Rules of Passion

by Sara Bennett - Greentree Sisters 02 - Rules of Passion

  How long since he had kissed a woman like this? There had been a time when he thought only of women and the mutual pleasure being with them could bring. He’d earned himself something of a reputation, although that hadn’t stopped the matchmaking mamas’ pursuit of the Duke of Barwon’s only son. But lately…sexual pleasure had become little more than a quick tumble, a moment’s release from his troubles, and soon forgotten.

  This was different. Marietta Greentree was different, and he didn’t understand why and he was beginning to think that even if he did, it was too late to fight it.

  When at last he broke off their kiss, Marietta’s eyes were closed. She was bending over him, with her palms resting heavily against his chest, and her lips parted and flushed from his. “Oh,” she breathed, with the flattering air of one who understood everything now.

  Max wondered if his head was spinning due to weakness from his wound or from Marietta. His heart, too, had redoubled its efforts to escape from his chest. And yet his voice, when he spoke, was calm and in control, and not showing any of the insanity he knew he had fallen prey to.

  “Now you kiss me,” he heard himself say in that reasonable voice, and knew it would be the Bedlam for him.

  Her lashes lifted and she gazed at him from languid blue eyes. “Do you think I can?”

  “It’s what courtesans do.”

  She licked her lips and he almost groaned aloud. And then she tilted her head slightly, to avoid their noses getting in the way, and began to do to him what he had just done to her. He had to hold his arms rigid, to prevent himself from grabbing her and molding that soft, delectable body to his. Marietta might not be an expert but she was keen, and she had a seductive charm that Max had noted from the first. Perhaps she would make a good courtesan, perhaps it was her destiny to follow in her mother’s footsteps, as she claimed, but there was a resistance to the idea inside him that he couldn’t explain, and didn’t want to explore.

  Marietta felt as if her insides had liquified, turned hot and sweet. She wanted to curl up on Max’s knee, and cling to his neck and kiss him forever. Why had no one ever told her that a kiss could be like this? So sensuous and powerful. Not just the prelude to the physical act of connection, but a book all on its own.

  Max’s tongue slid against hers, and she heard him moan as if he couldn’t help it. His hands were now clasped about her waist, tight, and when she would have pressed closer he held her away. Keeping her at a distance. Except for her mouth.

  It should have felt detached, but there was something very erotic about that distance between them. Knowing that they were separated by so little, and yet their mouths were fused so hotly. But still she wanted to get closer, to mess up his hair, twist those exuberant curls around her fingers, and then she wanted to undo the buttons of his coat, one by one, and explore. She hadn’t forgotten the night he had lain, naked, in bed and she had seen most of him.

  There must have been a sound at the door, but Marietta didn’t hear it, and she was positive Max didn’t either. But the next moment there was a furious clattering, as if a tray of tea cups had been caught in a gale. Shocked, Marietta turned just in time to see Daniel edging back out of the room, his eyes lowered, and then he closed the door with a clunk. There was no doubt he had seen them kissing. One of Max’s servants had seen them kissing.

  Embarrassing as it was, she didn’t care. I’ve done it! she thought. I’ve completed my first task… And yet she had been so busy kissing Max, and enjoying it, that she hadn’t given a thought to Aphrodite. Becoming a courtesan had been the last thing on her mind.

  Had he enjoyed it, too? He was just pretending, was he, playing a part? Huh! She let her lips trail over his jaw, little biting kisses, and then she flicked her tongue against his skin, tasting him.

  He shuddered. “Marietta.”

  And she knew then that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. Whatever he might say, his body wanted hers. For some reason she felt relieved by this knowledge. It gave her a sense of power over him, a sense of immunity from being used and abandoned.

  Max sighed and turned his face so that her brow rested against his cheekbone. “I think we have shocked the servants enough for one day,” he said in a voice she hardly recognized. “Enough, Marietta.”

  “Why?” she protested. “He’s gone now, and we’ve only just begun. Kiss me again.”

  “No.” He laughed harshly, and gave her a little push, so that she had no choice but to step backwards. “I can’t believe I’m doing this, I must be mad.” Then, his eyes looking straight into hers, “I don’t want to lose control, Marietta, not yet. And I will, if you keep at me like this.”

  Marietta stared at him a moment more, feeling extremely hot and bothered. Perhaps he was right. Their affair had just begun and she shouldn’t be impatient. Max was for practicing with, and she seemed to be having trouble just now remembering it. In fact it had almost felt as if it was more than that, more than pretend. It had felt as if it was real…

  Still, better not let him get too complacent.

  “I don’t know, Max,” she said, briskly pulling on her gloves. “Of course you have far more experience than me in these matters, but I feel as if you’re in charge and I’m sure it should be the other way around. I am going to be the courtesan, not you.”

  He shrugged but she thought there was a gleam of triumph in his eyes. Of course, he wanted to be in charge so that he could prevent her from getting the upper hand. It did not help that they were here in his house. That, too, gave him an unfair advantage over her.

