Previously: Caroline meets Alessia and suspects what’s going on.
—
Marines: Remember that Max is out of town, so he doesn’t have the Thames to immediately convey his emotions. Have no fear, we get a bunch of other weather updates to compensate:
“It’s a cold and gloomy Tuesday afternoon. Exhausted, I lean against the chimney stack of the old tin mine and stare out toward the sea. The sky is dark and ominous, and a bitter Cornish wind slices through me. A storm is brewing, and the sea rages and crashes against the cliffs beneath, the sound booming and echoing through the ruined building. The first freezing spots of sleet from the coming storm, splatter on my face.”
The emotional turmoil displayed here. The Thames could never.
Emmy: His emotions are too much for the Thames to even properly convey. He needs the might of a whole ocean.
Mari: #deep
Max thinks back to when Kit, Maryanne and he were children and played in this ruined tin mine, which is on the edge of the Trevethick estate. Kit and Maryanne were the heroes and Max was the villain, get it? If you don’t, James spells it out for us. “How fitting. It was typecasting, even then.” Thanks, girl. We get it.
Max shares that the mines made the Trevelyans rich, but they closed them down in the late 1800s when they became less profitable. He poses it as the workers left to other places and that’s also why they closed them down, but idk, sounds like you closed them down and bunch of people lost their jobs. Max touches an old stone chimney, cold and rough, but still standing after all these years. Get this one? It’s fine if you don’t, honestly. James explains: Like the earls of Trevethick… Wow, would’ve never made that connection without your help, James.
Emmy: This also sent me down a rabbit hole that I’ve been considering since we first saw these names: I wondered if Trevethick was like when a romance author names their male love interest Rod or Lance or whatever- a little *winkwink* to the genre. However, no! The Trevethicks were apparently pioneers in railroading or whatever and were indeed a whole noble British line. Shows what I know.
And then I was like “wait. Trevelyan was the name of Christian Grey’s adoptive mother!!” And sure enough, it is, and for a horrified moment I wondered if this was EL’s way of creating some kind of interconnected Jamesverse but rest easy, friends. Trevelyan is also a historic British noble line. So thank god for that (and sorry to my Brit History teacher), but also I now kinda feel for the random British people whose family names have been yoinked for a smut book. Even if they have money, no one deserves to be in EL James’ books.
I guess they can use the money for therapy, though. So.
Mari: Listen, real name it might be, but this is still James creating a Jamesverse for sure. She would.
Anyhow, Max’s visit has been successful, and he gives Oliver his due for being good at his job and maybe actually wanting the best for the earldom. The staff all knows that Max isn’t planning on making any changes, and while part of it is that everything is working smoothly, the other part is that Max is too lazy to make changes. He’s also tired from having to be encouraging and upbeat for a few days and because he had to “listen to everyone.” I feel this as an introvert, but as a Max-hater, I like that he finds actually listening to people exhausting. He immediately repeats how tiring all this listening and reassuring and smiling has been. Just like… says it two times so we really get it.
Max looks at the path that leads to the sea and thinks of racing to the beach with Kit. Of course, Kit always won, because he’s the best. They also picked blackberries from the brambles that lined the path and their cook would make blackberry-and-apple crumble, Kit’s favorite. Before we move on to Max’s intense jealousy, I would just like to remind you of a couple of chapters ago when Max shared his great childhood trauma of never getting to ride the river bus. Instead, he was enjoying the beach on his private estate and picking fresh fruit so their personal cook could make delicious treats. What a nightmare.
Emmy: Clearly, his childhood is a litany of deeply relatable traumas.
Mari: Okay, back to Max thinking about how everything was always about Kit because he was the heir, not the spare.
“Kit. Kit. Kit.
It was always Kit.
The heir. Not the spare.
Fuck.
Why race through the icy lanes on a freezing night?
Why? Why? Why?
And now he lies beneath cold, hard slate in the Trevelyan family crypt.
Grief tightens my throat.
Kit.
Enough.”
Just a little snippet to truly capture this incredible writing. It’s kinda like she already made blackout poetry with her own writing.
