‘You heard me. What happened to the table-thumping advocate of last week? The one who was adamant Effie should publish her work because it was an outrage that she couldn’t?’
‘She should publish her work. Asher. Not asme.’
‘Fiddlesticks! This has nothing to do with her borrowing your name and everything to do with the invitation she extended to the stuffy antiquarians who continually thwart her at every turn. You do not want them in the house!’
He couldn’t deny that part bothered him the most. It might not have last week when he had vociferously thumped the table—but last week she hadn’t trampled over the tender new shoots of his self-confidence and withdrawn herself entirely from him like a tortoise hiding in its shell.
‘You just want to be left alone.’
‘I don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry overrunning Rivenhall once that article gets out...’
‘You don’t want anyone to see your ugly scars, Max!’
He recoiled as if slapped at the harsh comment, because, even in his darkest days when his skin had been a bloody and festering mess, Eleanor had never once openly acknowledged he had scars which others found abhorrent.
She pointed at her forehead hard. ‘I do have some idea how your thick head works! That’s what you think of them, isn’t it? Unseemly? Unsightly? You don’t want people staring or whispering behind your back... You don’t want to see their shock.’
‘By shock you mean disgust, surely?’ If they were going to finally speak plainly, then he’d speak plainly and be damned. ‘Recoiling in horror in case this mess is contagious! Crossing the street... Covering their children’s eyes.’ Eleanor had been there that day and yet neither of them had mentioned it at the time or since. To all intents and purposes, they had both been oblivious to it all because that was the easier option. More civilised. A denial of the truth—all pretence and all damn lies. ‘Of course I don’t want strangers in my blasted house gawping at my face, Eleanor! This is the one place where I can avoid all that humiliation!’
His sister’s anger dissolved at what he knew was a bereft and hopeless expression. ‘I understand your reluctance Max. I know the last eighteen months have been awful and the behaviour of some people hurtful in the extreme, but the scars really do not look half as bad as they once did...and you do need to come to terms with them.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
‘They are not going to get any better, Max, no matter how much you hope they might. They have been the same for months. Is it your intention to hide away for ever just because of a bit of...?’
‘Gnarled and hideous skin?’ He had no patience for whatever diplomatic adjectives she was scrabbling for.
‘You are a long way off hideous, Max.’
‘And a long way off handsome.’
‘Is that what bothers you the most? That you are no longer as handsome as you once were? When only the shallow and superficial would ever care about such nonsense.’ They both knew she was alluding to Miranda. ‘Effie isn’t like that at all. I doubt she even sees the scars now that she knows you.’
He scoffed, disbelieving. Wishing it were true, but accepting that it wasn’t. ‘You really need to take off those rose-tinted spectacles, Eleanor, and face the harsh facts...’
‘You need face the harsh facts, too, Max. If you pursue this course of action out of self-preservation, you will only end up pushing her away in the process. This decision will ruin things between you.’
‘How many times do I have to tell you there is nothing between us?’ At least not any more. ‘There never was.’
‘I have eyes, Max. I can see how much she means to you.’
‘We are friends.’Werefriends. Before he’d acted on impulse and ruined everything with one short, ill-considered and life-altering kiss. ‘Just friends, Eleanor.’
His sister smiled maternally and reached across the table to squeeze his arm. ‘Friendship is the perfect foundation to build love upon... Tell her how you feel.’
‘Out of the question.’ The words had flown out before he had considered the gravitas of them. Typically, his sister grasped them straight away and leapt on them.
‘Maybe she feels the same? Have you considered that?’
‘She doesn’t.’ There was no point in denying it when he’d already let the cat out of the bag. Eleanor would never let it go unless he killed her romanticised and forlorn hope stone dead, just as his had been.
He watched her face fall and saw the sympathy in her eyes. ‘You’ve told her already, then?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake, Max. Then how could you possibly...?’
He held up his palm and tried not to show how thoroughly wounded he was by Effie’s latest rejection. ‘I am not some gauche and inexperienced virgin, Eleanor... I do know when a woman isn’t romantically interested in a man.’
