“You are just like your brothers, Ben, all honorable self-deprecation. Jack of course was not so close-mouthed, the good-natured sod.” Styles laughed, digging a familiar burrow of grief through Ben. He still could not bear to hear his half brothers spoken of casually, even by the one man who had been as close to them as he himself.
“So be it.” The baron lifted his blade in salute. “The secret of your empire is safe with me, whatever it is.”
L’Empire de la Justice—the name Ben’s uncle had given it. An empire born of his uncle’s education in France in the years before the Revolution, nurtured by his horror over the massacre at Mysore, and supported by a vast fortune in cotton, spices, and saltpeter. Groomed his whole young life to someday rule it, for years Ben had danced like a puppet on strings at his uncle’s insistence in service to that empire. As the progeny of a lord, even a third son and foreign-born, he had entrée into certain sectors of European society that his Indian uncle never would.
His uncle hadn’t any idea what that entrée had truly entailed. Or he hadn’t cared.
But for seven years now Ben had been master of the empire that operated below the notice of polite society and most governments. And he was no longer a third son. Other men, like his associate Ashford, now did the dirty work.
His steel tip clicked on the polished floor.
“Allez,” Styles announced.
The play remained light at first, then grew more intense. But it lasted little time, no longer than it took Ben to disarm his friend.
Styles flexed his wrist, breathing heavily from his exertions. “I must learn that useful little maneuver.”
“In the normal course of things, you haven’t any need of it.” Ben wiped his face with a cloth and racked his sword.
Styles’s eyes flashed. “You haven’t either.”
“I will always have need of such skill, Walker. Your longtime loyalty blinds you to that, I think.”
“Humanity is a savage lot, Ben.” The baron’s voice was tight, his brow uncustomarily clouded.
“Perhaps. But exceptions to the rule do exist.” He extended his hand. With a moment’s hesitation, Styles clasped it. Blue-veined ivory met bronze.
Styles’s palm slid away. “Is it to be the theater for you tonight?”
“Lady Constance insists that I escort her.”
“Apron-led fool.”
“You could ferry her about instead. She has been hinting at it for months now, or haven’t you noticed?”
“I’m not yet ready for parson’s mousetrap.” Styles smoothed a fingertip along the flat of his blade. “And she is meant to be a marchioness.”
Ben did not respond. His understanding with Constance Read was no one’s business but his and Constance’s alone. If the haut ton believed them to be set on marriage, let it. After the fire, gossips had whispered it was even more suitable that she wed him rather than the man she had been betrothed to from the cradle. With Jack Doreé in the grave, an alliance between the heiress of a Scottish duke’s East Indies fortune and a wealthy half-Indian peer seemed destined.
Savage humanity, indeed.
“I will be heading over to Hauterive’s later tonight.” Styles’s tone was a shade too casual. “Join me after you see Lady Constance home?”
Ben buttoned his waistcoat. “You know I don’t care for that sort of sport any longer.”
“That’s right. You prefer swords and horses to cards and dice now. But Hauterive’s offers more than dice.”
“Allow me to recall.” Ben smoothed a hand over his coat and straightened his cravat. “Drunken lords, unhappily married ladies, and sharps hoping to have their way with both? Yet more reasons not to accompany you.” He walked toward the door.
Styles grinned. “You sang quite a different tune, once.”
“A man changes.” Recklessness could cause that. Standing beside a pile of ashes could too.
The baron clapped him upon the back. “If you reconsider, you know where I will be.”
Unease prickled across Ben’s shoulders as he watched his friend move off along the corridor. Styles had encouraged him to return to their old haunt before, but never so insistently. But Ben hadn’t any interest in renewing his university days—rather, nights. He had never wished to live those nights in the first place. Duty and blood had guided him then. Always, then.
His hand moved to his waistcoat pocket and he withdrew the letter. He scanned the missive and his breathing slowed.
She was in England.
Long ago, he had ceased anticipating this day with any feeling whatsoever. It should not now take him by surprise. But for a moment he could not move.
Drawing in a cool breath, he walked into the parlor to the hearth. His hand extended over the grate. The flames seemed to reach forward, urging. His fingertips gripped the paper. As planned, this would be the last such note he received.
Jaw tightening anew, he cast the letter within. Fire licked at its edges for an uncertain instant then consumed it in a breath.
Without another glance, Ben went to change clothing for the evening. He was no longer twenty-two and just up from university, no longer the boy his uncle had controlled from four thousand miles away then again from the grave. In the intervening seven years he had fought and struggled in quite a different manner from the back-alley brawls Styles still seemed to enjoy. That moment, the brief slice of eternity when he had known her, might as well have been a lifetime ago.
“She is an Original.” The lady garbed in turquoise taffeta and turban with an ostrich feather poking from the nest lifted her lorgnette and nodded sententiously. “Tell everyone you heard me say it first.”
“Sally Jersey said it already, only yesterday morning at Kew when Lord Crispin escorted the girl there.”
“No. She came to my notice before that.”
“I am certain you wish she had, darling.”
“She is hardly a girl,” a third matronly voice interjected. “Five-and-twenty, I understand, and brown as a berry.”
“The East Indian sun will do that,” the first pronounced dismissively. “I call it charmingly sun-touched. Enormously elegant.”
“And refined.”
“And what taste! Did you see the gown she wore to Lady Alverston’s fete? Silver tulle over emerald silk, with mother of pearl and diamonds sewn into the sleeves. I have never seen its like.”
“Her sister’s husband is despicably wealthy from his East Indies interests.”
“And her coiffure—”
“Divine. I daresay I’ve seen nothing so smart in years. I would arrange my Penelope’s hair just like it, but of course it would not do for brown. Miss Pierce’s hair is entirely unique.”
“And natural.”
“She may be over the marriageable age, but she has the most maidenly address.”
“They say she keeps a monkey. And she has ridden an elephant.”
“Good gracious, how adventuresome.”
In the shadow of a potted palm, Tavy sipped her glass of orangeat, wishing it were black tea laced with cane syrup and cardamom. Theatergoers wandered about enjoying themselves. The play was diverting enough, but outside it was gray, London in late September just as she remembered it. And cold, just like her hands and feet and humor.
Tavy wished for sun and heat and Lal sitting upon her shoulder playing with her hair as she read, both of them ensconced in a hammock woven of soft hemp. Instead, she had carriage rides in the crowded park, supper parties, thin tea, and endless wide-eyed commentary. English society just as in Madras, simply lots more of it.