Rules of Passion Read Online Free PDF Page A

or my household bills. Although my cousin Harold has been generous, I cannot…I do not expect him to support me.”
    “Why not?” Ian asked coldly. “He’s taken what is yours, hasn’t he?”
    Max’s handsome face turned grim. “It isn’t Harold’s fault this has happened. I don’t blame my father either, not really. I’ve never seen him as hurt and angry as he was the night he read out my mother’s letter.”
    Ian did not dispute him, although his expression said he would like to.
    “And then there is my name,” Max went on quietly. “I can no longer call myself Lord Roseby—I am plain Max Valland. And although my mother may be dead, her reputation as a caring and generous woman, an honest and respectable woman, is in jeopardy. Vicious gossip follows me wherever I go. I am the scandal of the moment, and I do not like it.”
    “You think it’s true then, that your father—?”
    “Is not my father? That he married her all unsuspecting, believing the child she was carrying was his own? I have seen the proof with my own eyes—my mother’s letter of admission—I must believe it.”
    “So who is your father, Max?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Not even an inkling?” Ian asked softly.
    Max hesitated and then he said, “No,” firmly. Ian knew there was no point in trying to force Max to confide in anyone, that was not Max’s way. Max would tell only when and if he wanted to; when the burden was finally too heavy and he had to lay some part of it down. Ian had often thought that a wife was exactly what Max needed, a strong woman to confide in and stand at his side, someone to love him whatever name he bore. But then that, he supposed,was the wish of most men, and most men never had it realized.
    Max might not be an easy man, and at the moment he was a troubled man, but he had many good points. Ian only wished that Miss Greentree of the big blue eyes and irrepressible smile had had the chance to see some of them.

Chapter 2
    T he sounds and sights within Vivianna’s bedchamber were almost more than Marietta could bear. She did not like to see her sister in pain. Who would have thought it would be quite so exhausting to bring a baby into the world? Even one as anticipated and loved as Vivianna and Oliver’s baby.
    Marietta wasn’t supposed to be in the room, she knew that, but in the confusion no one had had the time or energy to send her out. Besides, Oliver was here, too, and he wasn’t supposed to be! A father, the doctors had informed him roundly, should be at his club awaiting the news in the presence of his friends, or else downstairs with a glass of brandy, pacing the carpet. Certainly not up in his wife’s bedchamber holding her hand.
    Just then Vivianna gave one last cry of effort, and suddenly it was over. The baby was born.
    “A boy!” declared the doctor with obvious relief, and the baby was taken off to be sponged andwrapped in the same shawl used by Montegomery babies for hundreds of years. Evidently this didn’t suit Oliver and Vivianna’s son, because when he was presented to the proud parents he was howling loud enough to wake the whole of Berkley Square.
    Gazing at Oliver across their son’s red, angry little face, Vivianna gave him a beaming smile. “You’re not the last of the Montegomeries now,” she said, her voice husky from exhaustion. Then, tears filling her hazel eyes, “Oh, Oliver…”
    Oliver drew them both gently into his arms, and closed his own eyes, burying his face in her hair. In the bedchamber people moved about them, tidying up, murmuring words of congratulation, but Oliver and Vivianna and their son were in a little island all their own.
    Watching them, Marietta felt the burn of tears in her own eyes—a mixture of sorrow and joy and even a touch of envy. For this would never be her life. She was destined for something very different, and if her hopes became reality then it would be a life to savor and to look back on with a smile of satisfaction. But she