “Never.”
The man’s face puckered, his thick brows tilting downward.
Styles laughed. “Doreé rarely minces words, Nathans. You ought to know that by now.”
“Don’t know that you’ve got cause to chortle at me, Styles,” Lord Nathans grumbled. “Didn’t see so clearly with that Nepal venture, did you?”
Ben turned to his friend. “Nepal, Styles? How positively intrepid of you.”
Styles’s blue eyes narrowed. “Not all of us can be universally successful. Some of us occasionally make mistakes.”
Nathans chuckled, a sound halfway between relieved and self-satisfied. “Well, I’m popping in to see Trapper try to salvage the wreckage. P’raps I’ll buy him a bottle after, to cheer up the old fellow.”
“Good of you,” Ben murmured. A few years over forty, George Nathans had the thick carriage of a man a decade older and all the bluff conceit of the worst sort of middle-brow Englishman involved in eastern trade. The king had recently awarded him a peerage, alongside his partner, another prosperous private trader turned Company lackey, for work they’d done smoothing the sea path to Singapore.
Nathans’s business partner was Marcus Crispin.
“By the by, Nathans,” Ben said, “I am having a few friends out to the house next week for some shooting. Care to join us? Just a handful of Company men. You are welcome to bring Lady Nathans along, of course. How a man could bear to be separated from such a beautiful wife I cannot imagine.”
Nathans’s square face reddened, but his eyes looked eager. Cantonese tea had made him rich as Croesus, but his father had been a haberdasher, and his title was spanking new.
“Well, I’m glad for the invitation, Doreé,” Nathans blustered. “Don’t mind if I do.”
“Capital. Friday, then.”
Nathans bowed and went into the hearing.
Styles turned to Ben, brows high. “Thought you didn’t care for entertaining.”
“I must have altered my feelings on the matter.” Ben started toward the exit.
“Don’t I merit an invitation as well?”
“Do you wish one?”
“I haven’t been to Fellsbourne since—well, since the funeral.” He cast Ben a questioning look. “Sometimes I wonder if you ever go there yourself.”
“I have had little occasion to.” Until now. Despite himself. But old habits were difficult to lay aside.
“If you wish to change government policy concerning trade in the East Indies, why don’t you do it in the Lords? You’ve got the seat. You don’t need to knuckle around with nonentities to drum up support. Step into your father’s footsteps.” Styles’s voice prodded.
“I have no interest in politics. You know that.”
“So you insist. But then why this shooting party of Company men? And, for God’s sake, Nathans? His wife is good
ton
, but the fellow is a horrid Cit.”
“Perhaps. But I am particularly ill suited to throw stones.” Ben’s gaze passed over an oil painting hanging on a nearby wall of a great, shaggy lion subduing a thick-shouldered tiger. The striped animal, longer and larger than its opponent, nevertheless lay prone beneath the king of beasts. “And perhaps I am inspired to know my competition.”
“Competition?” The baron’s eyes seemed to spark.
“
Adieu
, Styles.”
Ben passed through the front door onto the portico. The Company’s headquarters, built in Greek revival style to disguise its purpose in austere, classical costume, rose like a depressive shadow from the narrow street. Behind the striated Ionic columns and pediment stuffed with symbolic statuary, gold changed hands over kegs of saltpeter and barrels of cotton piece goods, bushels of opium and stacks upon stacks of tea bricks. But no London bypasser would know that from its exterior. It looked like a temple.
Ben moved from the porch, leaving the ponderous weight of India House behind him. The street was clogged with mud after the morning rain, but in front of the building straw was piled in ample supply to facilitate passage. The gentlemen-traders of the East India Company, struggling against the censure of high society, must not be seen to muddy their boots.
He pressed a coin into a stable boy’s hand and rode through the City toward Blackwall Village where the East India Docks spread across acres of planking and water. Before the massive wall that surrounded the quay, warehouses loomed, sentinels of Britain’s mercantile power upon the seas. Beyond, a forest of masts rose above the hubbub of business. Seamen strained at capstan poles, hauling aboard the produce of English manufacturers and mines—woolens, bullion, copper—and from the East, spices, tea, silk, and porcelain to be sold on the Continent and in America. Gulls circled masts and blanketed sails, alighting upon spars and barrels stacked along the boards awaiting transfer onto carts, their strident cries cutting the air.
Ben’s gaze slid over the nearest vessel, a hulking three-masted East Indiaman suited to the rough seas of the Cape of Good Hope. His secretary stood amidships beside a dockworker, gesturing aft to a pile of crates.
Creighton caught Ben’s gaze, dismissed the lumper, and moved toward the rail. Ben climbed the gangplank serrated with shafts of sunlight slanting through the rigging.
“Good day, my lord. This is the
Eastern Promise
.”
“Show me.”
He followed his secretary down into the belly of the vessel, the air growing close as they descended. Upon the low-slung berth deck, Creighton moved forward to the infirmary. He folded his hands behind his back and his brow furrowed, gaze fixed on the detritus stuffed into the foremost corner of the surgeon’s quarters.
“So you see, my lord.”
“I do.”
