Chapter Thirty #2
After that, the conversation drifted to the movements of armies and the diplomatic negotiations behind the scenes.
It was a pleasant discussion, one that allowed him to focus purely on the affairs of nations without the anxiety of personal problems. And yet, even as the talk continued, his mind wandered back to the sight of Yihui at her table, Yihui in his arms, Yihui as she writhed in pleasure.
How she fascinated him! He knew he needed to set her aside, and yet, every part of him rebelled at the idea.
He was still struggling with this idea when they were interrupted by pounding feet as Christopher burst into the room.
“Good God!” he uttered, the words half curse, half gasp. “I’ve been looking all over town for you.” The man grabbed a chair and plunked it down right beside them. Worse, he lifted the brandy snifter right out of Max’s hand and took a healthy swig.
“How the hell did you get in here?” Max asked. Of all his friends, it had caused him the most guilt to not share this most secret of havens with Chris. And yet here he was, plunking himself down as if he were a founding member.
Chris rolled his eyes. “I followed you here years ago.”
“Followed me!”
“And once I’d discovered it,” he grinned, “I found a way to become useful to the owner.”
“Useful? Owner?” Max didn’t know who owned this club. His dues went through Benedict who—
“Never mind that,” Benedict interrupted. “What is it that you’ve learned?”
Christopher rolled his eyes. “I haven’t learned anything except that royalty is damned hard to entertain.” He looked at Max. “I’ve delayed Prinny as long as I could. I even told him your mother’s sick.”
“Mama? How did you know—”
“She’s always ill when worldly things get upsetting. You’re the one who told me that if she can’t manage it with a tea party, then she’s useless.”
True enough. “What exactly does Prinny want?”
“What he always wants. Entertainment! He expected you to be at Miss Kaur’s come-out ball.”
Max frowned. “Whyever would I be there?”
“Because Miss Kaur and her sister were great friends of Emmaline at school. I guessed that Emmaline would be there and require you as escort.”
“She didn’t feel up to it and sent our apologies.”
“So I gathered!” Christopher huffed. “I was just there with Prinny who made a surprise visit at the girl’s come-out just so he could find you.”
“Why not simply send round a note commanding me to visit him?”
“Because he thought this would be funnier.”
Which naturally meant that Christopher had created an elaborate fiction about how it would be a delightful diversion. But that only worked if Max had been there. He sighed.
“How irritated is he?”
Christopher snorted. “I’m here, aren’t I? Prinny was threatening to throw me in the Tower.”
Ah. Max gestured for another brandy and then began to make plans. He hadn’t intended to spend an evening in debauchery with Prinny. The very idea made him ill. But he could delay facing the royal only so long—
“My God, of course you’re here,” a voice interrupted them.
Max’s blood froze. It couldn’t be. One of the prime attractions of Old Gold was that it was unknown to his father. Except obviously, the duke knew exactly where it was as he stomped through the parlor door like an angry golem.
Max looked at Lord Benedict. “I thought this was a private—”
His mentor waved a negligent hand. “I am not in charge of membership.”
Meanwhile, Max watched as Christopher settled into his customary bored sneer.
It was the expression he always wore when confronted by someone of the older generation who was rabidly political.
It didn’t matter which party, Christopher made sure to appear completely bored by the nation’s future.
Something that was sure to infuriate whoever dared approach.
Which, naturally, was the point. One could learn a lot from infuriated people.
“Father. I didn’t realize you were a member here,” Max said. “Pray, pull up a chair.”
“I’m not a member, you damned idiot. God, I’m choking on the shame that my son frequents a Molly house.” The man visibly shuddered as his gaze swept the room in contempt.
“You’re mistaken, Father.” This was a private club that had nothing to do with homosexual activities. There were no men getting debauched with unnatural acts. Indeed, there weren’t even the usual courtesans hanging about. It was all very proper, at least on these floors.
But his father never gave him the chance to point out the obvious.
“I’m finished,” the man continued to rant.
“Absolutely finished with your nonsense. It’s bad enough that you’re here, but this idiocy at home must end.
I’m tired of sleeping at my club.” He frowned as his gaze hopped over Chris to land on Lord Benedict.
“Bloody hell, Benedict, I thought you had more sense.”
The man shrugged, sublimely unaffected. “Apparently not.”
“You’ll do as you must, I suppose,” his father said. “I don’t pretend to understand the Foreign Office.”
And thank God for that. If his father knew half of what went on in diplomatic circles, he’d be shocked and appalled into an early grave. At least, if Benedict’s stories were true.
“Come along, Max. We’ll discuss an end to your madness in the carriage. I will not stay here another instant.”
