Chapter Thirteen
“Good God, you look awful.”
Max sat down at the breakfast table and wondered why he’d bothered to shave before coming down. His father would make him out to be disreputable, no matter how dapper he appeared.
“It was a long night, Father.”
“I don’t doubt it.” The man looked down at the newspaper. “Did she survive?”
“Yes, she did,” Max said, his tone churlish. “In fact, the surgeon said he is hopeful.”
“I heard him depart. And even if I hadn’t, it’s all the staff talks about.”
Max looked up, startled. “Surely not with you. Chiverton wouldn’t allow it.”
“Gads, no. But I’m neither deaf nor blind. I see them casting fearful looks down the hall. I hear the maids whisper about you sitting vigil in her room. And the honey pot was missing this morning.”
“It’s not missing. It’s upstairs to help her drink her medicine.”
“Yes,” his father drawled. “I heard all sorts of nonsense about that from my valet.”
Max covered his reaction by drinking his tea. Then he nodded to the footman as eggs and toast were set before him. He was either desperately hungry or too tired to eat. Meanwhile, his father continued to needle him with difficult questions.
“Have you decided what to do with the gel? I’m sure a place for her could be found in Devonshire, especially if she has some trade. What did her father do?”
“He was a doctor of some kind.”
“Well, that’s no help. Heathen medicine will have filled her head with all sorts of superstitious nonsense.”
Though Max had thought something similar yesterday—especially when he was collecting mold in the stable—this morning he found the sentiment narrowminded. “You don’t think they could have stumbled upon something that we don’t know? A plant, perhaps, or tincture that isn’t available to us?”
“Of course, they did. Opium. But we’ve got it now, refined it, and sell it back to them at great profit. We have the scientific method of inquiry, and until the heathens adopt that, they’ve got nothing to teach us.”
“What makes you think they don’t have a scientific method of inquiry?”
“They didn’t figure out opium, did they?”
“But maybe they figured out something else. We won’t know until we ask.”
His father arched a disdainful brow. “Then ask, if you wish to waste your time. Write letters to them, for all I care. But the girl is not going to help with any of that.”
I am important!
Yihui’s words echoed in his thoughts. Indeed, they’d echoed throughout the night while he cooled her brow and wondered what he was going to do.
He shouldn’t be irritated with his father for voicing the exact same things that had tortured him through the night, but he was.
Mostly because he knew the sentiment was wrong. He just couldn’t prove it.
“She has value,” he said firmly.
“How?”
“Because all people have value!”
His father leaned back in his chair and regarded Max with a quizzical air. “I begin to worry about you. Have you taken a religious turn?”
“What?”
“Sitting up all night next to a heathen, talking about her value as if a beggar at our door is important somehow.”
“Even a beggar is a person.”
“There!” he said pointing a finger at Max’s face.
“That’s exactly what I mean. I don’t deny that a beggar is a person, but they should be in the care of the priests and nuns.
Unless you are about to take up vows, I cannot see why you would traipse about London collecting dirt or sit at her bedside through the night.
And that is to say nothing of countenancing murder in our own home. ”
“I didn’t countenance murder.”
“Neither did you send her to Tyburn for committing it. No, you—”
“I sat vigil at her bedside. Yes, Father, I remember.”
“Don’t take that tone with me. You are my heir. Everything you do is noted and remarked upon by all of London.” He tossed the newspaper at Max opened to the glaring headline, MURDER IN A DUCAL HOME.
He scanned the contents quickly, seeing that the reporter had gotten the substance essentially correct, though it was written in the most scandalized tone. He set it down with a sigh. “It was never going to be kept quiet.”
“But it doesn’t have to linger. Certainly not upstairs.”
Max had no answer except the one his father would reject. “Prinny has not rescinded his order. I am commanded to marry her.”
“Bollocks. Send her off to Devonshire to cook or something. Prinny will get around to it in time.”
“She kept saying she was important. I don’t know what she meant—”
“Well, of course she did! Everyone in our circle is desperate to be important. Otherwise, they can’t be in our circle, can they? I’m a duke. You’re my heir—”
“Can you not feel for the girl? Sold into slavery by her own father, dragged to the English court only to have a knife put her throat. Her feet were broken, she’s wracked with fever, and she still had the wherewithal to tell me she could be useful.
That I shouldn’t kill her. Damn it, Father, can you not see the spirit in her? ”
“What I see is my name in the papers, a bedroom that reeks of blood and worse, and my son lost in a romantic fantasy about a savage. Can you imagine Lady Kimberly acting in such a manner?”
“No,” he said. “I cannot.” He had a great deal of admiration for his childhood friend, but he doubted she would endure being sold to a foreign land, much less any of the other crimes Yihui had suffered.
“Of course not and thank God for that. Max, you must get a hold of yourself. She is a savage, and you can no more marry her than you would a tiger or a rampaging bull.” In a rare moment of tenderness, his father reached out his hand.
Not quite enough to touch Max, but the gesture was there.
“Son, exotic fantasies are normal. Every man has them, but only a fool acts upon them. And he certainly doesn’t bring them home to their mother. ”
“It was by Prinny’s command.”
“And how many of Prinny’s commands have you disobeyed in the last month? How many of the man’s drunken idiocies have you curtailed just this week?”
Max’s eyes widened. He hadn’t thought his father understood what he was doing at Carlton House.
