Something flickered in his dark eyes—as if she had struck a chord in him. “Perhaps you would like a partner in your adventures,” he said, and his voice was no longer supercilious. “I am available.” He laughed, and it was hardly bitter at all. “I have nothing else to do but sit and feel sorry for myself, as you so rightly pointed out. Let’s go adventuring, Miss Greentree.”
Marietta wasn’t certain what she would have said. Yes trembled on her lips, but that was impossible. She had no intention of falling in love, not with Max and not with anyone, and the adventures she was planning were not the sort he would be able to afford—not any longer. Because for some time now Marietta had made her mind up that she was going to be a courtesan, just like her mother.
It was the only way in which she could have that life she craved, that full and satisfying life, without exposing her damaged heart. And her tattered reputation would be of no importance if she was a courtesan, in fact it might be a bonus. She had thought it over, and really, it was the only way she could move forward. Of course, it would not be easy. There was her family to convince—and Marietta did not pretend they would be pleased with her choice of career—and she did not want to hurt them more than she had already. But neither did she want to languish in the shadows for the rest of her life. She was young and alive, and it was time to begin to celebrate that fact.
Luckily, she did not have to explain all of that to Max, because they were interrupted.
“Hello there!” It was the farmer, peering over the fence. “Do you folk need any help?”
Soon afterwards they had loaded themselves into his cart and were jolting their way back to London. Marietta had been given the place of honor on the seat beside the farmer, while the two men sat in the tray at the back. She could hear them passing comment, but she did not join in the conversation. She felt shaken from the landing, but more than that.
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.
“A boy!” declared the doctor with obvious relief, and the baby was taken off to be sponged and wrapped in the same shawl used by Montegomery babies for hundreds of years. Evidently this didn’t suit Oliver and Vivianna’s son, because when he was presented to the proud parents he was howling loud enough to wake the whole of Berkley Square.
Gazing at Oliver across their son’s red, angry little face, Vivianna gave him a beaming smil
e. “You’re not the last of the Montegomeries now,” she said, her voice husky from exhaustion. Then, tears filling her hazel eyes, “Oh, Oliver…”
Oliver drew them both gently into his arms, and closed his own eyes, burying his face in her hair. In the bedchamber people moved about them, tidying up, murmuring words of congratulation, but Oliver and Vivianna and their son were in a little island all their own.
Watching them, Marietta felt the burn of tears in her own eyes—a mixture of sorrow and joy and even a touch of envy. For this would never be her life. She was destined for something very different, and if her hopes became reality then it would be a life to savor and to look back on with a smile of satisfaction. But she would never have what Vivianna had right now. The heart of one man.
She had come to London to be of help to her sister during her confinement, and to assist her afterwards with household matters. Lady Greentree was to have come herself, and in fact had been ready to do so, until she had an unfortunate accident. Two weeks ago, she tripped and fell down some stairs, and wrenched her ankle. Although the ankle was not broken, she was unable to walk, and a journey by coach to London had been out of the question. Even if she had been able to travel, of what possible use could she be, hobbling about? So she had handed the task over to Marietta, a little reluctantly to be sure—Lady Greentree did not like letting her second daughter out of her sight, not since Gerard Jones, and London was a long way from her watchful gaze. Marietta, with strict instructions as to what she could and couldn’t do, and with Mr. Jardine as her companion, came to take her mama’s place at Berkley Square.
Vivianna was very glad to see her.
“Oh Marietta, thank you for coming to be with me. I have missed you so!” It was nice, Marietta had thought, to be appreciated, even if she knew her sister was a little overwrought because of her condition. And she intended to do her duty, of course she did! But now she was finally in London, Marietta also meant to make the most of it. She had plans of her own, and one of them had been the ascent in the gas balloon. The other…Well, that was something both Vivianna and Lady Greentree had expressly forbidden.
Marietta planned to visit Aphrodite at her home, the famous Aphrodite’s Club. And she planned to ask Aphrodite for her help.
“You are not to go there under any circumstances,” Vivianna, knowing Marietta’s adventurous and impulsive nature, had spoken to her on the matter. “Are you listening to me, Marietta? Mama has forbidden it, and if Uncle William Tremaine were to hear of it…” She shuddered at the image of Lady Greentree’s brother discovering yet another scandal in the family. “He already considers you beyond redemption. You should concentrate on showing him how good and obedient you can be.”
“When did you begin to care what Uncle William said and thought?” she asked her sister, trying not to be hurt by her words. “Besides I am beyond redemption.”
“Nonsense! There are gentlemen here in London who have never heard of your…your misfortune. Oliver says he can find several who will be very interested in offering for you.”
Marietta bit her lip to stop herself from saying what she thought about that. Vivianna probably believed she was doing her sister a good turn—as the eldest she had always tried to look after them, ever since they were kidnapped from Aphrodite as children and later abandoned on Lady Greentree’s estate, where she had found them and taken them in. But the idea that Marietta would need Oliver’s help and persuasion to find herself a husband—probably some old man with lecherous eyes—made her feel ill. She was twenty-one now and the scandal had set her well and truly on the shelf. She had no intention of allowing Vivianna to boss her about just to avoid Uncle William’s displeasure. Particularly when she knew that same older sister had visited Aphrodite’s Club, incognito, when she was of a similar age.
Marietta took one more look at Vivianna and Oliver, admired their new son, and slipped out of the bedchamber. Mr. Jardine was waiting at the head of the stairs, his blue eyes anxious, his graying hair standing on end as though he had been running his hands through it.