Lord, he was so tired of everyone railing at him. Christopher had the right, given their many years of friendship. Obviously, the prince regent could command whatever he chose from his subjects. But his father was treading too heavy tonight, and Max was done with it.
“What madness, exactly?” he drawled as he was served another brandy.
The color in his father’s cheeks and neck darkened noticeably, but the man had generations of breeding inside him that refused to make a scene in public. Even in a place as secretive as this.
So despite his demand for an immediate departure, the duke gestured for the footman to bring over another chair. The man did so with speed, and much to Max’s dismay, his father sat down with spread legs, flushed countenance, and a cane that thumped hard on the floor as he settled.
“You’re to marry Lady Kimberly in the morning. I’ve already obtained the special license. She is right now being informed of the matter by her own father. You’ll come home with me now where I shall set a guard on your door until you do what is right by that gel.”
“You would have me commit high treason? I am under royal command to marry Miss Wong.”
“That’s a ridiculous command and you know it. And Prinny cannot set aside a marriage once it is done.”
Christopher snorted. “He can still throw him in the Tower.”
The duke’s gaze flicked to Christopher and away. “Like your title, your thoughts are impoverished.”
“Father!” Max snapped, but Chris was ahead of him.
“Good thing Prinny enjoys frivolous people.” Chris rose to his full height. “Well, Max? What do I tell His Royal Highness?”
The message was clear. If Max were about to be put under house guard, Chris could slip that threat into Prinny’s ear and stop the wedding forthwith.
Assuming, of course, that Prinny was of a mind to interfere.
For all that he’d made a show of demanding Max marry Yihui, he knew as well as anyone that the dukedom did not want to pull in Chinese blood.
“That I shall visit him forthwith and we can discuss when Miss Wong shall be presented at court. She is most anxious to meet His Royal Highness in better circumstances.”
“Excell—”
“Miss Wong is right now being settled in a location better suited to her social standing,” his father interrupted. “I have told you that I would not tolerate this murderous disaster for long, Max. My patience has reached its end.”
Max bolted upright in his seat. “What have you done? Damn it, Father, she can’t even walk. Where have you put her?”
“Be thankful it’s not Tyburne.”
“Be thankful the prince doesn’t clap you in irons!” Max cried as he jumped to his feet. Damn it, the places where his father might have put her were endless.
“I must agree, Your Grace,” Lord Benedict inserted in his low, diplomatic voice. “Max has been threading a very difficult needle with the prince. To insert yourself in the middle of this—”
“Insert myself!” his father all but shrieked.
“That woman”—he spat the word at Chris’s feet—“sleeps in my home, lives at my tolerance, and is completely unwelcome at my table.” He used his cane to thrust himself upright.
Max could see the bulge at the man’s temple and the white-knuckled grip he had on his cane.
If ever a man were about to have an apoplexy, it would be now.
And at the moment, Max was furious enough to not care.
But he knew better than to match his father fury for fury. Screaming back was not the way to get through, though it had taken him most of his adolescence to understand that. Instead, he took a page from Benedict’s book.
He rocked back on his heels and pulled up a calm facade. His face and his voice gave no room for disagreement.
“You have two choices, Your Grace,” he said coldly. “Either tell me where Yihui is or Chris will see that Prinny claps you in irons.”
“As if—”
“Oh, he would,” Chris interrupted with a vicious grin. “I shall be sure he knows how much you despise him. I shall spin a tale of your political ambitions, your desire to topple the monarchy—”
“Ridiculous!”
“Is it?” Max asked. “How many times have you publicly voiced your disgust of the prince?”
Again, the duke’s cane slammed down on the floor. There weren’t any other people in this room beyond the footman at the door. That was the beauty of Old Gold. Many rooms led to better privacy. But more than one person had slowed as they passed by the door. Max’s father was certainly aware of that.
“You will marry Lady Kimberly!” the duke bellowed.
“She has foresworn me.” That statement shouldn’t give him satisfaction, but it did.
“You need a bride.”
“And I have—”
“You will—You—obey—”
Max had thought the word “apoplexy,” but he hadn’t expected it. His father grew excited over a great many things. He bellowed, he blustered, he spoke in heated, explosive terms in the House of Lords. And that was nothing compared to the outright bullying he did when his choler was up.
But he did not gasp like a dying fish while he banged his cane down. He did not clutch his chest while his eyes bulged out. And he didn’t stiffen as if his whole body had turned to stone.
He did now.
And then his father, the Duke of Fernbury and leader of the Tory party, toppled like a great tree felled by a very sharp axe.