“Have I said anything with which you disagree?” the dowager demanded.
“No. Mama and Papa did not sympathize with my character in the least. I was terribly awkward, not at all pretty, and too plainspoken. I hadn’t any of your feminine graces, Thea, and I loved all the wrong things, like sea travel and adventure and India. As girls on the verge of their introduction into society go, I was a complete disaster. But he saw something in me that he liked, nevertheless.”
“Not Marcus Crispin?”
“Octavia Pierce, for a young lady of impeccable honesty you have been wretchedly deceptive.”
“Well, I don’t know why I should have told anyone anything about it. I have always been traveling in some way or another, in my imagination even before I left England, dreaming of adventures, not content living within myself. Marcus seemed the perfect solution for continuing to live in that manner. He would not have asked anything of me that I would have found difficult to provide. And he never would have left me because he never would have given himself to me in the first place.”
“Left you?” Alethea whispered.
Tavy met Lady Fitzwarren’s gaze. Tears quivered on the rims of the dowager’s baggy orbs.
“I am deceptive, Aunt Mellicent, to myself most of all.”
The dowager nodded. “How do you feel now, child?” she said without a trace of sentimentality, despite the tears.
“Wretched.” Her stomach hurt, as well as her brain and heart, in a wholly new and desolate manner. “I think I must go now and write a note.” She crossed the chamber and returned to her bedchamber.
As she had requested, Abha was not to be found, and she still hadn’t the desire to see him. So she put the missive into a footman’s hands—a remarkably direct and open action that felt marvelously good—and waited.
After several hours, nerves strung, she asked the footman about his errand. He replied that he had given it to Lord Doreé’s first footman.
Tavy continued waiting. The day waned and Ben did not call or send a message. Perhaps she had been wrong about him. Perhaps she should have trusted her misgivings, as before.
But as dusk deepened into a purple-blue haze, her nerves twisted tighter, her stomach knotting in a continuous loop. She worried for herself. For Marcus and the girl who should not have to suffer even if they did not entirely deserve her help. And most of all for Ben. She could not make herself believe that he would not return her message if he were well. She simply could not have been that mistaken again.
She must see him, and she was finished with waiting for him to come to her. Seven years past finished with it. This time she had pressing business that could not wait.
Chapter 21
BINDING-STRAKES. Two strakes of oak in the deck. The design of them is to strengthen and bind the deck so well together, as to prevent its drawing.—Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine
Ben went to Crispin’s rooms. A bulky fellow with weathered skin stood on the street corner, leaning against a coal bin. One of Sully’s men. He tugged his cap to Ben and shook his head. Crispin still had not returned home.
He went to Brooks’s club, but none of Crispin’s acquaintances had seen him, and Ben did not know why he bothered. For years he had expected his employees to take care of tasks without his intervention. And they always did. But the anger in his blood fueled by frustrated hopelessness and an urgency to bring it all to an end propelled him through London.
At Styles’s house the butler shook his head apologetically. “His lordship left for the countryside this morning.”
“When do you expect him to return?”
“He did not say, my lord. But his man said he took only a few items in his bag and did not require assistance for the journey.”
Ben rode Kali to India House without entirely knowing where he guided her. At the door to the library, Lord Gosworth hailed him.
“How do you do, Doreé. Just the man I was hoping to find, actually.”
Ben bowed. He hadn’t the time or attention for discussing business. But he hadn’t the clarity of mind for anything else. The only moments he’d had of true sanity since returning from Kent were those in which he held Octavia in his arms. But he would not allow himself that again until the rest was settled. He could not. He would not offer her a man who did not yet know himself.
“Nathans called upon me yesterday.” The earl stepped close as a pair of gentlemen passed by. “Said Marcus Crispin’s not been in touch with him for days now. Fellow was in a real taking. Recently sank a load of blunt in a vessel called the Sea Bird just about ready to sail. She’s an impressive boat sitting at the export docks now, in fact.”
“What is Lord Nathans’s concern?”
“Says the goods haven’t arrived from up north yet.” He lowered his voice. “But Crispin signed the lading papers today. Ship is set to sail with an empty hold, and Nathans is in a pother over it. Wanted my confidential advice on how to handle a renegade partner.” Gosworth’s eyes narrowed. “I told him to ask you. Thought you might know something about it.”
“With all due respect, you were mistaken, sir. I haven’t an idea of the business. And never having had a partner myself, I am the least likely to be able to offer advice.” Sheeble was probably holding the Sea Bird’s cargo—the girls—somewhere else in London. Possibly near the docks, at a brothel or several. But if he were taking them from the hells again, Lil would have known. This time Styles must be finding them elsewhere, perhaps in the country . . . where he had just gone to check up on his cargo?
Country-bred girls. Farm girls who could read and write. To become prostitutes in the Indies? It made no sense.
Gosworth’s face sobered. “Doreé?”
“Sir?”
“I’m sure you’re well able to assist Nathans and Crispin if you wish, of course,” the older gentleman said. “But I’ve been meaning to say a word to you for some time now.”
Ben waited.
“Your father was as fine a person as I’ve ever known.” Gosworth clasped his arm. “You are his son, lad, through and through.”
Throat dry, Ben returned his steady regard.
“Thank you.”
He released Ben and bowed. “Good day, my lord.”
“Good day, sir.”
Ben called for Kali and rode home.
“My lord,” Samuel said as he entered his house and pulled off his greatcoat, “a message arrived for you several hours ago.”
“Sully?”
“No, sir.”
Ben accepted the pile of correspondence from the footman and went to his study. Dropping the post onto his desk, he crossed to the sideboard and took up a carafe of brandy and filled a glass to the rim. One palm braced upon the sideboard, he drank the contents. But it did not serve to still the chaos in him.
Gosworth was a good man. And the men who worked for Ben—Singh, Creighton, Sully, Samuel—gave him their loyalty and discretion without fail. He paid them well for it, but there was more. More to Lil’s trust. More to Abha’s iron-fisted faithfulness.
Yet the two people Ben had most cared about for years, most trusted like a brother and sister, were lying to him.
Styles’s deception dug deep. Knowing more about it now only tore wider the wound of betrayal. But Constance’s evasions were nearly as painful to bear. They had never been truly honest with each other, both hiding far too many secrets. But something distressed her greatly now, yet she did not trust him with it.