Free The Marquess Who Loved Me by Sara Ramsey Page A

her shields before she saw Nick again — and somehow find the courage to leave him a second time.

C H A P T E R E I G H T

    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