Effie was no stranger to remorse.
When one frequently spoke or acted without thinking, which she did as a matter of course most days, remorse reliably often followed. However, this dose was niggling worse than usual because it hadn’t come about because her mind had raced ahead before her mouth caught up, it had come about by telling a lie.
A big, fat and dishonest lie which she wasn’t entirely sure what to do about.
The rain had had a bearing because she hadn’t been able to dig for days, which in turn meant she was all alone at home with her noisy brain going slowly mad. And with idle hands, the Devil had apparently made use of hers.
Although in her defence, not that she could really defend the indefensible, she had not set out to lie. With nothing better to do, she had resorted to busying herself by properly organising and expanding her notes on the dig site, which had rapidly turned into another research paper to send to the Society of Antiquaries. She then followed it by writing a heartfelt letter, passionately explaining the significance of her find and pleading with them to at least read the paper. Then, in a moment of uncharacteristic dishonesty borne out of sheer frustration at their continued and stubborn blatant ignorance, she had taken Eleanor’s advice and not signed it Miss Euphemia Nithercott.
Instead, she’d used a pseudonym.
One she was certain they couldn’t ignore.
Maximillian Aldersley—the Tenth Earl of Rivenhall.
Then, before she thought better of it, she had dashed out in the downpour and managed to get it to the post office just in time to make it on to the mail coach. The first pangs of remorse had twanged as she had watched it be spirited away. Two days on and they were still twanging because she had no idea how to break the news to Max. Or if she actually should. There was every chance they would recognise the handwriting, or the location of the dig site, and realise exactly who had really sent the letter and send it back unopened like they always did.
But what if...? She already knew Max wouldn’t take it well.
As if her thoughts had conjured him, two large booted feet appeared at the top of the trench she was crouched in.
‘I am in hell, Effie. Utter hell and I blame you for it entirely. It is a sorry state of affairs when a man looks forward to suffering hours of your incessant talking in a muddy trench doing backbreaking, menial work, simply to get some peace.’
‘Your niece and nephew have settled in, then?’
‘Indeed they have. Alongside their nanny, their father, his mother and one blasted puppy who hasn’t stopped yapping since it arrived. Of all the puppies in the world, what possessed my brother-in-law to get them that one? It is a menace.’ It all sounded idyllic to her.
‘Perhaps it’s nervous. A change of scenery can do that to an animal. Or so I have read. What do your family think of Rivenhall?’
‘The brats seem to love it. Which is a concern as already I am terrified they will never leave now that Eleanor has lured them here upon your flawed instruction.’
‘You did not have to take my advice.’
‘Yes, I did, or I’d never have heard the end of it! So I justifiably blame you entirely for the death of my peace and, thanks to the rain conspiring with you and Eleanor against me, what is left of my blasted sanity.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be for your sanity. It was entirely for Eleanor’s.’
‘The trouble with my sister is when you give her an inch, she takes a mile. Just like you, as a matter of fact. Give me a crew of men to manage any day over a couple of meddlesome and manipulative women.’ He huffed out a sigh, looking thoroughly put upon, gorgeously windswept and distractingly all manly. So much so, she was constantly having to remind herself she was a committed cynic regarding men and a pleasingly broad pair of shoulders, strong back and sinfully pert bottom did not alter the fact that Max was as male as the next man and, by default, inherently doomed to disappoint her in the long run. Even if he was her friend and she was unwisely fond of him. ‘Did I tell you she spent the week preparing the nursery? And trust me, it is a little too prepared for a short visit from the brats.’
‘But not too prepared for many short visits. Eleanor said you are their favourite uncle, so it is only natural your niece and nephew would want to spend time with you—and only proper you should have the facilities to welcome them.’
‘I am their only uncle, so it is not as if either of us has a choice in the matter.’
‘Regular visits from them will be good for you. Little people are good for the soul.’ So, apparently, was confession. She had to tell him what she had done even though she knew he was bound to explode in outrage.
‘And little feet, I have discovered, also make a great deal of noise on those old oak floors. So do little paws for that matter. I blame you for both.’ He crouched down, bringing his distracting muscular thighs level with her eyes. ‘Your trench appears to be filled with bilge water. We can’t dig that until it dries out.’
