The man squared his shoulders. “I’m older than you, my lord, and seen a bit more of what happens to these girls. And your mum, the duchess is in quite a state. If you sent the miss away—”
“The miss, as you call her, is my fiancée by royal decree!”
The sergeant’s head bobbed up and down. “Well, yes. I had heard that, but seeing as how it’s become a bungled affair an’ she’s not likely to survive—”
Max hadn’t realized he’d stepped to tower over the man until he saw the sweat beading on the sergeant’s pate. “I do not require your assistance in the care of my fiancée.”
“O-of course not. I-I only thought to help—”
“Is that all?” he bellowed.
“Er, yes, my lord.” He turned to his men who all bobbed their heads in equally silly fashion.
“Then I bid you good day,” Max said.
Chiverton was on the mark, popping open the library door with an imperious air. “This way, gentlemen,” he intoned.
The Watch scrambled away. That was one thing done. Next, Max needed to go upstairs before the leeches could do something stupid. But he didn’t make it out the door before his father’s firm hand gripped his arm.
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” the man growled in a low enough tone that no one else would hear.
Max turned to his father and deadpanned his answer. “I’m quite sure I have. I watched a man get a knife to his chest today. If you don’t want to smell his blood while you sleep, I suggest you spend the night at your club.”
“Chiverton’s handling that,” his father returned. “Why do you claim this Chinese gel? Do you plan to go into mourning when she dies? Do you mean for us to pay for her funeral rites?”
“Prinny himself—”
“Will understand. Damn it, if the girl is dying—”
Red washed through his vision. Not the red of fury, but one of blood spurting from a man’s chest. Of seeing dark red on yellow damask walls. Of the smell that came not just from blood, but other bodily fluids as a man died.
“There will not be another death in this house,” Max said.
“That’s why the girl must be sent on.”
“And what should I tell Prinny then? He ordered me to sort this out.”
His father threw up his hands. “This is sorting it out!”
“It’s sweeping it—and her—under the rug.”
“That’s where dead foreigners go. Good God, even a child can understand that.”
“Maybe so, Father, but I am fresh out of brooms and rugs.” They had all gone to wrapping up the mandarin.
His father pursed his lips, his sigh audible to the entire household. “Why do you persist in antagonizing me? I am trying to help! What you’re doing is not how a duke—”
“Not how a duke acts.” Max said the words at the same time his father did. “Then it is a good thing that you are not doing it.”
“Maximillian—”
“Excuse me, Father. I need to consult with the doctor.”
With that, he walked away from his very disapproving parent and straight up the stairs. He had no idea when exactly he set himself on an opposite path to his father. From his earliest memories, he recalled his father would issue a decree, and he as the heir was expected to follow it. There had never been any discussion or leniency in his father’s commands but sometime around Max’s sixteenth birthday, he decided that he would think for himself. He would choose his own actions regardless of what his father dictated.
That was a difficult position to take—refusing his father’s dictates without also setting fire to the dukedom and all it represented. He’d walked that tightrope for years, but it wasgetting harder. He refused his father’s demand that he take a position in the House of Commons but agreed to honor his betrothal to Lady Kimberly. But then he delayed that wedding by insinuating himself into Prinny’s inner circle. And all of it was done while he tried to indulge his singular passion in all things oriental without leaving England. After all, the sole heir to a dukedom couldn’t risk himself on foreign shores. But now that China had come to him in the guise of a frightened Chinese woman, he would not abandon her to the likes of Madame Sabate. Or allow her to die under his watch.
He simply would not allow it, and so he rushed upstairs to see if his will alone could ward off Death.
