Royal Pain (22 page)

He leaned in to kiss her and she felt herself give way to a sense of relief greater than she could have anticipated. For some reason, she had been having all sorts of miniature anxiety attacks about Max’s house being cluttered with minor Rembrandts and early Van Dycks carelessly hung in the guest bathroom, and she had been envisioning herself sleeping under a cavernous, maroon-velvet tester bed.

As it turned out, it was quite the contrary. She had stepped into a garden idyll. She was about to have what amounted to a lovely stay in what felt like a little country house, that just happened to be tucked away on a private little side street right in the middle of London.

The tiny whispering sound of the nearby climbing-ivy leaves rustling was crisp in her ears; her senses were in a state of both jet lag–induced exhaustion and heightened physical awareness. This kiss, the smell of summer in the air, the distant sound of a foreign siren with its unfamiliar high-low-high-low pitch, the feel of Max’s unshaven cheek against the soft pads of her fingers.

She pulled away for a second, getting her bearings.

“It’s like déjà vu all over again… the two of us back in the walled garden at my old place in Wicker Park.”

His arms were loose around her waist, his hands clasped at her lower back.

“Why do you think I was so at home there?”

He began to kiss her again; it felt like a welcome-home kiss, then turned deeper and more demanding until he withdrew and dragged her up the narrow stairs to the loft-like master bedroom. The open space consisted of painted-white wood floors and an enormous white platform bed. And not much else.

Just after Max did away with the crumpled excuse that passed for her linen pants and she wriggled out of the rest of her clothes, she glanced up at the hard wall of his stomach and chest—his face momentarily covered by his disappearing shirt—and trusted it would all turn out right. When the heat and texture of his strong torso came into full contact with her smooth, sensitive skin, she inhaled as if she hadn’t breathed for endless minutes. The sheer physical relief of contact.

It would all work out.

She hoped.

A short two hours later, the noon bells chimed from a nearby church tower and Bronte opened one eye to see Max standing at the sink in the bathroom across the room. He had a white towel wrapped securely around his waist and the muscles in his back tensed and relaxed as he reached to turn the water spigot on and off between strokes of the razor against his face. She must have shuffled the sheets because he caught her gaze in the reflection of the mirror and smiled.

“Good afternoon and welcome to London, lovely.”

“Why thank you, sir. What’s on the docket for today? Are we going to meet up with Devon? Go out for lunch? While away the hours here in bed?”

“You are such a temptress, but alas, no to that last proposition. I had hoped our earlier activities might have satisfied you”—raised eyebrow—“for longer than a few hours. Apparently not.”

“Quite satisfied, thank you.” Bronte had made her way out of bed, padded over to the bathroom, and hugged Max from behind.

“Hive off, Bron! Into the shower you go. I’ve got a surprise for you.” He reached back and gave her bare bottom a quick slap. “We are expected at two o’clock in Mayfair.”

Bronte reached in to turn on the shower within the clear-glass enclosure, then turned back to look at Max. “Your mother already?”

“Not yet. This is more of, well, a little pregame pep rally. We’ll be having dinner with Mother tonight.”

Bronte groaned as she entered the shower and pulled the glass door closed behind her. “Is our appointment today more business or pleasure?”

Max’s smile was deadly as he raised his voice slightly to be heard over to the shower spray. “Pure pleasure for you, I hope.”

“Mmmm, I’m liking the sound of that.”

Bronte let the scalding water run over her exhausted body. The flight had been luxurious as flights go, but she was still covered in a residual coating of airports, airplanes, and taxis. She took a deep breath of the moist, hot air inside the shower, then felt the pressure of Max’s gaze upon her.

Opening her eyes and looking suggestively over one shoulder, she asked, “What?”

He was frozen in place, his wrist limp, fingers lightly holding the razor over the edge of the sink. “Uh…”

She turned to face him full on, slowly realizing he was enjoying the sight of her glistening, wet body.

