Compromised by Christmas (35 page)

She struggled away from him. "I knew I was not when I
married you. I am so sorry to have tricked you. Can you forgive
me?"

Dev felt the side of his mouth twitch. "So are you
saying that you wanted to marry me anyway?"

"I am so awful, I . . . Yes. I knew I was only a
little late. I have always known when I was pregnant because
everything smelled like fish and I could not eat a bite of salmon
with getting sick and I had salmon that night that you said we
would be married. So I knew right then I was not with child."

"Fanny, darling—"

"I should have told you then, but you had sent for
Julia and Thomas and I did not want to tell you. I think I might
have confessed if you had stayed for the rest of dinner, but by the
time you returned with Max, I decided I would not." She burst into
tears.

He laughed.

She stared, her blue eyes swimming.

"I'm sorry, love. I cannot but be relieved."

"You are not angry with me?"

"No, you silly pea-goose. All I ever wanted was for
you to decide
you wanted
to marry me."

"I wanted you to tell me to."

"Yes, well, we should both be happy, then."

"Max told you that you must propose," she said
skeptically.

"Max is my friend, not my father, and his condition
was imposed only if I knocked on your bedroom door, love. I chose
to knock. I love you, Fanny, darling. You are everything I need to
make my life complete."

"Yes, but what are we to do about Max?"

*~*~*

Madame Roussard knocked on the door, speaking in a
jumble of French that Max's servants didn't understand. She'd
finally passed a bloody piece of paper to the butler, who had
recognized Max's signature.

He barely remembered shouting for his carriage to be
sent round to Roxana's shop, before running out the door, unwilling
to wait while the horses were harnessed and maneuvered through the
crowded streets.

"I should not have let him in," muttered Madame
Roussard, trotting along beside him. "I think she think it ez
you."

Madame Roussard gathered the hem of her gown and
skipped to keep up with his long-legged stride. He just wanted to
get to Roxana.

"He look so like her, I think he ez a relative."

Chills shot down Max's spine. If he had been there,
he could have protected her. It wasn't safe for her to live alone
in the heart of the city, although he suspected nowhere had ever
been safe for Roxana.

"He knows her name,
comprenez-vous?"

"I understand," he answered.

He entered the shop. The candles in the windows had
been allowed to burn to pools of wax. Without waiting to be shown
back, he wove through the back rooms. The disturbed bolts of fabric
had gaps between them. He took the stairs two at a time, barely
remembering to duck as he went under the eaves.

While the workspace was hardly disturbed, Roxana's
living corner was a mess. Her table had been turned over and the
chunks of her teapot along with clumps of wet tea leaves were
scattered on the floor. The way the bloodstained pages of the bill
he had written were strewn about made a mockery of his paper-tiger
efforts. Bills and laws would not protect her from the irrational
acts of what must be a madman.

Roxana sat backwards in a chair, her head slumped
forward over the top rail. A group of women milled around her,
dabbing at the wounds on her back. They dipped bloody cloths in a
bowl of water that had turned pink.

As he moved forward they parted in front of him, but
then one put a shawl over Roxana's shoulders to cover her bare
back. Her head jerked, but she did not make a sound.

He crossed to the other side of the chair and knelt
down in front of her, pushing her tangled hair from her face. She
blinked her blue eyes open.

"Roxy, you are coming home with me."

She flattened her mouth and shook her head slightly.
"I cannot. There are dresses to be sewn and cut and . . ."

"They will wait or Madame Roussard will handle
everything until you are well."

Tears welled up in her eyes. "He took my best
silk."

"Has anyone sent for a doctor?" Max stroked her hair,
seeking to soothe her.

"No doctor. I cannot afford . . ." Her voice trailed
off and then she began to cough and wince.

The coughing hurt her. He stood and looked at the
women standing around her as if they had lost their guiding star.
"Are there gowns to be completed? I see cut pieces over there." He
pointed to one of the long worktables. "One of you clean up the
teapot and papers."

