The Pleasure of Bedding a Baroness (32 page)

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Authors: Tamara Lejeune

BOOK: The Pleasure of Bedding a Baroness
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Max looked at her in surprise. “Briggs, of course.”
“Well, he can let you out again!” Pru said loudly. “Who do you think you are? You can’t just waltz into other people’s houses and order more coffee!”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, my dear. I don’t waltz.”
“Patience!” Pru said shrilly. “Do something!”
“Sir,” Patience began nervously, “what are you doing here?”
Max lifted his brows. “Don’t you read the papers, my lady? It seems we are married. I live here.”
Chapter 19
 
Pru made a disgusted sound. “You forget, sir, that I chose
not
to marry you, after all.”
“Wasn’t talking to you,” Max retorted.
Pru’s eyes flew to her sister’s white face. “Pay!”
Patience bit her lip. “This is what I wanted to tell you, Pru ...”
“You haven’t told her yet?” Max drawled, leaning back in his chair.
“You married him?” Pru shrieked. “
Him,
of all people? Oh, please, tell me it’s a lie!”
“It is no lie, Sister,” Max said.
“I am not talking to you!” Pru shouted, jumping to her feet with her fists clenched.
“I am sorry, Pru,” Patience said softly. “I did marry him. But that does not explain what you are doing here,” she went on, turning to Max. “I told you you couldn’t live here.”
“That was before someone splashed the news of our marriage all over the newspapers,” he replied. “And it wasn’t I, in case you were wondering.”
“No, I—I did it,” she said.
He stared at her for a moment. “Did you?” he said finally, a faint smile touching his lips. “Why would you do that, I wonder?”
“It was not to summon you here!” she cried. “You may be assured of that!”
“Well, you have made it impossible for me to live anywhere else,” he said. “A man who does not live with his wife is a laughingstock.”
Pru’s face contorted with fury. “Allow me to inform you, sir, that you are already a laughingstock!”
“No, they hold me in contempt, perhaps, but they do not laugh at me.”
“Oh, don’t they?” Pru sneered.
“Prudence, please!” cried Patience, her fingertips pressed to her temples.
“Either
he
goes or I do!” Pru shrieked, stamping her foot.
“Sit down!” Max commanded her sharply. “You’re not going anywhere. Not without my permission.”
“Permission?” Pru repeated incredulously.
“You do realize that, when I married your sister, I became your legal guardian, don’t you?”
Patience uttered a sharp cry and clapped both hands over her mouth. Slowly, she sank down into her chair.
“What are you talking about?” Pru snarled. “Patience, what is he talking about?”
Max answered, apparently enjoying himself. “The law gives me complete control over you—your person, your money. I can send you to the other side of the earth if you displease me.”
Without thinking, Patience touched his arm. “Max, you promised—”
Taking her hand from his arm, he kissed it before she realized what he meant to do. “I promised I would take no revenge upon your sister,” he said.
“Is this not revenge?” cried Patience.
“No, madam. This is breakfast,” he said. “Of course I shall
punish
her when she is naughty, but that is hardly revenge. I would be a very poor guardian if I did not discipline my ward. But it will be for her own good, and she will thank me for it later.”
“Patience, are you going to let him talk to me like that?” Pru howled.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Max told her. “I was talking to my wife. The first thing I’m going to do is cancel her allowance.”
“You can’t do that!” Pru screamed.
“I am still talking to my wife,” Max said curtly. “Then, I think, she should not be allowed to leave the house unless she can prove to me that she has spent at least two—nay, three—hours employed in some useful exercise.”
“What!”
Max shrugged. “I don’t know. You might darn my socks, or plant a garden.”
“Oh, do stop provoking her,” Patience pleaded.
Max tightened his grip on her hand. “She is too old for tantrums.”
“I will not stand here and be treated like this!” Pru cried. Tossing her head, she stalked out of the room.
Patience immediately got up to follow her, but Max still held her hand. She looked at him unhappily. “You cannot stay here,” she whispered.
“Where would you have me go?”
Although he whispered, too, Lady Jemima had no difficulty hearing every word.
“Where were you before?” asked Patience.
“Oh! Here and there. The gutter, mostly.”
She shook her head. “That coat did not come from the gutter,” she said dryly. “Let go of my hand, sir. Let me go to my sister.”
He leaned toward her, still whispering. “If you did not want me to come, why did you announce our marriage to the world? You could have kept it a secret.”
“I did not—” she began quickly, but he silenced her by kissing her hand again.
“You did not mean to summon me like a demon from hell. Yes, I heard you. I know why you
didn’t
do it. I would like to know why you did.”
“Mrs. Drabble suggested it. She said it would put off your creditors.”
He released her hand abruptly. “My creditors?”
“They say you owe money all over town,” Patience told him. “They say you are but two steps ahead of the bailiffs.”
“Is that what they say?” he drawled. Patience could not interpret his expression. “Yes, I suppose the news of my marriage will put off my creditors. And you had no other reason?”
She shook her head. “No, Max. Of course I didn’t.”
He sighed. “Will you at least admit that you are glad to see me?”
“I am
not
glad to see you,” she protested. “This is a catastrophe!”
“Mildly pleased to see me?”
“Please just go! Leave!”
But she was the one who hurried from the room.
Lady Jemima, finding herself alone with Max, pushed back her chair and stood up.
“Oh, let her go, Jemmie,” Max said. “She’ll be all right.”
“How dare you address me in that offhand manner?” Lady Jemima said haughtily.
Max looked at her in surprise. “Et tu, Jemmie?”
“Lady Waverly has asked you to leave this house,” she rasped.
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I care for your tone, Jemmie. You and I both know Lady Waverly cannot make me go.”