“You sure you cleaned behind your ears?” she teased.

He was in the shower within seconds.

***

The extraordinarily clean couple was drinking strong coffee half an hour later under the large, white, café umbrellas in the outdoor area in front of Bluebird in Chelsea. Max was reading the
Independent
and Bronte was reading an email on her phone about the latest sales figures from Sarah James.

Even though Max had only been half-joking when he’d suggested one reason for a London visit would be to scout out a stand-alone boutique location for Sarah’s flagship store in the UK, it turned out that Sarah was actually quite taken with the idea and wanted Bronte to do some forward recon while she was in town. To that end, Bronte had set up an appointment to spend Thursday morning with a commercial real estate agent who would take her around London to look at a variety of potential locations.

Mowbray, on the other hand, was not going to be a legitimate business visit. As much fun as it would be to meet all of the Mowbray employees and to see the historic London headquarters firsthand, W. Mowbray & Sons had their own British ad agency, so Bronte’s visit didn’t have really anything to do with the US BCA campaign that she was going to be frantically putting together over the next six months. She was all set to see James Mowbray Friday morning, to meet his staff and to get a real, hands-on feel for the history and sense of place that she was sure the mid-nineteenth-century offices would exude.

She clicked out of email and started to scroll through her to-do list, then momentarily looked up at Max. He was wearing a pair of classic aviator sunglasses, and as a double-decker bus went by, she was reminded of the first time she’d sat across a table from him, the two of them having coffee and pancakes on Halsted Street in Chicago.

He finished the article he was reading, shook his head dolefully, then glanced up from the paper as he turned the page.

He caught Bronte’s look and perked up. “Hey.”

“Hey. I was just thinking about how I have spent the past year savoring the eight short weeks we spent together in Chicago. I kind of honed and polished every memory.”

“Sounds delightful, all that honing and polishing.”

“Very funny. I mean it. All of a sudden, it’s just a relief, really, to think that I can glance up and see you all tall, dark, and handsome anytime I feel like it.”

“Better and better. Do go on.”

“You are such a conceited horse’s ass. Seriously.” But she smiled as she said it.

Max’s tone turned serious. “Bron, all conceit aside. Your good opinion matters more to me than you can ever imagine.”

Even in the midst of the buses, taxis, and clinking china and silverware of the bustling café, there seemed to be a sudden vacuum around them.

Bronte swallowed carefully.

“I love you, Max. Not to worry. You have secured my affections.”

Max had laced the fingers of his left hand through Bronte’s right and was smiling magnificently across the table at her.

“Well, if it isn’t Max Heyworth!” said a very plummy, British-accented female voice.

Bronte and Max looked up, startled, and Bronte instinctively tried to pull her hand out of Max’s grasp, only to feel his hold tighten possessively on hers. Neither of them was in favor of public displays of affection—despite what the CFDA paparazzi may have snapped that fateful night last week—so Bronte was a little surprised that Max was very decidedly leaving said affection on very public display.

This
should
be
interesting
, she thought ruefully.

Max oozed Etonian formality and charm. “Lady Claudia Seeley, please allow me to introduce Ms. Bronte Talbott. Bronte, Lady Claudia.”

He did not stand or make any pretense of intending to do so.

The perfectly groomed Lady Claudia was a very well-maintained woman of a certain age. Bronte suspected she was in her mid-sixties, but she didn’t have a stray hair or ounce of fat in evidence, nor a wrinkle in sight. In addition to the little cairn terrier she had tucked under one arm, she was also sporting an enormous blue crocodile Hermès Birkin bag, definitely
not
a knockoff, and wore what Bronte had to enviously confess was one of the most fabulous white Chanel pantsuits she had ever laid eyes on.

Bronte tried to get a glimpse of her shoes without giving her a totally obvious once-over, but the sharp matron caught her out.

“They’re Sarah James, darling. Are they not divine?”

