by Erica Ridley
Before he could demand answers, someone rapped upon the door.
Max darted a glance at the clock beside his desk and held a warning finger toward Bryony. “Not a word.”
She nodded submissively.
Max didn’t accept her capitulation for a moment, but he had scheduled several private meetings and could not delay any further. Nor could he give any indication that there was a woman inside the Cloven Hoof.
He adjusted the folding screen one last time for privacy, then turned to open the door.
The next two hours flew past in a blur of worried faces with problems to solve. An investment here, practical advice there, an increase in credit for some, lowered interest for others. Presiding over case after case like a magistrate. Righting wrongs. Changing lives.
At last, one final patron passed outside Max’s door.
“Lambley,” he said with pleasure. “Good to see you.”
The duke eased inside the office but declined to take a seat. “I didn’t see you at my last party. I wanted to personally reiterate the invitation.”
“It’s a masquerade,” Max reminded him. “How would you know whether I was there?”
“If you ever came,” Lambley said with a secretive smile, “you’d know that nothing happens in my house without my awareness.”
“I will attend,” Max promised. “Soon. I’ve just been so busy here at the club.”
“Have you considered employing somebody?” the duke suggested.
Max raised a brow.
Lambley burst out laughing. “Of course you have. You consider everything. No doubt there’s some scheme underway that no one will discover until you’ve chosen to reveal it.”
“A scheme to keep myself overworked and exhausted,” was all Max said in reply.
“Hmm.” The duke toasted with his glass of port and turned toward the door. “If you need a diversion…”
Max inclined his head. “I know where to call.”
No sooner had the door snicked closed, Bryony was already on her feet, eyes shining, hands clasped together in excitement.
“That was splendid!” She clasped her hands together and gave a little bounce. “You do this all day?”
“Speak to my patrons?” Max said dryly.
“Solve the problems of such diverse individuals,” Bryony continued, undaunted. “A duke, a dandy, a sparring master... I did not know that there were places in London where such men intermingled.”
“There aren’t places,” Max said with pride. “There’s the Cloven Hoof. That’s why it’s important.”
He crossed the office to sit behind his desk far on the other side of the room.
By the time his arse hit the seat, Bryony was already perched on the edge of his desk.
“Did you know that would happen?” she asked. “Is such a varied clientele something that can be planned from the start or was it more of a happy accident?”
“I hoped from the start,” Max admitted. “Not everyone approves. The very effect you consider splendid is the primary reason why the Cloven Hoof will never be fashionable to the majority of the elites.”
Bryony waved this away. “I’m sure it is the precise reason the rest of your patrons do choose to frequent this establishment.”
Max tilted his head. He had assumed his customers considered economic diversity a tolerable side effect of the Cloven Hoof, not its best quality. He would love to believe that were true. “Why do you think so?”
“Who wouldn’t?” Bryony squinted in thought. “In a place like this, chance encounters could spawn all sorts of complex conversations that would never have surfaced around a lukewarm bowl of ratafia within Almack’s hallowed-but-tarnished walls.”
Max shrugged. He had never been inside Almack’s. “I couldn’t say.”
“For most of your clientele,” Bryony continued, “I would assume your greatest competition comes from other gentlemen’s clubs like White’s and Brooks’s.”
“No,” Max corrected. “Rich or titled gentlemen might have that option, but my other patrons do not. One must receive approval from thirty-five members of White’s to join their esteemed rank. Here at the Cloven Hoof, the only opinion that matters is my own. No one can compete with that.”
Bryony grinned at him. “How unapologetically arrogant. I cannot imagine why you are still a bachelor.”
To his surprise, he enjoyed sparring with her. He raised his brows. “What makes you think I am?”
She leaned forward. “Aren’t you?”
Max gave a half smile instead of a reply, just to vex her.
He was indeed still a bachelor, though likely not for the reasons Bryony suspected.
Women did not reject him for his arrogance. If anything, his increased status and financial prowess only served to attract fortune-hunters. Max was uninterested. When he chose to take a wife, it would be a woman who wanted him, not one who sought to profit from him.
He narrowed his eyes at Bryony.
What was she after? It was impossible to say. She did not appear to want anything from him personally, which implied rebellion or a search for adventure were the only reasons she continued to trespass where she didn’t belong. He should not allow her to do so.
That reality was enough to douse any warm feelings he might have felt toward her. Being used as an avenue for rebellion or adventure was as distasteful as being used as an avenue to deeper purse strings. In both cases, the attraction was not to Max but rather what an association with him might offer.
“Very well,” she said when he failed to rise to her bait about his marital status. “Don’t tell me. I shall shock you by admitting that I find myself a spinster with little hope of wedded bliss.”
“Not a spinster.” He took in her long lashes, her high cheekbones, her soft skin. The only reason her disguise worked at all was because she was still young. Yet it only worked at a glance. Upon closer inspection, her beauty gave her away. “You cannot be more than twenty.”
“Four-and-twenty. Now you see why my mother despairs.”
