Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,49
foresight to check each one before he reads it after breakfast. But I didn’t think and he saw it, and he’s taken it badly.’
‘Poor Max.’ Effie’s heart bled for him. ‘And what a truly hateful woman to abandon him in his hour of need.’ She wanted to give the witch a piece of her mind. Right this instant. ‘What sort of a person does that?’
‘The sort who cares more for her own social standing and appearance than she ever cared for my brother! I have never told him...and I probably shouldn’t tell you...’ Eleanor lowered her voice to a whisper ‘...but a few weeks after he had returned, her visits to his sickbed became more sporadic. At first, I believed her flimsy excuses about being under the weather and exhausted from the trauma of it all—until I realised she was in fact back out in society attending every ball, soirée and tea as if Max did not exist.’
‘Oh, my goodness!’
‘And he kept asking after her. It was tragic, She would allow a week to pass between visits and when she did deign to grace us with her presence she never stayed very long. That hurt him deeply, but he never said anything. He stores everything inside, you see.’ She clutched her fist to her chest. ‘And I knew he was worried about it. So one day, I called upon her and tried to appeal to her better nature, citing how much her visits meant to my brother and how I believed they were essential in his recovery and do you know what she said?’ Effie dreaded to think. ‘That she wasn’t cut out to dance attendance on an invalid!’
‘But that is atrocious! After all he’d been through... How could anyone...?’ She was staggered that anyone could be so unfeeling.
‘It gets worse, Effie. I reminded her that the marriage vows stated a wife stand by her husband in sickness and in health and she countered that she hadn’t yet taken the vows and wasn’t entirely sure she was going to—as she felt that Max was no longer the man she had agreed to marry! Can you believe that?’
‘I have no words, Eleanor. None. I am so shocked...’ It really did beggar belief. Aside from the dreadful aftermath of his injuries, Max had lost his career, his ship and his fiancée, too, and all because he had tried to save his crew, then had the audacity to survive. Then another dreadful thought occurred to her. ‘Had your father died at this point also?’
Eleanor nodded and her expression turned fierce. ‘Oh, how I hate that woman and despise everything she has done to my brother. When he first came home he was optimistic and determined to fight, then after things ended between him and that foul harpy he changed. The light dimmed in his eyes and he lost the will to live. I do not think he has found it again since. I blame Miranda for all of it and I do not care if it is small-minded, but I wish her no luck, Effie.’ She gripped her hand and her expression hardened with disgust. ‘If I ever collide with her again, I swear as God is my witness, I shall spit in her eye!’
‘Then you are more civilised than I, Eleanor, because I have never met her or heard of her before today and I already want to wring her neck, then pummel her to a bloody pulp! What a witch! What an evil, malicious, spiteful...’ The fury and outrage she felt on his behalf burned hot in her gut and she didn’t realise she had leapt from her seat and started pacing until she stopped dead and pointed a quaking finger. ‘How far away is this Prittlewell House? Perhaps we should go there right now and give her what for?’
Through the tears, Eleanor smiled, her bottom lip quivering before she enveloped her in a hug. ‘Oh, I do love you, Effie! Max needs someone like you on his side.’
That simple, affectionate gesture touched her beyond belief. ‘Of course I am on his side. I am his friend. Or at least I hope I am. With Max it is hard to be sure.’
‘He plays his cards close to his chest. Too close nowadays but, and if