In the Arms of a Marquess (12 page)

“You can tell me the truth about the blackmailer. I think there is more to it than you have said.”

“I cannot speak of it at this time, but I will tell you eventually, I promise. My dear, let us forget about this and renew the friendship we have always enjoyed. This quarrel mars what should be a celebration.” His gaze was so sincere. Marcus always looked directly into her eyes. He never looked at her the way Ben did, first at her eyes, then all of her, then at her mouth, before returning his gaze to hers. Marcus’s gaze did not turn her inside out.

That had to be for the best. If what she learned about the blackmailer was unacceptable, her heart would not suffer for it.

“Octavia?”

She seemed to be staring at his neckcloth.

“Marcus, what if I told everyone that you invented our betrothal?”

“You would not.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you would not wish to see me hurt or humiliated. I know that about you.” He leaned forward and touched his lips to her brow, a gentle, brief caress.

Was this what one was supposed to feel for one’s husband, a mild tenderness mingled with frustration and a sense of inevitability? Alethea and St. John’s bond seemed the exception. The married pairs at Fellsbourne bore this out, most of them business arrangements between people with little in common. Only cherubic little Lady Gosworth seemed happy in her marriage, her husband gruffly appreciative of her. At least with a husband like Marcus, she would not find the need to seek out other gentlemanly company like Priscilla Nathans did.

Voices sounded in the corridor. Marcus looked toward them. Tavy tugged her hand away and stepped back across the threshold.

He banded his arms around her, pulled her forward and clamped his mouth over hers.

Astonishment shut out all else for an instant. Then she became aware of his lips urging hers to respond, his hands gripping her back and head, her breasts smashed against his big, firm chest. She had a quick impression of the scent of bergamot lotion and his skill at kissing as she flattened her palms against his shoulders and pushed.

A gentleman cleared his throat in the corridor.

Marcus released her. Tavy crossed her arms over her thinly garbed chest and swiveled her head. Lord Styles and the Marquess of Doreé stood two yards away.

“Ma’am.” Lord Styles bowed. He turned his regard upon Marcus. “Don’t blame you in the least, Crispin, stealing a march on the wedding day.” He twirled the chain of a quizzing glass around his index finger. “But do you mind if Doreé and I pass along to our chambers before you continue?”

Ben’s languid gaze slipped from Marcus to her, the black depths expressionless.

Tavy jerked back into her chamber and snapped the door shut. Pressing her palms to her burning cheeks, she leaned her brow against the panel. Shame enveloped her. Not because she had been caught embracing a man to whom she was not yet married. Not because anything in that embrace had stirred desire in her. Not even because she had been discovered by a man she had been kissing only hours earlier—enthusiastically,
hungrily
.

He was her weakness. Even as the moisture from Marcus’s kiss still lingered upon her lips, warmth bloomed in her the moment she saw Ben. Not a moment earlier. Being kissed by another man only increased her desire for him.

“Perhaps,” she whispered to the empty chamber, “I am a great deal more like Priscilla Nathans than I care to admit.”

Chapter 9

DECOY. A strategem employed by a ship of war to betray a vessel of inferior force into an incautious pursuit, til she has drawn within the range of cannon.

—Falconer’s
Dictionary of the Marine

B
en tamped wads of paper into the Manton’s double muzzles and braced the fowling piece against his shoulder. His spaniels darted through the brush, rousing birds from hiding with a flurry of soft flapping like loose sails in an easy wind. He took aim and fired, the stock jerking against muscle and bone. Two birds dropped.

“Bloody well done, Doreé.” The Earl of Gosworth splashed through an ankle-deep puddle to bypass him. Ahead, beaters smacked at shrubs and patches of undergrowth with paddles, stirring prey into flight. Farther off, gunshot ricocheted beneath the heavy overhanging clouds.

Ben shouldered his weapon and began walking, his boots sinking into mud. He despised birding, or hunting of any sort. He had hunted enough men to make the pursuit of dumb beasts less than enthralling. He preferred sport with a sword in his hand or a horse beneath him. And today especially he did not care for the opportunity to be alone with his thoughts.

Styles moved up beside him, the tails of his duster fluttering through the grass, his fowling piece gripped jauntily in his hand.

“Gosworth is wagering ten pounds on Crispin throttling Nathans before they can complete the Singapore deal,” he commented, following Ben toward the rise beyond the thistle bed to higher, less soggy ground. On the other side of the patch, Lord Nathans gestured with his weapon, shouting for his partner to hurry along. Styles snorted. “That Cit is a thorough boor.”

“Crispin seems like a reasonable enough man,” Ben replied. “I suspect he would not have gone into partnership with Nathans if he weren’t able to keep a cool head about him.”

“Perhaps he reserves all his heated moments for the lovely Miss Pierce, hm?” Styles chuckled and switched his gun to his other hand.

Ben glanced at the single-barrel weapon his friend preferred despite its cumbersome length. Leaving the house at dawn earlier, he had offered one of his finer guns, but Styles declined.

