Page 50 of About a Rogue
Dalway ordered a complete service the very next day and admitted he’d been wrong to call Max an idiot for pursuing the Perusia connection. “I thought you were mad,” he told Max, “but I see now you spotted a diamond in the rough.”
“Not rough at all,” replied Max easily. “Obscured.”
Dalway laughed. “Is that what you call her?”
“What I call my wife is not for your ears,” returned Max with a look. “Will you have a coffee service as well?”
“Aye, aye, in that bloodred glaze. Never seen anything like it! Serafina begged for it all the way home.” He eyed Max. “She’s pleased for you.”
Max inclined his head as he made a note of the order. “I’m delighted to have her blessing.”
Dalway snorted. “She wants to befriend your wife! Better watch yourself, she’s eager to tell all your secrets...”
“She doesn’t know anything I wouldn’t tell Mrs. St. James myself.”
“Wouldn’t.”Dalway caught his mistake. “Ought to hurry home and tell her yourself, if you don’t want Serafina and Louisa Carswell whispering it into her ears.”
Max kept his smile, not betraying the curses streaming through his mind. Between the two of them, those ladies could tell Bianca just enough to make him look like a monster. He didn’t think they would do so maliciously—no, even worse, they would do it while thinking they were helping him. Bianca, though, was too intelligent by half to miss anything. “I will. And inform Lady Dalway, with all civility, that I can conduct my own amours, without any help from her.”
Dalway snickered. He’d always loved a bit of scandal and intrigue, and had since they were young bucks at Oxford, evading the proctors sent to roust them from the local taverns. Max had only been at university for a year, but Dalway had been infamous even before he got there. “I’ll tell her. Don’t expect a great lot of good from it, though. You know how she is when she gets something in her mind.” He shook his head. “Better you the target of her interest than I.”
“One hopes the new dinner service will distract her from your many failings,” replied Max.
“For a fortnight at least.” Dalway grinned. “If you can divert her for a month, I’ll pay double.”
“On your own, mate,” retorted Max, making Dalway laugh again and flash him a rude gesture.
But after the earl had left, Max let out his breath and pressed his hands to his temples. Serafina Dalway, with her outsized and misplaced sisterly concern, would be the death of him. But she, at least, would listen to reason, if he begged. He was not so sure of Louisa Carswell, to say nothing of Clara Farquhar. Gossip was like air to those two, and even if they promised not to say anything, he didn’t trust either to remember it in the throes of sharing some delicious on-dit.
Gingerly he considered what Dalway had urged: telling Bianca himself.
It was the safest choice, in the long run. Unfortunately it was the short term Max was thinking of now, with the taste of her mouth still fresh in his mind. Andshehad kissedhim. Not only was she coming to look at him with new respect regarding his plans for Perusia, she was beginning to look at him with desire as well. He didn’t want to do anything to disturb the very pleasing direction things were going with his wife.
Besides, he reasoned to himself, they would only be in London another fortnight. Back in Marslip, there would be nothing to worry about. He would have plenty of time to tell her everything, at his own leisure, once he’d won her over in other ways.
No, if he told her now it would only spoil things. He wanted more of a hold on her heart and mind before he risked both.
Bianca was surprised—pleasantly—that coming to London had been far more productive than she had expected.
After Max was proven right about Lord Dalway ordering a service, Sir Henry Carswell did place an order as well. At that news, Bianca had to admit that Max knew far more than she about Londoners. When a request for a viewing arrived from the Countess of Dowling, and an order from Viscount Harley, she even congratulated him one morning at breakfast.
He took it graciously, raising his coffee cup in salute. “I knew it was only a matter of making the right impression, and your scarlet glaze did that.”
“No,” she replied. “The scarlet glaze alone would have done nothing. You knew how best to display it and tempt people like Lady Dalway.”
He laughed. “And Lady Dalway is likely to spread the word better than we ever could.”
They were cordial now. That was reasonable, she told herself. There had been no mention of the kiss, let alone any suggestion of more. In fact, she told herself this might be the happy balance she had wished for. They were both dedicated to advancing the interests of Perusia. It would please her father—whose twice-weekly letters asked repeatedly how she was getting on with her husband in London—and perhaps it was better to kiss him and be done with it. The only way to rid oneself of an itch sometimes was to scratch it.
It didn’t matter that she’d felt that kiss on her mouth the rest of the night, nor that she’d lain awake for a long time, wondering what had possessed her and if he thought it meant he’d won. If there had been the slightest trace of triumph in his attitude the next morning, she vowed, she would tell him it had been a dreadful mistake on her part, never to be repeated...
But he hadn’t. He had greeted her the next morning in the same way he had always done. Not so much as a lingering glance betrayed any smugness. And somehow Bianca never got around to saying it was a mistake, or that she wished it had never happened, or that it must never happen again.
Even though it neverwouldhappen again, obviously.
He pushed back his chair. “Shall you come with me today? I intend to view another shop.”
“Oh?” She gulped too large a sip of chocolate at his voice and winced as it burned her throat. She’d got distracted watching him talk, thinking about how she was never going to kiss his mouth again, and she’d not been attending to what he said. “Er—where?”
