Free To Win a Lady's Heart (The Landon Sisters) by Ingrid Hahn Page A

you should, too.”
    “We could discuss the matter.” Max, in his shirtsleeves, leaned over the table, took his shot, and missed. “Damnation.” He straightened and tugged the bottom of his waistcoat. “Anyway, the question of a mistress doesn’t apply to me, because I’m never going to marry.”
    “I wish you’d discussed your feelings on matrimony with your mother before she threw the house party.” His tone was dry, but he could not have been more insincere. Had the countess not stuffed the old manor house with a dozen eligible ladies, with Corbeau added to the ranks of Lady Maxfeld’s house party strictly to even out the ratio of gentlemen to ladies, he’d never have been locked in the storeroom with Grace.
    Poor woman, throwing that house party in the all but barren hope that her son might find a bride, only to suffer the engagement of her son’s friend.
    “You think I haven’t told her?”
    “Why don’t you want to marry?”
    Max’s smile turned wry. “Any woman who’d want me couldn’t be worth the having.”
    “You don’t hold females in very high esteem, do you?”
    “On the contrary.” Max’s expression displayed marks of sincerity so rare on his face. “I hold them in such esteem that I’d never curse one into a marriage with me.”
    “What about your line?”
    “The Maxfeld line will continue well enough through my cousin, as well it should, which is more than could be said for you up until a few weeks ago.” His eyes narrowed. “Just what happened between you and Lady Grace in that storeroom, anyway?”
    Corbeau leaned over the table and took aim. “Nothing.” The word was punctuated with the sharp crack of the billiard balls snapping against each other.
    His ball sunk into the correct pocket.
    “Nothing?” Max lowered his head to better give Corbeau an incredulous look, his tone flat.
    “We talked. It was all very innocent.” He took his next shot, the ball stopping at the brink of where it should have fallen.
    “Would it have remained innocent had you not been discovered?”
    Corbeau bristled. “Of course it would have.”
    “You wouldn’t even have tried for a kiss?”
    The idea of what it would be like to kiss Grace was always close. In his dreams he’d done far more.
    But that was the licentious male in him, untamed and feral and completely unfit society if he tried to act on such base impulses. Moreover, he wouldn’t be worthy of Grace if he did. He’d have to strip away all his honor to dare such a thing. Oh, he teased. But he wouldn’t act on the impulse. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t dare. “Not before we’re married.” And as to that, they couldn’t be married soon enough.
    Until then, he would do everything in his power to fight his base instincts.
    “We’re talking about Lady Grace, aren’t we? I mean about the ‘winning a woman’ business?”
    “Of course.”
    “And I’m correct in understanding that she’s less than keen on the idea of the marriage?”
    “You are.”
    From where he’d been hunched to study the geometry of the current arrangement on the table, Max straightened. “And you haven’t kissed her?”
    “Like I said—”
    “There’s your mistake. You must kiss her.”
    “How do you know the family, by the way? I didn’t know you did. Come to think of it, what were they doing at Sutterton Grange that week, anyway?”
    “Ah. Mother and Lady Bennington were at school together. They needed a place to stay, and—”
    “Needed a place to stay?”
    “Mmm. Worn out their welcome with the relations that begrudgingly keep them, it seems. You didn’t know?”
    “I didn’t.”
    Max gave him a suspicious look. “How are things going between you and Lady Grace?”
    Corbeau leaned over the table to take his shot, not looking his friend in the eye as he spoke. “She wants to break the engagement.”
    “Forgive me, but I think I like this woman rather more than I thought I did.”
    Corbeau went dark. “I’m not forgiving you for