In the Arms of a Marquess by Katharine Ashe Page A

passed over an oil painting hanging on a nearby wall of a great, shaggy lion subduing a thick-shouldered tiger. The striped animal, longer and larger than its opponent, nevertheless lay prone beneath the king of beasts. “And perhaps I am inspired to know my competition.”
    “Competition?” The baron’s eyes seemed to spark.
    “ Adieu , Styles.”
    Ben passed through the front door onto the portico. The Company’s headquarters, built in Greek revival style to disguise its purpose in austere, classical costume, rose like a depressive shadow from the narrow street. Behind the striated Ionic columns and pediment stuffed with symbolic statuary, gold changed hands over kegs of saltpeter and barrels of cotton piece goods, bushels of opium and stacks upon stacks of tea bricks. But no London bypasser would know that from its exterior. It looked like a temple.
    Ben moved from the porch, leaving the ponderous weight of India House behind him. The street was clogged with mud after the morning rain, but in front of the building straw was piled in ample supply to facilitate passage. The gentlemen-traders of the East India Company, struggling against the censure of high society, must not be seen to muddy their boots.
    He pressed a coin into a stable boy’s hand and rode through the City toward Blackwall Village where the East India Docks spread across acres of planking and water. Before the massive wall that surrounded the quay, warehouses loomed, sentinels of Britain’s mercantile power upon the seas. Beyond, a forest of masts rose above the hubbub of business. Seamen strained at capstan poles, hauling aboard the produce of English manufacturers and mines—woolens, bullion, copper—and from the East, spices, tea, silk, and porcelain to be sold on the Continent and in America. Gulls circled masts and blanketed sails, alighting upon spars and barrels stacked along the boards awaiting transfer onto carts, their strident cries cutting the air.
    Ben’s gaze slid over the nearest vessel, a hulking three-masted East Indiaman suited to the rough seas of the Cape of Good Hope. His secretary stood amidships beside a dockworker, gesturing aft to a pile of crates.
    Creighton caught Ben’s gaze, dismissed the lumper, and moved toward the rail. Ben climbed the gangplank serrated with shafts of sunlight slanting through the rigging.
    “Good day, my lord. This is the Eastern Promise .”
    “Show me.”
    He followed his secretary down into the belly of the vessel, the air growing close as they descended. Upon the low-slung berth deck, Creighton moved forward to the infirmary. He folded his hands behind his back and his brow furrowed, gaze fixed on the detritus stuffed into the foremost corner of the surgeon’s quarters.
    “So you see, my lord.”
    “I do.”
    Human hair clogged the crevice. Straight, curly, red, brown, blond, some black. In considerable quantity.
    “Too long for bilge rats,” Creighton muttered.
    Ben tilted his gaze aside to his employee.
    “Of all the moments for you to insert a note of levity into your work—and perhaps, Creighton, it may be the first in my memory—this is an odd one.”
    “Forgive me, sir. I have nothing else to say. I’m afraid this has left me quite speechless.”
    “The former master had no explanation?”
    “None, sir. Said he never saw it.”
    “The surgeon?”
    “Gone to America last week, unfortunately.”
    “What do you believe to be its origin?”
    Creighton shook his head.
    “Captain’s fancy?” Ben suggested.
    “I’ve seen some strange treasures, sailors being what they are.”
    Ben drew in a long breath. “Clean it out, then forget about it.”
    “My lord—”
    “I will look into it.”
    Creighton’s eyes brightened. “I say, sir, that’s very good of y—”
    “If you praise me for taking up this small task, Creighton, I will fire you.”
    Ben retraced their passage up four flights of narrow steps to the main deck, his secretary following. A twelve-hundred-ton