Lady Claudia took a moment to turn one foot this way and that, and despite Max’s obvious lack of patience with this woman, Bronte fell instantly in love.

“Would you care to join us?” Bronte blurted, as she wondered if her knuckles would crack under the pressure of Max’s death grip.

“Why, aren’t you just so
American
?! All of that immediate intimacy that is so utterly lacking here in mother England. Perfectly charming. I’d love to.”

And with that, Max let go of Bronte’s hand and went back to reading his newspaper.

“Since Max is clearly in a sulk about some silly accident of birth—his horrid mother is my sister, but please don’t tell anyone—I shall pretend he is not here and you and I can have a perfectly enjoyable discussion about the more important things in life. Namely, shoes.”

Bronte looked from one to the other, deciding to see if there was really any bad blood, caught the slightest hint of a smile on Max’s face, and, taking that for reluctant but tacit encouragement, decided to dive into the fabulous world of Lady Claudia Seeley.

“Well, first of all,” Bronte launched breathlessly, “your bag is absolutely to die for. I have never seen the crocodile in blue and I might very well have stopped you on the street, regardless of your mixed blood.”

Lady Claudia’s deep, throaty bark of a laugh was remarkably similar to Max’s, and even he was smiling as he continued to pretend he was mired in deep contemplation of the business section of his newspaper.

“Mixed blood? How perfectly true! Oh, Max, where did you find this gem of a girl? Has she met your mother yet? But of course not: I know you have always sworn you would never introduce any woman to that shrew unless you were on your way to the altar.”

Bronte smiled benignly and glanced at Max.

He looked up at his larger-than-life aunt and couldn’t resist. “We are having dinner with Sylvia tonight.”

Then he casually returned his attention to the newspaper.

Max had to admit, silencing Lady Claudia was tantamount to stopping the tide, so he took a satisfying moment behind the invisible wall of his reflective sunglasses to enjoy the blessed quiet.

“Roasted pumpkin and goat cheese salad?” the no-nonsense waitress snapped, holding the plate slightly aloft with a take-it-or-leave-it gesture.

“That’s mine.” Bronte raised her hand slightly.

As the waitress set a plate of eggs Benedict down in front of Max, Lady Claudia found her voice and nearly sang, “And a bottle of the Laurent Perrier rosé and three glasses, please.”

The waitress nodded and went to fetch the expensive bottle of pink champagne.

“What are you celebrating, Aunt Claudia?” Max asked disingenuously between bites of egg and brioche.

“As if you don’t know, Maxwell.” Lady Claudia raised her eyebrow.

“Aaah,” Bronte confirmed as she swallowed, “so the eyebrow-raising comes from your mother’s side of the family, Max!”

“Absolutely, dear,” Claudia interrupted as Max continued to eat as if he were at a table for one. “And so does drinking champagne at lunch. So has he already proposed or is he waiting to see if you will still have him after enduring the trial by fire also known as Sylvia, Duchess of Northrop?”

Bronte nearly choked on her salad and reached for her water to clear her throat and buy some time.

“Don’t look at me, Bron,” Max grumbled. “You are the one who invited her to join us.”

“Welcome to life in the lion’s den, Ms. Talbott.”

“Please call me Bronte. You know how
overly
familiar we Americans are.”

“Well, if the two of you are going to be hush-hush over the details,” Lady Claudia proceeded as she took a small brown nylon packet out of her stupendously fabulous purse, “and since I don’t see a ring on your finger”—the little contraption opened origami-like into a portable, stylish, square dog bowl—“I will have to accept that your introduction to the duchess this evening is merely the launching of Max’s first salvo.”

She then proceeded to carefully pour some of her Evian water into the bowl and slipped it under the table, where the perfectly behaved terrier was sitting contentedly at her feet.

The champagne arrived and was poured, the sparkling pink liquid bubbling and popping festively in the early-afternoon sun.

Lady Claudia raised her glass.

“Take those damn sunglasses off, Max, and pick up your glass of champagne.”

