Rules of Passion (16 page)

“No.” He laughed harshly, and gave her a little push, so that she had no choice but to step backwards. “I can’t believe I’m doing this, I must be mad.” Then, his eyes looking straight into hers, “I don’t want to lose control, Marietta, not yet. And I will, if you keep at me like this.”

Marietta stared at him a moment more, feeling extremely hot and bothered. Perhaps he was right. Their affair had just begun and she shouldn’t be impatient. Max was for practicing with, and she seemed to be having trouble just now remembering it. In fact it had almost felt as if it was more than that, more than pretend. It had felt as if it was real…

Still, better not let him get too complacent.

“I don’t know, Max,” she said, briskly pulling on her gloves. “Of course you have far more experience than me in these matters, but I feel as if you’re in charge and I’m sure it should be the other way around. I am going to be the courtesan, not you.”

He shrugged but she thought there was a gleam of triumph in his eyes. Of course, he wanted to be in charge so that he could prevent her from getting the upper hand. It did not help that they were here in his house. That, too, gave him an unfair advantage over her.

Now that Max was recovering from his wound he would leave London. She reminded herself that although she might have accomplished Aphrodite’s first task, there was no time to waste if she was to complete them all. And come to that, how many were there, and what would they involve? She definitely needed to see Aphrodite again and as soon as possible.

She turned around, catching him by surprise. He was watching her with a wary look in his brown eyes, as if he thought she might pounce on him and…and make love to him. She almost laughed aloud. Well, she wasn’t going to do that, not yet, but she was going to ask him some questions he probably wouldn’t like very much.

It was time to get Max seriously rattled.

M
ax was watching her, new shadows under his eyes, and she almost took pity on him, but then her gaze traveled to the bandage about his head. Was this an accident or a cold-blooded attack? For his sake she needed to find out the truth about the Valland family, and Max had to help her.

Her resolve hardened.

“Mr. Keith told me that you had two accidents only last year. Why do you have so many?”

Max felt his face go slack, and then crease up in the frown he had never learned to hide. His mother had been the same, she had been hopeless at pretending to feel something she did not feel. He had inherited her inability to dissemble and his father’s quick temper, a disastrous combination.

“Marietta, this time you have gone too far. My private life is none of your business—”

“Well, it is my business if you’re going to get knocked on the head again before we’ve finished our
arrangement,” she told him practically. “I’m only thinking of myself, Max.”

He wanted to strangle her, but at the same time there was something delightfully artless about her that made him want to laugh out loud…and then strangle her. Marietta Greentree was unlike any woman he had ever met before and he was in equal parts enchanted with her, and terrified of what she could mean to his already tangled existence.

“Come, Max, I won’t be satisfied until you tell me. What is this about you nearly drowning—twice?”

“I didn’t drown, and it was an…accident.” The word sounded different, almost sinister, and he didn’t like it. She had made him think things he preferred not to think.

“Twice?”

“Yes. I went out in my boat and it had a hole in it, but I was a decent swimmer, even though it was winter and the water was bloody cold.” He frowned. “The other time Harold and I were diving for coins—it was a game we played—and I became entangled in some reeds. I had a pocket knife and cut myself free. There was no harm done.”

“Hmm, and both times you saved yourself.” The expression in her eyes was skeptical. “Tell me, what other ‘accidents’ have you been involved in since you nearly drowned, twice?”

He narrowed his gaze, but answered her calmly enough. “The usual boyhood misadventures, riding accidents, falling from a tree, falling from a window. Don’t look so horrified, Marietta, I was like every other boy, never as careful of myself as I should have been. It’s natural to be careless of your physical safety when you’re young, and my father…the
duke did not stifle us with too many rules and regulations, as long as we got our lessons done.”

“I can’t imagine you being reckless, Max.”

He looked miffed, and then drew himself up in his Arrogant Heir pose. “Perhaps because you have no brothers of your own, you don’t understand boys as well as you think, Marietta.”

“Well,
I
was adventurous,” Marietta declared. “Francesca and I tramped the moors for hours in all weather. Once we stayed out until it was dark, and waited for the ghostly dog to come. It’s a legend, you see, the dog appears to anyone out after dark. It never did turn up.”

He smiled. “Did it rain?”

“Buckets. We had the most atrocious colds for weeks afterwards. Mama thought we were going to die.”

“Marietta—”

“So you see, I was careless, too, and I didn’t have as many accidents as you.”

