“It has been some time since I last visited there, ma’am. You might ask Miss Pierce, however. She only recently returned to England after quite a lengthy sojourn in the East Indies.” His tone did not mock or tease. He sounded perfectly sincere. Tavy’s throat dried up like the Arabian desert.
“How silly of me,” Lady Gosworth exclaimed. “You are such a lovely girl, I had forgotten you spent so much time there.” Her look grew avid. “They say you have a pet monkey.”
Tavy nodded. “I do.”
“How on earth did you come by him?”
“I found him in the market. He was a runt, brought from America,” trapped in a horrid cage, half-starved and bleeding from unmentionable places. At sight of him, Tavy had nearly swooned, then rang a peel over the vendor’s head and took the tiny urchin home. She left him uncaged, but he had never left her.
“I daresay he is quite like my pug,” Lady Gosworth cooed. “A veritable darling.”
“I daresay,” Ben murmured.
Tavy’s gaze shot to him. Her breath failed. His eyes shone with shared amusement.
“Precisely like your pug, my lady,” she managed. “I have no doubt.”
“Whatever did you name him?” the countess asked.
She chewed upon her thumbnail through the tip of her glove. “He is called Lal,” she mumbled.
Ben’s gaze shifted. Warmth spread deep through Tavy’s middle. She should not allow it, but her body would not listen to her rational will.
“Lal.” Lady Gosworth said thoughtfully. “I don’t believe I have ever heard that name. It must be Hindustani.”
“Sanskrit, actually.”
“Whatever does it mean?”
Tavy’s eyes apparently had a will of their own as well. “Oh, nothing of note,” she replied, captive in his gaze. “D-Dear one,” she lied, as always only when he inspired it. She had named Lal because of what still simmered in her memory, her very blood, after years. And somehow knowing that the monkey spent time each day in his house had comforted her.
For far too long she had allowed herself to be a fool.
Desire. Lal meant desire.
He must know it. His mouth curved up at one side, the crease appearing in his cheek that had once devastated Tavy. It still did. Her heart beat furiously. How could he smile at her now as though he had not been cruel only two days ago? As though he had not made love to Priscilla Nathans the previous night?
But Tavy’s nature tended toward happiness—or it had years ago, before she tried to deny it. And precisely that look on his handsome face had always encouraged her. Her resolutions of the previous night in her bedchamber wavered. She smiled. His black eyes sparkled in the slanting afternoon sunlight.
Lady Nathans spoke, and Tavy’s nascent, unwise pleasure abruptly died.
“You have given your horse a foreign name as well, haven’t you, Lord Doreé?” She gestured toward the animal.
“She is Kali,” he said simply. “The black one.”
“Oh dear, my lord.” Lady Gosworth giggled. “It seems you were not any more imaginative than Miss Pierce in choosing names.”
Tavy glanced aside. “To the Hindus, my lady, Kali is a fierce, destructive goddess. Most often she is depicted with four arms, brandishing a sword and a severed head.”
Lady Gosworth paled. “Good gracious.”
“Is that what you think of women, my lord?” Lady Nathans asked silkily. “That they are destructive?”
“No, indeed,” he replied without inflection, but he looked at Tavy.
She did not hold her tongue as she knew she ought. “Fierce, then?”
“If only it were so,” he said quietly. “It might be easier then.”
She knew they were watched. She could practically feel Lady Nathans’s gaze upon them, and Lady Gosworth’s curiosity. But she couldn’t care. For a moment, a flicker of time, Tavy was lost and she had no wish to be found. Not just yet.
In truth, never.
“Doreé,” Lord Styles called over. “Let’s have a go at the river road, shall we? I challenged Crispin to it earlier and he is game.”
Ben pressed his mount forward toward the baron.
“Must you?” Constance said. “That road is full of holes. You will lame a horse.”
“Many thanks for your concern over our health as well,” Lord Styles said with a laugh, and pushed into a canter. Ben glanced back, tipped his hat, and followed apace.
Priscilla Nathans made a rumbling sound in her throat. “That man is positively mouth-watering.”
“Lady Nathans,” Lady Gosworth admonished.
The baroness cast her an intolerant look.
The cherubic countess tipped up her chin. “Lord Gosworth says that now that we have been here to Fellsbourne, we must receive Lord Doreé in town.”
“I know where I would like to receive him,” Lady Nathans murmured.
“It is a shame he is not accepted into so many houses in society,” one of the other wives nearby commented. “I daresay dozens of mamas would like to marry their daughters to a rich, handsome marquess.”
“But one simply cannot endure the notion of all that Oriental blood in one’s grandchildren,” another said with a shake of her head.
“My butler says his valet goes about in a turban. And I have heard that some lords tried to block his preferment to the title despite his parents’ marriage and his enormous fortune.”
“And I have heard that dusky men have enormous—”
“Prissy Nathans, control your tongue,” Lady Gosworth hissed. “There is an unmarried lady present.”
Tavy’s eyes widened. Lady Gosworth stared back.
“Well.” The diminutive countess seemed to recollect herself. “He is not all that exotic.” She swiveled to the lady riding behind. “After all, Doreé is a French name, or it was at one time.”
The other nodded. “But I understand his given name is not Benjamin, as one would expect.”
“Oh, really?”
“Apparently it is Benji—” Her brow wrinkled. “Oh, I knew I would not remember it. It is very foreign sounding. Hindustani, no doubt.”
“Benjirou is a Japanese name.”
Four sets of female eyes snapped to Tavy.
“His nurse was Japanese.” She filled the silence. “The family quite adored her. Her son saved his life when they were children, and Lady Doreé named him in her honor. They are an extraordinary family.”
“I daresay.” Lady Gosworth looked as though she had swallowed a fish whole. “Quite extraordinary.”
“Benjirou means ‘son of two tongues.’ Naturally.” Neck prickling with heat, Tavy pressed her heels into her mount’s sides and caught up with her friend.
Constance’s cheeks were nearly as red as her habit, her eyes overbright.
“Constance, are you unwell?”
“Oh.” She dashed the back of a kid glove across her cheek. “I only wish those men would not be such fools. Look there, they will break their necks careening across that field, and all for foolish pride.”
“Pride?” Tavy murmured, training her gaze to the distance. Upon the gradual slope toward the river several horses galloped close. Far afield, the other riders watched. Tavy stared at Lord Styles’s white stallion, neck and neck with Ben’s mount. “Perhaps it is rather competition.”
Constance turned toward her. “Perhaps on Walker’s side. He has always wanted what the Doreé men have.” She seemed to study Tavy’s face. Her gaze lowered. “Except, perhaps, some things.”