Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,45
tolerating his presence or even befriending him was a completely different thing to allowing him to kiss her or caress her and he couldn’t imagine her wanting to do either of those things to him in a million years. Not when he couldn’t stand the dreadful sight of himself without wanting to be sick on the floor.
‘The prospect of a round dwelling is incredibly exciting! Unheard of, even. We’ll have to dig a few more trenches to properly confirm it, of course.’
‘By we, Eleanor, she means me.’ Max rolled his eyes for effect. ‘While she wafts around with a trowel on the last six inches of soft, flaky peat once the hard labour is done.’
As he had expected, she poked her nose in the air and peered at him imperiously down it. ‘I managed to dig my own trenches quite well enough before you moved to Rivenhall, so I dare say I’d manage if you stopped insisting on assisting, Max. Not that I ever recall asking you to assist. You took the task upon yourself.’
‘That is because Max is still a gentleman beneath his sour exterior, Effie, no matter how much he tries to hide it. Clearly you bring it back out of him.’ Eleanor shot him a loaded glance over her sherry glass. ‘Isn’t that right, Brother?’
‘When are you going home, Sister? Surely you must miss your poor, put-upon family even if they are undoubtedly glad of the respite?’
‘I do miss them. Two weeks is a long time.’
‘It is. A very long time. Long past time you were off, in fact.’
Typically, Eleanor decided to ignore him to speak to their guest. ‘And if your roundhouse is an exciting new discovery, what do you intend to do with it?’
For the first time, he watched Effie deflate as she shrugged. ‘What can I do with it? Nothing, I suppose. Although on principle I will doubtless write a paper to torture myself and send it to the Society of Antiquaries which they will, as usual, completely ignore. Then I shall have to wait for a man to make the discovery somewhere else years down the line and get all the credit for it when his work is published in Archaeologia.’
‘You should get the credit for it.’ Max hadn’t intended for his statement to come out quite so vehemently. It was so passionate it made his meddling sister pause mid-sip before making a poor show of covering her delighted smile behind the delicate glass as he tempered his voice. ‘Your work should be published.’
‘It’s always been my dream to be published! To be recognised as significant in something at least... That would mean the world.’ She caught him staring at her and, as if she realised she had just revealed an important part of herself, shrugged and looked towards Eleanor, pretending feeling insignificant was of no matter when it had to be. Max had felt a lot of things in his life, but being insignificant wasn’t one of them. ‘But I won’t and that is that. My own stupid fault for being born in this body.’
Unconsciously she gestured to her chest and it pulled his eyes there, to the hint of cleavage visible over the neckline of her pretty dress before he wrenched them away. Something which his blasted sister clearly noticed, too, judging by her broad grin visible alongside either edge of her glass.
‘Maybe you should submit it under a pseudonym... A male one. I have heard many female authors do that as it is the only way for them to be published.’
‘I suppose I could...’ She didn’t sound keen. She sounded disappointed and rightly so.
‘But Effie still wouldn’t get the credit.’ And that felt grossly unfair. She was so smart she’d wipe the floor with all those fusty, narrow-minded antiquarians. ‘I say you should persevere. In fact, I am inspired to write them a sternly worded letter on the subject.’
‘You? Write a strongly worded letter!’ His sister burst out laughing. ‘He would send them a list, Effie, like he sent me whenever he arrived in port. If that. Max is incapable of creating prose which does not read like a ship’s manifest.’