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“Am I infertile?” he asked, eyebrows raising. “No. I’m perfectly able to. Believe me, I’ve already been down this road of discussion with Grandma and had to prove it to her to make her drop it.”
“I don’t get it.” I shuffled forwards and gripped the edge of the window seat. “You can have kids, you’ve just admitted that you’d like to, but you won’t.”
Max shrugged. “Yes, that’s about it.”
“But why?”
“I’ve already said I won’t answer that.”
I sighed. “It just doesn’t make sense. Why not? Especially if it’s something you want. Is it not hard seeing your friends have families?”
“Ellie.”
“I mean, I spend far too much time in the society pages, and there are a whole host of aristocrats that are a similar age to you. I know The Earl and Countess of Anglesey are having a baby, and The Duke of Worcester is engaged, and I’ve seen them both pictured with Fred so you’re probably friends, too, and—”
“Will you leave it?” Max snapped. He got to his feet turned away from me. He ran his fingers through his hair, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck as he looked at the floor, looking somewhat defeated.
I stilled.
I’d gone too far.
Why hadn’t I just shut up? Just accepted what he’d offered me, even if I didn’t understand it? It was the most he’d opened up to me about his future, and I couldn’t just accept it, could I?
No.
We’d spent so much time together over the past several weeks, and the more time we spent together and the more I got to know him, the more Iwantedto know about him.
The more I knew, the harder I fell.
The harder I fell, the stronger the tiny whisper in the back of my mind that I could convince him to change his mind, that he should get married and have kids, that it was possible.
It was a dangerous, silly, dreamy circle of impossibilities.
Stupid, stupid, stupid Ellie.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I went too far.”
“No, I—” Max turned back and looked over at me, his bright blue eyes dull with sadness. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. That wasn’t fair.”
“It’s none of my business. You asked me to leave it, and I didn’t.” I rested my hands in my lap and looked away. “It was fair.”
“No, it wasn’t.” He sighed heavily, and I knew he was still watching me even though I had my gaze trained steadily on the spider plant that was in a wall planter.
It kind of was.
“It’s fine.” I smiled, glancing his way, but I knew he’d know how insincere my smile was.
I wasn’t the best actress in the world. That was why I wrote books instead of doing things like movies. Seriously, it was why I never misbehaved as a teenager. My parentsknewbecause I couldn’t lie my way out of bed on a morning.
“Ellie, my father wasn’t a nice man.”
I jerked to look at him, guilt churning in the pit of my belly. “You don’t have to tell me anything. Your reasons are entirely your own, and I was wrong to keep asking you.”
Max sighed again and tilted his head to the side. “My only memories of my father are of him violently drunk.”
I drew in a breath.
“And I meanviolently,” he added, emphasis on the ‘violently.’ “I don’t have many memories of him, exactly. I think I learnt to block a lot of them out at a young age, but the ones I do have involve him screaming, shouting, and breaking things. He was a cruel man who was even crueller to my mother and my grandmother.”
