Chapter 35
Max heard nothing from his extraordinary new acquaintance all through that long day, and though he tried to carry on as normal – riding in the park, sparring with Tom and then Gil at Jackson’s saloon – he was aware that he was distracted, answering them almost at hazard, not fully aware of the world around him.
After a while of this, and when Gil had popped a sly hit or two over his guard when normally he could by no means manage to do so, Jackson called a halt.
‘It’s dangerous to go into the ring – even in a friendly sort of way – when your mind’s not on the sport,’ he told Mr Severin with his usual calm authority, a hint of reproof shading his genial voice.
‘If Mr Glasscock knocked you down and by ill luck you sustained some lasting damage, he’d be sorrier than you would, and yet the fault would not be his.
This isn’t the place for you today, sir. ’
Max might normally have come back with some quick riposte, to the effect that if Gil put him on the canvas it really would be by luck and not skill, but today he could only smile a trifle bleakly and murmur in agreement and apology.
Usually, too, he could have expected his friends to rib him for his unprecedented absent-mindedness, and ask if a lady or a lightskirt was the cause of it, but today, after one look at his face, they let him be.
God knows what was written there, but they could see it and it made them wary.
When they had rubbed themselves down and attired themselves in their fashionable street attire once more, Tom asked him if he wanted to accompany them to Brooks’s, the gentlemen’s club of which they were all members.
He couldn’t imagine anything worse, in his current state of mind, and declined the offer with unflattering promptness, saying that he had urgent estate business waiting for him at home.
Gil clapped him on the shoulder – the masculine equivalent of a woman’s comforting embrace of a friend, he supposed – and they went on their way, their normally cheerful faces infected with a little of his own sombreness.
They knew that all was not well with him, and equally they knew that he had not the faintest intention of telling them anything about what ailed him.
He stayed at home for the rest of the day, increasingly impatient and anxious not to miss a communication, supposing the damn thing ever came.
He thought that Allegra must be in the same pitiful case, and wished in a futile fashion that they might be together and lighten the burden of waiting.
But that was ridiculous, of course. When all this was over, they should no longer see each other.
Certainly there must be no more illicit meetings, however tempting the thought was.
It would be safer, and less painful, never to see her again, even though all he had to do was close his eyes and she was there in his mind, naked and magnificent, holding his gaze, and likely always would be.
What of it? Probably she would soon be married to Milton, once this threat was lifted.
Then she would be secure, and he would be…
exactly where he had been before. If the prospect seemed lonelier, that was nonsense. Nothing had changed.
Everything had changed, though. He had thought, ever since he’d learned the truth about his mother, that the worst thing that could possibly happen to him was exposure, with all its manifold consequences, up to and including his own painful and humiliating death.
But he’d been fifty kinds of fool, he now realised.
Because the worst thing that could happen to him was simultaneously the best. The most exquisite and unexpected of torments, and the cruellest. He, Max Severin, notorious care-for-nobody, had fallen in love.
The letter came at last, brought by an impudent young street boy who gravely offended George Wicken’s dignity but would not be denied. It was unsigned, and it said in confident black ink:
It is done. Read the papers tomorrow. AS.