“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?”
Patience choked back a laugh. “I shouldn’t think so!”
“I’m to be her whipping boy, then, is that it?”
She reached across the table and touched his hand. “Don’t let her provoke you, and don’t provoke her,” she pleaded softly. “Promise me!”
In that moment, he would have promised her anything, but, unfortunately they were interrupted. “Don’t let me interrupt you!” cried Pru from the doorway.
Patience jumped up, knocking the chessboard and all the pieces to the floor. “Pru! How—how long have you been standing there?”
“I didn’t mean to spoil your tender moment,” Pru said scathingly as she sailed into the room.
Patience blushed. “What? We were just playing chess.” Bending down, she began picking up the pieces.
Pru snorted. “You don’t even play chess! If you must touch him, I wish you would do it in the drawing room. Respectable people come here to see me.” With her fan she made a sweeping gesture that included all the cards and invitations displayed on the mantelpiece.
“Do any of them ever return for a second visit?” Max asked very politely.
“Don’t be sarcastic,” Patience pleaded, slapping a handful of chess pieces into his hand.
Pru chose not to hear. Flouncing over to the sofa, she spread out her skirts and flopped down. “Patience, would you be good enough to tell that man to leave the room?” she said haughtily, addressing her sister. “I attended a ball last night, and I am expecting callers.”
“If any of your beaux turn up, I shall be happy to leave the room,” Max offered, giving Patience no chance to humiliate him by asking him to go. “Laughing all the way.”
“What do you mean if?” Pru snapped, looking at him with loathing. “Of course they will turn up! Gentlemen always call the next day. Except you, of course,” she added scathingly. “You only sent flowers.”
Patience resumed her seat at the game table and watched as Max set up the pieces.
“Tell him to go, Patience!” Pru insisted shrilly. “His face is annoying me.”
“I cannot help my face,” Max protested.
“You could put a bag over it,” Pru suggested sweetly.
Silently, Max appealed to his wife.
“Prudence, that is no way to talk to your brother,” Patience scolded her belatedly.
“Brother!”
“And there is no need for him to leave the room,” Patience went on. “This is his house, too, after all. Your beaux cannot object to finding your brother-in-law in the drawing room.”
“I’ll lay odds none of them show up today,” said Max.
Pru looked around for something to throw at him. “Are you going to let your husband insult me like that?”
“Max! Apologize at once.”
“I meant no offense,” said Max. “The news of your sister’s marriage will not have escaped the notice of your friends, Miss Prudence. As much as they may like you, I am sure they dislike me more.”
“You will not keep them away,” Pru said, tossing her head. “I am too popular!”
As if to settle the matter, the bell on the front door rang just moments later. Pru smiled triumphantly, and smoothed her skirts in anticipation, but the visitor whom Briggs brought up the stairs to the drawing room had come to see Patience.
“Mr. Molyneux!” Patience exclaimed, a little flustered as the young man bounded up to her and shook her hand vigorously. “This is a welcome surprise.”
Molyneux’s cheeks were red from being outside in the cold wind, and there were a few specks of snow on the shoulders of his blue coat, but his smile was as warm as ever. “I read in the newspaper, ma’am, that you’d married. I am come to congratulate you.”
“Thank you,” Patience said. “I believe you already know my—my husband.”
“Oh, it’s you, sir!” said Molyneux. “I didn’t recognize the name in the paper. Did they get it wrong?”
“They do sometimes,” Max said coolly. “I see your face has recovered from our last meeting?”
Molyneux laughed. “Yes, sir. Suffice it to say, I understand now how I offended you.”
“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Molyneux?” Patience said quickly. “I’ll send for some tea. Or would you prefer coffee?”
Molyneux sat down on the sofa next to Pru, inadvertently sitting on her skirt, to which she instantly objected. “Don’t tell anyone, Mrs. Farnese, but I’ve grown accustomed to English tea,” he said, when the situation on the sofa had been rectified.
“I prefer coffee,” said Pru.
Patience asked Briggs to bring both.
Max turned his chair to face the sofa. “And so, Mr. Molyneux, you came all the way from Southwark to congratulate my wife?”
“Not at all,” Molyneux replied. “You’re the lucky one, from where I sit. I’ve come to congratulate you.”
Max smiled briefly. “She remains Lady Waverly, by the by,” he said. “Not Mrs. Farnese. When the lady outranks her husband, she keeps her title and her name.”
“Does this mean you are now Lord Waverly?” Patience asked him.
“Alas, no. I am merely Your Ladyship’s consort,” he answered, and was amazed to see her face turn bright pink. He could not imagine that he had said anything untoward.
“It was very good of you to call on us, Mr. Molyneux,” Patience said quickly. “I know you must be very busy with your lectures.”
“I was lucky today,” he replied. “Dr. Chandler sent me to Harley Street with a message for one of his colleagues. He sometimes uses me for that purpose.”
“I suppose he does not think you are fit for much else,” Pru sniffed.
Molyneux glanced at her. “Tomorrow I’m to assist him in surgery. We’re going to attempt to repair a cleft palate. Von Graf has had some success with his protocol at the University of Berlin. We hope to duplicate that success.”
“Attempt to repair? Hope to duplicate?” Pru mocked him.
“It’s a very complicated and delicate business,” he told her. “You would not understand.”
She made a face at him. “With so much on your mind, I wonder you have time to read the social columns!”
“I don’t usually,” he retorted. “I take but little interest in people so wholly unconnected to me as Miss W——and Mr. P——. But I was obliged to wait for Dr. Wingfield’s reply to Dr. Chandler, and so I picked up the newspaper and glanced through it while I waited.”
“Was it Wingfield you went to see?” Max said, pleased. “How is the old buzzard?”
Molyneux blushed. “I did not actually see Dr. Wingfield, you understand. My message was carried to him by his clerk.”
Pru snickered.
“If you ever do get the chance to talk to Dr. Wingfield,” Max said suddenly, “you must ask him to give you his famous lecture on the diagnosis and treatment of chlorosis.”
The Pleasure of Bedding a Baroness Page 28