Max whistles for Kit’s gundogs, named Jensen and Healey, who are named after cars, giving Max a chance to tell us that Kit loved cars. They live on this country estate. Max has thought about bringing them to London, but he knows that wouldn’t be great for these two working dogs. This stream of absolutely useless information as Max thinks about shooting and how their holiday homes are booked year-round here as people enjoy hooting. He even details what kinds of people enjoy shooting: Bankers! Hedge-fund managers! Affluent surfers! You know, the three kinds of people in this world. I’m in physical pain as we KEEP ON with the useless details: Max likes surfing! He likes clay shooting! He doesn’t like killing helpless birds! His dad loved shooting! His dad taught him to shoot! The sport keeps the estate profitable!
Emmy: We cannot understate just how relatable this book is, guys. Don’t we all hate how our estates profit off a sport we don’t particularly enjoy? It’s too bad it’s not a brothel, he’d be all over that particular estate if that was the case.
Oh, wait, no he’s not a ho now that he has a pretty young woman who does his laundry, nvmd.
Mari: Speaking of, Max wants to be back in London to be near Alessia. He hopes to see her on Friday, if he didn’t scare her away with his lip petting.
On cue, we cut to Alessia’s POV: It’s snowing so the Umbrella of Love has snow on it. Fascinating.
Alessia is not expecting Max to be home, but she hopes he will be because she’s missed his brooding and his smile. She takes a deep breath, opens the door, and the alarm silences at her!!! Amazing! He’s here!
She thinks some about how she borrowed the Umbrella of Love again and how Magda’s house has become home now. She quietly heads to the laundry room to change. The house is basically clean since he wasn’t here being a slob, but she makes a cleaning plan anyway. She starts in the living room and is shocked to find that Max is sleeping on the couch. She thinks about whether she should wake him or not, specifically because he looks uncomfy, but before she really decides, he wakes up. Kind of. He kind of wakes up and blearily sees her and mumbles “there you are.” She thinks he wants help getting up so she moves to help (the woman who can’t even look at him in the eye is suddenly like need a hand up good sir), but he pulls her down, kisses her quickly and starts cuddling. He murmurs that he missed her. Alessia is just like frozen, still clutching the window cleaner and cloth because remember, she came in here to do her job. Max tells her she looks good, but then his breathing settles and he relaxes, she figures he’s asleep again.
Alessia is lying there, all stiff, but then she’s like “wait isn’t this what I want???” So she just like relaxes and enjoys his chest hair and his scent of sandalwood, the fir trees in Kukes, wind, rain and exhaustion. I think she might mean morning breath. Like he smells like fir trees and mouth breathing.
Alessia keeps being creepy and kisses him and then thinks “I’ve kissed him!” Alessia wants to keep snuggling, but she knows this is wrong, so she decides to wake him, shaking him and asking “Please. Mister. Move.” Max wakes up confused and horrified. It really is a testament to how ruined I am and how bad this book is that my first thought was “well, at least he’s horrified.”
Emmy: I was so prepared for him to be insta-horny so I think this might be a step up?? #alsoruined
Mari: Max lets go of her, and she scrambles off and tries to run away, but Max grabs her. “No!” she shouts, so he lets her go. He apologizes, explaining that he was sleeping and he didn’t mean to frighten her. He got home at 4am after driving all night and passed out on the couch while trying to take off his boots. That makes them both look down at said boots which are gross and muddy and making a mess. He apologizes for the mess, but Alessia will have none of that! Her “compassion for this man blossoms,” because here he is, tired, and apologizing for making a mess in his own home.
“That’s not right. He has shown her nothing but kindness, giving her his umbrella, helping her into her coat, and when he caught her at the piano, he was complimentary and generous in his offer to let her play.
“Sit,” she says, spurred on by her compassion.
“What?”
“Sit down,” she says more forcefully, and he does as he’s told. She kneels at his feet and begins to untie his bootlaces.”
I am un! comfortable!
First off, I love that “lending an umbrella” and “helping her into her coat” are listed in the list of Maxim’s great kindnesses. Secondly, that we are expected to process these great kindness to a degree that we would understand Alessia’s compulsion to now kneel at his feet and remove his boots? Thirdly, I can’t quite articulate but just the whole vibe of this romance and the fact that his knee-jerk reaction to her is “I want to fuck her” and hers to his is “I’d like to serve him” is very GRIMACE EMOJI.
