But he had forced himself to adapt, molded himself into the perfect English boy despite the constant torment of his peers. At the time, he told himself it was for the best—for his family’s honor, his uncle’s needs, his own peace—a private peace in life he had always yearned for yet never achieved. She gave him that peace, with her unrehearsed touch and speech, her genuine smile and thirst for life. She had from the first.
Except at the present moment.
She could not go into a gentleman’s club, but Ben would not put it beyond Octavia to wait on the sidewalk for Crispin to emerge. She had never been shy when she wanted something.
Despite his anxiety, he smiled.
But no beautiful minx with hair the color of fire opals stood on the block in front of Brooks’s. Ben entered the club and scanned the chambers. Gentlemen peppered the subscription room, playing at cards, backgammon, and politics.
One man sat alone hunched over a corner table, hand on his brow, the other around an empty glass. Ben slid into the seat across from him. Crispin lifted his head and his face crumpled.
“No,” he uttered and looked to the wall.
“What have you to tell me?” Ben asked quietly.
“Rather, how will you punish me? You needn’t, you know. I have been punished sufficient for a lifetime.”
“A somewhat melodramatic response, and not particularly lucid.”
“Need I be more lucid?” He swung his head back around. “You are here on his errand or your own. Either way, I am thrice damned.”
“Tell me of the first two damnations and I will offer you assurances concerning the last. Possibly.”
“Do you truly believe you could make it any worse for me now?”
“Undoubtedly.” Ben held his gaze. “My lord, my patience thins.”
“You don’t know?”
“Apparently not. Enlighten me.”
“He took Tabitha.” He lowered his brow into his palm once more, masking the gesture here amongst his peers in an attitude of weariness. Even in grief, the baron calculated his persona.
Ben’s blood hummed with impatience.
“Tabitha is the girl you keep, I am to understand. The one for whom you sent dozens of others to their deaths?”
“Not all died,” he muttered. “Sixty reached Madras in the last shipment.”
“How many vessels have sailed with such precious cargo, Crispin?”
“Since I have been involved, only the one, nearly two years ago, and the ship setting off tomorrow.” Disgust curled through his voice. “Before that, I don’t know. Three, four perhaps.”
“Why did you become involved? Easy income?”
His brow was dark. “What will you do if I tell you?”
“What do you imagine I will do?”
“Expect me to stand as witness against him.”
“Would you?”
Crispin’s genial eyes hardened. “It would ruin me.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“But you could protect me.”
Ben shook his head. “I haven’t so many friends in Parliament as my father did, or more importantly, as Lord Styles does now.”
“But I suspect those few you have are the ones worth having. And I don’t think a vessel leaves port in London without you knowing what’s in it and where it is bound.”
“Clearly several have, or I would not be sitting with you here now.”
Crispin’s face pinched. “I took passage on Styles’s ship two years ago merely because it was heading to Madras and that was my destination. I hadn’t any idea it belonged to him or what cargo it carried. The master was a drunkard, the quartermaster Sheeble in charge.”
“Sheeble bribed you with the girl?”
Crispin looked toward the wall again, as though he could find courage there. “When I discovered the girls, I threatened to make it known at the next port, and to have them sent back home. But by then it was too late.”
Ben knew about too late. Nine years ago he learned that lesson when he rescued an English miss in a crowded marketplace.
Crispin dragged in a breath. “I did not sleep.”
“Guilt for agreeing to keep the business secret and profiting from it?”
His eyes slewed back to Ben. “I never wished to profit from it, and I have not.” His voice was hard. “Sheeble said that if I slept, he would put Tabitha overboard. I could do nothing. The crew anticipated their gold at the end of the cruise. None of them would help me, and they took my sword and pistol, even the lock on my door. I kept her with me and barely slept for two months until we reached port. Sheeble let me have her then, but he maintained a watch on us.”
“I assume you smoothed the transfer into India of those girls who remained alive, without notice by the authorities. Why did you agree to sign the documents?”
His shoulders fell. “I was beyond myself. Ill. It was easier to do what he wished than to continue. I could not work and remain in society and protect her from Sheeble all at once. It was impossible.”
In society in Madras at that time he had begun to court Octavia, an attempt to release himself from the grip his obsession had on him. But such a grip never released a man.
“Did Styles ever threaten you himself?”
Crispin’s lip curled. “Sheeble always, until you so conveniently gathered us all at your estate.”
“He allowed you to purchase the Sea Bird, making you believe that would be an end to the trade in girls.”
“He lost a fortune in Nepal, but you must know that. I paid him twice what the ship was worth. I thought that would end it.”
“But he warned you that was not to be.” With a burr beneath a horse’s saddle and an impromptu race. Ben should have known. But he hadn’t known about the fire then. He had not yet learned to mistrust his old friend. “Will he bring the girls from the countryside this time?”
Crispin lifted his gaze again, abruptly sharp.
“Apparently you know everything already. Why are you here?”
“Take care now how you speak to me, sir,” Ben said evenly. “I have been asked to show you more mercy than you deserve, but I am inclined otherwise.”
Crispin’s eyes flickered with something deep and disturbing. Dread.
“I deserve no mercy at all. Not from you.”
Icy fingers stepped up Ben’s spine. “Where did Styles take your Tabitha?”
“To the safe house with the new girls. But only for a night, to frighten me. He brought her back this morning. I have sent her to the country with my housekeeper.”
“You no longer fear for her safety?”
Crispin shook his head, eyes swimming with guilt.
Ben’s throat twisted. “Where,” he said as steadily as he could, “is Miss Pierce?”
The baron looked like a man already upon the gallows.
“When he came to my rooms this morning,” he said in a strangled voice, “he said he is finished with Tabitha. That she and I are no longer useful to him. You are his principal object.”
“Crispin—”
“He has all the leverage he needs with Octavia.”
Cold, hard purpose washed through Ben, submerging the panic fighting to break loose. “Where is he?”
Crispin shook his head, throwing his face into his palm, not masking his misery now. “In the countryside, or preparing the ship. I don’t know. I don’t know, for God’s sake! I wish— I wish I had never—”
Ben stood and moved swiftly across the chamber and from the building, telling himself that Sully and Abha would not allow her to come to harm. That she was clever enough to recognize danger if it confronted her. That he was not upon the threshold of losing his life the moment he had gained it.