Redeeming The Reclusive Earl (HQR Historical)

by Virginia Heath

  It was ridiculous to allow the tiny shoot of hope to grow bigger, yet it was. ‘Unless what?’

  ‘I am galloping ahead of myself... I am useless at this sort of thing. 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...’

  His heart was hammering in his chest now. Every signal she was sending him was positive. Or at least he thought they were. Before the burns, he wouldn’t have been so uncertain. Wouldn’t have dithered. The old Max would have grabbed this opportunity with both hands and to hell with the consequences. He’d have taken the risk—but the new Max had so much more to lose and simply wasn’t brave enough.

  Her teeth worried her plump lip again and she couldn’t meet his eyes, except briefly, too briefly, and he was sure they flicked to his mouth.

  ‘I am reading too much into what you just said and... I mean, you are different, Max. You have always been different from everyone else. You seem to be able to tolerate me for a start. And what you are doing for me now speaks volumes, but... I should be happy with that... I am happy with that, but... What I mean is there is different and then there is different...’ Her gaze was now riveted to a spot on the floor, her hands busily fidgeting among the lace. ‘Really, I should go. And let sleeping dogs lie... Shouldn’t I?’

  Of its own accord, his finger reached out to tilt up her chin. In case he had completely misread things, he needed to see her eyes before he dared to dream. Needed to hear the words. ‘Unless what, Effie? Ask your question.’

  ‘I know I am odd and not quite what any man expects or wants from a woman... But I was wondering if you would like to try...’ She turned her face to the side and he realised she was blushing now, too. ‘Lord, this is mortifying. That I have to ask should tell me all I need to know... Which in itself makes it apparent that of course you wouldn’t like to kiss me again...’ All the air rushed out of his lungs and the ground felt unsteady in the very best way. ‘I’m sorry, Max—I should never have...’

  He pressed his lips to hers greedily and to his complete delight she melted instantly against him, winding her arms around his neck as she sighed into his mouth. It was all the encouragement he needed.

  There was no possibility of this kiss being soft and unhurried. Too many emotions had been stirred up this last week and he had temporarily lost the ability to mask them. There were too many of them coursing through his body now to dawdle or hold back. Utter despair had turned to overwhelming relief. Longing to lust. Grief to joy. Elation. Surprise. Affection... No... Something else, something big and complicated and frankly terrifying—except he wasn’t terrified. Not in the slightest. He was glad for it. Giddy with it.

  She was kissing him!

  With all the enthusiasm and passion she displayed in everything she cared about.

  Max filled his hands with her curves, revelling in the feel of her naked body beneath the thin material of her siren’s nightgown. Apparently misplaced jealousy made him possessive and desperate to stake his claim on her and brand her as his. He deepened the kiss and she matched him, her tongue tangling with his as her fingers wove themselves into his hair and anchored him firmly in place. He could feel her pebbled nipples through the unwelcome barrier of his shirt. The rapid rise and fall of her bosom as she pressed herself against him. The throaty, wanton sigh when he finally gave in and cupped her breasts was like an hallelujah. She wanted this. Wanted him and that indeed was everything.

  Then all at once she placed the flat of her hands on his shoulders and pushed them apart. Her eyes wide. Kiss-swollen lips parted. Her breathing erratic and laboured as she stared at him. For a moment, he was terrified she already regretted it, until her fingers touched her lips and miraculously she smiled. A sultry, seductive and wholly feminine expression he had never seen on her before.

  ‘That was...rather lovely.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’ He found himself smiling back.

  ‘Enlightening...’

  ‘Very.’ He had certainly never experienced a kiss like it. But then again, he had never kissed a woman he loved heart and soul before, so it was no wonder. And wonderful.

  She reached behind 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 no mood to judge. Poor Eleanor had performed a minor miracle in their absence today and had served a veritable banquet for dinner. It was a testament to her strong character she wasn’t swigging the stuff directly from the bottle. Something Effie was sorely tempted to do to simply calm her nerves.

  ‘How fast a whirlwind was it?’ Not that Effie really needed to know. She was intimidated enough by the seductive Miranda already without knowing how swiftly she had captured Max’s heart.

