Once Upon a Marquess (The Worth Saga 1)

Judith looked up the main stair. Marble steps were clothed in red and gold carpet, and Christian stood at the top like some conquering god set to descend his temple steps.

“I’m at home,” Christian said. “I’m always at home to Lady Judith. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” The man glanced mulishly at Judith’s skirts. She wasn’t dripping; she’d checked. She’d cleaned too many floors in her brother and sister’s wake to do so.

“Have Mary send in something warm to drink,” Christian said. “And scones. Lady Judith?”

He gestured, and she ascended the stairs to meet him.

She would not be overawed. She would not be overawed. This was what she’d been born to. This was what she would have had, had Christian not…

Or maybe, had her brother not…

It didn’t matter. Now, she might have been lady of smashed crockery and broken furniture, but she wasn’t going to duck her head to him. She’d spent the past eight years working for something impossible, trying to fit pieces together in ways they would not go.

Maybe it was a fairy story to believe that things could still turn out for her family, but at least it was her fairy story. She might not choose the ink or the paper, but she could write the words. Christian and his marble and his carpet and his butler all put together could not stop her and her smashed teacups. Her fists clenched as she made her way to him.

“Judith.” He looked utterly bemused. “Whatever brings you here? And what are you…”

She hefted her canvas satchel. “Keep your tea,” she said. “Keep your scones. Destroy what little remains of Anthony’s reputation. I don’t care any longer.” She thrust her burden at him.

He staggered under the sudden weight. “What the devil, Judith?”

“Go ahead, then. They’re Anthony’s journals.” Her chin was in the air, and she didn’t think the queen could have said it more proudly if she did secretly visit Daisy. “It doesn’t matter any longer. Take them.”

He set the package on a side table. “What is going on?”

She turned to him. “Go ahead. Explain it to me if you please. Use small words if you must, so I’ll be sure to understand. Tell me how you’re so certain. How you know that my brother was a traitor. Tell me how it makes sense for Anthony to have betrayed everything he held dear. Tell me, Christian. Everything else is broken. Tell me now.”

She poked his chest as she spoke, and he looked down at her finger. Her hand was beginning to shake, and that wouldn’t do.

“Well,” he finally said. “I’m surely not going to shout the whole thing at you in the hall. Come.” He opened a door to a spacious office lined with shelves. A desk and a few chairs sat near a fire.

“Come in,” he said. “Have a seat. Have a scone.”

“I don’t want a scone.” It was a lie.

She didn’t want any of his quiet reassurances. She wanted justice. She wanted anger. She wanted to make his life turn topsy-turvy, as hers had done.

She also wouldn’t have minded a scone. It was hard holding onto her hard-won anger when there was food available. Especially when she noticed a little brown kitten curled on a pillow before the fire.

She sat instead. The fire crackled pleasantly, and when Christian sat next to her on the sofa—a good three feet away—she refused to look at him.

“I’ll make it simple,” he said, “I believe that Anthony gave military secrets to the Chinese because he did not want Britain to win the war over opium.”

Her hands were finally warming up in front of the fire, and that made them feel itchy. She rubbed them surreptitiously against her skirt. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Christian simply inclined his head. “Do you know why Britain and China were at war?”

“I was seventeen,” Judith said. “I remember something about trade dealings and tea.” She frowned. “Something about the Chinese seizing a British ship.”

“Close enough.” The door opened and a servant brought in a tray. She set it on the side table near them, and Judith tried not to wonder what was on the plate beneath the cloth napkin. Of course Christian’s teacups matched. She hadn’t really expected anything else, but she still glowered at him as he poured pale liquid into a pink-edged china cup, and then set a little biscuit on a plate.

“Here.” He set these unceremoniously to her left. “You didn’t ask for it, so you needn’t feel obliged to me when I give it to you.”

She looked at him from beneath her lashes. She had never in her life not eaten food that was put in front of her, and he must have known that she was hardly going to start by spurning a sugary little biscuit. Especially not when little flecks of real vanilla were visible from this vantage point. When was the last time she’d had anything flavored with vanilla?

She wasn’t fooling anyone. She picked it up and ate it in one bite.

Christian spoke again as she lifted her cup. “It was really about one thing from the British perspective: tea.”

She looked down at the saucer in her hand. “Tea?”

“Tea. Tea comes from China.”

“I know. It’s why it is so very dear.”

“And yet we cannot do without it,” Christian said with a lopsided smile. “China has tea; Britain demands tea. Unfortunately, we have nothing that China wants in return. If life were fair, we’d simply send a vast quantity of money to China every year. They would grow wealthy. And we would not.”

Judith looked at the cup in her hand once again. “Britain waged war for better tea prices? That seems…”

It seemed like a tremendous waste, even if only one life was lost over the matter. Even if the only life had been her brother’s. And there had been many more lives lost than the one. Many more.

He noticed her frowning suspiciously at her cup. “It’s a tisane,” he told her. “Mint and chamomile. It’s not tea.”

She took a sip.

“It wasn’t just about tea prices.” Christian set another biscuit on her plate. “In truth, England found a much more effective way to balance the trade deficit than to lower tea prices. We found a product that the Chinese demanded.”

“That’s…good?”

His nose wrinkled in distaste. “Not when that product is opium. It’s addictive. It ruins men, utterly ruins them. Men addicted to the drug can think of nothing but how and when they’ll find their next smoke. Even men who manage to drag themselves away from the opium dens still feel its call years later. They’ll catch a hint of a scent on a breez

e, and next thing they know, they’ve abandoned all caution. One doesn’t stop being an opium addict, not ever. One can only stop taking the drug. I’m simplifying decades of history, but the Chinese government outlawed the trade of opium. Britain couldn’t afford that. Two wars later, and…” Christian shrugged.

Judith fell silent. “You think Britain was in the wrong.”

“On balance? There’s no question. But you didn’t ask about my beliefs.”

Judith felt a little thump to the side of her chair and looked over. Fillet had abandoned the fire to greet her. She was looking at Judith, blue eyes steady in her little brown, whiskered cat face. Judith reached over and stroked her between the ears.

Finally Judith spoke. “You think Anthony believed Britain was wrong. That he believed it so strongly he betrayed his own country.”

“Yes.”

“Why would he care?”

Christian looked away. His voice dropped. “He had a particular hatred of opium.”

“I never knew it.”

Fillet stepped daintily onto Judith’s lap, kneading at her leg and letting off a low purr. Her feet crackled noisily as she did so; she was stepping on the letter in Judith’s pocket.

Judith slid it out surreptitiously and moved it under her leg so it wouldn’t make any noise.

“No. You wouldn’t. He’d never tell another’s secrets. But—you see—” Christian stopped again and inhaled. Then he looked over to her.

She had seen Christian unhappy. She’d seen him laughing. She’d seen him the way she always saw him—as if he had five jokes at the ready, and he wasn’t afraid to use them.

Right now, it looked as if his jokes had all been stripped away. Every care he had, every worry, seemed to reflect in his eyes.

“You see,” he said in a low voice, “his best friend was an opium addict.”

Judith’s hand stilled on the cat. “That’s ridiculous. You were his…”

Christian stood. “Ah,” he said. “I misspoke. I should have said his best friend is an opium addict. One doesn’t stop being an opium addict, not even if it has been…” He swallowed and looked up. “Fourteen years and eight months, since one last had a dose.”