Royal Pain (24 page)

Max slipped the empty black-velvet box into his briefcase and told Bronte to wear the canary. She looked momentarily taken aback, then helped Max close up the rest of the small velvet boxes and put them snugly back into the oblong steel case. Max pulled the top of the safety deposit box securely closed, then got up to press the red button that would signal they were ready to leave. The efficient Ms. Balderton opened the steel door to the room and escorted them out to the reception area.

“Thank you for your visit, Your Grace. Ms. Talbott.” She nodded toward Bronte. “Please feel free to contact me directly if you need any further assistance.”

She handed Max her small, perfect business card as the bulletproof glass doors slid open. “The guard will open the outer door once these doors are securely closed. Good day.”

She stood with her hands clasped professionally in front of her as the glass doors silently shut. A few seconds later, the security guard on the street opened the heavy mahogany door and nodded in a genuinely respectful way as they walked out onto the sunny London sidewalk.

Max pulled Bronte toward him, his arm securely around her waist. “What’s your pleasure, Bron?” Max took a quick look at his watch.

“I hate to admit it, but I’m a little tired. Do you need to go to your office? I am happy to hop into a taxi back to your place for a little afternoon nap.”

Max looked both ways, then guided Bronte across the crowded street. “Let’s walk for a few blocks and then I probably should head over to St. James’s for a couple of hours. I’d love to go over some property details with my attorney. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Mind? Why would I mind?”

“I don’t know… romantic moment, our first day in London? I don’t know. I guess I forget that you are not really the sentimental type.”

She smiled then looked down at her left hand. “I think you’ve gone the distance in the sentiment department today, Max. Let me put my weary head down for a few hours and maybe it will fortify me for when I meet your mom later.”

“All right then.”

“Where are we going for dinner, by the way?”

“Mother wanted us to come to Northrop House in Mayfair—”

“Oh… a casual night at home?”

“Yeah, I thought it might be a bit of a drag, so I suggested Birches over in Kensington. Mother loves it and I hoped that our announcement might go over better in public.”

“Aaah. Safety in numbers or something.”

Max looked down at the sidewalk. “Or something.”

“Will Devon be there?”

“Yes, I invited him. More safety in numbers, right?” Max was trying to stay cheerful, but Bronte could feel his mood sliding into an almost palpable trepidation.

“Max, you have finally started to chip away at my natural state of extreme skepticism. Don’t blow it by going all panicky on me now.”

He smiled thinly. “It will be over soon.”

“Well, that was stirring. Now I feel really psyched.” She rolled her eyes and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “What time should I be ready to leave?”

“We are meeting at Birches at seven thirty, so I will pick you up at seven fifteen. The restaurant is near my place. Does that sound good?”

“Of course.”

He hailed a cab and helped Bronte get in. Max held the taxi door open a little longer than necessary as he watched Bronte lean forward and tell the driver his address. He liked the sound of it: his address coming out of her mouth, with that American accent—all business. She was already riffling through her purse looking for her cell phone, then clicking on her email icon, before she tossed her hair aside, looked up, and realized he was still standing there.

“What?” she laughed.

“Out of sight, out of mind, I see.”

“Well, somebody’s got to get some work done around here, and it’s still morning in New York.” She held her phone slightly to the side.

“I know. I’m off to do the same, but I think I’ll just stroll to the office and savor the memory of you and me alone in the vault.”

She smiled and reached out her free hand to grasp his. “I love you, Max. I’ll see you soon.” He smiled in return and released her hand.

He shut the cab door, gave it a firm slap-slap, and watched the back of Bronte’s head through the rear window as the taxi slid away and was swallowed into the heavy London traffic.

Despite his joking with Bronte about being out of sight and out of mind, he had to admit it was something they actually shared. When they had been together in Chicago, he had been at the height of defending his PhD work on his dissertation. As intense and exhilarating as their physical life together had been, they were always able to direct their attention squarely on their work when the time came. He had presented his oral thesis in front of some of the most discerning academics in the field of corporate finance. Initially, he had worried that Bronte was going to be too much of a distraction, but it proved to be a baseless concern.

