His eyes flickered with anger again for an instant, then coldness. Without another glance at Tavy, he turned and walked away.
He did not return, although she waited, lying upon her bed, weeping, knowing she could not have been so mistaken in him, then knowing that she was the na?ve fool her aunt claimed.
The following afternoon her aunt and uncle closed up the house and took her north. Uncle George, it seemed, had business he was obliged to attend to in distant Calcutta. Tavy waited for her aunt to redouble the condemnation, but she behaved as though nothing at all had passed.
Uncle George, however, changed. Before, he had been kindly neglectful. Now he grew diffident, treating her with an odd, distant respect. Tavy didn’t know what her aunt had told him, but she could not help wondering if Ben had spoken to her uncle that morning instead of Aunt Imene, whether matters would have gone differently.
Six months later when they returned to Madras, Ben was gone. It was only then that Tavy learned how his uncle’s death had left him the wealthiest Englishman in India, and amongst the wealthiest natives. She also learned what he had not told her, what perhaps her aunt had not even known. His future was already set.
“He is a veritable Midas,” a gossiping matron said at tea in the vice-governor’s home.
The matron’s companion tittered. “He is expected to make some Indian princess a handsome prince.”
But he did not. Upon his return to England, only two months after his second brother fell beneath cannon blast at Waterloo, his father and eldest brother perished in a fire that burnt down the family hunting box and killed six servants in their beds. Alongside the death notices the London journal printed the information—as though an afterthought—that the new marquess was expected to marry the heiress his eldest brother had been betrothed to since childhood, the daughter of a recluse Scottish duke who had made his fortune in East Indies trade.
No more Indian princess bride. Benjirou Doreé was a Lord of the Realm now. As such, he was expected to wed as one.
Tavy cried herself to sleep that night a final time, but never again. The young man she had fallen in love with—beautiful, laughing, kind—was no longer. He had disappeared the moment he walked away from her in the garden that morning, leaving her heart torn open. The new Marquess of Doreé, so high above her touch he might as well be a god, meant nothing to her.
Chapter 8
EMBAYED. The situation of a ship when she is enclosed between two capes or promontories.—Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine
Two dozen guests gathered in the drawing room before dinner. Until their host entered, Tavy only had attention for one.
Lady Constance Read was stunning, and not only because of her natural beauty. When she entered the chamber, her smile and golden spirits seemed to fill it with warmth, her wide, luxuriantly lashed eyes dancing with sincere pleasure to see friends and meet new acquaintances. Tavy wanted to hate her immediately. But since she had never hated anyone, including her Aunt Imene—whom she successfully resisted despising for three full years while living with her—she certainly could not begin with charming, vivacious Lady Constance.
Moving around the room as she greeted people, the heiress finally came to Tavy.
“Dear Miss Pierce, how lovely to see you again.” She reached for her hand.
Tavy stared, speechless, then dropped into a curtsy. Lady Constance remembered her. Then again, it seemed unlikely that unmarried ladies often visited the Marquess of Doreé’s town residence by themselves. Except, of course, Lady Constance.
But her smile now seemed so genuine, and Tavy found herself smiling back.
“It seems, Miss Pierce,” she leaned in and hushed her voice, “that you and I are the only husbandless ladies present at this dull business gathering, for of course that is why everyone is here, although our host will not admit it.” She glanced about with a furtive air. “I propose that the very moment we find the company unendurable, we dash off to the village together to shop, or perhaps shut ourselves in a cozy parlor with a stack of lending library novels and read aloud to one another.”
Tavy could not help but laugh. Lady Constance was precisely her age, with the appearance of a goddess and the character, apparently, of a girl not yet out of the schoolroom. She, obviously, had not struggled for years to quash that girl. Or if she had, she’d done a poor job of it.
Tavy nodded gravely. “It is always best to have a plan.”
A twinkle lit the beauty’s eyes, and just like that, despite herself, Tavy gave over her affection. It would no doubt prove horridly inconvenient when he married her. But she had never been very wise in that way.
Tavy was reminded precisely how unwise immediately. Ben entered the drawing room and his gaze came to her and Lady Constance. Shivers of heat and cold passed through her.
“Miss Pierce,” Lady Constance said, “may I call you by your given name? My father says I am always wretchedly overfamiliar, but may I tell you a secret?”
Tavy nodded, her stomach tight.
“I feel terribly out of place here amongst all these Company people and would be grateful for a friend.” Her gaze flickered about the chamber, a fretful light in it for a moment.
“My name is Octavia.”
“Lovely. And you will dispense with the title and simply call me Constance. Ben calls me Connie when he is unhappy with me, but I do not care for that at all.”
“I cannot imagine that he is unhappy with you often,” she managed, swallowing back a wretched lump in her throat. He had kissed her, in his house, with this beautiful woman beneath his roof. It had been the best and worst thing Tavy experienced in seven years. Marcus, the man who had proposed marriage to her, possibly knew. But only now did she feel like a betrayer.
“Oh, well, no. You are correct.” Lady Constance smiled, but not as brightly. “He is very patient with me.”
The butler announced dinner. Marcus approached, a blithe smile upon his face, and drew Tavy’s hand through his elbow.
“Lady Constance, may I take you in to dinner upon the arm that my fiancèe does not occupy?”
Constance’s gaze slewed to Tavy, her winged brows lifted.
“Thank you, Lord Crispin. And may I congratulate you, Miss Pierce, on your betrothal?”
Tavy could say nothing. Marcus pressed his elbow to his side, trapping her fingers against him like he was trapping her into marriage with these public statements. He wished to force her hand. Perhaps he feared she would discover the secret of his blackmailer and refuse him.
Her gaze darted about the chamber as guests headed toward dinner. Amidst the ten titled proprietors of the East India Company, at least one must have information that could lead her to answers about Marcus’s blackmailer. Their wives were a mixed lot, some tradesmen’s daughters, others like Lady Nathans impoverished noble daughters sold to the highest bidder during their come-out seasons. Tavy would interview them all and discover information to confront Marcus, either to help or refuse him. And if a refusal made her into a jilt in the eyes of society, that must be the price she paid for once again giving a man her trust.
Tavy tasted dinner, but her stomach would not unwind. At the foot of the table, Lady Constance rose, and Tavy welcomed the ladies’ retirement. Slipping onto the sofa beside her sister in the drawing room, she watched Constance move to the pianoforte and draw back the lid.
“Why do you suppose Lady Constance and Lord Doreé are not yet married?” Alethea whispered. “I understand it has been some time since they were expected to wed, and she must be quite a few seasons out of the schoolroom.”