About a Rogue EPB

by Linden, Caroline

  In the grove opposite them, the orchestra played. At some point Lady Dalway thought she heard the singer she liked announced, so she got up and made Dalway go with her to hear better. The earl rolled his eyes and mimed being pulled by a halter, causing Sir Henry almost to fall off his bench in a fit of laughter. The Carswells were both greeted warmly by a passing couple, and invited to take a turn about the gardens with them.

  A large number of people tried to hail Max as they passed. Several times someone would stop and exclaim. Most were men, but a few were women. They all seemed extraordinarily pleased to find him there, although one fellow shouted that he barely recognized him. To all, Max raised a hand, almost dismissively, and pointedly turned away. The men laughed, the ladies pouted, and one woman who did not look worthy of the name lady strolled off with a small smile on her face. Bianca glanced at her husband as it happened again and again, but he appeared to find it annoying, if anything.

  As the night deepened, Max touched her hand. “Do you fancy a walk?” he murmured.

  Bianca caught Clara’s eye, watching them contemplatively. The conversation had grown a trifle rambling and uninhibited as the wine flowed. Besides, she wanted to see more of the gardens. “Yes.”

  She took his offered arm without thinking, and they crossed the avenue to the lawn in the grove. Up in the orchestra, the musicians were playing, though without a singer. Max nodded politely but never stopped whenever someone called out to him, keeping up a steady pace.

  Finally Bianca, tightly laced and already warm in the heavy gown, stopped walking. Max looked at her in concern. “Can we sit down?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Of course.” He flagged down a waiter running past and ordered two glasses of champagne.

  “I don’t think I could drink another,” she protested, but he shook his head.

  “It’s burnt,” he said. “So it’s not as potent. Try it.”

  The servant came darting back with the glasses, and Max tossed him two shillings, which the man snatched out of the air without breaking stride. Bianca took a sip and realized it was crisp, cool, and decidedly less potent than the champagne she had already had two glasses of.

  “Where shall we go?”

  It was crowded in the grove, to say nothing of warm and cloying, under the profusion of oil lamps burning in the trees. “Somewhere it’s quiet and cooler,” Bianca suggested, plucking again at her tight bodice. Now she saw the benefit of the tiny food portions.

  Max’s gaze dropped for a heartbeat to her fingers. “Right. This way.” He steered her away from the orchestra, past the rotunda, toward the darker paths beyond the winding colonnade and supper boxes. Away from the crowd, Bianca removed her mask again, sighing in pleasure as the cool air hit her face. Max had taken off his mask when the champagne arrived, and not bothered to replace it.

  “Welcome to Vauxhall, my lady,” said a leering harlequin sauntering by.

  Bianca looked at him, startled, but Max put his arm possessively around her. The other man made a moue of regret and hurried off. “Did you know that man?” she whispered as they walked.

  “No,” he said in amusement. “Did you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “In Vauxhall, it matters little. He admired you.”

  Bianca flushed. “I shall never be used to that sort of admiration.”

  Max laughed softly. His arm lingered at her waist, and she found it rather comforting. “You should try. I admire you a great deal.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. She had nearly said that he was different, that his admiration didn’t make her feel the same way. His admiration made her feel . . . beautiful.

  They turned a corner, where a pair of ladies dressed as Grecian goddesses were strolling arm in arm. “Maxim! Oh, Maxim, darling,” cried one, catching sight of them. She tore free of her companion and flung herself on him. “You’re back!”

  Astonished, dislodged by the woman’s attack, Bianca retreated a step, too surprised to speak.

  Max was trying to untangle her arms from around his neck. “I am not,” he said coolly. “Not really.”

  The other woman had hurried up, and now she pouted under her half mask, sidling close enough to walk her fingers up his arm. “But you are! When shall you come to see us again?”

  His jaw set, Max put the first woman away from him, holding her a moment to quell her attempts to throw herself on him again.

