A Princess for Christmas - Jenny Holiday Page 0,111
It’s madness.”
“Excuse me?” Max had always been cheerfully resigned to their turkey-baster-and-open-marriage plan. “I appreciate you trying with Mr. Benz earlier, but since when have you thought this was anything other than a strategic union we’d resigned ourselves to?”
“It still is that for me, but it’s clearly not for you, so we’ve got to call it off.”
“But it’s not like I’m going to marry Leo.”
He shrugged as if that wasn’t the most preposterous idea he’d ever heard.
“Max. I can’t marry Leo.” Could she? No universe, right? That’s the phrase that had been echoing through her head during the confrontation with her father.
“Let me ask you, why did you agree to marry me in the first place?”
“I don’t know that I did agree. It’s more that I went along with it.”
“All right, then why did you go along with it?”
“I—” Because going along with things was what she did?
But . . . was that true anymore? Marie thought back to last night, when Leo had listed off all the ways she hadn’t bent to her father’s—or Mr. Benz’s—will.
“I’ll tell you why I went along with it,” Max said. “Because I like you. I like you better than most people. I’m never going to meet anyone I want to marry. Since I have to marry, it might as well be to you.”
“I know.” She tried not to let the frustration she felt come through in her tone. Max was only trying to help. “We’ve talked about all this.”
“It’s all the same to me,” he went on, as if he hadn’t heard her. “But it’s not all the same to you. Not anymore.”
It wasn’t. It wasn’t the same at all. There was theory, and there was . . . Leo.
A sob started to rise through her chest. She tried to swallow it—there was no point in crying—but Max knew her too well. He scooted closer and took her hand.
“I’m not going to pretend I understand this love business. But I can grasp it intellectually, and I know you well enough to know that now that you’ve had it—even if it can’t work out with Leo—you can’t settle for . . .” He grinned. “My sorry ass.”
“What am I going to do, though, if he doesn’t want me? Just not get married?” Could she do that?
He only shrugged again. She glared at him. She needed real advice here.
He sobered. “Don’t you at least think the first step is to get out of marrying me?”
“I have no idea what my father will do. What if he . . . kicks me out?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say disown.
“Does it matter? You have money.”
She did. Her mother had had a trust, held independent of any of her father’s family money. She’d drawn on it for their impromptu trips to America. She used to say, “It’s my money. I can do what I like with it.” Marie had forgotten that. Her mother used to say that rather vehemently, too. Defiantly, almost. As if someone had objected to the way she was spending it.
And Marie knew who that someone was, didn’t she?
Her mother had bequeathed that money to Marie. It wasn’t a lot. Maybe a hundred thousand euros. But that was more than the average person had. It was enough to rent somewhere to live and tide her over until she figured out a way to make more.
“Max. Could I . . . get a job?”
He sniffed. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to, but, yes, of course you can. You can do anything you want to, Marie.” He still had her hand, and he give it a quick, hard squeeze. “I’ll help you. You can stay with me in Cambridge until you get on your feet if you need to.” Her skin started tingling. The idea felt simultaneously so ludicrous and so obvious. She’d never had a job. But she’d given a speech to the UN that had been heard and applauded by some of the world’s most powerful people. She was a mechanical engineer by training, too!
What had Imogen said that first night in the pub? Change or die. But . . . “What about your father, though?” In some ways, Max’s father was worse than hers. Father hadn’t always been the remote, uncaring man he was now. The duke, by contrast, didn’t seem to care at all about Max and Sebastian except in terms of what they could do for the dukedom.
“You worry about your father, and I’ll worry about mine.”