She glanced over her shoulder. Aphrodite had sent Dobson with her to Vauxhall Gardens, and she saw him now, waiting a few paces behind her until she found Max safely. Her mother was being very cautious tonight, but Marietta was glad of it. Dobson looked dangerous and tough, standing amidst the crowd with his arms folded.
Was Dobson the Jemmy her mother spoke of in her diary? The man she had loved and lost? Marietta did not know how the two of them had been reunited—the latter part of her mother’s story was yet to be told. At first she had not thought Dobson particularly remarkable, but as she came to know him and witness her mother’s affection for him, Marietta had revised her opinion. Behind his gray eyes lurked humor and a sharp intelligence, and, whenever he looked at Aphrodite, a flood of warm affection. Hmm, and desire. He loved her, and she loved him.
As if he had read her thoughts, Dobson winked at her, and spoiled the tough image he had been conveying. Marietta smiled beneath her mask as she turned to scan the crowd for her own lover.
There were colored lanterns everywhere; they hung from the trees and swung from poles. A man on stilts blew fire into the air, and a woman shrieked with more excitement than fear. The private boxes were for those who preferred to sit and eat their thin slices of cold ham, enjoying the ambience while they studied the endless stream of humanity that wandered past them down the tree-lined avenues. Marietta smiled at one particularly loud group, the women shrieking with laughter as a gentleman drank champagne from a slipper. She knew that those who came to Vauxhall Gardens were a mixture of genteel and far-from-genteel, rich and poor, good and bad. The proprietors had attempted to ensure the safety of their patrons by increasing the number of lanterns in the walks, and employing men to patrol the area in search of pickpockets and to break up affrays, but no one could change Vauxhall.
It was rowdy and exciting and a little bit dangerous, and Marietta loved it.
The band in the rotunda finished their piece and were duly applauded, and as the sound died away, a voice spoke behind her.
“My lady.”
Marietta turned. A tall, broad-shouldered man in a black cloak and a silver mask was standing there. Her gaze dropped to the small scar on his chin, and then rose to his mouth. Oh yes, she knew that mouth very well.
“Sir,” her voice was throaty, “you are late.”
“I have been watching you ever since you arrived, enjoying the scenery.”
His head dipped and he stepped closer, until their bodies were almost touching. A lock of his hair brushed hers, and his fingers closed around her arm. “You are so beautiful, Marietta,” he murmured.
She smiled. Tonight she felt beautiful, because Max loved her and all was right with the world.
The band in the rotunda struck up again, and now a woman was singing, her voice wobbling a little on the high notes. Max grimaced as if his senses had been assaulted and Marietta laughed.
“Perhaps we should stroll in Dark Walk?” he suggested, his eyes narrowing behind the mask. “It will be quieter there and you might find it instructional.”
“Instructional?” Marietta breathed, her imagination taking flight.
“In an educational sense. I know a great deal about the Dark Walk, my lady. I can show you the secret arbors and the bowers where ladies have been ravished by gentlemen throughout the centuries.”
His voice had dropped a notch and Marietta felt it brush over her, exciting her. But she had a part to play, and she assumed a cautious pose as she replied, “I have heard that gentlewomen should not venture into the Dark Walk. That it might be injurious to their reputations.”
“What about gentlewomen who are engaged to be married? Surely they are beyond censure?”
“Only if they are in love.”
Max slid his arm about her waist and gazed down into her eyes. “And are you in love?”
“Oh yes.” Marietta stood on tiptoe and kissed his lips, a brief butterfly kiss. “Very much.”
Max groaned at the brevity of the kiss. The vocalist hit another high note and he began to lead her out of the crush, toward one of the tree-lined avenues. “If this is our last rendezvous I want it to be one we’ll both remember,” he said. “And I want to go somewhere quiet so that I can see if what you’re wearing under that cloak is as heart-stopping as I think it is.”