  “Maxim,” she mewed in disappointment. “After all the fun we’ve had together . . .”

  The second girl glanced at Bianca. “I suppose you’re his new girl. Lucky little pigeon, ain’t you?”

  “I am not,” said Bianca indignantly. “I’m—”

  “Good evening,” said Max with swift finality. He seized Bianca’s hand. “We’re done, Harriette, and you know it.”

  “Don’t have to be,” she said coyly, but Max was already striding away, pulling Bianca with him. She stumbled, almost dropping her champagne, as he charged down a path, turning corners until finding a secluded bench.

  Bianca dropped onto it with a thump. Max put his hand on his hip and stared at the ground, his fingers drumming on his hip. She had learned his nervous habits by now, so Bianca just addressed the matter directly. “They, I take it, were lovers of yours.”

  He cursed, violently, under his breath.

  “I knew you had some,” she went on. “I’m only surprised it took this long to cross paths with one. Or two.”

  He plowed his hands into his hair and sank onto the bench. “I never wanted you to meet any.”

  “Well.” It was much darker out here, and blessedly cooler. Bianca finished her champagne, looking into the distance at the blue-black velvet of the sky above to give him a moment to compose himself. “It wasn’t a terrible shock.”

  It was obvious to anyone that he was mortified and furious. She wasn’t going to pretend it hadn’t happened. That was how Cathy had almost ended up married to him instead of to Mr. Mayne; Cathy had never been able to stand up to her father, to say aloud what really bothered her. Bianca, on the other hand, had never been shy about speaking her mind.

  But her husband was silent for a long time, and finally she looked at him. He sat with his hands on his knees, elbows splayed out. She could just make out his profile, his jaw hard as he faced grimly ahead.

  “Dalway said I should tell you all,” he said at last, his voice low. “I thought him mad, but perhaps he was right.”

  Despite her bravado earlier, Bianca felt a strange twinge at the thought of him telling her about all his previous lovers. Women who knew things about him, who knew him in ways she did not, even though she was his wife.

  “Do you want to hear?” he continued. “Or would you prefer to consider it a closed chapter of the past? I will tell you as much as you want to know.”

  She thought about it. The idea of listening as he listed all the women he’d taken to bed was viscerally revolting. But he, who had been so closemouthed about everything, was offering to tell her anything . . .

  “I would prefer to know about you, not about them,” she said softly. “About your parents, your youth . . . your grandfather.”

  After a long pause, he let out his breath. “My mother was beautiful.” His voice was quiet and wistful. “Dark hair, gentle blue eyes . . . She never deserved what my father did to her. He was a thorough scoundrel. I think he married her only because she held him at arm’s length. My father wasn’t accustomed to being refused. But she did, and old Maxim refused to give up her funds, modest though they were, until they went to church. So he married her, poor creature.”

  “What was he like?” she couldn’t resist asking.

  Max growled in disgust. “The most selfish man I’ve ever known. Nothing mattered except his own desires and wishes. He would scold her and abuse her, then disappear for a month with no word—and leaving no money. One winter we had to go back to my grandfather’s farm in Lincolnshire to avoid starving to death.”

  “But your fat
her—!”

  “He didn’t care if we starved,” said Max with scathing malice. “He preferred the finer life, and he was determined to have it, even if that meant leaving us behind. That year he’d found a wealthy widow—I don’t know if she knew he was married, or if she didn’t care—and they went off to France or the Low Countries. He always came back when they tired of him, but never for long. He was never pleased in one place for more than a few months together, never satisfied with his wife and son, although I suppose he might have also wanted to stay ahead of his debts.”

  Oh goodness. Bianca had never suspected that. Her father would never have left any of their family to starve—indeed, Samuel routinely took on distant cousins or their widows, wives of drunkard nephews and children of feckless neighbors. He gave them employment, annuities, hampers of food . . . And all that in addition to what he gave his workers, above and beyond what other employers did. Perusia supported far more than their own little household in Marslip. Her chest filled with a burst of love for her father, irascible and stubborn though he could be.

