In the Arms of a Marquess(37)

“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.

The 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.