Human hair clogged the crevice. Straight, curly, red, brown, blond, some black. In considerable quantity.
“Too long for bilge rats,” Creighton muttered.
Ben tilted his gaze aside to his employee.
“Of all the moments for you to insert a note of levity into your work—and perhaps, Creighton, it may be the first in my memory—this is an odd one.”
“Forgive me, sir. I have nothing else to say. I’m afraid this has left me quite speechless.”
“The former master had no explanation?”
“None, sir. Said he never saw it.”
“The surgeon?”
“Gone to America last week, unfortunately.”
“What do you believe to be its origin?”
Creighton shook his head.
“Captain’s fancy?” Ben suggested.
“I’ve seen some strange treasures, sailors being what they are.”
Ben drew in a long breath. “Clean it out, then forget about it.”
“My lord—”
“I will look into it.”
Creighton’s eyes brightened. “I say, sir, that’s very good of y—”
“If you praise me for taking up this small task, Creighton, I will fire you.”
Ben retraced their passage up four flights of narrow steps to the main deck, his secretary following. A twelve-hundred-ton ship, broad-bellied and cleanly built from her three sturdy masts and fifty guns to her sparkling decks, the
Eastern Promise
was as fine a merchant vessel as could be seen docked anywhere in the world.
“Creighton, who brought your attention to this ship? Lord Ashford?”
“No, sir. I had a tip through the regular channels. Since you were looking for a third vessel to send down to Tunis with the others, I inquired after it.”
Ben endeavored to loosen his jaw muscles. First mysterious hair, now the need to ask the sorts of questions he typically left to his secretary’s discretion.
“From whom have I purchased her?”
“A Frenchman we’ve done good business with in the past. He took her off her previous owner six months ago in Calais.”
“Only six months? That is brief to own a ship like this.”
“He’s an honest man. Had another vessel founder off the Cape filled to the gunwales with goods intended for Bombay. He needed the cash.”
“And we needed the ship.”
Creighton flipped open a leather folio and scanned the top page. “She’ll be ready to put to sea within the month. The tea will take a fine price in Marseilles.” His face grew impressively blank once again. The cargo of tea masked the vessel’s true function, to trawl the Barbary Coast in search of pirate ships with holds full of human ballast. Ben had kept Creighton on for seven years precisely because of his consistent failure to emote over the principal project he oversaw, the destruction of slaving vessels and conveyance of their cargo to safe ports. Men involved in the slave trade tended toward pride, then greed, when they met with success. Creighton never showed a hint of either vice.
His only vice, in fact, seemed to be in continually hoping for his employer’s greater involvement in his business. If he had any idea what Ben was currently planning, he would be in alt.
“Fine,” Ben replied.
“The muskets and cannonry Lord Ashford took off that privateer last month arrived in Portsmouth. Shall I see to their storage?”
“Too likely to go astray.”
“I’ll have them sent to the foundry to be melted down.”
Ben’s gaze strayed to the Union Jack hoisted high upon the mizzenmast, bright blue, white, and red against the pale sky. Beside it the colors of his front company flapped dully in the slight breeze, brown and white stripes with a gold slash through the center. That company made him a healthy income he then used to fund other shadowy and considerably more controversial causes.
A weary crease shaped his brow. Styles imagined he had an interest in politics, perhaps that he was trying to work his way into society’s good graces by pleasing his fellow lords and tradesmen at once.
Ben’s old friend hadn’t any idea of the truth. For seven years, even longer, Ben had worn the secret of his life’s work like an invisible yoke about his neck.
“Sir,” Creighton said, “about that letter you dictated to me yesterday, to the governor of Madras . . .”
“Complete it, allowing for the transfer of funds to the army if he agrees to the terms.”
“Yes, my lord. And the Malta issue?”
“It may work itself out without interference, and we will not know for some time yet.”
His secretary scribbled upon the ledger.
“Creighton, I need you to pen some invitations.”
Creighton’s head snapped up. “Invitations?”
“A dozen or so, for a sennight of shooting at Fellsbourne.”
“Shooting.”
Ben leveled a clear stare at his employee.
Creighton cleared his throat. “Of course, sir. To whom should I send them?”
“The Leadenhall Street set, but exclusively titled men. Nathans, Styles, Crispin, the others. Include their wives.” He turned toward the gangplank.
“I don’t believe there’s more than a handful of lords involved with the Company at this time.”
“It is a modest group indeed.” All fairly well known to each other. All with business interests in the same far distant waters and upon the same eastern coasts. All with fortunes to lose should Parliament decide to further tighten its control over Company purse strings and trade practices. Since the bill of 1813, government had been holding the ribbons, driving the Company in a new direction. Some proprietors chafed at the bit, remembering days not long past when Company officials acted independently of Whitehall and made a hefty profit any way they saw fit.
A man who saw his business autonomy dwindling might have any number of reasons for blackmailing a fellow trader who was also a lord and had a voice in Parliament.
“And, Creighton, make certain St. John Pennworthy and Abel Gosworth are on the list.”
“Mustn’t be the only gentleman there whose fortune is stable, my lord?” Creighton’s face shone with pride.