‘I know.’ She tapped the wooden pail sat half-full beside him. ‘I thought it might aid the drying if I removed most of the water but it’s proved futile. As fast as I remove it, it fills up again. Clearly, man can drain the Fens all he wants, but the moment they are fed with a little rain they return to type and flood. I blame the peat beneath the soil. There seem to be more old peat bogs around this dwelling than over by the Abbey... But then I suppose the Abbey needed to be built on solid foundations and a wooden house would not.’
Stop procrastinating and tell him. Fall on your sword. Beg for mercy.
‘Are they all as bad?’
‘Fortunately, thanks to your covers on the other side of the dwelling, those trenches seem to have avoided the worst.’ Max had predicted the storm several hours before it had happened and then appropriated every piece of oilskin, canvas and wood at Rivenhall to cover the most important trenches which had yielded the most finds thus far.
‘Then let’s work on them while the weather holds. It is bound to rain later. Just look at that sky.’ He pointed upwards at the single paltry, dark cloud in the sky.
‘It is not going to rain, Max.’
‘I might not know my Iceni from my Catuvellauni, Miss Naysayer, but like any good sailor worth his salt I know my weather and I smell another storm.’ He offered his hand to haul her out and then frowned in disgust when he saw the state of hers. ‘Good lord, you are filthy! I mean, you are always filthy so I’m used to it, but that is a new level of muddiness, even for you. Yet despite the mud, I can still see you are wearing odd shoes. How hard is it to match a pair of shoes, Effie?’ He walked off, shaking his shaggy dark head and leaving her ankle deep in water.
‘Don’t mind me. I can get myself out.’
‘Probably best.’ He returned with the wheelbarrow which he deposited next to one of the covered trenches while he watched her clamber up the sticky mud. ‘Did you have the foresight to bring a towel?’
‘Of course not. But I brought cake.’ His favourite, as a sweetener in the hope it would make him less inclined to hit the roof when he learned she’d used his name without permission.
‘Mrs Farley’s...?’
‘Well, I certainly did not bake it.’
‘Did I tell you I am thinking of marrying that woman? What she can do with a humble currant and a bag of flour is a miracle. Is she single, perchance?’
‘Not yet. But Mr Farley is seventy-seven and as such could feasibly turn up his toes at any moment. Mind you, at seventy-six, so could she.’
‘If you are expecting me to baulk at that, I should warn you, I’ve always been partial to an older woman.’ He had bent over to remove the pegs from the canvas protecting trench sixteen, allowing her to admire his spectacular bottom unencumbered. ‘There is an earthiness to them which is...’ She could hear the wistful smile in his voice and groaned aloud in mock disgust. The disgust might be false, but the pang of irrational jealousy felt very real.
‘I have no desire to hear about your many conquests, Max—old or otherwise.’
‘To be fair, seventy-six is a bit old. I always drew the line at late forties. After that, gravity tends to have taken its toll.’
‘Ugh!’
‘And how old was Rupert? Eighty? Ninety?’
‘Fifty-nine.’
‘Fifty-nine! You really were going to marry an old man! I assumed, when you said he was older, it was by less than twenty years. But fifty-nine, Effie...?’
‘You sound as though you disapprove.’
‘Of course I disapprove. What sort of a marriage would you have had with a man old enough to be your father? When you are so full of life...’ His voice trailed off and she watched him shake his head in disbelief before his big hands spanned her waist and he effortlessly lifted her into the trench. Which once again put her eyes level with his distracting buff-clad thighs and reminded her of the hard muscles which pleasingly upholstered his strong arms and broad shoulders.
I am a cynic! A weak-willed and easily waylaid one.
‘I told you—it wasn’t a love match. It was more a marriage of convenience. He wanted a wife...’
‘What for? To bring his slippers? To polish his ear trumpet? To keep him company in his dotage?’
‘And I wanted...’ To feel part of something. To feel like a woman first rather than an oddity. Feel a baby grow in her empty womb. Watch it grow. Love it with all her heart and never be lonely again. She shrugged, not wanting him to see how depressing it was to know her one chance at having what every other woman of her acquaintance took for granted had passed her by and she would never know what any of those longed-for things felt like ‘...more than what I have now.’