  Now that Max was recovering from his wound he would leave London. She reminded herself that although she might have accomplished Aphrodite’s first task, there was no time to waste if she was to complete them all. And come to that, how many were there, and what would they involve? She definitely needed to see Aphrodite again and as soon as possible.

  She turned around, catching him by surprise. He was watching her with a wary look in his brown eyes, as if he thought she might pounce on him and…and make love to him. She almost laughed aloud. Well, she wasn’t going to do that, not yet, but she was going to ask him some questions he probably wouldn’t like very much.

  It was time to get Max seriously rattled.

  Chapter 9

  Max was watching her, new shadows under his eyes, and she almost took pity on him, but then her gaze traveled to the bandage about his head. Was this an accident or a cold-blooded attack? For his sake she needed to find out the truth about the Valland family, and Max had to help her.

  Her resolve hardened.

  “Mr. Keith told me that you had two accidents only last year. Why do you have so many?”

  Max felt his face go slack, and then crease up in the frown he had never learned to hide. His mother had been the same, she had been hopeless at pretending to feel something she did not feel. He had inherited her inability to dissemble and his father’s quick temper, a disastrous combination.

  “Marietta, this time you have gone too far. My private life is none of your business—”

  “Well, it is my business if you’re going to get knocked on the head again before we’ve finished our arrangement,” she told him practically. “I’m only thinking of myself, Max.”

  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?”

  He frowned. “They’re not connected. How could they be? Why should they be? You’re turning something innocent into something sinister without the slightest piece of evidence.”

  “But think, Max, think. Do you have something that someone else wants?”

  “I might have had, once,” he admitted grudgingly. “I know what you’re doing, Marietta. You’re trying to make me believe that Harold wants me dead so that he can inherit. But apart from the complete ridiculousness of such a theory, how can you justify this?” He pointed to the bandage on his head. “Harold already has everything. What’s the point of getting rid of me now that he has been named heir? None at all.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, no. Not yet.”

  “Please, Marietta, just leave it. I don’t need you to interfere in my life, and I certainly haven’t asked you to. You are one of those women who delight in meddling, aren’t you? Well, in this instance, don’t!”

  “Someone has to look after you, Max,” she said, and gave him her wide-eyed look.

  “The kissing was easier,” he muttered. “At least while your mouth was busy you couldn’t ask questions, or inflict your wild theories on me.”

  “Oh, do you want to practice again?”

  He looked at her mouth, and for a moment his eyes darkened, as though he was considering it. And then he rose to his feet, with only a little hesitation. “No,” he said bluntly. “No more lessons today. Goodbye, Marietta.”

  Marietta smiled, because no matter how much he was protesting now, she knew he had enjoyed it as much as she. “Very well, goodbye until next time, Max.”

  The door closed behind her.

  Thank God she’s gone, Max told himself, and ignored the flash of heat inside him when he remembered his mouth fusing with hers. She had gotten some wild notion into her head and now she would not let it go. And it was wild, he told himself firmly. Harold was his cousin and his best friend; he would never hurt him. Never!

  But the damage was done. Marietta Greentree had made him face his doubt, and no matter how he protested against it that sly voice would be forever whispering in his ear.

  “I’m just lucky…or unlucky,” he murmured to himself. “Accident prone, that’s all.”

  Oh yes, very accident prone.

  “It means nothing.”

  Others have noticed. Marietta noticed straight away.

  “If someone wanted me dead so that they could claim my inheritance, then why knock me down after I lost everything? It doesn’t make sense.”

  The voice was silent.

  Because he was right, Max told himself.

  Besides, he had other things to think of. His man of business had made some suggestions about the house in Cornwall,
and the possibility of turning the estate into a going concern. None of them had been very optimistic, apart from one idea that appeared workable. There was a mine near Blackwood, long since closed down because the copper had run out at the end of last century. Now many such mines were reopening and being profitably mined for tin. There had been traces of tin found in Blackwood’s mine, enough anyway for him to consider reopening it. His mother’s little nest egg would be sufficient to repair and reequip the mine, employ some of the local men, and make a new start.

  If he lived long enough.

  “Blast her,” he murmured. Marietta Greentree’s insinuations didn’t make sense. None of them. Just as his feelings for Marietta herself didn’t make sense. She was the most irritating woman, and yet…He wanted her. She was already playing upon his desire like a musician upon a harp—she had his strings expertly quivering and humming—and yet she claimed not to know anything about seduction.

  It was annoying, Max decided bleakly, looking about him, and very strange when he had just been wishing her gone, but now that she was…

  The room felt empty without her.

  Downstairs, Pomeroy was just divesting a tall, thin gentleman of his top hat and walking stick. Harold Valland looked up as Marietta descended the stairs, his brown eyes so very similar to Max’s and yet so very different.

  “Miss Greentree! Pomeroy said you were here. How is Max today?”

  Marietta smiled as she joined him. “He is much better, sir.”

  “It is very generous of you to take this interest in my cousin,” Harold said, full of sincerity. “Unfortunately since his…his troubles, people have been avoiding him. But you are his friend, aren’t you, Miss Greentree?”