She pretended his words hadn’t affected her. “I don’t know if I should allow you to touch me, Max.”
He stopped by a hedge that shielded them from passersby and took her in his arms. And he kissed her, deeply and thoroughly. “You were saying,” he said at last.
Marietta took a moment to answer and when she did she had abandoned her play-acting. “Will we be happy in Cornwall?” she whispered, with her head resting against his chest.
He bent and kissed her hair, his hands smoothing her back and shoulders. “Do you doubt it, my darling?”
“No, not really, only sometimes. I’m not used to being happy like this, Max. I’m not used to thinking about a future with you in it.”
Perhaps some of her lingering doubts did sound in her voice, because Max removed his mask so that she could see his face properly. His dark hair had been slicked back from his forehead, and he looked different, handsome certainly, but also more like an aristocratic stranger. This was Max Valland, Lord Roseby, the Duke of Barwon’s son, and Marietta did not doubt it for a moment.
Her heart gave a little skip of trepidation.
Max took her hands in his, his fingers strong and warm and comforting. She looked down and they were Max’s fingers, Max’s hands; they had held her and stroked her and made love to her. These were the hands she would hold as she made her vows on her wedding day, and that their children would grasp as they took their first steps.
“Darling Marietta, I want you to know that I will never leave you. We will go to Cornwall and I promise you I will do everything in my power to ensure that you are happy. With you at my side, Marietta, I feel as if I can be anything, do anything. I feel complete.”
It was a wonderful speech, the sort of speech she used to dream about as a girl. And yet, as Marietta gazed in to his eyes, she found herself wondering what he would think when she explained to him about Aphrodite’s Club. She knew she must be a coward, but she was afraid to tell him that one day his future wife would be the proud owner of a bordello.
Vauxhall Gardens was so like a fairytale tonight, Marietta could not bear for reality to creep in.
“Come with me.” His breath was warm in her ear as he drew her along the gravel paths, further and further away from the crowds. The shadows were thick here, despite the lanterns, and the trees and shrubs loomed about them. It was isolated, and that was its charm, but after what had happened to him Marietta pondered whether it was entirely safe for Max to be here.
“Should we go back?”
He leered like a stage villain. “Why, are you frightened I’ll ravish you?”
Marietta gave a husky laugh. “Not frightened, Max. I’m looking forward to being ravished tonight.”
Max brushed his fingers down the opening of her cloak, parting it and holding it aside so that he could see the dress beneath. Her bosom, pushed up and prominently displayed, threatened to spill over the gold braided neckline. The waist was pinched in, displaying her hourglass shape to perfection, while the skirts were snug to her hips and fell in smooth folds to the ground. The dress was fashioned to appear medieval, and Marietta wore no petticoats so that Max could see the shape of her legs. Without the cloak it would be considered indecent.
“Oh yes,” he murmured approvingly.
His slid his fingers over her white skin so lightly she might not have felt them, except that her body had become so completely sensitized to his. She trembled, her lips parting and her eyes fluttering closed. His mouth made warm, wet circles on her breasts, and then he had found the hooks that held everything together and began to undo them. The neckline sagged and her bosom spilled out into his hands.
“Max,” she gasped, “I need you.
I need you now, Max.”
He covered her with his palms, preserving her modesty, his thighs brushing hers through their clothing. “I love the way you always tell me what you feel for me,” he murmured, kissing her throat, his mouth warm and seductive.
“I’m not straitlaced or conventional,” she said, trying to concentrate on what he was saying while his hands were stroking her breasts, making her flesh quiver and ache.
“And I thank God for it,” he said. He was drawing her along a winding path that left the main walk, into the trees, the scent of earth and foliage all about them. There was an arbor, overgrown and secret, and Max led her inside.
Marietta wound her arms about his neck, her breasts pressed to his chest in a manner designed to tease. “Do you?” she whispered. There was a devil inside her, urging her on, and she heard herself saying, “What if I did something outrageous, Max? What if I became the proprietor of a club like Aphrodite’s? Would you thank God then?”