‘I know—you wanted the security of marriage because life is so difficult for a woman on her own. I understand that—’ He didn’t look like he did. ‘But those same securities would also come with a younger man. Could still come with a younger man. Preferably one still with all his own teeth. You were selling yourself short, Effie, and that is so sad.’
‘One cannot sell oneself short if there is only one bidder, Max.’
He scoffed as he rummaged in the wheelbarrow. ‘Do you seriously expect me to believe you were Miss Never-been-kissed before you met my uncle’s decrepit friend? Because I won’t have it. Oddness aside, you scrub up well.’
She decided to take that as another compliment because his tone had sounded flatteringly incredulous and despite being a little back-handed, it still made her tummy go all fluttery. ‘Hardly never. In fact, as long as I disguise my natural self from the first moment I meet a gentleman and talk about superficial things like the weather, they have always seemed rather eager to kiss me initially.’
‘So why the blazes didn’t you marry one of them?’
‘Getting them to kiss me has never been the problem. It’s getting them to want to continue kissing me after they discover the truth about me that’s always been the struggle. They seem to forget I am a woman the moment the real me slips out of my mouth...’ She paused, waiting pathetically for another compliment which never came while he continued to rifle noisily in the wheelbarrow with more concentration than she felt it warranted in view of the gravitas of what they were discussing. Then, in a moment of pathetic weakness and to her abject horror, she accidentally said what she was thinking out loud into the void.
‘I think I emasculate them.’
She saw his body stiffen before he turned, lips parted, and she realised she had shocked him. She found her hand slicing backwards and forward. ‘I didn’t mean by actual castration, Max.’ Another poor choice of word when his groin was mere inches away and she was now thinking about it. The size, the shape, the form... ‘I meant that their desire for me withers...’ Good grief, the inappropriate words were coming thick and fast now! ‘I mean it deflates...’ It was like a disease of the jaws! It was his fault. His shaving soap, his arms, his thighs and the intimate proximity of his masculine parts were scrambling her wits. ‘What I mean is...his desire, not his...um...desire.’ To compound her misery she found her finger was pointing south and felt her face combust.
Laughter rumbled in his chest. ‘You are blushing! Like a beetroot.’
‘Only because you have the wrong end of the stick!’ Suddenly every word coming out of her mouth sounded hugely inappropriate to him as well as her if the second bark of laughter was any gauge. ‘And by stick I meant stick and not...’
She could see the amusement dancing in his dark eyes. ‘And not?’
‘Sometimes I loathe you!’
‘Only sometimes? I must be slipping.’ He passed her a trowel and when she snatched it out of his hand couldn’t stop himself from grinning ear to ear. ‘In case you were wondering, I understood your initial statement perfectly, Effie. Without the need for all your hilariously inappropriate descriptive clarification. Your big brain makes them feel emasculated in the inadequate sense rather than the literal.’ To vex her he also pointed south, his lips twitching as he struggled to hold the laughter in.
‘Then why didn’t you just say so and put me out of my misery, you wretch?’
‘Where would the fun have been in that? I thoroughly enjoyed watching you flounder and that unflatteringly blotchy blush was the icing on the cake.’ He snorted again when her hands automatically sought her cheeks to feel the apparently unflattering blotches for herself.
‘You’re a miserable, reclusive curmudgeon. You’re not supposed to have fun. And certainly not at my expense when I am one of the few people who can tolerate you.’
‘That’s true.’ He jumped into the trench beside her making the six-foot-by-three-foot space feel overwhelmingly small. ‘I shall try to curb the urge in the future. Although to be fair, it would be much easier to do if you stopped giving me good reason. You are the one who used the words wither and castration in the same sentence and then dug yourself a bigger hole trying to correct them.’
‘You know the words fly out of my mouth before I’ve had time to consider them.’
‘Then try breathing in between them, Effie, darling.’ He was too tall. Too broad. Too everything while smelling sinfully too good. And he had called her darling, when no one had ever called her darling, and the endearment sounded wonderful on his lips. It all had a devastating effect on her pulse. ‘It might help prevent unnecessary embarrassment in the future.’
