Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,67
be so furious to learn it is me—the most persistent and irritating bane of their life—they’ll order the edition delayed or, at the very least, every copy of that journal destroyed as a mark of protest before they can send it out. Rivenhall’s secrets will remain exactly that—secret. I promise...’
Her hand reached up to touch his face and he leaned into her palm. Then immediately pulled away when her tingling fingers had sought his hair and he had given her an intense and troubled look she couldn’t begin to decipher.
Other than it was troubled and she was the cause of it.
Feeling instantly awkward at indulging in such an obviously affectionate gesture when he had made it plain days ago he did not reciprocate the feeling, she glanced at her offending appendage, cursing it for having a mind of its own, then shoved the guilty hand behind her back in case it was tempted to go wandering again. Which it was.
‘Thank you, Effie.’ He was backing away, putting several feet of distance between them. Distance which felt more temporal than physical. Significant again, as so many odd moments with Max so often were. ‘I shall see you tomorrow evening, then...’
‘Stay.’ She didn’t want him to leave. Despite all her anger at him, all her hurt at his cutting uninterest, she couldn’t bear him going just yet when he was clearly upset and she had caused it. ‘You are soaked through. Have some tea... I’ll fetch some towels.’
‘No.’ He couldn’t meet her eyes again. ‘Pointless. I’ll only get soaked the second I leave.’ He gazed longingly towards the door and she felt her throat tighten at the blatant rebuff.
‘Mrs Farley made fruitcake.’ Why was she practically begging when only minutes ago she had wanted to give him what for? Pathetically, she gestured towards the desk where the housekeeper had left a slab of his favourite confection and was horrified to see the rusty spearhead still sticking out of it. The sight of it seemed to bring Max up short, too, because he blinked at it, then at her and shook his head emphatically.
‘No, thank you.’ Too polite. Too formal. He couldn’t meet her gaze. All very explicit signals he had misinterpreted her comfort as an attempted seduction and was plainly eager to run for the hills at the hideous prospect. ‘Adam and the children are returning back to London shortly and I promised Eleanor I would be there to say goodbye...’
‘Of course.’ It was staggering that a second rejection from him could hurt as much as the first, when the first had been so cutting and decisive she really no longer harboured false expectations or ridiculously girlish hope for more. Yet it did. Max had made it obvious he did not want her in a romantic sense—she’d already had that spelled out loud and clear—but clearly he no longer wanted to be her friend any more either and, as much as she had fantasised about stepping back from the relationship to serve him right for disappointing her, knowing he would be nothing but relieved at the news was an awful blow.
‘I will send the carriage tomorrow.’
She found herself bobbing a stiff and painfully awkward curtsy in the wake of the new parameters he had set, when she had never curtsied to him before. ‘That is very thoughtful of you.’
He bowed and hot tears prickled at this new starched formality. ‘Good day.’
No, it wasn’t. It was one of the worst. For the first time in a month she was categorically relegated back to being the annoying and peculiar oddity again, when for a while, with him, she had cast off those shackles and just been Effie.
‘Good day to you, too...my lord.’
* * *
‘Oh, I understand perfectly, little Brother! You hold all of her hopes and dreams, the fruit of two years of her labours and the power to help her in the palm of your hand and intend to crush it into dust. And I refuse to be a party to it!’
Max had known it was a mistake to confide anything to Eleanor because she always took the opposite stance to his, and always had, purely to vex him.