  But she sensed Max didn’t want to talk about his father. “Were you happy at your grandfather’s?”

  “In Lincolnshire?” His shoulders rose and fell on a sigh. “I suppose. He had a good property and I was a boy, left at liberty to explore. Freedom suited me.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She died when I was a child,” he said after a moment. “In the spring. Too much worry and not enough money.”

  Bianca bit down on her lip, picturing a brokenhearted young boy, abandoned by his father and left to fend for himself. “What was her name?”

  “Adelaide,” he said softly. “Adela, her family called her. My father came back long enough to collect anything valuable. He went to France, as far as I know. If there’s any grace in the world, he fell into a privy ditch in Paris and rots there still.”

  She was frozen by the calmness of his voice. “But—but you’re cousin to a duke,” she faltered.

  “Distant cousin, and not one worthy of His Grace’s kindness. My mother tried to interest them in our plight,” he went on, as calmly as if they’d been discussing the weather. “Desperately. My father had been quite boastful of his connections, you see, and she’d thought that meant something. She never knew until later that his father and grandfather considered my father the worst sort of reprobate—not that they were any pillars of propriety themselves, mind. She named me after them, hoping one of them would grant me a living or at least favor me with a position. She thought I might make a fine secretary.” He tilted his head, and incredibly, Bianca thought he was smiling. “Imagine that, someone trusting me with their business affairs and correspondence.”

  That stung, even if he hadn’t meant it to. She had met his arrival in Marslip with open suspicion, considered him a shallow fortune hunter and called him simple to his face. She wet her lips. “You did read law for a year . . .”

  “Ah. You remember that?” He nodded. “After my mother died, her younger sister, Greta, took me in. Her husband at the time was a solicitor. She sent me off to Oxford for a year, and then I read law under her husband before he died.”

  “But then you left,” she said slowly, trying to put together these disparate pieces of him into a coherent whole. A useless father, but a loving mother and family. University and a solicitor’s office, but no profession. Nearly starving one year, but possessed of the manners and airs of a gentleman. Even the first time he came to dinner at Perusia his reputation had preceded him: a rakish sort of fellow, a gambler, a dangerous scoundrel.

  “Yes, I left,” said Max, with a dry emphasis on the last word. “It happened that my uncle’s partner thought I was bent on seducing his wife. If I hadn’t left, he would have thrown me out.” He paused. “He told all his fellow solicitors I’d done it, and none of them would take me on. That was the end of my career in law.”

  Outrage filled her chest. Without thinking she put her hand on his. “What vicious slander!”

  He was as still as stone. “Don’t you think I did seduce her?”

  Bianca flushed. No, she did not. “Did you?”

  “No,” he said softly. “But I am grateful you didn’t presume I had.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. And when she tried to slip her hand from his, she realized his fingers had closed around hers, so lightly she’d barely felt it. “You must have been a very young man,” she said unsteadily. It felt shockingly right to sit here, letting him hold her hand.

  “Eighteen,” he agreed. “Old Tibbets knew his wife favored young men, and so he only employed older clerks. My uncle persuaded him to allow me, but I expect he set his heart against me from the start, certain I would betray him.” His voice turned mildly contemptuous. “She did invite me into her bed, but—not only was she my employer’s wife—she already had a young lover. Tibbets never suspected the tailor’s apprentice was warming her bedlinen every time he delivered a new coat or trousers. And he was a vain man, who ordered a new coat every month.”

  Bianca couldn’t help it; she gave a little snort of laughter.

  “I agree,” said her husband in amusement. “Old fool.”

  “What did you do then?” she asked.

  “A single gentleman of no fortune and no profession? The gaming tables, my dear.”

  “Were you good?”

  “Brilliant,” he said with a wink. She laughed, and he grinned. At some point during their conversation she had slid down the bench until she was right beside him, and could make out his expressions.

