Max decided honesty was the best course. “Because, dear Freddie, with the season on and your father in America, I promised your sister I’d look out for you and keep you in line. And,” he added as the younger man muttered an oath, “I’d like my efforts in that regard to be minimal.”
“But I don’t see why Timothy and I have to be included in that,” Thomas put in. “Helen’s not our sister.”
“No, but the two of you are every bit as notorious in your conduct as Freddie here and could easily lead him further astray if you’re not subject to the same rules.”
An immediate wave of protest greeted this accusation, but Max ignored it.
“My condition applies to all of you,” he said. “For me to write that letter, you must earn it. Come now, gentlemen,” he added as they continued to hesitate. “It’s not as if you’ve got the blunt for heavy-stakes gambling, cancan dancers, and East End drinking bouts just now anyway. And,” he added as the other three gave gloomy sighs of acknowledgment, “if you behave, you won’t incur any additional debt, much to your families’ joy and relief. And with a clear conscience, I will be able to inform the good gentlemen at Oxford of your exemplary conduct when I write that letter.”
He waited as the other three considered this new development, but when the waiter placed another round of Manhattan cocktails on the table, he lifted his glass and pressed for an answer. “Well, gentlemen, are we agreed?”
Thomas was the first to speak. “I’m in,” he said and picked up his own glass.
His brother did the same. “Metoo. What about you, Freddie?”
“I think I can manage to be a good boy for a couple of months.” Freddie laughed, reaching for his cocktail. “And once we’re safely reinstated at Oxford, I will thoroughly enjoy spending my share of the hundred quid Westbourne will be paying us.”
“Hear, hear,” his companions replied in unison.
“After all,” Freddie added, laughing as he lounged back in his chair with his drink after the toast was complete, “even a duke can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
Max’s temper flared suddenly, putting the cocktail glass in his hand at serious risk. With an effort, he relaxed his grip so as not to snap the stem, tamped down his anger, and reminded himself that winning would be the best way to put Freddie in his place.
And he would win, by God. He raised his gaze to the laughing face of the young man opposite, set his jaw, and lifted his glass for a second toast, a silent one.
No matter what he had to do, no matter what it took or what price he had to pay, he would transform Bookshop Cinderella into the belle of the ball.
With that vow, Max downed the rest of his drink, and as he set his glass on the table, he grinned, his good temper restored. This was going to be fun.
4
Twenty-eight finger sandwiches. Four plum cakes. Seven pots of tea. Eleven dashes up and down the stairs to her flat, five trips to the costermonger on the corner, and zero chances to put her feet up.
Evie stared at the wreckage that had been imposed upon her once neat and tidy storage room—the crates of books shoved carelessly aside, the scattered chairs, the empty plates and cups, the tea-stained floor, and the crumbs on the table—and she wondered how only five men could have eaten so much food and made such a mess in only a few short hours. Too exhausted last night to tidy things up, she’d decided to leave it until the morning, telling herself it would be easier to face in the light of day.
It wasn’t.
Still, the mess wouldn’t clean itself, so she unbuttoned her cuffs, rolled up her sleeves, and donned her apron, but she’d barely taken the first tray of dirty dishes up to her flat and returned for the second when she heard the unmistakable sound of tapping on the window at the front of the shop.
Puzzled, she glanced down at the watch pinned to her lapel. Confirming that there was still half an hour before she was required to open, she resumed her task, but thenthe tapping came again—more insistent this time—and Evie gave up trying to ignore it.
She expected to find an impatient customer waiting, but when she paused in the pantry and took a peek into the shop beyond, she discovered she’d been mistaken. Rory stood by the front door, his hands cupped to the plate glass as he tried to see into the shop’s unlit interior, and she came forward to unlock the door.
“Hullo, Rory,” she said, pulling the door wide. “What are you doing here so early?”
He smiled, a smile that could have melted stone, and Evie forgave the mess in her storage room and how all those plum cakes and sandwiches had nearly emptied her cash register.
“I wanted to express my thanks for your generosity yesterday,” he said. “And to give you something in return.”
“Oh, Rory, you don’t have to give me anything,” she protested, even as she felt her flagging spirits lifting a notch. “I was glad to help.”
“Nonetheless, I wanted to show my appreciation.” He pulled a slim package wrapped in brown paper from his breast pocket. “For all your hard work.”
He held it out to her, and even before she took it from him, she knew what it was.
A book.
Resisting the temptation to glance at the overflowing shelves all around her, she took the package from Rory’s outstretched hand and hoped for the best as she untied the string and tore off the paper. Maybe it was a novel, something new and exciting she hadn’t already read.
