“We’re not going anywhere this year, not even London. Evie doesn’t want to travel in her condition.”
“Her condition? Max!” she cried with a jolt of joy as she realized what he meant. “Evie’s pregnant?”
At his confirming nod, she flung herself into his arms, oblivious to Samuel’s presence, smothering her cousin in a hug and a slew of kisses. “That’s wonderful news. Simply wonderful. How far along is she? Did the doctor say? Is she…” Delia paused, taking a deep breath. “She’s all right, isn’t she?”
“Of course. She’s a little sick in the mornings,” he added as they pulled apart, “but that’s to be expected at this stage, I understand. She’s about four months gone. Doctor Treves says she’s in fine form.”
“Excellent,” she said with heartfelt relief. “And your sisters? Do they know about the baby?”
“They do. I telegraphed all of them and broke the news before I left Gloucester to come here. They were thrilled.”
“Of course they were,” she replied, laughing. “We shall all be spoiling that child senseless, I warn you.”
“I have no doubt. Anyway, I won’t be coming down to London again for ages, so I expect the next time I see you will be at Whitsuntide. You are coming up for the party?”
At this mention of the house party held every spring at Max’s estate, she could only offer a helpless shrug. “I hope so, but it depends on how smoothly things go here. Given how they’ve started, I haven’t much hope. Especially without you here to support my end,” she added woefully.
“Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re perfectly capable of dealing with Lord Calderon without any help from me.”
“Am I?”
“Of course. He’s a man, isn’t he?”
She thought of those imperturbable green eyes blinking at her in that cool, rather inhuman way of his. “I’m not sure. To me, he’s more like the Grim Reaper.”
Samuel choked, trying to suppress his boyish giggle, a reaction she found quite gratifying under the circumstances.
Max merely smiled. “Just be your usual charming self, and you’ll have him eating out of your hand soon enough.”
She made a face. “You talk as if I set out to charm people on purpose.”
“Well—” he began, but she cut him off.
“I’m only charming to people I like. And as I’ve already told you, I don’t like him.”
“Like him or not,” Max said as the lift jerked to a halt and Samuelopened the doors, “he’s here, and you’ll have to accept that and the changes he’s making as best you can.”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she stared at her cousin, riveted, as an idea flashed into her mind—an idea so simple and so easy she was amazed she hadn’t thought of it until now.
Max turned so that she could precede him out of the lift, but she didn’t move.
Acceptance, she thought. That was the ticket.Acceptance. Things were already chaotic. Another week, perhaps two, and the consequences of his decisions would surely start coming back to bite him. All she had to do was sit back, do nothing, and watch him sail straight off the cliff.
“Delia, is something wrong?”
Faced with the inevitable consequences of his dunderheaded decisions, he might become more willing to listen to the opinions of others—the people who worked here, people who understood far better than he how a hotel like the Savoy ought to be run. And even if he was too obstinate to admit he was wrong and change course, the board would soon see the damage he was doing and stop him.
A put-down like that, she thought with a rather naughty sense of anticipation, would do that man a world of good.
“Delia?”
The sharp note of Max’s voice succeeded in garnering her attention. “Hmm?” she asked, coming out of her contemplations with a shake of her head. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re standing there as if you’ve been turned to a pillar of salt. Is something wrong?”
“No, no, nothing’s wrong. In fact,” she added, smiling at him as she sailed past him out of the elevator, “I think everything just came right.”
“I know that look in your eyes,” he muttered, falling in stepbeside her as they crossed the foyer together. “Delia, what are you scheming?”