He looked at her strangely. “Perhaps it’s different for girls. Although my sister Susannah was always right there with us, trying to keep up. Anyway, when I was sent away to school things changed. There wasn’t the freedom any more to do dangerous things, and I had no more accidents. In fact, it wasn’t really until last year that I…that…” He frowned.

Had something odd about the incidents finally struck him, as it had her? Had he never thought about it properly before? Had he never realized that perhaps someone had wanted him dead for a very long time? But whatever uneasy thoughts Max was thinking, he soon rejected them.

“No,” he said. “Sheer coincidence. You can turn
any childhood mishap into a crime, if you try hard enough.”

“Max,” she asked him quietly, “what happened last year?”

“Marietta, it’s meaningless.”

“Then if it’s meaningless you won’t mind telling me about it, will you?” She gave him one of her sweetest smiles.

His mouth twitched despite himself, and then he was cross with her, but she knew she had won. “I can see you won’t be satisfied until I tell you everything. Very well! Last summer I was shot at while I was out riding at Valland House—our…my father’s…the duke’s estate in Surrey.” His eyes avoided hers as he made the correction. “The shot missed me, but not by much. I never discovered where it came from, but I believe it was an accident. Why would someone fire on me? Perhaps the shooter took fright when he realized what had almost happened, or else he was ignorant as to what he had done. In any event, we never discovered his identity and it didn’t happen again.”

“And what of the second accident?”

Max reached up to touch his bandages, grimaced, and took his hand away. “Just before Christmas, I’d come home. I was in the stable—my horse had gone lame and I had made my way down in the night to check on him. Something…someone…something struck me down. I don’t remember much, until a groom found me an hour later. It wasn’t very serious, just a knock on the head. There was a piece of wood from the loft. It looked as if it had fallen down and I just happened to be under it. Luckily the horse was quiet that night. He has a bit of a temper and can be tricky.”

“You mean you were lucky you weren’t trampled to death while you lay in his stall unconscious. You have a lot of lucky moments, Max,” Marietta said quietly. “You don’t seem to realize it—or maybe you don’t want to—but others can see it.” She mulled over his words a moment while he sat in stubborn silence. “And these two latest ‘accidents’ happened
before
your father disinherited you?”

“Yes, shortly before. I was disinherited in January, in the New Year, when we were all gathered together at Valland House. The family come to stay—it’s a tradition. No matter how far the Vallands roam they will always return at that time of year. My father instructed everyone to come into the library and there he read my mother’s letter out to us. It was…distressing, to say the least.”

Marietta gasped, her eyes wide. “You mean he read it aloud to the entire family?
All
your relations? Max, that is very cruel! In fact it seems intentionally so. Is the duke a cruel man?”

“It was a cruel moment,” Max said grimly. “I suppose he was upset and he just wanted to get it over with.”

He was standing up for him—the man who had blasted his lifelong expectations in one brief and shocking moment, and embarrassed and humiliated him at the same time. Marietta looked at Max and wanted to shake him for being so loyal, and she wanted to kiss him for being Max.

“And now this attack outside Aphrodite’s Club,” she went on mildly. “So many near misses. Aren’t you at all suspicious that they may not be accidents after all?”

He frowned. “They’re not connected. How could
they be? Why should they be? You’re turning something innocent into something sinister without the slightest piece of evidence.”

“But think, Max, think. Do you have something that someone else wants?”

“I might have had, once,” he admitted grudgingly. “I know what you’re doing, Marietta. You’re trying to make me believe that Harold wants me dead so that he can inherit. But apart from the complete ridiculousness of such a theory, how can you justify this?” He pointed to the bandage on his head. “Harold already has everything. What’s the point of getting rid of me now that he has been named heir? None at all.”

“It doesn’t make sense, no. Not yet.”

“Please, Marietta, just leave it. I don’t need you to interfere in my life, and I certainly haven’t asked you to. You are one of those women who delight in meddling, aren’t you? Well, in this instance, don’t!”

“Someone has to look after you, Max,” she said, and gave him her wide-eyed look.

“The kissing was easier,” he muttered. “At least while your mouth was busy you couldn’t ask questions, or inflict your wild theories on me.”

“Oh, do you want to practice again?”

He looked at her mouth, and for a moment his eyes darkened, as though he was considering it. And then he rose to his feet, with only a little hesitation. “No,” he said bluntly. “No more lessons today.
Goodbye
, Marietta.”

Marietta smiled, because no matter how much he was protesting now, she knew he had enjoyed it as much as she. “Very well, goodbye until next time, Max.”

The door closed behind her.