Oftentimes a man did not always know what was best for him.

Ben halted on the hilltop, the dogs circling around him. His land stretched beyond in strips of brown fields and copses of trees turned gold, crimson, and sienna. Styles drew a flask from his waistcoat and filled his shot cup, the aroma of brandy stealing through the chill air. He threw back the drink then proffered the flask. Ben shook his head.

“Your brother consumed at least three of these every time he went out shooting,” Styles said. “He got me and Arthur drunk as emperors once, boasting that a man could not take a shot without taking a shot both before and after.”

Ben nodded. He had heard the story plenty of times.

“We were all three of us shot to the wind,” Styles continued. “Jack staggered back to the house, of course, calling for a cart to retrieve us from the field. But the cart stuck in a brier patch. Arthur and I woke up the next morning scratched on every surface of our skin. You were lucky you weren’t there, Ben. You must have been in the Indies.”

“Indeed, I was.” Just before his twentieth birthday, when his uncle summoned him home to discuss the business, this time man-to-man.

Home.

During that visit Ben had rescued an English girl from a pair of kidnappers hoping to win a quick ransom payment. Afterward he had returned to the market and dealt with the thieves as he dealt with all swine. But months later, occasionally, deep in his cups at Hauterive’s, staring at a hand of cards or into a demi-rep’s jaded eyes, he had thought of that girl with the wide unspoiled stare and the beautifully long legs, and wondered how India was treating her.

Two years later when he encountered her again in India then returned to England, he had not left her fate to idle wondering.

“Have you gotten what you hoped from this little gathering yet?” Styles swallowed a second finger of brandy.

Ben turned away from the view of his estate, blocked in any case by the vision in his mind of her eyes before he kissed her yesterday. He’d been a fool to succumb to his desire. He should have known better. But he had always been a fool with Octavia Pierce. And for her.

“Styles, have you had any business with Nathans yourself?”

His friend’s brows rose. “You are after Nathans, then?”

“Have you?”

Styles shook his head. “Singapore does not interest me.”

“Why not? There is good money to be had along that route to Canton.”

Styles dropped his shot cup into his pocket. “I am occupied with other affairs.”

“Still fixed on Nepal?” Ben asked casually. “You won’t get far there, my friend. Those natives are not impressed by English woolens.”

“No. I’ve given up on that.” A strange light entered the baron’s blue eyes.

“Keeping things closer to home, I daresay? You have not been east in nearly a decade.”

“Neither have you.” Styles’s gaze narrowed. “Not since you acceded to the title.”

“I have not found the need.” Ben started along the ridge of the hill. Below, Nathans cavorted like a green lad over a brace of pigeons. Gosworth joined the gentlemen heading over the rise, including Marcus Crispin. Crispin cast a glance over his shoulder at his partner down in the brush then went along with the others.

He should send the whole lot of them back to London after lunch. She was set to marry Crispin. Her concerns about the blackmailer must be allayed.

But a persistent unease scratched at him. The night before, when he and Styles encountered Baron Crispin and his betrothed in the corridor, she had been resisting the embrace. And when he released her and turned to them, Crispin’s determined gaze fixed on Styles—not on him, the man Crispin had found his fiancée alone with earlier that day, her porcelain cheeks and the ivory column of her neck flushed, her beautiful lips bruised from his kisses.

Crispin was no idiot. In the ballroom Ben had seen the snap of his gaze, the proprietary grasp of her arm to make it clear to whom she belonged. But last night outside her bedchamber, that passionate embrace had been for Styles’s benefit. Not his. And she had not been privy to her fiancée’s purpose.

Ben would know why.

T
he wives of the proprietors of the East India Company present at Fellsbourne might be married to milliners, modistes, and jewelers, for all they discussed their husbands’ businesses. Their interests seemed to lie entirely in the current season’s fashions and in society ladies unwise enough to dress in last season’s.

Tavy sat in a windowed corner of a parlor elegantly appointed in ivory and cobalt blue silk, her embroidery forgotten in her lap, and gazed at the gray day without, listening now with desultory attention to the conversation of Lady Gosworth, Priscilla Nathans, and the other wives. Somewhere far off in the corridors of Fellsbourne, Alethea napped with Jacob, an excellent choice of afternoon activities indeed, as it happened.

“Isn’t this a cozy picture?” Lady Constance said from the doorway. Resplendent in peach silk and pearls, she moved into the chamber with smiles for each lady.

“Have you any news of the gentlemen’s return, Lady Constance?” the Countess of Gosworth asked, her round cheeks dimpling.

“Yes, do tell,” Lady Nathans purred. “Has our host enticed our husbands to the farthest reaches of the estate to find the perfect birds?”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Constance said with an unaffected shrug of graceful shoulders. “Lord Doreé dislikes shooting, and probably wishes he were here with you lovely ladies instead.” Her gaze glittered on the chestnut-haired coquet for a purposeful moment, then shifted directly to Tavy.

