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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?”
