“I know,” Max said, his gaze even. “I didn’t expect them to allow me in.”
She frowned. “Then why...”
“I wanted to force them to have my name on their lips,” he said fiercely. “To speak out loud from the sanctity of their club why I wasn’t worthy to join them. And then drive their fancy coaches with ancient family crests over here to my door in order to beg entrance into my world.”
She straightened. “You blackballed them?”
“Best day of my life,” he said with satisfaction.
Bryony grinned back. “Good.”
Her smile faltered when she realized it meant her own father was likely one of the men who had voted against him. One of the many privileged gentlemen who believed he could then walk into the Cloven Hoof as if he owned the place, only to be turned away at the door.
Perhaps that was the real reason why Max has been disgusted to learn she was a Grenville.
She couldn’t blame him.
His story gripped her heart. He had been born into poverty. Raised by his mother. Worked on the docks. Made more of himself than anyone of his acquaintance ever thought him capable of achieving.
Not only wasn’t he searching for some rich, high-class savior to bestow greatness by association and thereby elevate his worth.... He didn’t need a savior of any kind.
Or her.
Her chest thumped in sudden understanding.
She wasn’t sitting across from him at this desk because she had broken in, because she had been his first investor, because she owned the deed.
She was here because he hadn’t blackballed her.
It wasshewho’d had to prove herself to him. To be worthy of his time. Of his trust. All her contributions were incidental. The journals spread out before her proved how competent and clever he was completely on his own.
She looked around the meticulously ordered interior. This was his dream, not hers. If she cared about him at all, she ought not stand in his way.
Hedeservedthe deed.
She had no right to keep it from him.
That he didn’t already possess it was a technicality. Her presumptiveness, her self-interest, was all that kept her from giving in. She was so afraid that once he possessed the deed, he wouldn’t need her anymore. No, not fear. It was the truth. She was delaying the inevitable.
Her throat tightened.
Giving Max his land was the right thing to do. She might wish to be part of the Cloven Hoof, but heneededthe Cloven Hoof.
And as for Bryony?
Perhaps there was something else out there for someone like her.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
She dropped her gaze to the journals. “Nothing. Arithmetic.”
“You haven’t scribbled a single number in the past quarter hour.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
Bryony went with a half-truth. “I was thinking about Almack’s.”
He flinched and immediately shuttered his expression. “You’re thinking about ensnaring a titled gentleman?”
“I’m thinking about burning Almack’s to the ground and remaking it in the Cloven Hoof’s image.” She squinted into the distance as she imagined how wonderful it would be. “Instead of rigid rules for entry, I would let everyone in. Perhaps then love matches wouldn’t be so rare.”