“He dislikes shooting?” one of the ladies trilled. “Who ever heard of such a thing?”

“Anybody who might be listening,” came the vocal rejoinder. Lady Fitzwarren stood in the doorway behind Constance, her bulk encapsulated in a fantastic constellation of violet organza and lilac silk.

“Lady Fitzwarren, how do you do?” Constance said delightedly and grasped the dowager’s lavender-gloved fingers.

Tavy leapt up and went to them.

“Afternoon.” Lady Fitzwarren took in all the women in the chamber with the greeting, then brought her open gaze to Tavy. “Octavia, you look peaked, especially with Lady Constance beside you for comparison.”

Constance laughed. “Come now. Octavia is as lovely as can stare. And,” she added sotto voce, “there are those here who can and do stare.”

“I have no doubt of that whatsoever.” Lady Fitzwarren took Tavy’s arm. “Come with me, child. You may join us, Lady Constance.”

“It is good to see you, Lady Fitzwarren,” Tavy said uncertainly. “But what are you doing here?”

“You called me Aunt Mellicent when you were a girl. May as well do so now.”

“But what
are
you doing here, Aunt Mellicent?”

The dowager dragged Tavy into the drawing room. Constance took up a position at the door.

“You needn’t be shy, Lady Constance,” the dowager said bracingly. “There will be no secrets passed about here. Come have a seat. Does Doreé’s cook make an edible poppy cake? I’ve had a hankering for a fine poppy cake for a fortnight now and ordered my own Griffin to bake up a batch for tea today. But after I received Alethea’s note, I hadn’t time to taste a one.”

“My sister sent you a note? Whatever for?”

“She thought I should know that you betrothed yourself to Marcus Crispin. I don’t blame her for it, of course. Your parents have been angling in that direction for months.” She fixed Tavy with a direct stare. “Well, why did you do it?”

“I beg your pardon, Octavia.” Constance spoke before Tavy could open her mouth. “I did not mean to suggest last evening that married ladies are dull bores.”

“At the time you suggested it, I was not precisely betrothed, actually.” It felt unreasonably good to admit that aloud. Too good.

“Aha.” Lady Fitzwarren snapped her fleshy fingers. “I knew it.”

“How could you have known that, Aunt Mellicent?”

“Suspected it, rather.”

“But he is a perfectly unexceptionable gentleman, and you have been present on nearly all the occasions I have been in company with him since I returned to London.”

“Precisely.” Lady Fitzwarren turned to Constance. “Why aren’t you and that handsome marquess wed yet?”

Tavy’s stomach hollowed out. She could claim a sudden megrim and flee. But she must hear of their plans eventually. The sooner the better. Then perhaps her foolish imaginings would finally cease. Lord knew she hadn’t the strength to cease them through her own will. Like Priscilla Nathans and Lady Gosworth, she had spent the majority of the day wondering when the gentlemen would return. Her betrothed had nothing to do with her anticipation.

She had never kissed two men in a single day. Or year. Marcus’s embrace had left her furious and frustrated, and she was still piqued with him for it. But Ben’s kiss . . . Hot, delicious little eddies wound through her at the mere thought of it.

Constance smiled. “One reason we are not wed, my lady, is that he has not offered for me.”

“Which suggests there are other reasons as well.”

“It does, indeed.” The heiress’s eyes glimmered.

Tavy struggled to appear only mildly interested.

“Has he got a host of lightskirts at his beck and call, or a flamboyant Bird of Paradise you cannot abide?” Lady Fitzwarren demanded.

“Oh, that certainly is not my place to say.” Constance’s eyes danced.

“I haven’t heard that he has either, so you needn’t be coy, missy, and I suspect you wouldn’t be if he did,” the dowager responded with a satisfied nod. “Good.” She returned her regard to Tavy. “I thought you told me you were through with pretending. How long have you been betrothed to Crispin and how long will you make him wait before you jilt him?”

Tavy sputtered. “Jilt him? Aunt—”

“Don’t try to cozen me, Octavia. I knew you when you were all spots and elbows, long before you put on airs.”

“My lady,” Constance interjected softly, “I believe Octavia was as surprised by Lord Crispin’s announcement of their betrothal as—well—as I was. Perhaps she is only now determining how she may proceed.”

“Well, you’ve got a sensible head on your shoulders, after all, don’t you, young lady?”

“I have my moments.”

“Moments in which your beauty eclipses the sun, moon, and stars combined, dearest Lady Constance?” Lord Styles drawled as he entered the chamber. “Innumerable, I daresay.”

A flicker of displeasure passed across Constance’s eyes so swiftly Tavy nearly missed it.

“Afternoon, ladies.” Lord Gosworth entered, Ben and Marcus behind.

Marcus moved to Tavy and lifted her hand to his lips. “What a relief from the wilds of nature.” He offered a charming smile for all. “Feminine beauty and grace to please a man’s weary eye.”

“Young flatterer,” the dowager scowled.