Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,88

catch it up.

‘Only another full day to get through and we can wave them off from the doorstep.’ The sands of time were clearly running out for Effie, too. She would leave hot on the heels of the antiquarians and, at this rate, without the promised third kiss she had been craving since last night or any clue how Max felt about her. ‘And we’ll be reading your work in that funny-sounding journal and you’ll be the talk of the antiquarian world.’

‘Well, Max will.’ A sacrifice she had accepted for the sake of knowledge when she had signed his name instead of hers. That didn’t make it any easier to swallow and the blatant unfairness of the world still galled.

‘But you will know it is yours and so do we. Perhaps in a few years, when times have changed, you will get the credit you deserve. Max will tell them the truth when the time comes, so you do not need to worry on that score. He might have abysmal taste in fiancées, but he is an honourable man to his core.’

He was. And a frustratingly difficult one to read.

Effie saw Eleanor to her door and then retreated into her own room to wait. No matter what time the dratted game of billiards finished, or how exhausted she felt from a day spent largely on edge, she needed to talk to Max alone to assess the lay of the land. She needed to know where she stood, although after her conversation with his sister, the spectre of Miranda now hovered ominously. How exactly was she supposed to compete with that?

She stared at her reflection in the dressing table mirror and tried to ignore her racing pulse.

What was Max thinking?

Hard to say. He had been perfectly pleasant all day. He’d placed a lingering kiss on the back of her head when she had arrived a tad flustered at breakfast—but as he was doing a splendid job of pretending to be her fiancé, he could have been acting. He had also been most solicitous during the long hours they had all spent digging, including her in conversations which two of the other gentlemen naturally excluded her from, helping her in and out of the trenches and offering her reassuring smiles throughout. But again, as her pretend fiancé he would do all those things, too, and in isolation they did not mean he was really as happy about everything as he looked.

As Eleanor had quite rightly pointed out—lust wasn’t love. And once again, her overactive imagination was running ahead of itself. Love did not happen overnight—unless you happened to be an Incomparable named Miranda—and it certainly was not something she could ask him about if she ever got him alone. Such declarations had to be offered freely, not prised out, and if she admitted she was falling hopelessly in love with him, he would probably baulk. She would most definitely not bring that up if she ever cornered him alone again.

It was so frustrating! Twice, they had almost been alone. The first time he had leaned towards her, clearly about to say something about them or the kiss or both, but Percy had interrupted. The second time, he had caught her hand in the hallway, then a moment later Lord Denby had spirited him away. They had also shared a couple of meaningful glances over dinner, although Effie had no clue as to their real meaning. But when he had suggested the gentlemen did not abandon the ladies tonight and gazed at her, he had been boisterously cajoled into another game of billiards by Percy who declared that when a fellow had rinsed all the others of their coin the night before and then refused to give them the opportunity to win it back, it was very poor form. Obviously, Max had relented—what other choice did he have? But that did leave her and their potential third kiss in limbo.

She stared at her hair, still elaborately dressed and tamed by what felt like a thousand pins. Would a woman waiting to be kissed still have her hair styled so formally after two hours of waiting? Probably not. Nor would a woman on the cusp of thirty try to entice a gentleman to kiss her looking like the nervous dolt staring