Chapter Five
Max felt his entire body tighten with guilt. In one flash, he saw the ridiculous display that surrounded him and knew that he had done the one thing that he’d sworn to never do again. He’d dragged Lady Kimberly into a scandal.
He watched her green eyes widen as she took in her surroundings, then saw her skin pale to a grim shade of gray. She was a private, quiet woman, and whatever gossip she’d heard that brought her to his door was now confirmed by the parade of people coming down the stairs straight at her.
And then, true to her aristocratic bearing, she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and arched a single brow in his direction. It both demanded an audience and threw the coming debacle at his feet.
Hell.
“Good afternoon, Max,” she said in cool tones as he made the main floor. “I apologize for not sending word earlier. I wondered if I could have a moment of your time.”
He nodded, his gaze going to the mandarin who appeared confused. The man was clearly torn between giving her a respectful bow and demanding she curtsy to him. Worse, the foyer was choked with servants standing around gaping. Chiverton was clearly not in control of the staff.
Meanwhile, Lady Kimberly, pitched her voice a bit louder. “My lord, you have not introduced me to your guest.”
He winced. He should not need to be reminded.
He’d been drilled in proper behavior since he was a child, just as she had.
It had been repeated ad nauseum for exactly this kind of moment when one was so confused as to become lost in the weeds.
Proper etiquette was a godsend, and she was reminding him of it as any future duchess ought.
It was still immensely aggravating.
He straightened, then strode forward. Taking her hand, he bowed before her. “Lady Kimberly. I’m so pleased to see you.”
A lie, of course, but a polite one and therefore forgiven. She smiled as she dipped into a shallow curtsy. Then he turned to gesture to the mandarin.
“Pray allow me to introduce the Wong Mandarin. He has been charged with the care of a lady who is resting upstairs. Prinny himself asked me to see to her comfort.”
Thanks to the captain’s hurried communication in Chinese, the mandarin slammed his fist into his palm and bowed before her. Obviously, this was a Chinese greeting, and Kimberly curtsied in response.
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” she said. Then everyone waited as the captain translated.
The mandarin responded in Chinese with a bold look in Kimberly’s direction. He even held out his hand as if he were the king himself asking her to walk with him.
And that raised Max’s hackles.
“What, exactly, did he just say?” he demanded.
The captain blushed. “Er, well, he asks if the lady is to accompany him to his chamber. B-begging your pardon, my lady,” the man stammered.
“It’s common in his country to, um, reward service and, um, please guests in very specific ways.
Not every family, of course, but the Wongs have become renown for such…
um, things. It’s what he expects. He assumes it’s you or at least you’re the one who will acquire—”
Max held up his hand, the gesture nearly violent.
“Please remind him that he is in England now, and such assumptions are impertinent.” He glanced at Kimberly.
“I think the library would be the perfect place for our conversation.” He glanced at the nearest footman.
“See that tea is brought there directly.”
Then he held out his arm and escorted her there.
Recalled to his duty, Chiverton managed to rush ahead to open the library door.
And then, as was appropriate, he left the door ajar.
They weren’t officially engaged, so propriety demanded a chaperone or at least an open door.
Her maid followed at a respectful distance and took a seat in the hall chair set for exactly this situation.
Then he watched as Kimberly took a deep breath and settled herself on the settee.
He noted the stains on her skirt and the faint whiff of dog that surrounded her.
Her greatest love was for the canines in her life.
Indeed, her fascination had brought her a medical understanding far superior to many veterinarians.
“Whose animal is ill?” he asked. The aristocracy often sought out her advice with their sick dogs.
“My cousin’s. Oscar is at the end of his life, and Mary Ann is beside herself.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry. It’s always hard to see a beloved pet pass.”
She took his sympathy with a grateful nod but then went straight to the point. “Out with it, Max. Quickly, please. Before half the ton finds an excuse to visit.”
“I think they’re already outside,” he groused. In their short moments in the hall, he’d glimpsed no less than a dozen people “strolling” by.
She nodded but didn’t comment. She would not be put off the mark with a delaying tactic. And neither could he soften the coming blow.
“Prinny has commanded me to marry a Chinese bribe. Some diplomatic thing that I mean to ferret out.” He quirked a brow at her. “He said you’d understand.”