Emmy: Also, a large part of his attraction to her is definitely related to her being his (underpaid) subordinate and also being meek and afraid of him, considering his fantasies all involve her CLEANING HIS APARTMENT AND DOING HER DAMN JOB. VOMIT EMOJI.
I am grateful, however, that we didn’t get an “on her knees” fantasy with the pink underwear he’s so in love with.
Alessia remembers that he was probably dreaming when he said he missed her, and she’s back to being let down. But off she goes to clean his house anyway. James tells us her equilibrium is restored, and I twitch because she loved telling us all about Ana’s equilibrium in Fifty Shades. If the medulla oblongata shows up, I’m out.
Max can’t believe what an idiot he is. He drove back in the middle of that night because there was a blizzard coming and he didn’t want to get stuck in Cornwall for a week. He kept almost falling asleep, but he had to see Alessia! And now he’s blown it. But maybe not because he took off his shoes and ordered him to sleep. He can’t ever remember a time when any woman put him to bed and left him. Is that a mommy issue thing or are women routinely out there putting men to bed and then leaving them?
Max is still really tired, though, so he takes off his clothes and goes to sleep with horny thoughts of Alessia.
When he wakes up, he feels guilty. His phone is buzzing, but he misses a call from Caroline. Also, his wallet and spare change and a condom are on the bedside table so he remembers his daily.
“Oh, God. Alessia.
I jumped her.
Bugger.
I screw my eyes shut to escape the embarrassment that washes over me.
Fuck. A. Duck.”
James does this single word or short sentence thinking thing all the time and it bothers me so much.
Emmy: I was so thrilled at the return of “fuck a duck.” I’m keeping a counter- we’re at 2.
Mari: Max sits up and notes that his clothes have been put away, which means she emptied his jeans pockets. He thinks this is an intimate thing to do, to have her fingers on his clothes and on his stuff. WHAT DOES HE THINK HE’S PAYING HER TO DO?? FINGERS. ALL OVER HIS STUFF.
Emmy: Also kinda funny, considering all the nasty things he’s been thinking about doing to her and yet he considers when she’s doing her job and making sure she doesn’t wash pens and things in his clothes as “really intimate.”
Mari: Max wants those fingers on him. He thinks that’s not going to happen because he scared her so bad.
“How many houses does she clean anyway? How many pockets does she rummage through? I dislike the thought. Perhaps I should hire her full-time.”
He’s thinking about hiring her full-time, so she doesn’t rummage through other people’s pockets.
Max wonders what time it is because he can’t see the Thames shimmering on the ceiling. He glances outside and only sees white. “Snow.” Yes, again, thanks for clarifying, James. Max finds Alessia still cleaning, and she asks him if he slept well. He did. He apologizes again for sleep-grabbing her. They look out at the blizzard again and Max realizes that Alessia probably won’t be able to get home. He looks it up and indeed, none of the trains are running. Max offers to let her stay here and promises to keep his hands off her. Alessia says she has to be home, though, and proposes to walk. Max says she’ll catch hypothermia and mentally adds that is especially true in her threadbare clothes and shoes.
Emmy: You know what could help that, Max?
If you paid her more.
Mari: And that can happen BEFORE you sleep with her…
Alessia is adamant about returning home, and Max is adamant about driving her then. He tells her to play the piano while he goes to get ready. Like so many things in this damn book, it is unintentionally hilarious.
Cut to Alessia. She watches Max leave and she wonders if being in a car with him would be okay. She wonders what her mom would say. And then what her father would say. She decides neither of them would approve, especially not her father, who only approved of one cruel man. She tells herself not to think of him. She briefly considers just leaving now while Max is getting ready, but decides that would indeed suck. Instead she claps delightedly because she can play the piano. She changes out of her cleaning clothes, sits at the piano and plays “Les jeux d’eaux a la Villa d’Este,” which looks white to her. All her bad memories of her parents and cruel men and walking to London fade away.
