The Marquess Who Loved Me

Chapter EIGHT


Nick loved the City. India had held its own unique charms, and he had enjoyed it enough to stay years longer than he had intended. But no matter how long he lived in Madras, he sensed that he would never quite feel at home there. The Indian men whom he dealt most closely with were anxious to prove their loyalties, and so never shared their culture with him. The ones he didn’t deal with viewed him with suspicion bordering on hostility.

He was no stranger to hostility. The upper classes in London hadn’t liked him either. But he couldn’t entirely blame the Indian populace for hating him, or for wishing the British would leave.

But this corner of London, wedged between the City and the East End, felt like home. The mix of shops and warehouses drew laborers from the east and bankers and merchants from the west, and was ideally suited to supply the whole metropolis with the staples and luxuries the people demanded. Still, he knew most peers would rather die than soil their Hessians by setting foot inside a warehouse.

With his father’s breeding and his mother’s money, Nick could afford to spend his days somewhere far more salubrious. But salubrious climes required socializing with the people who could afford those climes. Nick wasn’t in the mood to be social.

Then again, he also wasn’t in the mood to investigate his own potential demise. But if he wanted to make progress, he needed to see if any threats materialized around his London offices.

And he couldn’t sit idle at Folkestone all day without breaking his promise to give Ellie a reprieve.

Marcus, walking next to him as they left one of the Corwyn, Claiborne and Sons warehouses, took a deep breath. Then he coughed. “The countryside always makes my lungs soft,” he complained when he’d regained his breath. “I am surprised you can stand the city air after six months on the ocean.”

Nick inhaled. London, and particularly this quarter of London, was an unholy potpourri of unwashed bodies, manures of both horse and human variety, coal fires, and cooking pots. The stench was almost a physical attack.

“The ocean is more pleasant, I’ll grant you that,” he said. “But by the fourth month aboard, when the foodstuffs are maggoty and there is only salt water for bathing, London seems wholesome by comparison.”

“For all that I’m jealous of what you and Rupert have seen abroad, I consider myself fortunate to have been the brother who stayed behind,” Marcus said. “There are advantages to a stolid life in the cleaner areas of the capital.”

Nick hailed his batman, who had lounged near the street watching the passing traffic. They waited near the curb as Trower fetched their driver. Their newest warehouse, only recently completed, was a temple to modern industry, with an imposing marble façade designed to impress buyers who came to purchase their imports. But its purpose was given away by its lack of street-facing windows. With the value of the indigo and spices stored in that warehouse, it had been made as impregnable as any fortress.

For all the abuse the higher classes heaped upon the trade, Nick thought there was nothing more exciting than seeking out new products and making risky deals, whether in the far-off reaches of the empire or in the trading rooms of the City. “Your London life never sounded stolid in your letters,” he said to Marcus.

“Utterly stolid, I assure you. Wouldn’t want our grandfather to think I was shirking my duties.”

Nick laughed. Their maternal grandfather had remained very much in command of most of the London operations until his death a year and a half earlier, but Marcus was no idle gentleman. “You had the old man in your pocket from your first steps. And he was hardly a Puritan. I doubt you’d be half so debauched without his influence.”

“It is a shame you weren’t more often in London to partake of Grandfather’s generosity as a youth. The fair ladies at Madame Patrice’s were worth any number of hours spent counting tea chests.”

Nick had gone to Eton, as his father had before him. But unlike his father, who had been perfectly aristocratic until he fell in love with the wrong girl, Nick was mocked from the start for his ties to the trade. It might not have been so bad — there were other, lower born boys who took the brunt of the bullying — but Nick and his cousin Charles, who was two years older and already the Marquess of Folkestone, hated each other on sight. And even the youngest boys knew to side with a marquess over a merchant’s son.

Nick had refused to back down and hadn’t left despite their years-long conflict, but his parents hadn’t made the same mistake with Marcus and Rupert. Where Nick had grimly survived Eton, his brothers had stayed in London, learning the trade from their father and grandfather. Little wonder they were inveterate rakes. Nick sometimes felt like a brooding monk by comparison.

He shrugged. “I’ve had my share of pleasure without needing Grandfather to be my procurer.”

Marcus snorted. “Grandfather never had to procure for me, brother.” Then he cast Nick a sidelong glance. “If you want me to point you toward some prime houses, though…”

“No need,” Nick said.

There was a finality in his voice that would have warned off lesser men. But he and his brothers had been raised as equals. The Folkestone title had seemed destined to stay in Charles’s line, and primogeniture did not apply to their shared inheritance from their grandfather. Marcus wouldn’t yield to him just because Nick now outranked him.

“Please don’t say you went through with your revenge last night,” Marcus said.

They had avoided talk of Ellie for five hours — longer than Nick had expected Marcus to refrain from the subject. “She’s not my mistress yet,” Nick said, sharing a truth that, at midnight, would be a lie.

Their carriage pulled up and Trower jumped down to open the door for them while the driver held the horses. Marcus waited until they were seated and the carriage was in motion before saying, “Your lack of compassion with her surprises me.”

