Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,90

needed to ask. Or needed any reassurance of her abilities to snare him. She would have known—or perhaps assumed, as Eleanor had intimated. Maybe that was what was needed here?

Perhaps if she behaved a little more like the sort of woman Max was obviously drawn to—the confident, flirty, effortless seductress rather than the clueless oddity with her head buried in a hole—then she might convince him to be similarly besotted with her.

How hard could it be to be a seductress anyway?

She had the basic equipment if the compliments were anything to go by and she had certainly read enough romantic books to be able to mimic some of the techniques from the pages. She could start right this second by using this time to rehearse her words. Not questions which demanded answers but assumptions which told him in no uncertain terms that a third heated kiss and everything beyond was a foregone conclusion.

Hello, Max... I’ve been waiting for you.

Too bold?

Hello, Max... I couldn’t sleep.

Which sounded as though that was his fault—which might be good. Or it might come across as pathetic and whiny. It was probably all in the tone and the facial expressions. She practised a few sultry looks in the mirror and, when she found one she liked which involved her twirling her finger in her hair, she rehearsed her lines again, dropping her voice to a breathy whisper.

Hello, Max...

Perfect!

Ambiguous, but hinting at promise...except... Drat it! She’d knotted her finger in her messy hair! Thank goodness this was just a rehearsal as the calculated Miranda would have known she should have brushed the tangled mess first before fiddling with it.

Effie had only just unknotted her finger and grabbed the brush when she heard his feet on the stairs, then practically jumped out of her skin as nerves took over. This was it! There was no more time to procrastinate. No more time to prepare herself. It was time to make him fall in love with her.

Wide-eyed, she took a last look at her reflection in the mirror and her heart sank at the ridiculous state of her hair. What had she been thinking to take out all the pins and destroy a perfectly lovely hairstyle?

In desperation, she gathered it all up and twisted it into a knot, then blindly rummaged for her hairpins. She jabbed a few in, but when they stubbornly refused to work resorted to her trusty old faithful. He had said he preferred her pencil and so a pencil it would have to be! She cast her eyes frantically about for the slippers she had kicked off the second she had entered the room, but when she located only one realised she had no choice but to go to him barefoot.

Bare feet and a pencil! Heaven help her if those were the only weapons she had in her seductress’s arsenal! At this rate, they’d never bump faces again.

She heard his door click shut and realised she was in grave danger of losing the moment. If she left it any longer, he’d be in bed and that certainly wouldn’t be proper.

Proper!

As if anything about this was proper.

She inhaled deeply before wrenching open her door and inhaled once again before she knocked on his. To her surprise, it opened straight away, almost as if he’d expected her.

‘Hello, Max. I’ve been waiting for sleep and couldn’t.’

She cringed and immediately prayed for death as his handsome face scrunched in confusion.

‘Couldn’t what?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ The confident seductress had clearly been shot in the paddock before the race. ‘I just thought we should discuss...um...your evening... Make sure we are presenting a united front.’

‘I am glad you are awake. I’ve been wanting to speak to you about last night.’ His suddenly serious expression killed all her last hopes of seduction stone dead. ‘Come in for a second.’ Just a second. Disappointment settled in her stomach. ‘This is not a conversation for the hallway.’

Effie stepped in on leaden feet, urgently rehearsing her nonchalant face in her head. If he was going to break her heart, she’d be damned if she allowed