Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,69
Wishing it were true, but accepting that it wasn’t. ‘You really need to take off those rose-tinted spectacles, Eleanor, and face the harsh facts...’
‘You need face the harsh facts, too, Max. If you pursue this course of action out of self-preservation, you will only end up pushing her away in the process. This decision will ruin things between you.’
‘How many times do I have to tell you there is nothing between us?’ At least not any more. ‘There never was.’
‘I have eyes, Max. I can see how much she means to you.’
‘We are friends.’ Were friends. Before he’d acted on impulse and ruined everything with one short, ill-considered and life-altering kiss. ‘Just friends, Eleanor.’
His sister smiled maternally and reached across the table to squeeze his arm. ‘Friendship is the perfect foundation to build love upon... Tell her how you feel.’
‘Out of the question.’ The words had flown out before he had considered the gravitas of them. Typically, his sister grasped them straight away and leapt on them.
‘Maybe she feels the same? Have you considered that?’
‘She doesn’t.’ There was no point in denying it when he’d already let the cat out of the bag. Eleanor would never let it go unless he killed her romanticised and forlorn hope stone dead, just as his had been.
He watched her face fall and saw the sympathy in her eyes. ‘You’ve told her already, then?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake, Max. Then how could you possibly...?’
He held up his palm and tried not to show how thoroughly wounded he was by Effie’s latest rejection. ‘I am not some gauche and inexperienced virgin, Eleanor... I do know when a woman isn’t romantically interested in a man.’
They tended to react to an unwanted kiss with obvious discomfort as a rule, then hastily retreated, and in case he was in any doubt she felt disgusted at the prospect, her response this afternoon had confirmed it. She had inadvertently touched his scars and, when he had pulled back—filled with longing and foolish hope that to her they really didn’t matter—she had stared briefly at her palm as if they had burned it hideously, too, before she fisted it behind her back and he’d watched her erect a sturdy and prickly fence around herself to keep him well away. He still felt nauseous thinking about it because that hideously polite and distant curtsy had almost killed him. And he certainly did not want to contemplate exactly why she had stabbed the fruitcake.
‘Perhaps you used to have a good gauge on women—but I suspect your view of such things has become skewed since Miranda...’
Max leapt out of his seat to show his sister their conversation was done. He was not going to rehash the demise of his engagement on the same day as he had buried his blossoming dreams of Effie.
‘Maybe the enforced proximity of this unwelcome visit is exactly what you both need to sort things out. Why don’t I have some rooms readied for your guests in case you change your mind before tomorrow?’
Enforced proximity would kill him for sure. ‘The long and short of it is...’ He sucked in a calming breath and decided to bite the bullet in as brief and as matter of fact a way as he could without entirely humiliating himself in the process. ‘I’ve completely and thoroughly murdered the friendship between Effie and myself.’
‘Murdered is probably a tad exaggerated...’
‘Trust me. It really isn’t. It’s been dead for almost a week already.’
‘Which is why you are actively avoiding her.’
He hadn’t entirely avoided her. He had sent her a heartfelt note, a tenuous olive branch suggesting they talk about it all, and she had ignored it. Doubtless she had only been polite yesterday because she was so eager to have her research published, although it hadn’t lasted long.
Eleanor’s expression was filled with pity now and he suppressed the urge to dash away from it so he could curl up in a ball somewhere and lick all his latest flayed, open wounds in private. ‘Prolonging the agony of it all to continue the acquaintance is...is...’ Emotion strangled his