Thank God she’s gone
, Max told himself, and ignored the flash of heat inside him when he remembered his mouth fusing with hers. She had gotten some wild notion into her head and now she would not let it go. And it was wild, he told himself firmly. Harold was his cousin and his best friend; he would never hurt him. Never!

But the damage was done. Marietta Greentree had made him face his doubt, and no matter how he protested against it that sly voice would be forever whispering in his ear.

“I’m just lucky…or unlucky,” he murmured to himself. “Accident prone, that’s all.”

Oh yes, very accident prone.

“It means nothing.”

Others have noticed. Marietta noticed straight away.

“If someone wanted me dead so that they could claim my inheritance, then why knock me down after I lost everything? It doesn’t make sense.”

The voice was silent.

Because he was right, Max told himself.

Besides, he had other things to think of. His man of business had made some suggestions about the house in Cornwall, and the possibility of turning the estate into a going concern. None of them had been very optimistic, apart from one idea that appeared workable. There was a mine near Blackwood, long since closed down because the copper had run out at the end of last century. Now many such mines were reopening and being profitably mined for tin. There had been traces of tin found in Blackwood’s mine, enough anyway for him to consider reopening it. His mother’s little nest egg would be sufficient to re
pair and reequip the mine, employ some of the local men, and make a new start.

If he lived long enough.

“Blast her,” he murmured. Marietta Greentree’s insinuations didn’t make sense. None of them. Just as his feelings for Marietta herself didn’t make sense. She was the most irritating woman, and yet…He wanted her. She was already playing upon his desire like a musician upon a harp—she had his strings expertly quivering and humming—and yet she claimed not to know anything about seduction.

It was annoying, Max decided bleakly, looking about him, and very strange when he had just been wishing her gone, but now that she was…

The room felt empty without her.

Downstairs, Pomeroy was just divesting a tall, thin gentleman of his top hat and walking stick. Harold Valland looked up as Marietta descended the stairs, his brown eyes so very similar to Max’s and yet so very different.

“Miss Greentree! Pomeroy said you were here. How is Max today?”

Marietta smiled as she joined him. “He is much better, sir.”

“It is very generous of you to take this interest in my cousin,” Harold said, full of sincerity. “Unfortunately since his…his troubles, people have been avoiding him. But you are his friend, aren’t you, Miss Greentree?”

There was something in his tone she didn’t understand. “I-I hope I am his friend,” she said carefully. “I have his best interests at heart.”

“That is good to hear.”

Marietta met his gaze, fixed on her rather piercingly, and decided that now was the time to test Harold’s own loyalty to his cousin.

“As Lord Roseby’s friend I can’t help thinking that it was a cruel thing his father did to him, reading his mother’s letter aloud like that.”

“So he’s told you that?” Surprised, Harold glanced away, but whether because he was embarrassed by his uncle’s behavior, or because he didn’t want her to see the expression in his eyes, Marietta could not tell. She wished she knew him better; she wished she had Max’s faith in him.

“Max tells me many things.”

He pondered that for a moment. “The matter is private, but as Max has spoken of it…The duke is an intelligent man but sometimes, in times of great distress, his feelings take over. You must understand that he loved his wife and the knowledge of her betrayal almost destroyed him—in my opinion he will never recover from it. When the letter came into his hands he was crazed with pain and anger. The duchess was dead, he could not punish her for her infidelity, but Max was there. I imagine he read the letter aloud to hurt them both, as they had hurt him. Not very logical, but then families often aren’t logical in their reactions to each other.”

Remembering her own family, Marietta could only agree with him and let it pass. “What I don’t understand is how the letter came to light.”

Harold grimaced; clearly the memory was not a pleasant one. “You are very curious, Miss Greentree, but still it cannot hurt to speak of it, not when the whole of London knows. The letter was among the
duchess’s personal papers. My wife had been sorting through them after her death and she came across it. She had placed it on the fire, thinking it of no importance, and then she happened to read some of the words.”

“So she retrieved it before it burnt too badly.”

Of course she did. She would see at once what such a letter would mean to her and her husband, Marietta thought cynically.

“It distressed her tremendously,” Harold went on sharply, reading her thoughts in her silence. “Susannah is very fond of her brother, and she couldn’t believe it was true. She thought hard about what she did, believe me, but she decided that it was the duke’s right to know the truth about his wife and son, no matter how unpalatable that might be. Lately, Susannah has even speculated that perhaps the duchess wanted her husband to know the truth—why else would she keep a letter so incriminating? Why not destroy it years ago?”

“Yes, I see that. The letter…who was it written to?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it was a letter. It looked more like someone setting down their thoughts. A confession, if you like. That was why she wondered if it had been meant to be found.”