  ‘Fast. He proposed after only three weeks.’ Effie had known him for a good seven and had only achieved two kisses. Or one kiss and an over-excited bumping of faces in a confined space. And she still had no earthly idea where she stood. ‘The pair of them were the talk of the ballrooms, which suited her very well and wherever he went the men slapped him on the back and congratulated him on his impressive conquest. Then he got deployed to the Americas and she got to play the tragically stoic heroine as she waved him off from the dock. Miranda wept such pretty tears while she waved that exquisite silk handkerchief. I always distrusted that about her. When I cry, my entire face collapses. I look as though I’ve been smashed in the face with a shovel.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘And there is no shame in that, Effie. Those are real tears. Everything about Miranda was fake. Calculated. With my cynical hat on, I would even go as far as saying she’d been out for two Seasons and, with no wealthy duke on the horizon, the sands of time were running out. There is only so long one can be an Incomparable before the bloom fades from the rose.’

  ‘There is?’ The world of ballrooms and Seasons and society was a mystery to her. Her academic father had also thought them frivolous and with no mother figure in her life, or even a distant Nithercott aunt somewhere, there was nobody around to organise one. All she had been to were a couple of faculty dances at Cambridge and the local assembly. Neither of which she had bothered attending in years because she had nobody to attend them with.

  ‘She was four and twenty! That is old for a debutante.’ Which made Effie positively ancient by comparison. Yet another blow to her fragile confidence. How exactly was she supposed to compete with all that?

  Eleanor yawned again as the clock chimed midnight. ‘I suppose we should call it a night. The gentlemen are clearly having too much boisterous fun to be rejoining us any time soon and I have to be up at the crack of dawn. And so do you. But we can chalk today up as a success though, can’t we?’

  ‘Indeed. A resounding success.’ Effie supposed she should mark it up as a triumph. After a long day of digging Percy was beside himself for finding the brooch, Lord Denby was clearly impressed with everything despite his naturally pessimistic character and, because his crony was, so was Lord Whittlesey, therefore Effie should have been delighted the eminent antiquarians all agreed she—or rather Max—had discovered something amazing. Doubting Denby had also sent her sketches of the shield to the printers by express to ensure they were added to the article alongside an additional couple of paragraphs—ostensibly hastily written by Max as well—to ensure everything was included before they published it for the world. But she was too distracted to give much of a care, truth be told. Distracted by all her racing thoughts and feelings. All churned up by that phenomenal kiss yesterday and vehemently refusing to go away.

  She and Max hadn’t discussed it. There hadn’t been either the time or the opportunity, entirely thanks to the visiting antiquarians who had monopolised them since breakfast. It had been hard to concentrate on the task at hand when her mind was so full of him and desperately wondering if there was, or could ever be, a them.

  What exactly did that kiss mean?

  Because to her it already meant something more than lust. It had made her begin to crave things from Max which went beyond a kiss and her overactive mind was determined to plan the next few years rather than the next few hours. Racing ahead again before reality could 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 do
lt staring back at her now. Effie wanted to appear both confident and alluring like the fiancée who had captured his heart in just three short weeks. Max liked her hair down—at least she assumed he did because he had made short work of the loose bedtime plait last night before he had fisted his hands in it possessively.

  Maybe she should take it down? Her scalp would certainly be happy if she did. All those pins were digging into it now and her head felt as heavy as her aching, needy breasts. She pulled out the pins and watched it tumble around her shoulders. If that wasn’t a blatant invitation, she didn’t know what was and, seeing as at this stage she was prepared to do almost anything to move things rapidly forward, she didn’t care if it was too obvious a gesture. Obvious was confident and confident, if Miranda was any gauge, was alluring.

  But had she pushed him into the second kiss?

  The question which had been niggling the most since she had shut her door last night made her pause again to consider it. The simple answer was most definitely—she had had ample opportunities to leave his bedchamber at the end and had taken none of them. But he had seemed to enjoy it regardless. He had been as breathless as she when she had ended it—it had been she who had necessarily ended it for certain, not he, because she couldn’t trust herself not to take things too far and scare him off. But she had felt his obvious desire through her nightgown pretty much from the outset. Surely he couldn’t fake that? Everything she had read about the male anatomy suggested such a feat wasn’t possible. Therefore she decided to trust the science and assume the kiss had affected him as much as it had affected her. He felt lust at least, if not affection, and that was a start.

  However, the first time they had kissed he had seemed as overwhelmed by it as she was and then he had dismissed it as a heat-of-the-moment bumping of faces born out of the excitement of finding the shield. Maybe his passionate reaction this time stemmed from the sheer relief of getting through the first day of their charade without issue? And while he might well have said he would kiss her a third time today, after sleeping on it he could well have changed his mind.