In the Arms of a Marquess Read Free Page A

sorrowful. Tavy’s throat thickened. She shook off the sensation. Too much rain made her maudlin too. In the morning she would walk to the bazaar to work out her fidgets and say goodbye to her friends there.
    “I hope you will live with us in town instead of with Mama and Papa,” Alethea said. “St. John’s aunt, Lady Fitzwarren, can introduce you into society.”
    “I would like that.” Tavy moved toward the parlor doors to the terrace. “In the meantime, I shall begin packing the house,” she said with purpose. “You mustn’t strain yourself. Leave it all to me.”
    “Thank you, dearest. Octavia?”
    She glanced back.
    “Is this acceptable to you?”
    “Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” She passed out onto the veranda.
    A man sat against the wall beneath the broad awning, cap drawn over his dark face, his loose cotton trousers, shirt, and long tunic neat as a pin.
    “You have no doubt heard the news already, Abha.” She curled into a chair. Lal leapt from her shoulder to the windowsill. Droplets of rain pattered from edge of the roof to the tiled floor.
    Abha pushed the cap back on his bald pate. He was a large man, thickset and heavy-eyed, with an Oriental flatness to his cheeks and brow. When her uncle hired him on her eighteenth birthday, Tavy thought it excessive to keep a servant principally to attend her when she went about Madras. But Abha had remained even after Uncle George left for Bengal.
    “Thank you,” she said.
    “For what do you thank me now, memsahib ?” he rumbled.
    “For putting up with me for so many years. In case I should forget to thank you later when everyone is busy getting ready to depart, I wanted to do so now. Or perhaps simply twice. Will you go now to work for my uncle in Calcutta?”
    “I will go to London.”
    Tavy sat up straight. “Has my brother-in-law asked you?”
    Abha did not respond. He often did not when she asked questions to which the answers seemed obvious. To him, at least.
    Tavy shook her head. “London is not like Madras. Englishwomen are not kidnapped and held for ransom there, and I am not royalty. Far from it. I can go to the shops or call upon my friends with only a maid.”
    He put a thick palm on the ground and pushed himself up to stand, silent as jungle birds at the onset of a storm.
    “Well, you won’t like it, I daresay,” she said. “It is horridly gray and cold. Sometimes, at least.”
    He moved toward the kitchen entrance.
    “Abha, you cannot come. India is your home.”
    He halted and looked over his bulky shoulder. “As it is yours, memsahib .” He disappeared around the side of the house.
    Lal landed on Tavy’s shoulder and pressed his tiny hand against her cheek.
    “You smell of rosewater.” She stroked him beneath the chin. “You have been in our neighbor’s kitchen, after all.”
    He clucked his tongue.
    “Lal, will you come to London and stay with me when I become Lady Crispin?” Tavy’s gaze strayed to the wall between the garden and the neighboring villa. Vines twined around the gate, especially thick where they tangled about the rusted latch. Her heart beat hard and fast. “You see,” her voice dimmed to a whisper, “except for Abha, I will not know anybody else there.”

Chapter 2
     
To IMPRESS. Where no other adequate mode can be substituted, the law of imperious necessity must be complied with.
—Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine
     
    Cavendish Square
     
    “I have no need to hear the details, Creighton.” Benjirou Doreé, Fifth Marquess of Doreé, set his elbow atop the broad mahogany desk, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose between a manicured thumb and forefinger. “Indeed, I would rather know nothing about it at all.” He looked up and lifted a single black brow. “As I have told you ten score times. No, I must correct myself. Twelve score. But perhaps your memory fails.” His smooth voice seemed unperturbed.
    His secretary knew better than to trust in that tone. While the