“I suppose that depends on your perspective,” he replied, eyes twinkling in the candlelight. “In many circles, nothing couldbe bolder than getting up and moving to sit beside a beautiful young lady. Why, in society these days, that is practically a proposal.”
Is he… jesting with me?
Caroline could not be certain, for he appeared to have the most irksome ability to keep a completely blank face while amusement weaved through his words.
She cleared her dry throat. “Then it is lucky for us that we are alone and already married.”
“Lucky?” Max’s lips turned up in a half smile. “I was under the impression that you considered it to be the worst thing that has ever happened to you.”
She blinked, bewildered by the stranger sitting beside her. He certainly was not the Max she had spent days diligently and creatively pestering, sawing away at his patience bit by bit.ThatMax would not have teased her about something so… raw and sensitive. Nor would she have felt the increasing urge to laugh at his brazen jest, enjoying the more sarcastic humor.
“My quarrel is with society,” she replied, gathering herself. “I aimed my anger at you, I do not deny it, but that is because I cannot aim my anger at society as a whole. It would not be nearly as effective when split between so many—a feeble breath of disapproval instead of a tempest of fury.”
He definitely smiled this time, the warmth of it disarming. “Society is rather like this manor,” he said. “No matter what alterations or improvements you make, parts will always be ancient and crooked, parts will always be in need ofgreaterimprovement, and there will always be a rather unpleasant smell that you cannot find the origin of. Indeed, most of the time, you wonder if you ought to knock it all down and start again.”
“An interesting metaphor.” Caroline shyly took a sip of her drink, the bubbles fizzing up into her nose. “Interesting and accurate. That smell, in particular—I would place the responsibility for that on the gossipmongers who are so bored with their lives that they cannot survive without scandal to nourish them.”
He nodded, his eyes so enchanting that she could not look away. “What of the ancient and crooked parts?”
“Ah, well, that is less simple,” Caroline replied, unable to deny that she was starting to enjoy herself. “The ancient part would be this ridiculous notion that ladies and gentlemen cannot be friends. The crooked part would be… the part where gentlemen can be utter scoundrels and face few consequences, while ladies are reviled and cast out for even the smallest indiscretion.”
She had spent enough years in Matilda’s company to have picked up a thing or two about the unfairness of society’s opinion of men and women, even before she was thrown into her own ridiculous scandal.
Max observed her with an intensity that made her shift in her chair, willing the footmen or Mrs. Whitlock to come in and begin serving dinner if only to make him break that powerful gaze. It was as if he was looking right through her, seeing everything she might be trying to hide, peeling away the layers of who she was and who she presented herself to be.
“Have you truly never had any sort of affection for Dickie?” he asked suddenly.
Caroline gulped. “Pardon?”
“An unusual question,” he admitted, “but I have always wondered what possessed you to try and visit him in the middle of the night.”
Caroline reached for her champagne and took another, larger sip. “The same thing that makes even the sanest person just a little bit mad.” She turned her gaze toward a spray of lavender and dried reeds, eager to escape the heat of Max’s attention. “Love.”
“But you didnotlove my brother?”
She shook her head. “That is why Ihadto speak with him, there and then. I had been stewing over the fact that I did not feel anything for him, not in that way, for hours and I knew I would not sleep unless I heard his opinion.” She paused. “Did you know that Anna suggested that he and I would be a good match?”
“As a diversion, yes.”
“Then, can you understand why it perplexed me?”
Max tucked his fingers into the top edge of his collar, pulling to loosen it. “In truth, no.”
“The Matchmaker had no failures, at that time,” Caroline explained, struggling to ignore the cords of his neck that appeared as the top button came undone. “Every couple she paired together fell hopelessly in love. So, when my letter came, suggesting Dickie, I waited for that love to hit me. When it did not, I thought something might be wrong with me, and I ruminated myself into a sort of insanity.Thatis why I went to visit Dickie and got the wrong room—for answers. If not for love, then for the sake of being able to sleep.”
Max nodded in thought, his fingertips unfastening his cravat absently, as if out of habit. “Well, I may not understand your obsession with love, but I can understand how… devastating it is to not get what you have longed for, your entire life. I can understand the disappointment you feel, at least.”
Her gaze returned to him, intrigued by his phrasing. They were not the words of someone who was trying to humor her, but the words of someone who had experienced their own disappointment.
“Did… someone break your heart, Maximilian?” she asked boldly, hoping to put a piece of the puzzle of him into place.
If he smiles at me, I am right.
He met her eyes and in the low light, something akin to pain moved across his handsome features. In her face, was he seeing a woman who had betrayed him? Did he look at her and miss another? Was that why he had stepped in to marry her for duty’s sake because it truly did not matter when his heart already belonged to someone else, someone that could never be his?
The dining room door burst open at that moment, startling Caroline out of her skin. The footmen swept in, bearing the first course and dashing any hope she might have had of hearing what Max had to say about the matters of his heart.
CHAPTER TWELVE
