In the Arms of a Marquess(16)

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.