“She doesn’t despair because you are four-and-twenty,” he pointed out. “She despairs because you gallivant about London unchaperoned in men’s clothing. You’ll never find a nice gentleman that way.”
“Perhaps I don’t want a nice one,” Bryony said.
Max straightened with interest. He was very good at being very bad.
“Perhaps I don’t want a husband at all,” she continued indifferently.
For some reason, this rankled. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“I see no reason to fawn over every man who stands up with me at Almack’s. Being leg-shackled to the wrong husband would be a thousand times worse than not having one at all. How can I give them my hand if they can’t even keep my attention?”
Max’s flesh chilled to realize that her earlier comments about warm ratafia and tattered decor had been based on personal observation rather than idle gossip. Her vocabulary and accent indicated her education, but the well-worn lad’s clothing had not hinted at wealth.
This new knowledge gave him no further insight into what the devil a debutante would be doing in trousers and a waistcoat on the wrong side of town, but as strange a creature as she might be, he now knew her to be well out of his league.
Not that he should care. After all, he wasn’t going to offer for her.
In fact, he was going to have another talking-to with his staff to ensure misplaced debutantes never found their way into the Cloven Hoof again.
Chapter 6
Bryony had no idea what she’d said to spoil the mood, but even she could see that she had done so.
Max’s focus was not on her but on rearranging a small stack of journals that suddenly appeared to require the entirety of his attention.
Bryony tried not to be disappointed. Conversation with him had been so invigorating. She could not help but wonder what had just happened between them. The Cloven Hoof was a far cry from the sheltered sitting room she had once shared with her sibli
ngs, but for a moment she had felt a sliver of the same connection, the same camaraderie, the ability to just be herself.
Then in the space of a few breaths, Max had gone from tolerating her to ignoring her altogether. The awkwardness swirling around the silent room now felt more like her parents’ drawing room. A place where Bryony was always either alone, or silently being judged.
But she was not at home. She was in the hidden private office of an infamous gaming hell, alone with a dangerously handsome man whom gamblers worshiped as a saint and ladies decried as the devil himself. And he was doing sums.
If even a quarter of the rumors of Max’s unapologetic sinfulness were true, he could have debauched her three times over by now. Instead, he looked for all the world as if the column of numbers he was currently tallying was far more enticing than anything Bryony might have to offer.
She held her composure. It was not that she wished to be ravished by this tall muscular man with wide shoulders, tightly controlled composure, sensuous lips, too-long dark hair and even darker eyes that betrayed not even the slightest hint of what he was thinking.
Bryony could not help but hope he was thinking about her.
She had not been planning on kissing the owner of the Cloven Hoof, but now that he was right in front of her, close enough to rub a finger along the rough whiskers shadowing his jaw, close enough to tumble forward into his embrace, close enough to slide her derrière off the edge of his desk and right into his lap, the thought of kissing him had simultaneously become the best and worst idea she’d ever had in her life.
She watched as he tallied another row of numbers. He did so briskly, efficiently, as fast as Bryony could have done herself, not in the least distracted by her presence less than an arm’s width away. She could not help but be impressed with both his cleverness as well as his remarkable ability to shut the rest of the world out in order to concentrate.
Perhaps that untouchable aura was also part of his allure. He had always been a mysterious figure in society, and meeting him had only deepened the mystery. She had been terrified when he’d discovered her that first night. What if he had believed her to be a lad and beat her for her trespass? What if he had seen through her disguise and punished her quite differently?
The fact that he had done neither had caused her to draw an unexpected conclusion. For all his ostensible annoyance at her presence and her interruptions, she did feel safe.
She had inadvertently tested him under the worst possible conditions, and he had proven himself to be the sort of man who neither raised his voice nor his fist. He could have thrown her bodily from his club or told her not to worry her pretty little head about big scary concepts like “varied clientele.”
Instead, he’d treated her like a person. He was kind to her. Patient. Honest. Perhaps that explained why she felt so safe with him. Or perhaps when she looked at him, she too perceived more about him than others took the time to see.
“What are you doing?” she asked. By all appearances, he didn’t give two figs about her one way or the other. He was no devil with cloven hooves and a forked tail, but he was still as untouchable. As unreachable. Even though he was right here in front of her.
She had never wanted to know another person more.
He slanted her a look. “Adding.”
“Adding what?” she pressed.
“Numbers.” He turned back to the journal. “Now I must start again.”
“Three hundred and forty-six pounds, thirty-two shillings, five pence.” She pointed at one of the rows in the middle. “I believe that’s meant to be zero, not a six.”
Max’s gaze rose from his journal to her face. He laid his plume atop his desk and folded his arms over his chest. “You can tally sums over your shoulder from a journal facing the opposite direction?”
The back of her neck heated.
“Lots of people can do arithmetic,” she stammered.
“No one but me has ever managed to read my handwriting,” he said drolly. “Upside down or otherwise.”
Bryony swallowed. This was not the moment to tell him she’d had nearly five years of practice reading his detailed monthly reports. She would recognize his handwriting in any direction, under any light. She knew his hand as well as her own.