Predictably, she did not.
“Damn it all, Max, I told you this would happen.”
He threw up his hands, and his voice was heavy with sarcasm. “You told me that I would be forced to marry a Chinese bribe?”
She pushed to her feet, her fury making her twitch as she paced tight circles about the room. “I told you that carousing with the prince would land you in trouble. When Prinny drinks, he does all manner of erratic things.”
“He wasn’t drinking yet!”
“Then he had the blue devils, just as you do now.” She stomped forward until she met him nose to chin. “I told you, Max. I told you that you could not embroil me in scandal again. You made me into a loose, fat girl before—”
“That was years ago! I was thirteen and an idiot.”
“And yet the taint remains years later. I cannot weather another scandal.”
“You exaggerate.”
“Do I?” She dropped her hands on her hips. “Do I understand that you are now royally engaged to a Chinese bride?”
“She’s a bribe, and I don’t yet know if this is a ruse. It could be over the minute we get rid of the mandarin, but even so, I don’t like the appearance of accepting a bribe.” He shook his head. “Kimberly, they were going to kill her right before our eyes—”
“Max!”
“What?”
“We are not discussing how this happened. I need to know how to manage it before—”
The knocker sounded loud enough to reverberate back here in the library. The ton was arriving. They both stared at the door then back at each other.
“I need a plan of action,” she said.
“What plan?” he retorted. “I am to see the woman settled and get rid of the man. After that—”
Emmaline stuck her head into the library door. “Keep your voices down!” she hissed. Then she sent an apologetic look at Kimberly. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I cannot imagine how difficult this must be for you.”
Max snorted. “For her? I’m the one who is supposed to marry a stranger!”
“You’re an idiot,” Emmaline said to her brother before she turned back to Kimberly.
“I’ll keep the biddies away for as long as I can.
Mother will help after her restorative. You know how much she enjoys her upset nerves.
She’ll likely make a dramatic entrance in twenty minutes or so. But after that—”
“I will endeavor to be quick,” Kimberly answered. “Thank you.” Then she turned to face Max. “Is it true? She’s an opium eater?”
He jolted. “Where did you hear that?”
She threw up her hands. “It’s what is said about all the Chinese.”
He winced. It could be true. Or more likely, Yihui was fighting horrendous pain from broken feet and may or may not have had opium to fight the agony. “I have only just met her. She told me they broke her feet.”
Kimberly appeared to absorb that information with a frown. “Have you sent for a doctor?”
“I have to get rid of the mandarin first. Otherwise, he’ll interfere with everything.”
She nodded. “Did you truly sit on a donkey cart with her?”
“I couldn’t very well leave her up there alone. She looked like she was headed for Tyburn.”
“Of course not,” she muttered, and he couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or genuine. “Exactly how direct was Prinny’s command?”
“Explicit.”
“And did he mean it?”
Max shrugged. “Maybe. I may be able to talk him out of it once I understand the particulars.” He rubbed his chin. “I need to speak with Lord Benedict. He’ll know the details of our relationship with China.”
Benedict was high up in the Foreign Office and Max’s unofficial superior. If anyone could help him out of this quagmire, it would be Benedict.
Meanwhile, Kimberly dismissed Lord Benedict with a wave of her hand. She’d never cared about the business of nations.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
He stared at her. “Kimberly, I don’t know that there’s anything to do. I’ve sent an urgent message to Lord Benedict. I’m doing my best to get rid of that toady mandarin. Yihui is upstairs alone as she wanted—”
Kimberly rolled her eyes. “Not that! The way I see it, I can either wait patiently by your side playing the wilting Ophelia until I drown myself for lack of attention—”
“Wilting what?”
“—or I can throw you over in a fit of pique and be done with you all together.”
She visibly shuddered at her words. They both knew how much she despised the social whirl.
Their engagement had never been announced, and yet everyone had expected it since they were both small children.
If she were to publicly cast him aside, then she’d have to enter the Season for real.
She’d have to go to parties and look for a suitable husband, all at an age when most of her peers were at home with their second or third child.
“Kimberly, don’t be hasty. Let it wait for a few days.”
She glared at him. “Do you understand how long I have been waiting? You should have proposed years ago.”
