The large, burly watchman guarding the entrance to the Cloven Hoof was almost as infamous as the club itself. Due to the requirements of his post, Vigo rarely exchanged a word of conversation with the hundreds of gentlemen—and not-quite-gentlemen—who entered these walls or were turned away at the door.
He was its drawbridge, its gate and keeper. Omnipresent, feared, and respected.
Max doubted it had occurred to anyone who had come in contact with Vigo to wonder what the man did when not lurking next to the gambling den’s entrance. He suspected “attending balloon launches with a French poet” would not be high on the list of guesses.
Max would have to think of a way to include Vigo more. His post had to be lonely. Max sighed. There was so much still to do before the Cloven Hoof was perfect.
The original goal behind this particular vice den might have been to create a gentleman’s club so exclusive even the aristocrats far outside Max’s league would prostrate themselves trying to gain entrance. The secondary goal of ensuring men of high and low background interacted within these walls as equals had succeeded far better than Max had dared to hope.
And yet there were so many people still left out in the cold. The not-quite-gentlemen with deep enough pockets to gamble at the same table as viscounts and earls might be treated as temporary colleagues, but the man who guarded the door, the man who poured the ale, the man who swept up cigar ash and broken wine glasses, all of them were still invisible.
Maybe it was not possible to cross such lines. Perhaps it was a foolish dream. But Max would keep trying, keep pushing, keep smudging the boundaries that segregated people from each other.
Further on the list were men like himself. Men who didn’t even count as not-quite-gentlemen. Sons of seamstresses and dockworkers, with the same amount of brains as anyone else but only enough coin in their pocket for a single round of loo.
Max’s father had been a dockworker all his life. Every cent he owned, he’d given to the family, then gone right back out in the rain and the wind and the sleet to try to earn another penny. In the end, it had killed him. Never a day off, never an increase in pay. The titled toff who owned the dock never bothered to check on his condition until it was too late.
Their mother was the reason his sister had learned to sew. More than that, Mother was the reason there had still been broth to drink after their father had died and his meager salary had stopped coming. She had cried the morning Max left to work on the docks himself, but had no choice but to let him go. There wasn’t enough money to go around, and he was big enough to earn a ha’penny of his own.
And now he was halfway to his dream.
It wouldn’t happen overnight, of course. Nor was the current salon big enough for everything he hoped to accomplish. That was why he had bid on both this building and the neighboring property, which had been under the control of a different landowner and left empty to rot.
Max was happy to step in. In order to create a communal crossroad between the workers and the wealthy, the guests would need plenty of room in which to intermingle. Significantly more space than what the current venue could offer. Purchasing both was an elegant solution.
The slender addition was smaller than the current property, but the shared wall dividing the two meant that expansion was not only possible but inevitable. He would open the other side as a slightly less exclusive annex, and then create interior walkways between the two to encourage visiting both sides.
Combining the two venues into the sort of establishment he’d always dreamed of running would be visible proof of success in an unfriendly world that had held his family down every step of the way.
But to do so, he neededbothdeeds.
Somehow, his extremely generous offer for the Cloven Hoof’s land had been outbid without any prior indication of outside interest. Overnight, Max’s straightforward plan had turned from a certainty into a disaster. The new landlord refused to sell, and the neighboring property was too small to serve as a replacement.
He needed both, and was determined to make it happen. But until then, he needed to keep his plans for expansion a secret.
If the silent investor had any idea, he would refuse to relinquish the deed at any price. Either to keep Max beholden to him financially, or to ensure such a mix of classes and backgrounds could not occur so close to the fashionable set’s front doors.
Max headed straight to his office. He would write yet another letter requesting an audience with the owner.
His friend Heath Grenville had brokered the original contract that had enabled the establishment of the Cloven Hoof, and was the only person who knew the identity of the man whose purse strings had both granted Max’s childhood dreams and stood in the way of achieving something new. Somehow, Max needed to break through.
He pushed open his office door and stepped inside. Familiar darkness greeted him. He lit the interior sconce just inside the door with one of the candles lining the corridor, then slipped inside for a few moments of peace before the day’s work began.
“Minus ten points for failing to be punctual,” came a bored female voice from the direction of the settee.
Max whirled to face the same woman in lad’s clothing from the other night.
“Are you judging me like a horse?” he asked in disbelief. “Minus twenty points for disguising your body but not your voice, and minus one hundred for daring to return without an invitation.”
“Fair enough,” she agreed. “But I get a hundred-point bonus for realizing I was never going to receive an invitation and having the fortitude to come anyway. It all evens out.”
“It’s not even at all,” Max spluttered. “How did you get in? Do not attempt to say the door was unlocked.”
“The door was very locked,” she assured him. “So locked that I couldn’t get out. I snuck in with the late crowd before closing and fell asleep on your sofa.”
His jaw clenched shut. He supposed he should be grateful the person pointing out unexpected holes in his security was a young lady, not an arsonist or a murderer.
He did not feel grateful.
