“Can you marry her for it?”
He nearly laughed. “Even further out of the question.”
“Have you offered enough money for it?” she asked.
“More than twice what it’s worth, and still she toys with me.”
Frances raised her eyebrows. “What exactly did she say?”
He ground his teeth. “That she would give me a final decision at the end of a month’s time, and not a moment before.”
“A month of learning more about the business in order to make an informed decision about how best her money should be spent?” his sister asked adroitly.
He slanted her a look. “Frances—”
“All I’m saying,” she interrupted, “is that it doesn’t seem like she’s toying with you. You may not like her actions or her choices, but she’s given you a deadline and an explanation that make sense. You just don’t like being on the receiving end of someone else’s grand scheme.”
“Who does?” he asked darkly.
Frances reached for another biscuit.
She deserved so much more. So much better. Max wished he had been there for her from the beginning.
The day she had gained employment as a maid-of-all-work, they’d known it would be grueling hours for very little pay, but at least she would be safe and warm and dry and fed.
Except, the master of the house tried to make her into his whore. When she’d fled, sobbing, arriving on Max’s doorstep with no references and no self-respect, believing she had somehow brought the assault on herself, Max had lost control.
He flew straight to the home of the supposed “gentleman” and demanded an audience. When he was not granted one, he muscled his way inside and demanded to meet at dawn in order to defend his sister’s honor with a loaded pistol.
Her employer had laughed in Max’s face. Dueling was a gentleman’s privilege, not a dockworker’s. There were no charges that would stick. Not with the word of a slut against her master. The so-called gentleman immediately had Max thrown out on his ear and reported to the constable for nuisance.
By then, their mother was too ill to work. Max swore on her deathbed that he would protect his sister from such monsters in the future, and swore to himself to enact revenge on one cruel bastard in particular.
That he suspected Bryony to be of the same world—a world that considered people like his family, like his sister, to be as inferior as insects—was a detail he had refrained from sharing with Frances.
He much preferred to see her smiling and teasing than for her to think they were once again being trod beneath the heel of someone else’s boot.
A sharp knock rapped upon the door.
Max and his sister met eyes in surprise. She was the only visitor he had ever had. No one else had any clue where he lived.
Perhaps it was a lost traveler. Or a neighbor.
He rose from the table and went to answer the door.
A well-dressed footman held out a folded missive, sealed with expensive wax.
“Mr. Gideon?”
Max accepted the letter in silence.
The elegant footman immediately vanished back to his master.
“Who is it?” Frances called. “Is something amiss?”
“I don’t know.”
He broke the seal and unfolded the letter.