He walked down to St. James’s where he had set up the family offices after his father’s death. His mother had pleaded with him to use the study at Northrop House, but he had absolutely refused. He treated the dukedom and its holdings as a serious financial business concern, and he wasn’t about to run it by proxy from some Regency antique escritoire in Mayfair. Several private banks and family trusts had offices nearby, including the Rothschilds and the Guinnesses. It was a millionaire’s ghetto of sorts.

He sat down at his immaculate, nondescript, brown institutional desk and was relieved to feel that the sweet memory of Bronte in the vault had receded considerably. He was going to be able to turn his full attention to a land dispute at Dunlear that was presenting a complex array of obstacles. Unfortunately, concentration was not the problem, but keeping track of the time once he was consumed by a particular mathematical problem was.

A few hours later, across town, Bronte had tried on every different outfit she had packed and still didn’t like how she looked. It was five after seven and she was pacing around Max’s bedroom in her slip and high heels.

Catherine Malandrino dress? Too frilly.

J. Crew mustard-yellow pants? Not respectful enough for dinner with the duchess.

Barneys navy suit? Too mannish.

Sexy silk tank top with Rick Owens back slit skirt? Schizophrenic.

Michael Kors beige drawstring dress? Brown bag.

Armani black tunic dress? Funereal.

Good God. These had been all of her best eBay, Bluefly, and Barneys Warehouse prime finds. What the hell?

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Finally reverting to type, she opted for sexy schoolmarm. She put on her navy pencil skirt and a crisp, feminine but not too fussy, white button-down shirt. She tried to dress it up with a wide patent leather belt and a pair of black patent-leather peep-toe heels that Sarah had given her the day before she had left for London.

“For good luck!” she had said with a kiss.

Well, here she was wearing them, and the luck did not feel forthcoming. Mr. I’ll-Pick-You-Up-at-Seven-Fifteen was still AWOL and
tardy
was not the first impression she wanted to give the Duchess of Northrop on their inaugural meeting.

Fuck.

Her cell phone started ringing; somewhere under the pile of her entire travel wardrobe was her purse, deep inside of which, presumably, rested her blasted cell phone. She dug it out on the last ring.

“This is Bronte.”

She knew it was Max, but her mood was too peevish to give him a kinder greeting.

“I am so sorry, Bron. I got completely involved in the agricultural dispute and whether or not we are going to be able to move forward with the drainage works on the entire six hundred arable hectares or if we—”

“You know what, Max? I don’t give a rat’s ass about arable hectares right now. I am having a fucking meltdown here. Are you still at the office, because I am not going to meet your mother alone, I’ll tell you right—”

“Of course, I am not still at the office, Bron. I am on my way to pick you up right now. I was just calling to see if you could meet me out on the Fulham Road in five minutes, at the corner of the entrance to the mews, and then you can hop in the cab and we’ll be right as rain—”

“Enough with the chipper BS. I have worked myself into quite a lather. I’ll see you on the corner.”

She turned her phone off and stared at it for a full minute. Obviously she cared about the arable hectares… but, fuck, did she have to care about them right now?

She pursed her lips and took a credit card, some cash, and her passport out of her big day bag and slid them into the sleek, oblong Anya Hindmarch black patent-leather clutch that Sarah had coerced her into buying on sale last spring at Bergdorf’s. At least with the belt, the bag, and the shoes, she felt properly armed to deal with the coming storm. She threw in a lip gloss and her cell phone, then walked downstairs, almost tripping on the second-to-last step.

Perfect
, she thought.
I’ll fall flat on my face
.

She grabbed the keys to the house off the mahogany table by the front door and headed out onto the cobbled mews. Obviously, no one in high heels had played a part in the urban development known as cobblestones.

How the hell was she supposed to look like all that and a bag of chips when her heels were catching in the cracks of the street? She made her wobbly way out to the Fulham Road at almost the exact moment Max’s cab pulled up. He jumped out and gave her a quick woo-hoo whistle, followed by a peck on the cheek and the press of his hand on the small of her back to guide her into the cab. Almost before the door had closed behind him, the driver was on his way north toward the tiny restaurant in Kensington.