He dropped his hands on his hips. “You know why I didn’t. Lord Castlereagh himself asked me to stay in Prinny’s inner circle. England needed someone with a level head to keep Prinny from his worst excesses.”
“I would never stop you from going to Carlton House!”
“Prinny prefers to entertain with bachelors, not dull men with leg-shackles on them.” He dropped his weight onto the desk. “Those are his words, not mine.”
“And now you are engaged to a Chinese opium eater.”
“That wasn’t my fault!”
“But it was predictable. This or some other disaster, and you know it.”
He pressed his lips together. He knew it was the truth.
She’d warned him of it three years ago when he’d told of her Castlereagh’s request. One could not remain in Prinny’s intimate orbit without getting pulled into one scrape or another.
Naturally, as a future duke, he would be forgiven whatever mishaps befell him, but she was in a more precarious position.
As the daughter of an earl, she was an acceptable wife to him, but her title had neither prestige nor great wealth.
Given that she was not considered a warm person like his sister, scandal would inevitably slide off of him then splat on top of her.
It wasn’t fair, but it was the truth of their positions.
As was the fact that he should have proposed to her years ago.
Indeed, if he had been a “proper son,” as his mother put it, they’d be married and have a couple heirs already in the nursery.
It was only his promise to Lord Castlereagh that had kept him from doing his duty by her.
They’d begged him to act as a brake to Prinny’s impulsive behavior.
And in order to do that, he’d had to remain a bachelor.
But now he had to fulfill his promise to her. It was the only honorable thing to do. So he pushed off the desk to cross back to her. He gathered her hand in his and squeezed her fingers.
“Kimberly, I have every intention of fulfilling my promise to you.”
She gripped him back. “Max, I am five and twenty. That is much too old to be searching for a husband. If not for our understanding, I would already be called an ape leader.”
“I will call out any man who dares utter such a thing.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not the men who say it. Or at least not until their mothers and sisters say it first.”
“A few more days,” he pleaded. “I shall resolve everything and then we can announce our engagement.” He flashed her a grin. “In this, Prinny will have to understand.”
They both knew that Prinny understood only what he felt like understanding, and Max could no more force the royal than he could sprout wings and fly. The real question was whether Max would marry her anyway despite royal displeasure.
“I have been faithful to you, Max,” she said firmly. “I have done as you and your parents asked. I have stood by you when your friends called me fat—”
“I didn’t mean—”
“For it to happen,” she finished for him.
What he’d actually said—and his friends had repeated—was that her breasts were as plump as bowls of treacle and just as tasty.
He’d been thirteen, and boys tended to say such things.
But what had been a youthful boast by him had tainted her as a fat, loose girl who was not fit to be a duchess.
He’d been an idiot, and he’d apologized profusely for his stupidity.
At the time, she’d forgiven him, and yet she still brought it up whenever she was angry at him.
“But it did happen, Max, and I forgave you. I refused good marriage offers from men who would have given me a fine life.”
“You will be my duchess—”
“And I have waited while you dance upon the prince and do things that you should have outgrown by the time you began shaving.” She didn’t say it, but her gaze went to his unshaven cheeks.
“Kimberly, I am playacting. If you could know what excesses I have prevented—”
“None of much importance, I wager,” she snapped. “If it were not you, it would be someone else. The prince is not without wit or discretion of his own. He uses you as an excuse to stop his wildest impulses.”
Max shook his head. “You have no understanding of what it means to keep Prinny happy.”
“I am not being unreasonable,” she countered.
“Neither am I! I did not expect to be saddled with a Chinese girl.” And now they were simply repeating themselves.
“Max—”
Her words were cut off as a roar sounded throughout the whole house. It was the mandarin’s voice, and he was clearly furious.
“Damn it,” Max cursed. “I had meant to stop him in the stable, not bring it back here.”
They listened as feet thudded up the stairs. The bastard must have escaped Chiverton and was now running up to Yihui’s room.
“Go,” she said, though he was already headed out the door. “I’ll put on my Ophelia face and sit in wan, devoted, patience.”
This time Max did roll his eyes. “I am not Hamlet!” he snapped. And he was grateful that she didn’t remark at how very Hamlet-like that outburst was.