“If you were a gentleman—!” she began. “But, of course, you are
not
a gentleman,” she added maliciously. “You were born on the wrong side of the blanket.”
“As you say, I am not a gentleman.”
“I will not stay another moment under the same roof with the likes of you, sir! I will be gone within the hour.”
Satisfied with her grand, if rather self-contradictory, declaration, she swept from the room.
Max calmly signaled to the footman. “More coffee.”
The footman looked startled. “Very good, Mr.—sir! Master!”
Max leaned back in his chair as the cold coffeepot was carried out. “Master,” he murmured. “I like the sound of that.”
Several hours later, Patience came to him in the drawing room, where he was setting up the chessboard. “I had hoped you would be gone,” she said, looking at him with anguish.
Her distress nearly unmanned him, but he managed a cool shrug. “I believe Lady Jemima has left you. I could not deprive you of all your company at once.”
“Max!” she murmured, lingering near the door.
“I assume that gentle Prudence has locked herself in her room?”
She nodded glumly.
“Good,” he smiled. “It saves me the trouble of doing it for her.”
“You would not dare—!” she began hotly, then bit her lip.
“I have all the keys.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “You will make all three of us miserable, if you do this. Please just go.”
He frowned. “Of course, I will go if you ask me to—”
“I have just done so!”
“Then I’m afraid I cannot do as you ask!” he snapped. “You are my wife, and now the whole world knows it. I will not be made a laughingstock. You will not shame me by putting me out of this house! I am a tolerant man, God knows, but I will not tolerate
that
. I don’t know how it is in America, but here in England a man lives with his wife. You have done enough to me, I think, without making me the butt of a thousand jokes!”
Patience was horrified. “It was never my intention to shame you. I wanted to help you, that’s all.”
“I know it wasn’t your intention,” he said gruffly. “If I thought you were
that
sort of woman, I would never have married you. I don’t like this talking at each other back and forth across the room,” he added impatiently. “I feel I ought to cup my hands around my mouth, like the master of the hunt! Come and sit down with me. I’m not going to bite you.”
Patience hesitated for a moment, then crossed the room. The pieces on the chessboard rattled as she sat down, bumping into the table.
“Do you play?” he asked her.
She looked at him blankly.
“Chess,” he said, calling her attention to the red and white pieces. “The game of kings. Do you play?”
Patience mutely shook her head.
“Backgammon? No? Cards, then. Cribbage? Fox and Geese? Jackstraws? Why do you have all these games, if you don’t play any of them?” he said, exasperated.
“I’ve never seen them before in my life except the chessboard. It stands in the corner usually.”
“I prefer to play at fireside,” he said. “The others I found in the japan cabinet. Surely you play cards, at least?”
Patience was a little disconcerted that he apparently had been rifling through the japan cabinet, which stood between the two long windows, but, apart from the accounts and correspondence she kept in the desk, she stored no personal items in the drawing room. Nor did Pru, to her knowledge. She had often admired the cranes painted on the cabinet but she had never looked inside. “These games must have been here when we took the house,” she said impatiently. “And no, I don’t play cards. I believe gambling is immoral.”
“Do you really?” he said. “Curious! But I hardly think of cardplaying as gambling. It’s not dice or roulette. It requires skill. And we must have something to do in the evenings before we go to bed.”
She jerked to her feet, upsetting a few pieces on the board. “We’re not going to bed!” she blurted out in a horrified whisper, her cheeks stained scarlet. “If that is what you think—!”
“My dear girl,” he protested, laughing. “You cannot imagine that I would presume to share Your Ladyship’s bed? I have not come here to impose on you, if that is what you fear. Inconvenience you I must, but I would by no means injure you. Despite what you may have heard—despite what you
have
heard—I am not in the habit of forcing myself on women.”
“I know that,” she said quickly. “I am not afraid of you.” Slowly, she sank back into the chair.
“Then what is the trouble?” he asked, resetting the pieces on the board.
“You know what it is! It’s Pru! You’ll be at each other’s throats.”
“I daresay it will be contentious at first,” he conceded. “You are not firm enough with her, my dear. She stamps her foot, and you let her have her way. A few tears, and you are reduced to a jelly. She will not find
me
so easy.”
Patience frowned at him. “You know nothing about my sister. My grandfather was very hard on her. Very hard.”
“Not hard enough, if you ask me.”
Patience shook her head. “You would not speak so lightly of it if you had known my grandfather,” she said fiercely.
All traces of humor vanished from his face. “Was he unkind, really?”
“He was a tyrant.”
“Forgive me! I had misunderstood; I rather thought you admired your grandfather.”
“Oh, I did,” she said. “I do. I admire his success. I am truly grateful to have inherited his wealth. But, I must confess, I never had any affection for him. He was a cruel man. Pru always had the worst of it, because she was the more rebellious. She did go a bit wild when my grandfather died, but that is to be expected after all she suffered at his hands.”
“Did you suffer at his hands?” he demanded.
Patience looked down at the chessboard. “He was not cruel to me, but only because I did my best to meet his expectations. As I said, Pru had the worst of it. My sister will not do as she’s told, not even if what she’s told to do is perfectly reasonable.”
“I had noticed that,” he said dryly, earning a faint smile from Patience.
“If you are going to stay here—and—and I suppose you are—you must promise to be kind to her.”
Max looked away, unable to bear the sight of tears in her eyes. “Is she going to promise to be kind to me?”

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