He looked at Madame Roussard. She nodded and began
setting the seamstresses to their tasks.

Roxana tried to stand, but she leaned heavily on the
chair back while holding her gown so it wouldn't fall. "I need to
get back to work."

"Roxana, I must insist that you come home with me and
allow me to take proper care of you until you are healed." Her skin
would mend as it had before, but would she ever be truly healed?
Max took a step closer and caught her elbows. "Even if I have to
carry you out of here."

Her eyes rolled up and he caught her as she
collapsed. The women around him wailed collectively, but Roxana was
silent and far too pale.

*~*~*

Roxana woke on her stomach in a bed with several
pillows under her. Her back ached and she suspected she had a
cracked rib or two. Her wounds were damp, her back exposed and she
wondered if she was still bleeding.

As her senses slowly returned to her, she realized
the room was much warmer than her attic and the sheets were quite
luxurious. She flexed her fingers and was relieved they were
fine.

"You're awake."

She shifted too quickly and fought a wave of pain,
but Max sat at a writing desk in his shirtsleeves. His coat hung on
the back of his chair. He set down his pen and moved closer to the
bed.

As she started to rise up and then realized she did
not have anything on, at least not on her torso, she sank down into
the pillows. "Where am I?"

"My bedroom, where I can watch over you." He knelt
down beside her so she did not have to strain her neck to see him.
As he did, his gaze traveled down her bare side and then returned
to her face. He touched her cheek, gently.

Warmth curled in her belly.

"Am I wearing anything?" she asked.

"Salve on your wounds," he said with a slight mocking
glance.

He stroked her hair behind her ear, although she
could see it lay in a braid beside her. Her hair had been combed
out and plaited. She could not picture Max being the one to do
that. Perhaps he had assigned a maid.

"Your workers are making you a dressing gown with
padding on the shoulders that they are convinced will keep the
material from touching your back, but I'm afraid it hasn't been
delivered yet. And as soon as you can sit, the doctor says we need
to bind your ribs. We can put dressings on your wounds, but you
seem to find that distressful, so I thought it better to leave them
off until the bruising and swelling eases."

"How long have I been here?"

He pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and
flipped open the gold cover. "Five hours. The doctor thought it was
best to let you sleep. Since you pulled away when we tended your
wounds he thought your sleep was not too deep, but perhaps borne of
exhaustion. Madame Roussard confirms that you often work all day
and all through the night. Although the doctor did give you
laudanum to ease the pain."

She closed her eyes. Her father had taken what money
she had in the till and several bolts of her most expensive fabric.
Without his stealing her goods, she had been barely scraping by.
She might as well consider her business a failure.

"Could you eat?" he asked.

Life went on.

"I don't think so." She turned her head away.

His hand curled over the top of her head. "We have
many things we need to discuss, but you need to know that I have
insisted that your father be arrested."

She stared at the far wall, at the rich paint above
the layered wood panels on the lower half of the walls. A carved
wardrobe of rich mahogany stood screaming Max's wealth and standing
in the world.

"Roxana, he is a madman and I cannot allow him to
roam the streets."

"You know from the bill you propose to put before
Parliament that he did not break any laws."

"He can be held for some time on a criminal charge.
So I swore a complaint against him for theft."

She snorted. "I am his chattel and what I own belongs
to him."

"I claimed a partial interest in your business, since
Scully's five hundred pounds founded the enterprise, and I have
assumed your debt."

So she had a failed business, a loan she could never
repay, a criminal madman as a father and Max knew her as a liar and
trickster as well as less than virtuous. What would she do now?

Would she have to marry Max now? Did he even want her
to, now?

"Sleep, then. Try not to worry. Madame Roussard is
minding your dress shop and your father cannot get to you
here."

Max stood and backed away from the bed. "I'll have a
maid come and sit with you. If you need more laudanum, let her
know."