“A son,” she said, with a smile to set his mind at ease. “And everyone is very well.”
His face sagged in relief. Mr. Jardine had been with the Greentree family for so long that they always thought of him as one of them. He had come to Greentree Manor shortly after Lady Greentree’s soldier husband, Edward, had died in India, and Marietta and her two sisters had been found abandoned in a cottage upon the estate. At the time Rawlings was their estate manager, but he had proved unsatisfactory and Lady Greentree had let him go—only for him to bob up in that inn and ruin Marietta’s life.
Mr. Jardine was a mature gentleman of medium height and build, and handsome. His skin had been darkened by the years he had spent in the West Indies.
“Lady Greentree will be so pleased,” he said now, and it was clear from his expression that he was imagining her joy when she heard about her grandson.
Such a wish to please an employer might be due to friendship or gratitude or loyalty, but Marietta knew differently. It had been obvious to her for many years that Mr. Jardine loved Lady Greentree. Unfortunately his love went unrequited, for although Amy Greentree was clearly fond of her secretary, she was still mourning her husband, and perhaps she always would be. It did seem to be a pity that she could not put aside his memory for just long enough to allow herself to brush the past from her eyes. If she could once see Mr. Jardine clearly, without the veil of her bereavement, Marietta was certain she would love him, too.
Marietta left Mr. Jardine and slipped down the stairs. News of the new Montegomery heir had already spread, and servants with beaming faces had gathered in the entrance hall. Soon congratulations would begin arriving at the town house, and with them would come Lady Marsh, Oliver’s wealthy aunt. Mr. Jardine would send a message posthaste to Lady Greentree and Francesca, and Marietta would follow that with a letter of her own. A notice would be placed in the more important newspapers, and that would bring more congratulations. Queen Victoria herself would send a gift, for Oliver was a favorite of hers, and Prince Albert would attach a personal note, because Vivianna was a favorite of his.
But there was someone else, someone Marietta considered more important than Her Majesty. Someone who should be told the news as soon as possible, and with Vivianna so completely absorbed in her brand-new family, that important person might be otherwise forgotten until tomorrow.
A grandmother deserved to be informed face-to-face.
Marietta hurried off to find Lil, her sister’s maid. Lil could keep an eye on Vivianna while she slipped out to tell Aphrodite the good news.
And it has nothing to do with my wish to visit Aphrodite’s Club and my plans to be a courtesan. Nothing whatsoever…
But Marietta was fibbing to herself, and she knew it. Visiting Aphrodite’s Club was not a whim, it was an important step toward her future. Everything depended upon Aphrodite’s reaction to her request for patronage—for if she was going to be a courtesan, she wanted only the best advice.
“Do you think you should go off to that place, miss?” Lil said. “I don’t know if Lady Montegomery would approve.”
“Lady Montegomery’s approval is neither here nor there,” Marietta retorted.
Lil opened her mouth as if to argue, and then took note of the stubborn tilt of Marietta’s chin, and closed it again. The Greentree sisters were all alike, she thought wryly to herself. When they wanted their own way there was just no stopping them.
Aphrodite’s Club had a somber elegance that gave little clue to its real purpose, thought Marietta as the hansom cab set her down. She had never seen her mother’s club before, but she had read of such places and steeled herself for a certain amount of gaudiness. This was more like a private school for young ladies!
Marietta lifted the hem of her skirts above her slippers to climb the stairs towards the white portico that framed the entrance. Apart from tossing on her emerald velvet cloak, Marietta had not changed her clothing from the red and g
reen shot silk dress she had worn all day. Changing would have meant delay, and the news she carried seemed too important to wait. Besides, this might be her only chance to speak to Aphrodite privately, and Marietta meant to take it.
The doorknocker brought a man in a red military style jacket to the door, his thick graying hair neatly combed, his gray eyes quizzical in his rugged face. This was Aphrodite’s faithful Dobson—Marietta knew him instantly from Vivianna’s description. And just as her sister had said, he looked as if he had been involved in a great many fistfights over the years.
“What can I do for you, miss?” he asked sternly, in the accent of the London streets. “Do you know where you are? Maybe you’re lost, is that it?”
Marietta smiled. “No, I am not lost, Dobson. I am Miss Marietta Greentree, and I have come to see Aphrodite.”
Dobson’s eyes gleamed with intelligence behind his rough mask; his mouth did not smile but it looked as though it wanted to. “She’s in the salon at the moment, Miss Marietta.”
“Oh, is she?” Marietta’s curious gaze flicked past him. “I came to tell her good news, Dobson. Vivianna and Oliver have had a son, and I thought Aphrodite would want to know immediately.”
Now Dobson did smile. “Why, that’s wonderful news! Aphrodite will want to know all right. You wait here, miss, and I’ll go and fetch her.”
And he dashed off.
Marietta stood alone in the vestibule. Really, she hadn’t expected a bordello to look so…so ordinary. Nothing exciting appeared to be going on, or if it was, then it was all happening behind tightly closed doors. She could hear music and talk and laughter from the salon, but even so there was nothing here that was different from any other large, fashionable, London establishment.
Almost a disappointment, Marietta admitted to herself.
A curving staircase rose up to a gallery circled by a black and gold balustrade. There were boudoirs up there, she supposed. Perhaps they were gaudy, perhaps they were occupied. Marietta sighed. Alone on her chair in the vestibule she felt very removed from it all, just as she had felt removed from life for the past four years.
Rules of Passion Page 3