Max obeyed, albeit slowly.

Bronte looked from one to the other, reached for her glass, picked it up, then waited.

And waited.

Finally, Lady Claudia inhaled as if to speak, when Max forestalled her almost-toast.

“Lady Claudia, let us raise our glasses to my
fiancée
, Bronte Talbott.” His eyes narrowed for a split second as if daring Claudia with a look, then he continued, “If you breathe a word of this news before I have a chance to tell your sister in person, I will not be as charitable as my wife-to-be: I will no longer consider your blood
mixed
; instead, I will assume that the same malicious brew that flows through my mother’s veins also courses through yours.”

“Now, Max—” Bronte tried gamely. She had never heard him quite so firm.

“Really, Max, I am Lady Claudia Seeley,” she said in lofty defense. “Don’t you think I have better things to do with my time than ruin my sister’s day?” She turned to look in the metaphorical middle distance, then returned her gaze. “Well, when I put it that way, I don’t have much better to do, but I assure you I won’t celebrate her
demotion
until after you make it public.”

Lady Claudia turned to Bronte with what appeared to be renewed, and far shrewder, interest. “You, my dear, may have bitten off more than you can chew, but let the feast begin! Cheers!”

“Cheers… I think.” Bronte took a very careful sip of the perfectly delectable rosé. “Mmmm, isn’t that delicious?” She smiled despite herself.

“Yes, dear, very. And don’t you have quite the winning smile,” Lady Claudia said as she put her glass down with precision then turned the force of her full attention on Bronte, ignoring Max completely. He merely put his mirrored sunglasses back on, picked up his paper, and muttered something along the lines of “here we go.”

“So, tell me, dear. Where did you grow up? Who are your parents? How did you and Max meet? Was it romantic?”

Bronte laughed and couldn’t help feeling like she and her best friend from sixth grade were about to dig into a brand-new clandestine issue of
Seventeen
magazine at the foot of her bed.

“My mother lives in northern New Jersey, about twenty minutes outside of New York City. My father died over ten years ago and I have no brothers or sisters.” She made a show of inhaling for breath, then plowed on. “Max and I met in the science-fiction section of a secondhand bookstore on the west side of Chicago and”—dramatic intake of breath—“he fell madly in love with me and I haven’t been able to get rid of him since, so I finally gave in and accepted one of his persistent proposals of marriage.” She filled her lungs while reaching for her champagne, then proceeded to drain the entire flute. “Aaaah. Delicious.”

Lady Claudia stared in utter amazement. “You dare to make fun of the irreproachable Master Maxwell? It gets better and better. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that I decided to walk dear little Amis down the King’s Road today! To think I might have gone into Hyde Park and, oh, it’s all just too divine.” Claudia savored another sip of champagne. “Oh, Max, admit it, your mother is going to go into fits. Well… no need to cause the lovely Ms. Talbott—I mean, Bronte—any undue anxiety.”

Max folded his newspaper neatly, then placed it methodically onto the seat of the unoccupied chair at their table and looked across at his impossibly elegant aunt.

“We are going to Dunlear for the weekend. Would you and Uncle Bertrand care to join us?”

“Oh, Max. You are splendid. Of course, we will be there. Amassing your army, I see. Are Devon and Abigail going to be there?”

“Devon certainly. I haven’t been able to get ahold of Abigail for weeks. I think she’s WWOOFing in Scotland or some damn thing and she doesn’t return calls for weeks at a time.”

“What in the world is
woo
-fing?” Claudia pronounced it so it rhymed with
goofing
.

“You know, volunteering on organic farms…”

Claudia shook her head slowly to indicate she had absolutely no idea what Max was talking about.

“Never mind, Aunt Claudia. Spending a month in New Zealand on a worm farm is not something you should ever have to contemplate. Meanwhile, Abby’s up north somewhere planting lettuce and talking to rabbits and upsetting Mother with all of her alternative lifestyle decisions.”

