The unexpected rejection of her heartfelt offer stole Bryony’s breath. Her eyes pricked with heat.
“Why?” she asked quietly. “You’ve no interest in meeting them?”
“I’ve no interest in wasting time. You and I might have a moment here or there in the shadows, but that is all it will ever be. A diversion, nothing more. Certainly nothing that would require meeting families. Whatever you’re thinking might happen… you’re wrong.”
Frances gasped.
“I see,” Bryony said, her lips tight. She swept her bonnet up from the floor and marched out the door, into the cold, and out of their lives.
She would not wait around to be hurt a second time.
Chapter 14
The secluded, soundproof office that had once been Max’s refuge from the outside world was now his private hell.
Life wasn’t peaceful without Bryony. It was lonely. The journals she’d been studying were still stacked on the settee. The place he had started to consider hers, right where she had left it.
Even if those volumes were the only item out of place in the entire office, he wouldn’t put them away.
Putting them away would feel like admitting she was never coming back.
His stomach clenched. He hadn’t seen her in days. Ninety-eight hours, if one were to be specific. It felt like a lifetime.
If a few days without her were this hard, what would it feel like when the month was through and she was gone for good?
He pushed the thought away. He couldn’t think about that. There were figures that needed to be summed. Plans that needed to be made.
Bryony would be back.
He hoped.
Damn it all, there was no question that he had handled the situation with her family musicale badly.
It wasn’t that he wished to keep their burgeoning attachment—or whatever it was—a secret. It was that they couldn’t have a relationship at all. Not as lovers; not as friends.
He should never have kissed her. He was right to have turned down the invitation. Nevertheless, he felt like a monster. He was frustrated Bryony didn’t see that she was asking for something impossible. She had been thinking with her heart, instead of imagining what the reaction would have been if he had actually accepted.
True, he was no longer a dock worker. He was now something better. Something worse.
The same gentlemen who revered him in his club, who lined up to visit his dark throne deep in the bowels of the Cloven Hoof, would not treat him the same when bathed in the glittering candlelight of crystal chandeliers. Not where they were the kings.
Max had fought hard to gain what respect he had, earn what money he had, garner what success he’d had. If transferring the Cloven Hoof and its property into his name would be visible proof that he’d achieved success... Being snubbed and ridiculed by Bryony’s peers right in front of her would be even more incontrovertible proof that he had gained nothing after all.
Only a fool would put himself in such a position.
The absolute worst possible person to fall in love with would be someone who made his many differences seem all the starker. Someone whose world would either cast him bodily from it or swallow his soul in darkness.
His heart skipped, and he set down his plume with shaking fingers.
Fall in love? Foolish notion. No matter how much he liked Bryony, he was in no danger of love. He knew their time was limited. Days, numbered.
No matter how much he might wish otherwise.
His throat tightened. The reason he felt so conflicted over turning down her invitation, the reason his gut cramped with each memory of the flash of hurt that had crumpled her hopeful face until she could disguise the pain, was because he held her happiness on par with his own.
A faint knock sounded from outside the Cloven Hoof. Max frowned. The club had closed an hour ago.
Was it Bryony? Had she lost her key?