He laughed. He thought she was joking. He didn’t take her seriously at all.
Just then the fireworks began to rain brilliantly from the sky. The arbor reflected the colors, red and blue and gold, bright as day one moment and dark again the next. Marietta had jumped when the first volley went off, but Max wrapped her in his arms, safe, and he bent to cover her mouth was his. Tasting her, caressing her, promising her everything.
Marietta kissed him back, the ache in her body building as she pressed against him. And yet even as desire spun out of control, the little devil in her head was still there, spoiling the moment for her, gleefully listing all the terrors she had thought vanquished: Being left, being abandoned, her heart being broken.
Would Max leave her when he understood Aphrodite’s would one day be hers, or would he insist that she refuse her parents’ gift? Marietta wondered how she could bear to scorn what they had offered her with such love in their hearts. And was a man who insisted she do such a thing to preserve his own reputation really worth having anyway?
Max had stopped kissing her.
“What is it?” he asked, a new sharp note in his voice. “Marietta?”
She opened her mouth but nothing came out.
Max set her away, and even in the shadows she saw how his brows had drawn down over his eyes as he stared at her. Gently he reached around to the back of her head and undid the ties, finally removing her golden mask.
Marietta felt as if he had stripped her naked—and this time it was not a pleasant sensation.
Something was wrong. Max could see it in her eyes, read it in her face, sense it while he was kissing her. One moment she was his, completely and utterly in tune to him, and the next he had lost her.
“What is it?” he demanded, worried. “Marietta, what’s the matter?”
She stared back at him like a rabbit would a fox. The expression in her eyes frightened him—he felt as if there were a hollow opening up inside him—and he wanted to shake her until she widened her gaze in that mock-innocent way and laughed and admitted it was nothing, and that she was just playing with him again…
“Max, I have something to tell you.” Her voice was quiet and a little tremulous. It was the voice that belonged to the girl who had spoken about her past; the somber girl who had been abandoned and hurt, and who had never recovered.
She is going to tell me she can’t marry me, he thought bleakly. Can’t or won’t. And everything I have been hoping for and planning for will be gone. His sense of despair was so great it was beyond imagining, because Max knew that without Marietta Greentree his life would cease to be.
More fireworks thundered overhead, their beauty truly spectacular, but Max didn’t see them. His gaze was fixed on Marietta’s face, and he was waiting for her to speak.
That was the reason he didn’t notice the man in the shabby brown coat, walking along the narrow path that passed by the entrance to the arbor. He couldn’t hear him, either, the fireworks were too loud.
“Tell me then,” Max said, sounding cold and distant, as if he was already alone.
But Marietta’s gaze had shifted past him and widened. A splash of green in the sky turned her face a sickly color, and then her fingers dug hard into his arms. “You!” she gasped, just as Max began to turn.
The man standing behind them wasn’t very tall, but he was broad, with the sturdiness of someone who had worked physically hard all his life. His clothes were cheap and well worn, and his face was misshapen and rather frightening, as though he had once been a fighter. All of this Max saw in a moment, before he realized the man was holding a pistol.
Marietta screamed, clutching at Max’s arm as he tried to push her away, out of the line of fire. The man raised the barrel.
“Move aside,” he snarled. “I don’t want to kill you too, lady.”
“You’ve been following me,” she said, her voice shaking violently. “I’ve seen you before.”
“Not you,” the man retorted impatiently. “Him! I was waitin’ my chance, and now I’ve found it. Now get out o’ me way so I can earn me money.”
“No, I won’t let you…” She clung on to Max, despite his efforts to unfasten her fingers from his clothing and push her to safety. She was shaking with terror, but she wouldn’t be moved. The man with the pistol growled again for her to get out of the way.
“No!” she screamed, the sound shredding the night. “Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt Max, please! Oh please!”