“I was wondering when I was going to get the full précis on Abigail,” Bronte added as the waitress refilled her glass. “You and Devon have been so busy bolstering me up that I haven’t heard anything about her. Lady Claudia, please elaborate.”

“Aaah, well you really must thank her when you meet her.”

“Really? What for exactly?”

“For paving the way, of course.” Claudia raised her glass in mock-salute to Abigail. “Abby has been quite naughty all her life, but she always managed to stay in her father’s good graces for two very good reasons. She loves manual labor and, well, she’s an idea person. A fair assessment, Max?”

Max nodded and mm-hmmed his tacit agreement.

Bronte looked to him, then back to Lady Claudia, prompting her to continue.

“So of course, her father adored her. The fact that she likes girls”—raised eyebrow—“didn’t really matter to him one way or the other. She’s more of a Vita Sackville-West really.”

“Oh, Claudia. Please don’t try to be hip,” Max groaned.

“Your sister is a lesbian, Max?” Bronte asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it doesn’t
matter
. It’s just odd that you wouldn’t have told me.” Bronte gave him a puzzled look then turned back to Lady Claudia. “Pray continue. I am clearly going to gather much more family lore from you than I ever will from Max. Go on!”

“Well, not much else to tell, really. If you’ve just come from New York, I’m sure you’ve already met prissy Miss Lydia, and Claire is just, well, the type of careless woman who would incubate just such a daughter: vain, self-centered, and utterly oblivious.”

Max gestured to the waitress for the bill. “Please tell us what you really think, Claudia.”

“Funny you should ask,” she said with an eloquent smirk. “I really
do
think Lydia might, just might, be salvageable if we get to her soon. She’s not cruel, really; she just does what her mother tells her—which isn’t very much, mind you—and the rest of her brain has been stuffed with thoughts of frocks and shoes and purses and eligible husbands.” Lady Claudia raised a hand in silent protest. “Don’t say it! I adore frocks and shoes and eligible husbands—plural—but when I was her age, at least, I gave the occasional thought to the occasional personal opinion.”

“I said the same to Max in New York, that she might not be all bad, but she is just so… so… impertinent.”

“She is that.” Claudia took her final sip of champagne. “But you may have an ally there. Her grandmother occasionally makes thoughtless comments at her expense and you’d be wise to trade on that.”

“God. It all sounds so deeply Machiavellian. It’s bad enough I am, well, I guess I need to practice saying it,
engaged
to a duke, but the family drama is just so totally out of my league.”

“Come now, Bronte,” Claudia chided. “We all have families.”

“Of course, but Max and I really dated in a vacuum, wouldn’t you agree, Max?”

Max had just finished signing the bill. He folded his receipt and replaced his credit card in its slim black leather card case, then returned the case to his pocket. His fingers glanced across Bronte’s thigh under the table as he looked into her eyes.

“Yes, a fabulous vacuum. Exactly.” Then he turned back to Claudia. “We will look forward to seeing you Friday evening for supper, then? You’ll stay for two nights?”

“Wonderful. Absolutely.”

“And please, promise me we will get to talk about
real
issues then”—Bronte spoke in a deeply serious tone—“such as that Chanel suit you are wearing and where you think the best Sarah James—”

Claudia was laughing as Max hauled Bronte away from the table. Bronte tried to continue on about clothes and shoes, but ended up laughing through her farewell. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Lady Claudia. See you Friday.”

“Good-bye, Aunt Claudia.” Max had Bronte’s hand firmly clasped in his. “We have an appointment at Coutts in ten minutes. Have to run.”

Bronte wasn’t sure, but she thought her fiancé winked at his fiercely chic aunt just as the two of them left the café and went to the sidewalk to hail a cab.

“I’m sorry”—Bronte was still recovering from her laughter—“but there is just no way in
hell
that your mother can be that much of a pill if that fucking dame is her sister.”

