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 dolt 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.
But if he wasn’t averse to indulging in a third kiss, which she sincerely hoped he wasn’t, should she broach the subject of all the other things she had lain awake thinking about then incessantly pondered still or was it too soon? All-encompassing new feelings, desire, outright curiosity—and the future. Would such things scare the daylights out of him? She’d never had anyone to ask.
Common sense told her of course it was too soon even though she might feel the moment was right. What did she know about such things anyway? She usually got this sort of stuff wrong as her extensive lack of real friends and woeful shortage of eager beaus was testament to. Just because she was feeling all of these heady, thrilling and all-consuming things, just because she was tumbling head over heels into love, did not mean he was. In fact, so early into their ever-changing relationship and only two actual kisses in, there was every chance he hadn’t given any of it much thought. Max was clearly an expert in kissing and she certainly wasn’t his first. Therefore, it stood to reason that what they had shared thus far wasn’t the least bit significant as far as he was concerned.
Besides, and to give him the benefit of the doubt for his potential lack of similar angst, he’d had his hands full since yesterday pretending to be something he wasn’t. He’d been too busy charming Lord Denby into agreeing that her roundhouse was indeed a roundhouse, that one could clearly discern the remains of the long-rotted-away post holes in compacted mud and that the amazing finds which had emerged from the site so far indicated the Celtic dwelling was considerably older than the Roman ruins nearby.
And he was doing all that for her. Which suggested he must care in some way, although it was which way he cared that consumed her. She sincerely doubted Miranda would have 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 him to see it. He closed the door and leaned his back against it.
‘What did you mean when you said it was obvious I regretted the last kiss?’
‘The bumping of faces?’ She had not expected him to start with that question. Or any question to be frank when she was expecting a polite let down.
He winced. ‘I said that, didn’t I?’
‘You also called it a big mistake.’
‘Not my finest hour. But in my defence you had just knocked me sideways and I was...’ He sighed as he turned away and then gazed at her sheepishly though the heavy curtain of his hair. ‘I didn’t mean it, Effie. Any of it. That first kiss was special. Last night’s was spectacular.’
‘Oh...’ She had no earthly idea where this was going.
‘And I would very much like to do it again... Right this second, in fact...in case you were wondering.’