Cut to Max, who is of course watching her play. He’s finally seeing her hair without the scarf and wonders would it would look like loose. So he closes his eyes and pictures her naked while he listens to her playing. She’s still a “fucking virtuoso,” just FYI. When she’s done, Max asks where she learned to play so well. She says home. Max says they can talk more about it in the car. Alessia stands and this is also the first time Max has seen her out of the house coat. She’s even! slimmer! than he thought she would be, but also super curvaceous. She’s wearing a tight v-neck sweater and tight jeans.
“Fuck.
She’s gorgeous.”
Max watches her put her boots on, but she doesn’t wear socks. He asks if she wears socks and she says no. He wonders if it’s an Albanian thing, I guess because he doesn’t understand how poverty works??
He helps her into her bad coat again, this time noticing it has a badge and freaking out thinking it might be a school jacket. He asks how old she is. She says she’s 23. “Old enough. Good.”
Emmy: Gross. But at least he did consider this might be grosser and it gave him a second of pause.
Mari: And there’s the bare minimum yet again.
They head out. In the elevator, Alessia stands as far away as possible from him. Max is real sad at the thought that she’s so scared of him. He tries to look calm and nonchalant, but we know how much E.L. James loves horny elevator rides. Again again again again again, Max wonders if Alessia is scared of just him or all men.
They get to the parking garage, and Max makes sure to tell us that it is small, but since his family owns the building, he gets two parking spaces. He has a Land Rover Discovery and an F-Type Jaguar, which is a great way for us to spend another paragraph talking about cars and how much Kit liked cars and how if a car just drove through my apartment and over my laptop ending this misery, I wouldn’t be sad exactly.
Max picks the Discovery for that sweet four-wheel drive. The car is dirty from his drive home and he’s got a bunch of garbage in the passenger seat. He cleans it up and wonders why he’s not tidier. He is self-aware enough to realize that it has something to do with being picked up after his whole life.
Emmy: Oh god watch- him “falling in love” with a woman who cleans will make him realize that people who clean are human and he’s been treating them like robots who deserve the hellacious mess he apparently manages to create in thirty-six hours. VOMIT EMOJI.
Mari: Duh, what good is a woman if falling in love with her doesn’t make you aware of basic human decency? HEART EMOJI.
They both climb in and Alessia gives him her address in Brentford. As they drive, Max asks about where she’s from and if it snows there. He asks what brought her to London, but she clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. He asks how she memorizes all the pieces she plays on the piano, and she describes her synesthesia to him, which Max teaches her the word for. He emphasizes that she can play the piano whenever she likes, which makes her smile. She tells him that she likes to play. And he tells her that he likes to listen. Then they just… ride in silence. For forty minutes.
When they get to Magda’s house, Max sees Michal peek outside. He asks if that’s Alessia’s boyfriend and she laughs because he’s 14. Max notes that he’s tall. Alessia explains that she’s staying with Magda, who is her mother’s pen pal. She thanks him for driving her home. Max apologizes again for pouncing on her, but she doesn’t know the word. He explains it as jumping, like a cat, which makes her laugh. She offers him a cup of tea, but he declines, noting he’s more of a coffee drinker. She says they might have coffee, but he says it’s okay. He has to get back home. He says he’ll see her on Friday and they smile at each other some more.
Don’t ask me what the fuck happened in that car so that now she can suddenly converse with him and smile easily.
Emmy: It would be almost cute if they were both just more comfortable now that they’ve had a genuine conversation, and so now they’re not as on edge with each other as a result. You know, a normal progression in anyone’s relationship as you get to know the other person. But no, of course not, they’re written by EL so it’s just weird (and we know my rationale is not their rationale because the Thames would have told us).
Also lololol he was jealous of a kid being friends with Alessia and if that’s not the most Christian Grey BS ever. Next we’ll see someone have a male infant and Max get fiesty about Alessia cooing at the baby.
Mari: I mean, he did get jealous of her cleaning out other people’s pockets, so anything is possible.
Alessia gets out and heads to the house. Michal scowls at Max, which he thinks is hilarious.
Next time on The Mister: Dear god, they finally kiss, bless, praise in Chapter 08.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Emmy is a teacher/poet by day and a blogger/cat mom by night. She spends a lot of time watching scary movies and then jumping at every small noise for the next five or twelve hours. Her dream job would absolutely be kitten/puppy cuddling, or maybe professional napper.