“I might’ve been wrong,” she said quickly.
“You’re not.” His dark gaze stayed focused on her. “And you know it.”
She wished she hadn’t spoken. If she’d failed to tempt him by appearing in his office in breeches and a great coat instead of an evening gown with a dampened bodice, she would only make herself seem all the more mannish by continuing to correct him on his own mathematics.
She fluttered her hand in the direction of his journal. “I didn’t mean to bother you. Carry on.”
“You mean to bother me, or you wouldn’t be here,” he said matter-of-factly. “You might as well be useful while you’re at it. Do you know what these numbers are?”
Her breath caught. Was he asking her to use her brain? Was he asking her for help?
Excited disbelief fluttered her pulse. She had dreamed of such a moment. And yes, she absolutely had a hypothesis about his numbers. Given the amount stated and the past history of income and purchases that passed through the Cloven Hoof, he was almost certainly tallying this month’s alcohol income.
But she couldn’t tell him. That was something his secret investor would know, not something a woman who just so happened to slip into his club on a lark might be privy to. Despite the incredible opportunity, she still was not in a position to display her brain to full advantage.
Her responses would only be able to use whatever was currently perceivable to the eye.
“I haven’t a clue,” she answered, imbuing her voice with as much womanly femaleness as she could muster.
Max was unmoved. “Replacement candelabra. I’m switching from tallow to beeswax.”
“Are you outfitting Buckingham Palace?” she blurted out. “The Cloven Hoof has no need of candelabra when the current wall sconces do perfectly fine. You already use beeswax candles. Either someone is trying to hoodwink you, or…”
Oh. She was the one being bamboozled.
He folded his arms across his chest. “How do you know?”
She cleared her throat. “If you had ever smelled a tallow candle, you’d know how I know. And I can see the sconces. Exchanging sturdy lighting fixtures for precarious candelabra would be a fire hazard once you add drunken elbows. Installing a glass chandelier worth any sum would be a waste on clientele who prefer the darkness.”
“All true,” he said after a moment. “Very observant. I’m more interested in why you would know the difference in price between various commercial lighting options.”
“I am a candlestick-maker by day,” she said without blinking. “Sneaking into off-hour establishments by night is only a diversion.”
He did not smile at the jest, nor did he comment further on the obvious lie.
“What numbers were you tallying?” she asked when he made no further comment.
He tilted his head. “Beverage income.”
Bryony hoped she kept her jolt of instant satisfaction at having guessed correctly from showing in her eyes. “Is the number good or bad?”
“All positive numbers are good numbers in this case.” He glanced down at the list. “I’m hoping to increase them. I don’t know if your idea to double the price of French imports will end up costing more than it gains.”
Bryony did know. She’d studied the numbers. Not just his, but the books of all the other establishments in which she’d invested over the years. Numbers did not lie.
She moved her hand closer to the journal. “May I?”
His brows darted skyward as if the absurdity of their situation had finally hit him. A man feared and respected by the underworld and aristocrats alike, discussing hypothetical profit and loss with a woman in trousers trespassing in his private domain against his will.
This time, his lips did
twitch as he turned the journal around to face her. “By all means.”
He’d agreed. Bryony’s heart skipped, then seemed to beat twice as fast to make up. Other than her family, Max was the first man to treat her opinions like they mattered. As if her mind worked just as well as his. As though she were an equal.
The sensation was as bewildering as it was liberating.
Before he could change his mind, she lifted the journal and flipped through it in the hope that he had recorded the sort of detail she was looking for. The monthly reports she received from him were clear, but summarized.
She need not have worried. Within seconds, it became apparent that the journal she was holding was exhaustively and exclusively dedicated to the purchase, sale, and consumption of all alcohol at the Cloven Hoof since its inception. She could not have asked for better primary information from which to defend her hypotheses.
“Here.” She grazed her fingertip along the pages near the beginning. “And here, and here, and here.” She skipped forward again and again, stopping only to point out certain figures. “And here, just six months ago.”
Max leaned forward. “What are we looking at?”
“Those are times you raised prices on different offerings.”
“I had to,” he said with a lift of his shoulder. “My providers change prices and I cannot lose money on a sale.”
“But that’s the point.” She showed him again. “You didn’t lose money. If you compare sales numbers before and after each price increase, you’ll see that there’s no appreciable difference.”
His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps I was fortunate.”
“You weren’t fortunate. You lost money.”
He frowned. “But you just said—”
“I said there was no difference in raw sales numbers despite raising prices,” she repeated. “That means, raise your prices. There is no difference in quantity of sales.”
He looked at her.
“Your customers come for the gaming,” she explained. “They’re here to spend money, not to pinch pennies. They’re paying attention to their cards, not their credit at the bar. If they want a glass of ale, they want a glass of ale. If they want a bottle of champagne, they want a bottle of champagne. No gambler who truly believes himself on the verge of winning a fortune gives a fig about the price of whatever wine he’s swilling as he does so.”