‘Good advice.’ And because it was and she was more mortified now than just embarrassed, and because he already had his back to her, she inhaled deeply and slowly blew it out. She didn’t usually allow herself to be so flustered with a man. Not any more at least. She blamed the fact she was today on three long days of not seeing him despite knowing full well he had always had the power to fluster her. Although bizarrely, as much as Max flustered her, he also liberated her, too. With him, she gave her big brain free rein and never pretended to be anything but what she was. He was her friend. Which was lovely and she should be content with that seeing as she had never had many of them. Except increasingly she wasn’t.
‘Do I intimidate you, Max?’ So much for breathing before she thought aloud.
He paused and she held her breath, unsure she truly wanted to hear his answer, but desperate for it all the same.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Another pause. Strangely loaded and significant this time as his answer mattered so much to her. ‘Because it is hard to be intimidated by a woman who cannot match a pair of shoes.’
Had he tempered his words? Sidestepped the question as he was prone to do when he did not want to honestly answer? Was he placating her, or worse—paying her lip service because he was kind beneath the bluster? He didn’t seem intimidated ever—but then their friendship had always been strictly platonic. Perhaps that had a bearing? Or was she reading more into the pause and his answer than he had ever meant because her feelings for him weren’t entirely platonic any longer and probably never had been? The feminine part of her was attracted to his physicality and the temporal part was attracted to the man beneath. Was she trying to read more into his words because she wanted more than friendship? Did he?
Of course not! This was all Eleanor’s fault. Because Eleanor had set her reading Gothic novels again and the unrealistic romance in them was doing strange things to her cynical brain and reawakening her curiosity of men. Every heroine looked remarkably like her in her odd head and every hero bore a striking resemblance to Max. This was exactly why she had stopped reading the rubbish!
Max had never flirted with her. Or flattered her with effusive compliments. Never given any clue that he saw her as a woman as well as an irritant. All clear signs he did not reciprocate her foolhardy blossoming feelings.
But then again, after everything he had suffered, after his fiancée’s cruel rejection, would he?
Too many questions crowded her mind, none of them she was brave enough to risk asking out loud. In case one slipped out and royally spoiled their friendship for ever, she bit down on her lip and tried to focus on the task in hand. Behind her, Max happily did the same although she sincerely doubted he was similarly plagued by questions concerning their unlikely but complicated relationship.
Did she intimidate him?
What sort of a blasted question was that to ask hot on the heels after he had only just discovered there had been multiple idiots who had apparently kissed her in the past. Idiots who were too stupid not to want to do it again! Because to his way of thinking, asking if she intimidated him was merely a polite way of asking if she emasculated him, which would be laughable if everything about Effie didn’t remind him hourly exactly how masculine he truly was.
The most masculine part of him was still reeling at the sight of her all flustered and damp in that worn shirt and those damned form-fitting breeches. And she had a smear of mud on her cheek, which he’d had the devil of a job not brushing away the second he had seen it. The only way he could stop himself was to pretend he did not want to hold her muddy hand when he had stupidly offered to help her out of the trench, because in that precise moment, had he hauled her up, he would have hauled her into his arms and likely scared the hell out of her.
What baffled him, what he still couldn’t wrap his head around, was how those idiotic men had found the strength not to kiss her because he was severely struggling with it.
Every day it got harder and, to make it worse, the urge wasn’t only fired by her pretty face and mouth-watering figure, but by her mind. The more he got to know her, the more he wanted to know her in every sense of the word. His unwelcome infestation of visitors aside, the past three days had been interminable because he had missed her. He’d even ridden twice in the pouring rain in the pathetic hope he would still find her here, tenaciously digging despite the foul weather. The linen shirt plastered to her skin and rendered translucent...
And those thoughts were not helping his discomfort at all. What had possessed him to work in the same trench as her? Mere inches away, but still too many miles apart for his liking.
Blasted torture!
Clearly he had a masochistic streak to have chosen this, rather than the other fifteen trenches he had dug, just to be close to her?
Annoyed, he thrust the trowel into the soft mud wall in front of him and felt the tip of it strike something solid. Even though he knew it was probably a rock, he still took the time to remove the soil carefully from the surface exactly as Effie had taught him.
