“I know you’ve been speaking to my wife,” he said, pushing off from the door and stalking toward her.
"Well, of course I have. We live in the same house.”
“Don’t play games with me,” he snarled. “You’ve been speaking to her about our marriage.”
Joyce sniffed, her eyes narrowing as she looked up at him. “I hardly see what the fuss is about. I said nothing negative aboutyou, you know.”
“No, you said that she ought to begratefulthat I am not cruel to her, and that she ought not expect too much from me.”
“And is that wrong?” Joyce asked, cocking a brow. “We both know you are not about to fall in love with the girl, and that was what she was hoping for. You have never been in such a position yourself, but you ought to know that a woman’s chances of happiness often depend entirely on a man. It is all quite unfortunate, of course; that is the reality of things. Her happiness depended on you loving her, and the poor girl deserved to know how things stood.”
Rage boiled inside him. “I told her the way things stood,” he snapped. “And she would have been content with it, or so I hoped, until you came whispering these vile things in her ear. Our marriage is not the same as yours.”
“She was forced into it the same way I was.”
“Youwere pushed into a match with an older gentleman to preserve your reputation after you were heavy with my brother’s child.” His fists clenched, and he sucked in a breath, delving into the cold anger he had once been known for. “We both know the cases are different.”
“Are they? Do you think she will be happier with you than I was?”
“I do.” On this point, he was certain. “You presented her choices as being either to enter into a love match or be miserable for the rest of her life, but there can be nuance. A prospect you seem unable to grasp. Would Rivenhall have supported you and your art in this way if the tables had been turned?” When she didn’t answer, he pushed on. “What would he have done, Joyce?”
Her nostrils flared. “Does it matter?”
“It does when speaking about marital happiness. Tell me. Would I ever treat her the way he treated you?”
Joyce gritted her teeth, but he left the silence to grow until she finally muttered, “No.”
“And speaking of that. Why did you choose last night, when she needed support and encouragement and friendship, to tell her that she would never be happy with me? What would that achieve, by chance? Were you hoping to scupper the chances of my marriage before they even had a chance to begin?”
“Well, what were you thinking of marrying this Season anyway?” Joyce demanded, and the sudden volume of her voice made him start. She rose, though her nose only came to his chin. “You have a duty toward Lydia.”
“I haven’t forgotten my duty.”
“No, but now you have a wife—what if you have a child, Maxwell? What then? If Lydia doesn’t manage to marry this year—” Her voice cut out. “Next year, she will need sponsorship in London too. I can’t do it alone—we both know it. So, what then?”
A terrible thought occurred to him. “Did you know Thalia was Alessandro Rossi?”
Joyce’s face went carefully blank, and he knew he had his answer.
“Joyce,” he warned. “Think very carefully before you lie to me.”
“It was hardly a carefully kept secret, the way she swanned away to that man’s apartments every chance she had. I suspected when she gifted Lydia the sculpture, but I didn’t know for certain until I had her followed.”
Maxwell’s icy calm vanished, and he strode to her side, gripping her shoulder. “You betrayed her?”
“The world had a right to know.Youhad a right to know.” Joyce wrenched herself free again, but any anger she felt was nothing compared to the anger he faced. “How should I know that you had married her in the full knowledge that she would behave in a way that risked ruining us all?”
“You had no right,” he said, his voice quiet.
If he spoke any louder, he risked losing what little hold he had of his self-control.
“Oh, easy for you to say! You are a duke; your reputation is all but guaranteed. What about Lydia? You never once thought of her.”
“I came back because of her!” he snarled. “Otherwise, I might easily have spent months in the country acclimatizing Thalia to her new way of life as duchess.”
Months of the two of them, of the bliss they had experienced for those two short weeks. That would have been dangerous indeed for his heart, but compared to what he had faced subsequently, it felt like a lesser evil.
“We returned for Lydia’s sake. But even if I had not, you had no right to sabotage my life with my wife to what, turn her against me so we would have no chance of bearing children?” He laughed bitterly; if Thalia’s present behavior was any indication, Joyce had succeeded in her intention, and it made Lydia no less likely to marry.