“I am so sorry, Bron—”

“Don’t worry about it. I was a cow. I will always be late if I’m at work, I’ll warn you right now. I’m horribly unreliable. I just—”

“You look great, by the way.” He came in for a kiss.

“Watch the lipstick!” she cried as she pushed him away.

“For future reference, we are never going out to dinner again if I am not allowed to kiss you in the taxi.” He fumed like a toddler and crossed his arms.

Bronte smiled and let her hand rest innocently on his thigh.

“Where’s the ring?!” Max grabbed her other hand.

“Back at the house. Why? Did you want me to wear it?”

He leaned toward the hard plastic divider in the taxi without a second glance toward Bronte. “Driver, please turn back,” he said with terse authority, then he sat back to look at her. “Of course I wanted you to wear it. I would have thought—”

“It’s kind of huge, Max. I’m not really accustomed to it yet.”

“Accustomed to it?” He laughed as if she were being ridiculous. “Get over yourself!” He was trying to make light of her modesty, but it came out as plain old arrogance. “I want the whole world to see that ring on your finger,” he added as he looked out the window.

“The whole world? Or just your mother?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he said, turning to face her again.

“You know damn well what I mean. What did you think, Max? That if I walked into the restaurant with that headlight on my left hand it would take the edge off? Make it easier for you to introduce me to your mother as your fait accompli fiancée?” She pulled her hand from his grasp.

“Bronte. Why do you have to twist this all around?”

“Me twist it around?! Are you fucking kidding me? We are going to be totally late! And for what? So I can parade around with that ginormous diamond—”

“What are you saying? You were not planning on wearing it all the time?”

“Well, I mean, it’s bordering on ostentatious, don’t you think?”

Max silently counted to ten as he looked out at the anonymous parade of seeming normalcy that was sliding past his window. He tried not to explode in pure rage. He turned back to look Bronte in the eye and in very slow, very modulated tones, he continued.

“Bronte, it was my understanding—unspoken, I admit—that, yes, you would wear the ring
all
the
time
because you would be engaged and subsequently married to me
all
the
time
. I hadn’t even thought of discussing it because it seemed patently obvious, to me at least.”

“Max—”

“Bronte, we’re here.” He gestured toward the passage that led to his mews house. “Please go back into the house and get the ring. If you refuse to wear it, at the very least, I can carry it with me so we don’t get burgled and lose a family heirloom.”

She stared at him as if she no longer knew who he was. In a daze, she got out of the taxi and headed back across the infernal cobblestones, inserted the shaking key into the lock, walked upstairs to the bathroom, got the ring out of her makeup case, slid it unemotionally, forcefully onto her left ring finger, made her way back down the stairs, locked the front door, tripped on another cobblestone, swore, and then got back in the taxi with a firm slam of the black door.

By this point, it was seven forty.

Bronte was wiped.

Max was still fuming but trying not to show it. He reached for her hand and she pulled it away and folded her arms tighter than necessary, stuffing her fingers childishly under her arms.

“Bronte, this is ridiculous—”

“Ridiculous?
Ridiculous?!
”

“No need to shriek—”

“I will
shriek
any time I damn well feel like it, but especially when you act like a fucking Greek shipping magnate who wants his latest bimbo to sport the day’s haul from the vault—”

“It is nothing like that, Bron.” Max tried to keep his voice even. “This is all your crisis-building. Only you could turn this into my failure to appreciate your tender sensibilities. I just gave you one of the most precious—”

“Stop! Stop right fucking now.” The taxi slowed abruptly. “No, not you, Driver. Sorry.” She looked down at her knees. “I’m just not up for it, Max.”

“What?!” His head whipped around to take her in. “What the hell are you not
up
for?”

“I am not up for sitting across the table from your mother so she can make snide remarks about how low brow I am, how delightfully
common
I am—”