Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,86
clumsily to open the door, still facing him. ‘My very first second kiss.’
The first of many if he had anything to say about it. ‘It bodes well for the third.’
‘Yes, it does... Will that be happening tomorrow?’ She clamped her mouth shut in the way she so often did when her thoughts escaped before she had time to stop them and he laughed.
‘I think I can guarantee it—Miss Never-been-kissed-twice-before.’
She smiled again, a little shyly, a little expectantly, as she slowly retreated across the landing to her bedchamber, her pretty eyes never once leaving his. ‘Goodnight, Max.’
‘Goodnight, Effie... Sleep tight.’
It was only after she had closed the door that her words permeated his lust-addled brain.
‘I can never accurately gauge people’s emotions until it is too late and I have gone too far... And it was obvious you regretted the last one...’
Had he been the one to get it all wrong all along?
Chapter Twenty-One
Dig Day 803: one brooch, fourteen shards of pottery—or perhaps it was thirteen? Or even sixteen...
It had been an odd day. So odd that even at this late hour she wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. There were so many things to think about. So much indecision it was all sending her mad. She didn’t have all the answers—but what she did know with complete certainty was that she needed Max.
‘Of course, Miranda was the worst kind of seductress.’ After two evenings left to their own devices while the men played billiards, they had exhausted all conversation about the charade they were performing for the antiquarians and had resorted to discussing the one thing that inextricably bound them.
Him.
‘Such a practised flirt never walked the earth before. All those calculated, heated glances, the rehearsed grace, the confident allure and that classical, effortless beauty... She was used to men dissolving in a puddle at her feet. She had been declared an Incomparable two Seasons before and wielded that title with brutal and well-aimed precision. Every man wanted her, so it was hardly a surprise she snared my brother. He didn’t stand a chance against all her obvious charms.’
It was all well and good hating Miranda on principle, but that didn’t help Effie’s cause on a practical level. If Miranda was the sort of woman he went for, she had little in her own arsenal to compete with the memory. Effie wasn’t a seductress or an Incomparable or in possession of classical and effortless beauty. She knew she was considered pretty, as that had been a frequent compliment over the years before her odd personality and manner sent the gentleman who had hastily bestowed the compliment running the obligatory mile to get away from her.
She certainly wasn’t graceful, was woefully incapable of flirting and the less said about her lack of grace the better. It didn’t bode well for her quest to convince Max they should be more than friends. ‘He must have loved her a great deal.’
Eleanor scoffed and shook her head. ‘He might think he did, but that wasn’t love. It was lust. With a healthy dash of one-upmanship. Pure and simple.’ Eleanor drained the last dregs of her fourth sherry and waved the empty glass around. ‘The trouble with my brother is he has always been competitive. He cannot stop himself. Miranda was the prize every bachelor in London wanted to win and he made it his mission to hoist the trophy. And the fool had no clue she made it easy for him because he was a trophy, too. The handsome, decorated naval hero who just happened to be in line to inherit all this alongside an earldom.’
She stifled a yawn and leaned closer. ‘It all happened too fast, if you ask me.’
‘Really?’
‘He was given extended shore leave while his ship was in dry dock at Portsmouth, fresh from the Battle of Vis and sporting a shiny new victor’s medal to make the ladies swoon, and he arrived in London to a hero’s welcome. Obviously, that set him a notch above all her battalions of eager suitors and she played him like a fiddle. It was a whirlwind romance.’ The whirlwind was a little slurred, but Effie was in