Roxana did not answer, and when Max left the room she
mulled over the conversation. Other than a hint of flirtation, he
had been matter-of-fact.

Not like a man in love, not like a man who would
pledge his life to her, but a duke who had for a moment lost his
bearings but was back on track with his plans to leave Thomas his
heir.

She'd failed and she could not in good conscience
accept marriage as a means to bring her back from the ruins of her
life, but stars above, she'd marry him if that was the only way she
could keep him in her life.

*~*~*

Max left his bedroom because he could no longer
contain his anger and anguish. What good was his power if he could
not protect the ones he loved?

As he stormed through the house, he wanted to break
things, to destroy everything in his path. Mostly he wanted to kill
her father, strangle him until the breath left his body. He had
never felt such a murderous rage before in his life. His brothers
had occasionally gone at each other, throwing punches and wrestling
each other to the ground until they ended up with torn clothing and
bloody noses and Fanny had fretted over them and sent them to have
baths. Max had never joined in their fracases. He was expected to
control his temper. A duke-to-be couldn't go flying off the handle.
Only lately had Max ever been in danger of losing control.

Roxana was overly affected by displays of temper. He
could not let her see his rage.

That she had not mentioned his letter that he had
included with the draft of the bill was telling. He had poured out
his heart in that letter that had been in Madame Roussard's hands,
then in his butler's hands. He'd sworn he would never raise a hand
to her, no matter what provocation, and that he still loved her and
wanted her as his wife.

Since she referred to the bill, she must have read
his letter. Clearly she'd opened the packet.

Then, as he walked through the streets, needing to
keep occupied, he headed for her dress shop. If he could make sure
her business was maintained until he returned, he could at least
serve her in that way. He passed a shop window that displayed
china. He stopped, thinking of the broken chunks of pottery lying
on her floor.

He bought her a new teapot.

Roxana woke in the darkness. Sleep, laudanum and the
heat of the room left her groggy. Hands stroked a soothing salve on
her back. The touch was familiar.

"Max?"

"Shhh. Go back to sleep. I didn't mean to wake
you."

She leaned up on her elbows, scrunching the pillow
under her chest.

He wiped his hands on a towel, then hung it on the
washstand.

"That packet you sent was legislation you plan to
present to Parliament, I trust?" she asked.

"It won't pass," he said quietly.

She twisted to look at him.

Running a hand through his hair, he turned and sat in
the armchair that had been positioned by the bed. She drank in the
long length of his thighs encased in doeskin breeches and the white
of his shirt. He leaned forward and placed his elbows on his
knees.

"No one I've talked with shall support passage. I
don't have enough leverage to get the bill through."

"So it is too late to help me."

"It already was too late to help you," he said.

"Why did you write it, then?"

"Because it needs done." He stood. "Are you
hungry?"

Roxana felt a surge of disappointment that he would
leave the room. He seemed intent on stuffing her with food. She
shook her head.

Nearly every time she woke, he was there, but then he
would leave as if he did not want to be with her. Had she ruined
everything between them?

"I'll bid you good night, then." He walked toward the
connecting door.

"Max, would you stay awhile? I don't want to be
alone."

"Neither do I," said Max as he shut the door between
them.

She found the padded dressing gown and slipped her
arms into the sleeves. Moving gingerly, she pushed open the door
separating their rooms.

He stood at the window, leaning on the sill.

"Max?" Her hands were shaking and she did not know
what she would say, but she hated the distance that had sprung up
between them.

"It's almost Christmas," he said.

So it was an anniversary of sorts for them. "You
shan't have the house party this year?"

He turned and looked at her, folding his arms across
his chest. "Not without a hostess. Fanny has married Scully. They
have gone to his home."

The coolness of Max's room made her senses spring
alive. She could hear her heartbeat, the breaths they took. The
faint scent of bay rum from him and sweet basil from the salve he
used on her hung in the air. "Why do you leave when I wake?"