“You’d better watch it or I will tell her you called her a ‘fucking dame.’”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Well…”

“No, I take it back. Go ahead and tell her; she would know I meant it as a compliment.” They were settled in the cab and Bronte was smiling as she looked out the window, Max’s hand safely in hers.

She spent the next fifteen minutes drinking in the lush London scenery. She had only been to London once, in college, and she had stayed in the all-girl dorm section of a Piccadilly youth hostel for nine pounds per night. Bronte smiled despite herself.

Ten years later, here she was traveling in a taxi with the nineteenth Duke of Northrop, who was whisking her off to some mysterious destination, then whisking her off to his family estate for the weekend. She didn’t even feel like the same person.

For better or worse.

She recalled how confident she had felt at twenty-one, with a backpack and a passport and five hundred dollars in traveler’s checks tucked securely into her money belt. She had felt utterly free. As exhilarated as she was at the prospect of a future with Max, she could no longer deny that by marrying Max, she would also be forfeiting that type of utter freedom.

“What are you thinking about?” Max’s voice was gentle and low.

“All sorts of things. The last—and only—time I was in London. Backpack, youth hostel, you get the picture.”

“Hail the conquering heroine and all that?”

“Hardly. You are going to think I’m being maudlin or overly analytical or whatever it is you think I am being when I dare to question the wisdom of diving into the deep end of the relationship pool head first”—she paused for a breath—“but I was just bidding farewell to that level of freedom… carelessness, I suppose… that has no place in the life of a well-adjusted adult. Especially a well-adjusted adult duchess. And yet…”

“Aaaah. Yes. The little
yet
. I think I know a little bit about that
yet
.”

Bronte turned from the window to look more closely at Max’s eyes as he continued.

“I… well… I have wanted to talk to you more about what it was like for me when I came back last year. I thought I had a good twenty years left to shirk my filial responsibilities”—he smiled but without any real humor—“or, if not shirk, then at least to have had those years to adjust to the reality of one day having to assume the role. Despite my pep talk on the plane this morning, I am not really any more cut out for this than you are, as you will soon see.”

“Cut out for what, exactly?”

“The inescapable responsibility, I suppose.”

“But you were so responsible about your academic work in Chicago—”

“That’s just it. I loved the pressure, the research, the complications. I loved fighting to resolve the issues that seemed insurmountable. Because, in the end, the solution always presented itself.” He stopped to think, very slowly trailing his thumb up and down each of Bronte’s fingers that rested in his hand. “The problem with my family… obligation… well, the whole dukedom seems so entirely intractable. Unavoidable, really. Endless.”

“Max… maybe I’m just playing devil’s advocate, but you sound so ungrateful. I’m sorry to be snippy, but really. Cry me a river.”

“Very well. Turnabout’s fair play and all that, but, well, you and I will… it will all turn out splendidly, of course, but you must always tell me when it starts weighing on you.”

She looked out the window and thought of the anvil on her chest. “Okay.”

“I mean it. You will
see
what it’s like. It is splendid and grand and ancient and brooding and can sometimes just be a bit heavy.” He gave her hand an extra squeeze. “Right here, Driver, thank you.”

The taxi came to a standstill in front of the highly polished, very discreet, guarded mahogany doors of the Coutts Private Banking offices on Cavendish Square. The digital clock on the taxi’s meter read 1:59.

Perfectly punctual.

Bronte was starting to realize that her husband-to-be had perfected the art of seemingly casual precision. Not that she was incapable of staying on task or completing her work assignments in a timely manner; it was just that she never really liked adhering to a recognizable routine. She went to work and did her job quite well, really, but she always welcomed the unexpected intrusion—the last-minute call from her long-lost cousin saying she was in New York for the night and asking if she could crash on Bronte’s couch, the friend down the street who was always losing her keys and kept an extra set with Bronte. Something about the unpredictable offset Bronte’s latent fear of boredom. She dreaded repetition. She was going to need to keep an eye on Max’s reaction to the unexpected.