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She felt shaken by Max.
Yes, he made her angry. Yes, he was moody, and it wasn’t fair that he was so physically attractive. When he had held her in his arms, her body pressed to his, she had felt…well, it frightened her, because the last time she had felt like that it had ended in disaster. Marietta sympathized with his predicament, of course she did, but they were strangers, and soon they would go their own ways and live their own lives.
She found comfort in the fact that she would never see him again.
When they reached the outskirts of London, Mr. Keith found Marietta a hackney cab to take her home. She glanced at Max as she climbed inside. He was looking at her, but his smile was gone, and it occurred to her that soon he would have forgotten she existed. With a little shrug, she ignored him too, and turned her face for home.
“It was no accident Miss Greentree being with us, was it, Ian?”
Ian Keith glanced at Max, taking in his obvious bad humor.
“The truth, if you please,” Max added, his dark eyebrows drawing down at the corners to mimic the shape of his mouth.
Ian sighed. “I don’t know why you’re complaining. Any other man would have been more than happy to while away a few hours in the company of so sweet a girl. I thought…I hoped she would drive away your dark mood.”
“Did you? I suppose she did have a certain naïve charm. If I were ten years younger—”
“Max you’re twenty-nine!”
“I feel like one hundred and twenty-nine. I’ve seen girls like that before, Ian. Too many of them.” He sounded pompous and he knew it, but it seemed important to convince Ian that he had no interest in Miss Greentree. Because if he couldn’t convince Ian, how on earth was he going to convince himself?
“I take it you’re not hanging out for a wife then?” Ian said curiously. “Not that I’m suggesting Miss Greentree is the woman to share the nuptials with you, but I have wondered.”
“If I want a woman in my bed I’ll go to Aphrodite’s and find one there, and as for the rest…My servants cook my meals and launder my clothes, and I have you for a friend.” The drawl was back in his voice, to show he didn’t care. “A wife would be an added burden, especially now, when I have no future.”
Ian shook his head. “It isn’t the end of the world, Max. Even if you can’t persuade your father to change his mind, or break your cousin’s hold on your inheritance, you still have a lot to be grateful for. Remember, you have your mother’s estate in Cornwall, and your house in London. Admit it, you’re hardly destitute, Max!”
Max’s expression grew bleak. “You have a very simplistic view of the world, my friend. My mother left me property in Cornwall, it’s true, but the house is falling down. And the house in London isn’t mine, it’s part of the Valland estate and it belongs to Harold now. My father has sent his man of business to tell me to leave by the end of the month, but I don’t know if I can wait that long. You see I can’t pay my servants or my household bills. Although my cousin Harold has been generous, I cannot…I do not expect him to support me.”
“Why not?” Ian asked coldly. “He’s taken what is yours, hasn’t he?”
Max’s handsome face turned grim. “It isn’t Harold’s fault this has happened. I don’t blame my father either, not really. I’ve never seen him as hurt and angry as he was the night he read out my mother’s letter.”
Ian did not dispute him, although his expression said he would like to.
“And then there is my name,” Max went on quietly. “I can no longer call myself Lord Roseby—I am plain Max Valland. And although my mother may be dead, her reputation as a caring and generous woman, an honest and respectable woman, is in jeopardy. Vicious gossip follows me wherever I go. I am the scandal of the moment, and I do not like it.”
“You think it’s true then, that your father—?”
“Is not my father? That he married her all unsuspecting, believing the child she was carrying was his own? I have seen the proof with my own eyes—my mother’s letter of admission—I must believe it.”
“So who is your father, Max?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not even an inkling?” Ian asked softly.
Max hesitated and then he said, “No,” firmly. Ian knew there was no point in trying to force Max to confide in anyone, that was not Max’s way. Max would tell only when and if he wanted to; when the burden was finally too heavy and he had to lay some part of it down. Ian had often thought that a wife was exactly what Max needed, a strong woman to confide in and stand at his side, someone to love him whatever name he bore. But then that, he supposed, was the wish of most men, and most men never had it realized.
Max might not be an easy man, and at the moment he was a troubled man, but he had many good points. Ian only wished that Miss Greentree of the big blue eyes and irrepressible smile had had the chance to see some of them.
Chapter 2
The sounds and sights within Vivianna’s bedchamber were almost more than Marietta could bear. She did not like to see her sister in pain. Who would have thought it would be quite so exhausting to bring a baby into the world? Even one as anticipated and loved as Vivianna and Oliver’s baby.
Marietta wasn’t supposed to be in the room, she knew that, but in the confusion no one had had the time or energy to send her out. Besides, Oliver was here, too, and he wasn’t supposed to be! A father, the doctors had informed him roundly, should be at his club awaiting the news in the presence of his friends, or else downstairs with a glass of brandy, pacing the carpet. Certainly not up in his wife’s bedchamber holding her hand.
Just then Vivianna gave one last cry of effort, and suddenly it was over. The baby was born.
