She glanced down at her shirt and breeches and sighed. Even though she knew he would never have allowed her into the club dressed as Bryony-the-debutante, she wished he could see her as more than some strange woman in pants with an affinity for giving unsolicited advice.
For him, she suddenly wished to bebeautiful. Elegant gown, hair ringlets, whatever it took to get him to notice her as a woman.
Yet this costume was the only way for her to pay him a visit. Disguised. Sexless.
It wasn’t fair.
She couldn’t come here to him as herself any more than she could attend Society events as her true self. At one, she disguised her outside. At the other, her inside.
How she wished Max could see through the layers to the real her.
“Faro or whist?” he asked.
She blinked. “Are you asking me to play?”
“I don’t gamble,” he said with a straight face. “I want to add some new tables. Which would be the most profitable?”
“You don’t gamble?” she repeated in disbelief. “This is a gaming hell.”
“No cards, no dice.” He gestured at his obsessively organized desk.
“The Cloven Hoofisa gamble,” Bryony pointed out. “You didn’t know when you opened it if it would be a success or a failure.”
“Maybe I didn’t care,” he said with a shrug. “Is it a gamble if the outcome doesn’t matter?”
She narrowed her eyes.
The outcome did matter. Enough that he had used the only asset in his possession, his very home, as a lien. But no one knew that except Max himself, the potential investors who had reviewed his proposal, and Bryony’s brother Heath, who had arranged the deal.
As far as anyone else knew, Max had burst onto the scene whole cloth. No one knew where he was from, where he lived, whether his entire financial state was wrapped up in the Cloven Hoof.
That was, nobody knew but Bryony.
“Where would you put the tables?” she asked. “Would you replace the seating in the sole area currently dedicated to drink and conversation?”
“Wouldyou?” he countered and pushed a journal across his desk toward her.
She picked it up, fingers trembling with excitement. “You’re asking for my help?”
“I don’t need your help,” he replied matter-of-factly. “But only a fool refuses to listen to outside opinions.”
Bryony grinned to herself. He was right; he didn’t need her help. At least, any more of it. But this was the first time her opinion on a business matter had been consciously solicited.
Heropinion. Not her anonymous male pseudonym. Directly solicited. Not like the last encounter, when Bryony had blurted out her opinions on beverage prices without being asked.
This was unprecedented. Max might not know her identity, but he knew she was a woman. He believed she had a brain. And possessed an opinion that only a fool would fail to listen to.
She opened the journal to the first page. “What is this?”
“Daily profit by table,” he responded at once. “The key at the bottom indicates which game is played at which table, and the index at the back lists any dates in which a dedicated table changed from one game to another.”
Bryony warmed at his words.
What he did not say was,it may be too difficult for you to keep the legend straight.
Nor did he say,it will be impossible for you to hold the changes in dates in your memory as you sort through the daily profit records.
Perhaps he thought she could do it. Perhaps he did not. Either way, he took care not to presume. He simply offered her the opportunity to try.