Max could see the man’s frustration was making him even more unpredictable. The pistol was waving dangerously as he took a step forward and then a step back. In a moment he would shoot, and it was Marietta who would be hit. And Max could not allow that to happen.
He struggled with her, lifting her bodily, and this time he wrenched her hands free, holding them as he shoved her aside. She stumbled, cried out, and sank to the ground.
The man lifted the gun, his face grim and determined, and prepared to fire. “I’ll make it clean, sir. Don’t worry, you won’t feel nothin’.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Slipper.”
Dobson’s voice was soft with menace as he stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the path. He was holding a pistol of his own, and this one was aimed at Slipper’s back.
“Bloody hell,” Slipper moaned, twisting around to see who it was. “Is that you, Jemmy?”
“Drop your weapon or I’ll have to fire, and I’m not as good a shot as you.”
Slipper dropped the pistol, eyeing Dobson cautiously.
“I didn’t think you hurt women,” Dobson said. “Your mam wouldn’t like to hear you’ve been mistreating ladies, Slipper.”
Slipper sighed. “Why won’t nothin’ go right for me anymore? Since I took up with the duchess there’s been nothin’ but trouble for me.”
Marietta picked herself up, feeling dizzy, as if she might faint. The fireworks were still exploding in the sky but they seemed inappropriate now, an distraction from the important business of the night. Max was standing a little way from her, staring at the man Dobson had called Slipper, and his face and body were rigid.
“Duchess?” he whispered. “What duchess?”
Slipper shifted his feet, his ugly face turning from Max to Dobson, as if he didn’t trust either of them. “I call her that,” he explained, “because she looks like a duchess, not because she is one.”
There was only one woman Max thought looked like the perfect duchess.
Slipper eyed him slyly. “You wanna know who she is, right? If I tell you, will you let me go?”
Dobson laughed. “Still the same old Slipper. Tell us anyway.”
Slipper hesitated, but after Dobson had another little talk with him, he told them.
Dobson squeezed Marietta’s arm gently as they stepped from the hansom. “Are you all right, miss?”
“I think so. I’m worried about Max.”
“Max is tougher than any of us, don’t worry about him.”
But she couldn’t help it.
Dobson
had explained that Slipper had been one of his sparring partners when they both spent some time bare-knuckle fighting. It was useful sometimes, he said, having grown up in Seven Dials; it meant he knew just about every villain in London, and just about every villain’s mother. Slipper’s mother was a fire-breather and he was more afraid of her than any policeman. It had been fear of his mother that Dobson had used to convince Slipper to finally tell them who had paid him to kill Max.
Marietta glanced at Max now, but his expression revealed nothing to her. Since he had heard the name he had been silent, holding his emotions inside, preparing for the confrontation.
The house they had come to was not as grand as his own. Lights blazed from the windows and the sound of a piano drifted from one of the upper rooms. Max walked up the steps and knocked, loudly. Marietta followed more slowly, dreading the next few moments. They had argued in the hansom—Max had wanted her to go home and wait for him, but she had refused, and after a short, tense battle he had given in. She needed to be with him, to support him or simply to watch over him. Marietta had almost lost him tonight and she was caught between elation that he was alive and unharmed, and dread of what might have happened. What might still happen.
Max strode past the servant who opened the door. “Mr. and Mrs. Valland are not receiving visitors,” the man began, his gaze sliding to Marietta and Dobson. “Sir, I’m sorry but you—”
Max ignored him and climbed the stairs with barely a pause, heading toward the sound of the piano. Dobson took Marietta’s arm and they followed in his wake. By the time they reached him, Max had already flung open the door, sending it crashing back against the wall.
That was when Marietta realized how angry he was—Max had the Valland temper after all.
“Max!” It was Harold, staggering to his feet. He had been half asleep in front of the fire and he looked bewildered, his hair on end, his shirt sleeves rolled up.
Rules of Passion Page 29