“I have friends in the Foreign Office as well. I know what Lord Benedict has asked of you.” He withdrew his hand to close up the paper, hiding the awful headline. “You have spent the last four years dancing rings around the prince. Why now, of all times, would you bow to royal decree?”
“It’s not that simple. I cannot blatantly refuse a royal command.”
“I’m sure it’s devastatingly difficult. And yet, I know you could do it. There’s always a way to distract royalty. So why didn’t you do it this time? Why did you spend the night praying by her bedside?”
“I wasn’t praying,” he said. He’d been thinking. The events of the day had forced him to take a hard look at his life and choices.
His title had kept him from the military or indeed any foreign travel for fear of contracting some disease or being shot by the French.
He understood that his death would be the end of a very ancient title, and though he feared that less than his father did, he still chose to stay out of harm’s way as much as possible.
He did that out of respect for his forefathers.
He was not especially prone to scholarship and his father refused to let him manage the family finances, though he had tried dozens of different tactics to get their smallest estate under his control.
That left him pursuing his only real interest—Chinoiserie—and serving as Prinny’s court jester or secret brake if the situation called for it.
So many of his compatriots would relish this life.
Money to burn with no responsibilities except for the getting of an heir.
Max, however, found himself itching to make more of himself.
Growing up, he hadn’t just fantasized about being a pirate.
He’d adored tales of King Arthur and had fancied himself a chivalrous knight.
He wanted to punish evil, proclaim right over might, and rescue the princess.
He still did. Only now, all he did was restrain Prinny from the worst of his excesses and tried to make restitution to Yihui.
That was not his job. He had not wronged her.
And yet, he was in a position to help her.
And so he would serve as her protector even if it meant defying his own father as he sought a solution.
It also gave a purpose for this desire he felt for her.
He had spent half the night in thought, and half the night in fantasy.
Even with broken feet, she was beautiful to him.
The curve of her eyes, the shape of her face.
Exotic, yes, and so very exciting. Her spirit enflamed him, her defiance against her captors made her into a warrior goddess.
What man wouldn’t want to claim that for his own?
The two desires to protect her and claim her brought him to defy everyone around him.
“She is an innocent,” he said. “I will not add to her pain.”
His father didn’t answer except to stand, choosing to tower over his son while tapping the newspaper against his thigh. It wasn’t a hard whack, of course, but the sound was loud in the quiet house.
Slap, slap, slap.
Like the ticking of a clock or the drip of blood from a small wound.
“End this, Max,” his father finally said. “Get the girl out of the house and our name out of the papers. If you need help with Prinny—”
“He hates you, Father.”
“I was going to suggest you go to Lord Benedict for aid. You’re right that Prinny and I will never see eye to eye on anything.” He peered down at his son. “I rather thought that was what drew you two together.”
“Not really, Father.” He had chosen to entertain Prinny rather than openly defy his father’s politics in the House of Commons.
It helped that he agreed with some of Prinny’s liberal ideas.
The man was a great defender of the arts and could be extraordinarily generous to his people.
He could also be flighty, selfish, and completely blind to deeper issues.
His father sighed. “Prinny’s a prancing fool, not an idiot. He knows a duke cannot marry a merchant girl from China.”
That was certainly true. “I’ll have to speak with Christopher. He was with Prinny last night to tell the tale.”
“Wonderful,” his father drawled, heavy with sarcasm. “Trust Christopher to take an ember and make it into a conflagration. With him in Prinny’s ear, we won’t escape the tale for months.”
“You’ve always been too hard on Chris.”
“And you’ve always had a soft spot for broken creatures. Christopher is case in point with his disastrous father. They’re sad things, to be sure. They’re God’s way of making us appreciate what we have. But that doesn’t mean you need to marry them.”
“I’m not going to marry her!”
“Then go to bed, Max. Get a decent night’s sleep and some hearty food in your belly. Stop drinking all hours of the night and take a good look at your life. You’re two and thirty now. It’s time to take up your responsibilities.”
Max lifted his chin to stare at his father. “And what responsibilities would those be? You won’t allow me a hand in the running of the estate—”
“You spend too freely, Max—”
“I’m more likely to vote against your measures if you put me in the House of Commons.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you thought about the consequences of what those idiot Whigs are spouting on about.”
“I cannot marry Lady Kimberly while commanded to wed Yihui.”
“Is that her name? Sounds like a wheezing dog.”
Max pushed to his feet to meet his father eye to eye. Or rather eye to forehead, as he topped his father’s height by three inches. “It is her name,” he repeated firmly.
“Fine, fine.” His father stepped far enough back that he could look down his nose at Max. “I truly don’t care.”
“But you want me to take up my responsibilities. I ask again, what responsibilities are those? What meaningful use of my time would you like me to adopt?”
“I cannot pick your amusements, Max. Take up writing or the sciences. You were always good at mathematics.”
“Why don’t I take Yihui back to China? I could be England’s special envoy—”
His father threw up his hands in disgust. “And now you are back to nonsense. England has people in China already. You’re not just the heir to a dukedom, Max.
You’re the only heir. You’re not going anywhere until you sire a few more.
If you’d done your duty by Lady Kimberly, you wouldn’t be in this mess now.
So get rid of the broken Chinese creature and get on with your responsibilities as a man. ”
“Or what, Father?”
“Or remain as you are now, a jester in Prinny’s court. A useful jester, to be sure, but a silly one nonetheless.” His father sighed. “And a true embarrassment to the title we hold.”