“It shouldn’t.”

Again, Marcus plunged past the warning in Nick’s voice. “After everything you’ve done for me and Rupert? Granted, I’d begun to accustom myself to the idea that you would never come home, but you gave me more room to make decisions than most men would have. Hard to believe you could be so kind to us and so…unkind to her.”

Nick had lain awake the previous night, in the giant bed that had once been his cousin’s, separated from Ellie by a locked connecting door and ten years of regret. She had tried to stuff him into a small room as far from her as possible, but he’d taken a single look at the lumpy mattress and ordered the butler to put him in the master’s chamber instead. At the moment, disregarding her wishes had given him a visceral kick of satisfaction.

But in the dark, the question of kindness had haunted him. He had always been kind to those who depended upon him — it was his duty and privilege as a gentleman, even moreso when hundreds of people relied upon him for their livelihoods.

And he had always been kind to Ellie. Even on the day she had destroyed him, he hadn’t done what he wanted to do — couldn’t toss her onto his horse and ruin her publicly just to keep her. When his rational self had considered his revenge on the ship home from India, he had thought that he couldn’t do it. The Ellie in his head was still, always, nineteen, all meek adoration and pretty, fragile need. She’d hurt him badly, irredeemably, and he wanted to do the same to her — but he hadn’t been sure that he could follow through. Ten years was more than long enough for his anger to cool, and while he still hated her for what she had done, destroying a woman was beneath him.

The Ellie in his house, though — she wasn’t the Ellie he had remembered. He had been so shocked by the transformation that he hadn’t even fully grasped it before the feral, maddened beast within him had marked her as an opponent deserving of his revenge.

Now, though, he wondered. Did she deserve it? Or was he pursuing her because he had realized, on some level, that she could take it?

Such considerations could only lead to madness.

Marcus coughed. “I thought having you in London would make for faster communication, but it feels like I’ve been waiting months for you to answer me.”

“If you were so concerned about whether I would be kind to Ellie, why did you follow through with our plan?” Nick asked.

Marcus’s face turned grim. “Misplaced loyalty, brother.”

Nick had never heard that tone in Marcus’s voice. But then, Marcus hadn’t been in a position to judge him in person before. Nick leaned forward. “What do you mean by that?”

Marcus didn’t waver. “Ellie’s paid for her sins. What you’re doing now — that’s a new sin, and one I’ll pay for as well. I would have stopped long ago, but I suppose I’m just as much a sinner as you are.”

“How so?”

This time, Marcus paused. Finally, he said, “Much as I enjoy playing the country lord, I wanted you to come home. And this revenge of yours seemed to be the only thing that would bring you back. But there’s still time to change your mind.”

Marcus didn’t know that time had run out. And he didn’t know what had really brought Nick home. Nick was nearly positive that Marcus wasn’t behind the attempts in Madras, but “nearly” wasn’t good enough — especially not when Marcus stood to inherit a title, another share of their company…and perhaps Ellie, if that’s where his inclinations ran. He wouldn’t be the first Claiborne to try to ruin Nick’s chances with her.

He didn’t let any of that flicker across his face. “We’ve all made our beds. But if you want to play the country lordling, I won’t stop you. Once my business here is done, we can discuss the future.”

Marcus frowned. Then, abruptly, and without asking Nick’s approval, he pounded on the ceiling of the couch and ordered the driver to take them to Folkestone House.

“There’s no need to show me everything today,” Nick said.

“I know, but we still have an hour or two before we should drive back to the country. And it’s in my best interests to show you how much you would enjoy living here, if only so that I’m not stuck managing your holdings forever. If anything will convince you, it’s Folkestone House. Ellie may have awful taste in men, but she has an eye for color that rivals anything I’ve ever seen.”

Nick knew Marcus well enough to hear the cheeky insult in his comment, but he let it pass unremarked. As they drove, Nick flicked open a curtain to watch the passing crowds. The pale winter light, too far north and filtered through the smoke from thousands of chimneys, muted the city’s dubious charms.

He had looked forward to returning to London, when he could forget the fact that Ellie waited here. Despite how much he loved the subcontinent, India was a harsh mistress — heat so intense that he boiled alive in his proper British morning suits, followed by months of monsoons with torrential downpours that could drown a man in the street. All the Englishmen had lived in fear of disease, and fevers claimed more men than would ever return to Britain alive.

But for a few months, from October to February, it was just dry enough to stop mouldering and just cool enough to be able to breathe. And no matter how difficult things were, there was color — endless varieties of reds, yellows, oranges, and blues, in every house, in every market, draped in silken sari swathes on every woman.

There wasn’t enough color in Britain. Ellie, though…Ellie was a streak of red in a grim, grey country.

He couldn’t forgive her, but he still wanted her. If she’d influenced the London house as much as she had Folkestone, her touch would be in every room.

And he could look his fill, without her knowing, while trying to remind himself why he had to let her go.