  “So you weren’t an indolent scoundrel when you came to Perusia,” Bianca said, feeling as if the veil had dropped from her eyes. “I believed you were the most unprincipled fortune hunter, wanting Cathy’s dowry and my father’s factory because you had nothing of your own. I thought you had dazzled Papa with empty talk of your connection to the Duke of Carlyle, and wanted nothing more than money.”

  His hand twitched in hers.

  “I’m sorry for believing the worst of you,” she added in real remorse. She had been wrong, and owed him an honest apology. “I hope you can forgive me.”

  He turned, taking both her hands. “Bianca . . .”

  “Yes?”

  His face was silvery pale in the dark gardens. The moonlight made him look haunted and drawn, his eyes dark and shadowed. Instead of replying, he kissed her.

  This time she was ready for it. She didn’t know if she had walked into the woodland in order for him to kiss her, but she had walked out here knowing it was a possibility. She had not missed one iota of the searing hunger in his gaze when he first saw her in this gown, nor the fascinated way his eyes dropped to her bosom every time she took a deep breath. The dress was very snug, but she might, just might, have exaggerated her posture at times to see what he would do.

  Now he was kissing her, his mouth moving over hers, his free hand wrapping around the nape of her neck. And she was kissing him back, because he was not the rogue she’d thought he was and she could no longer fight her attraction to him.

  “God above, how I want you,” he whispered, brushing kisses over her brow.

  “We’re in a public garden.” Bianca thought that if that weren’t so, they would indeed consummate their marriage tonight.

  “I know.” He rested his forehead against hers, his fingers playing with the long strands of pearls lying across her bosom. “But with the right discretion . . .”

  She tensed. “What? You would do that in a garden?”

  He laughed quietly. “Not this time. But there are still . . . pleasures . . . one can find . . .”

  Her heart was thumping and her skin was tingling. “What pleasures?” she whispered.

  “Will you trust me?” He slid off the bench, onto his knees in front of her. His black cloak pooled around him. He traced one finger over the inside of her ankle.

  Bianca glanced nervously from side to side, but they were alone. It was full dark out, and the nearest lantern was barely visib
le at the end of the path. And his words were so tantalizing: trust me . . .

  She swallowed hard, and nodded.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I won’t hurt you. Never, my love.” His voice was a thread of sound as his hand skimmed up her leg. At her knee he paused and slowly moved first one leg, then the other, to the side, spreading her knees apart. She almost choked. Another feverish glance around showed no one.

  Max raised her skirts, draping the hem across her knees. His gaze never strayed from her face. Her pulse leapt—with excitement.

  “I want to please you,” he breathed. His hands were on her thighs, smoothing over her bare skin and sending shivers through her.

  “I’ve never—” she began, not knowing how to say that she—unlike he—had no idea what to do.

  “I know,” he murmured. “Say one word and I’ll stop.” His thumbs brushed the curls between her legs, and she stiffened, her breath catching in nervous anticipation.

  This was so unlike her. Bianca felt as if she were in a dream, or watching it all from a distance. But when he stroked her there, her back arched and she flung her hands behind her to grip the bench at the sensation reverberating through her.

  “Max,” she gasped.

  He paused. Bianca gulped for air and nodded weakly. That wild rakish smile slowly grew on his face, and when he put his hands around her hips, to pull her closer, moving between her knees, she only moaned in encouragement.

  Pleasures most women only dream of.

  Her every breath was like a spasm as he touched her. His fingers petted and stroked those curls, as leisurely as if he meant to spend all night doing only that. Bianca bit down on her lower lip to keep from urging him on. She was tense and on edge, her toes digging into the ground.

  “So soft,” he whispered. “So wet.” His thumb dipped deeper, sliding easily. She was wet, and her skin prickled all over as he stroked her, lightly, slowly, barely enough to keep her from bursting out in frustration.