Just then the fireworks began to rain brilliantly from the sky. The arbor reflected the colors, red and blue and gold, bright as day one moment and dark again the next. Marietta had jumped when the first volley went off, but Max wrapped her in his arms, safe, and he bent to cover her mouth was his. Tasting her, caressing her, promising her everything.
Marietta kissed him back, the ache in her body building as she pressed against him. And yet even as desire spun out of control, the little devil in her head was still there, spoiling the moment for her, gleefully listing all the terrors she had thought vanquished: Being left, being abandoned, her heart being broken.
Would Max leave her when he understood Aphrodite’s would one day be hers, or would he insist that she refuse her parents’ gift? Marietta wondered how she could bear to scorn what they had offered her with such love in their hearts. And was a man who insisted she do such a thing to preserve his own reputation really worth having anyway?
Max had stopped kissing her.
“What is it?” he asked, a new sharp note in his voice. “Marietta?”
She opened her mouth but nothing came out.
Max set her away, and even in the shadows she saw how his brows had drawn down over his eyes as he stared at her. Gently he reached around to the back of her head and undid the ties, finally removing her golden mask.
Marietta felt as if he had stripped her naked—and this time it was not a pleasant sensation.
Something was wrong. Max could see it in her eyes, read it in her face, sense it while he was kissing her. One moment she was his, completely and utterly in tune to him, and the next he had lost her.
“What is it?” he demanded, worried. “Marietta, what’s the matter?”
She stared back at him like a rabbit would a fox. The expression in her eyes frightened him—he felt as if there were a hollow opening up inside him—and he wanted to shake her until she widened her gaze in that mock-innocent way and laughed and admitted it was nothing, and that she was just playing with him again…
“Max, I have something to tell you.” Her voice was quiet and a little tremulous. It was the voice that belonged to the girl who had spoken about her past; the somber girl who had been abandoned and hurt, and who had never recovered.
She is going to tell me she can’t marry me, he thought bleakly. Can’t or won’t. And everything I have been hoping for and planning for will be gone. His sense of despair was so great it was beyond imagining, because Max knew that without Marietta Greentree his life would cease to be.
More fireworks thundered overhead, their beauty truly spectacular, but Max didn’t see them. His gaze was fixed on Marietta’s face, and he was waiting for her to speak.
That was the reason he didn’t notice the man in the shabby brown coat, walking along the narrow path that passed by the entrance to the arbor. He couldn’t hear him, either, the fireworks were too loud.
“Tell me then,” Max said, sounding cold and distant, as if he was already alone.
But Marietta’s gaze had shifted past him and widened. A splash of green in the sky turned her face a sickly color, and then her fingers dug hard into his arms. “You!” she gasped, just as Max began to turn.
The man standing behind them wasn’t very tall, but he was broad, with the sturdiness of someone who had worked physically hard all his life. His clothes were cheap and well worn, and his face was misshapen and rather frightening, as though he had once been a fighter. All of this Max saw in a moment, before he realized the man was holding a pistol.
Marietta screamed, clutching at Max’s arm as he tried to push her away, out of the line of fire. The man raised the barrel.
“Move aside,” he snarled. “I don’t want to kill you too, lady.”
“You’ve been following me,” she said, her voice shaking violently. “I’ve seen you before.”
“Not you,” the man retorted impatiently. “Him! I was waitin’ my chance, and now I’ve found it. Now get out o’ me way so I can earn me money.”
“No, I won’t let you…” She clung on to Max, despite his efforts to unfasten her fingers from his clothing and push her to safety. She was shaking with terror, but she wouldn’t be moved. The man with the pistol growled again for her to get out of the way.
“No!” she screamed, the sound shredding the night. “Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt Max, please! Oh please!”
Max could see the man’s frustration was making him even more unpredictable. The pistol was waving dangerously as he took a step forward and then a step back. In a moment he would shoot, and it was Marietta who would be hit. And Max could not allow that to happen.
He struggled with her, lifting her bodily, and this time he wrenched her hands free, holding them as he shoved her aside. She stumbled, cried out, and sank to the ground.
The man lifted the gun, his face grim and determined, and prepared to fire. “I’ll make it clean, sir. Don’t worry, you won’t feel nothin’.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Slipper.”
Dobson’s voice was soft with menace as he stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the path. He was holding a pistol of his own, and this one was aimed at Slipper’s back.
“Bloody hell,” Slipper moaned, twisting around to see who it was. “Is that you, Jemmy?”