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Maximus’s eyes narrowed. “And why should I pause?”
“Because you know what you have done—what you are doing—is not right.”
“It was she who came to my bed, not the other way ’round,” Maximus muttered, feeling heat flush his neck even as he gave the feeble excuse.
“A gentleman has full control over his urges—all his urges,” Craven said with just a hint of sarcasm. “Would you blame the lady for your own fault?”
“I blame no one.” Maximus turned back to his dresser, unable to meet his valet’s eyes. He scraped the stubble from his right cheek.
“And yet you should.”
“Craven.”
Craven’s voice sounded old. “Tell me you mean to marry the lady and I’ll gladly celebrate.”
Maximus froze. What he wanted and what was best for the dukedom was entirely separate. “You know I cannot. I plan to marry Lady Penelope Chadwicke.”
“And you know, Your Grace, that Lady Penelope is a frivolous fool not worth half of you. Not worth half of Miss Greaves, for that matter.”
“Have care,” Maximus said, frost dripping from his lips. “You malign my future duchess.”
“You haven’t asked her.”
“Yet.”
Craven held out pleading hands. “Why not make this right? Why not marry the lady you’ve already bedded?”
“Because, as you well know, her family is diseased with madness.”
“So are half the aristocratic families of England.” Craven snorted. “More than half if we count the Scots. Lady Penelope herself is related to Miss Greaves and her family. By your estimation she is not fit to be your duchess, either.”
Maximus gritted his teeth and breathed out slowly. Craven had been there at his christening. Had taught him how to shave. Had stood behind him when he’d laid his mother and father in a cold crypt. Craven wasn’t just a servant to him.
Which was why Maximus made sure to keep his voice level as he discussed something so utterly private with the man. “Lady Penelope doesn’t have a brother who is a murderous madman. To take Miss Greaves as my duchess would taint the dukedom. I owe it to my forebears, to my father—”
“Your father would never have made you marry Lady Penelope!” Craven cried.
“Which is why I shall marry her,” Maximus whispered.
Craven simply looked at him. It was the same look he’d given Maximus when he’d snapped at one of his sisters as a youth, when Maximus had drunk too much wine for the first time, when he’d refused to speak for that fortnight after his parents’ death. It was the look that said, This is not behavior becoming of the Duke of Wakefield.
That look had always stopped Maximus.
But not this time. This time he was the one who was right and Craven who was in the wrong. He could not marry Artemis—his debt to his father’s memory, to what he must be as the duke in order to make something right, did not allow it—but he could have her and keep her and make her his most secret desire.
Because he wasn’t sure at this point that he could live without her.
He looked at Craven and he knew his face had assumed the cold, stony mask that made other men glance away. “I will marry Lady Penelope, and I will continue bedding Miss Greaves as I see fit, and if you are unable to reconcile yourself to those facts you may leave my employment.”
For a moment Craven merely looked at him and Maximus was reminded suddenly of his first sight the day he woke after his parents’ murder: it had been Craven’s face as he’d slept in a chair by Maximus’s bedside.
Craven turned away and left the bedroom, shutting the door gently behind him.
It might as well have been a gunshot to Maximus’s soul.
Chapter Fifteen
Now Tam rode behind the Herla King, and though she tried to talk to him, never in that year did he speak to her or make a sign that he knew her. Still, when the night of the autumn harvest next came, Lin took a deep breath and did as the little man in the hills had bid her: she reached back and dragged her brother from his ghostly horse, gripping him tightly. Immediately Tam turned into a monstrous wildcat.…
