Lady Vice Read Free Page A

legs shook with cold.
    “How dare you?” Without waiting for an answer, she ran the back of her hand across her lips, wiping away the remnants of their kiss. She leaned forward to stand, but her wobbly legs refused to hold her weight.
    Max reached out.
    “Keep away!”
    Max jerked his head to the side, as if she had smacked him. His face grew grim and he stood. He stilled his half-taken step.
    “I apologize, Lady Vaile.” He folded his hands behind his back. “I—I have no explanation.” He turned toward the water and squinted into the morning.
    She braced against the tree and willed herself to stand. Max made no effort to assist again, which was fine, just fine, just as it should be. She ran her hands over her rumpled, dampened skirts but only succeeded in spreading mud. No one who saw her would believe she had not…
    Well, she had been doing exactly what they would believe. But the circumstances…
    She groaned. The circumstances left even less room for explanation. She settled her racing pulse with a few reassuring breaths. She would live through this. She had lived through worse.
    But Max must leave. She could only get through this mess the way she got through everything else: alone. His presence was a lie that made her long for things clearly never meant to be hers, if they had ever existed at all— love, peace, and refuge.
    “Go, Max,” she choked.
    He glanced sideways. “Is that what you want? Truly?”
    No. She wanted nothing more than to wind her arms around his neck and sink into the power and confidence he exuded.
    She studied the fine lines around his eyes and the creases in his forehead. She glimpsed the awkward, uncertain boy who had been her first and only love, beneath the man who existed in another world, a world that would never accept her again.
    They could never reclaim all they’d lost.
    Vaile was dead. Dead. But his cousin Montechurch still lived. What had Monte told her? You can leave Vaile, but your sins will haunt you until death. I will haunt you until death.
    Her mind conjured leering faces seen through a suffocating veil. The early morning breeze infused with the remembered stench of mating, sweating bodies.
    She blinked at Max—so respectable, so sincere. God, how he would hate her when he learned the truth.
    She no longer had anything to give. Vaile had taken everything. There would be no second chance. She would preserve her youthful love untainted. Losing that one pure thing would be her final undoing.
    A muscle twitched in Max’s jaw and an unfamiliar sensation of tenderness blossomed in her heart. He had risked much by coming here this evening. His patron, the duke of Wynchester, had broken alliances with men just for speaking to his estranged duchess, and the duchess numbered among Lavinia’s most intimate friends.
    She drank in his essence, taking one last look before sending him away. She tried to preserve the image of the light against his features, the smooth angle of his cheek, and the earthy green of his eyes.
    “Thank you—” she said, her voice cracking.
    He raised his brow.
    “—for being the one to tell me.”
    His shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly, but she saw and understood.
    He cleared his throat. “I had to come, Lavinia. If there is anything I can do—”
    “No. What you’ve done already was…” she searched for words, “…a true kindness.”
    Was that soft voice hers? She could not afford tenderness. She needed anger to give her the strength to make him go.
    I would not have met Vaile had Max stayed in Thistleton, where he belonged.
    “Mr. Harrison,” she made her voice low and resolute, “you must go now.”
    “Allow me to stay until the magistrate arrives.”
    “No.”
    Pity, enough to make her shudder, lit his eyes. Damnation. He held something back. “What is it?”
    He took her hands in his. “I have spoken with the surgeon. The coroner’s court will convene a jury later today. I still hold hope they will return a verdict of