The edge of whatever it was seemed large and curved like a wheel and, because he did not possess her patience or want to alert her to the fact he might have found something and then have to suffer her leaning over him while he worked, he discarded the trowel and began to tug away the earth with his fingers. Then he hit peat and that happily crumbled with the merest touch.
Little by little, the object quickly revealed itself until Max had uncovered a foot-wide crescent. But unlike a wheel, it wasn’t hollow, nor did it have spokes. He swiped his hands over it to clean away the mud and then stared in disbelief at the tiny spot of ornately tooled metal he had clumsily uncovered.
‘Effie...’
His tone must have alerted her to his discovery, because like a shot she at his side and staring in disbelief. ‘Good heavens...’
Suddenly crouched next to him, her fingers joined his as they frantically removed the dirt. A task made easier by the moisture left in the ground from days of rain, the removal of years of compacted earth with the pickaxe only days before and the fresh drops which decided to fall from the sky to soften the peat it sat in. In no time and oblivious of the rainfall soaking them through, they had unveiled a perfect circle, obviously an ancient shield, the centre decorated with a proud riveted disc around which swirling patterns had been pressed into the metal.
Max stepped back to allow her smaller, more nimble, gentle fingers to prise the embedded edges from the earth, then watched transfixed as it was suddenly and miraculously free with hardly any effort and she lifted it.
‘I cannot believe it is completely intact.’ She laid it reverently on the grass on the top of the trench and ran her palm over the pattern as the rain that had started again hammered down on it. ‘Unless the peat somehow preserves things better than normal soil?’ She tugged free the hem of her shirt and used it to clean away as much muck as she could and then just stood and stared at it in wonder. ‘It is beautiful... Truly beautiful... Obviously bronze by the patina and lack of rust... The workmanship exquisite.’
‘So much for the Celts being savages, then? The man who used this had excellent taste and knew one hell of a blacksmith.’
She slowly turned to him, half-smiling, half-agog. ‘You are right... The man who owned this was someone special, Max. This shield is a statement. Purely ceremonial, I’ll wager, and a mark of his status, exactly like the gold bracelet. Both are incredibly special objects and it is too coincidental to find two such treasures in one small space.’
‘Do you think it plausible this wooden hut belonged to a king?’ If the Celts even had kings.
‘Perhaps... Which would make this dwelling...’ Awe turned to excitement as she beamed, then launched at him, wrapping her arms around him in an exuberant hug while jumping up and down. ‘Oh, Max! This is wonderful! Wonderful! You’ve found something wonderful! He’s someone important! Someone hugely important! That explains why his house is so big!’
‘Do you think?’
‘It has to be! He is an eminent chieftain or a king!’
‘Or a queen like that Boudicca you and my sister are so fond of. That bracelet is too small for a man’s wrist. And then there is that comb you found. Big, hairy, blue men wouldn’t bother with a comb...’
‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this was a woman’s house? A different sort of woman than society understands today, of course.’ Much like Effie herself. ‘But one who mattered once. Someone important...’ Her hands clutched at his waistcoat as she beamed and bounced on the spot. ‘You’ve found something amazing, Max!’ Caught up in her excitement he looped his arm around her waist and laughed, picking her up and spinning her around in the confined space as best he could until they were both giddy. ‘You’ve found something amazing!’
‘We found something amazing, Effie.’
We...
He liked the sound of that on his lips. Liked the feel of her arms locked around his neck. The feel of her lush body in damp fabric plastered against him. The sight of her bedraggled hair and the way it dripped rainwater on to his face. The way that rainwater spiked her long lashes and dewed her lips.
He felt his heart beating against her ribs.
Felt his chest rise and fall in time with hers.
Lost himself in the depths of her beautiful, expressive eyes.
Then forgot all the reasons why he shouldn’t kiss her and simply did, sighing against her mouth as he gathered her close. She tasted like the outdoors. The sea air. The vast horizons he had sailed towards, filled with promise and wonder. Smelled of lilacs and roses and rainwater. Felt like utter perfection in his arms.
As if she had been made for him. That was his last rational thought before he lost himself.
Until the sound of rapidly approaching hoofbeats broke the spell and the pair of them jumped apart and blinked at each other, stunned.