Redeeming The Reclusive Earl

Chapter Three

Four hundred and twelve crystals...

Max knew that already because he had counted every damn droplet on the chandelier above his bed twice this week when sleep evaded him. For once, he had someone else to blame for his restlessness. The tart-mouthed, not easily intimidated new bane of his life: Miss Euphemia Nithercott.

He would lay good money she was out there. Since laying siege to his study and frightening the life out of him two days ago, he knew full well she was still digging despite his expressly forbidding her to do so. Annoyed, he threw the covers back and padded to the window, staring sightlessly at the darkness, impatiently willing dawn to break an hour earlier than usual.

He knew she was out there because he had become unhealthily obsessed with checking up on her. Each morning since, as soon as the sun came up, he rode to her haphazard cluster of holes in his ground and each time he had seen as clear as the sparkling crystals on his bedchamber chandelier her dratted hole was getting bigger. Although she was taking her own sweet time about it as only a few inches of dirt had been neatly scraped away from her stupid pot. Why she hadn’t taken a shovel to the earth to get the damn thing out once and for all was beyond him. That she hadn’t strangely intrigued him.

So much so, the chit had apparently taken root in his thoughts since—although Miss Nithercott was hardly a chit. She was, he estimated, probably nearer thirty than twenty and undeniably all woman. And a damned attractive one at that. The entire time he had been forced to look at her in his own study and inhale the sultry scent of her perfume, his senses had been assaulted with that unfortunate fact. And despite the addition of an entirely respectable pretty dress, his imagination kept conjuring up the image of her lush curves encased in the tight breeches and softly worn shirt he had first encountered her in, when he was certain her femininity had not been tamed by the rigid restrictions of a corset. It was a memory he visited often.

Those errant but ultimately futile thoughts only served to depress him. Max did not want to contemplate Miss Nithercott’s corset, any more than he wanted to contemplate Miss Nithercott. But contemplate both he did with alarming regularity.

Aside from his morning reconnoitres, he had also taken to riding past the ruins every afternoon and evening around sunset, too, and finding no sign of the wench. Which meant she had to be doing her digging in secret in the dead of night like a grave robber, much too close for comfort.

Damn and blast it all to hell! Why couldn’t she just leave him alone as he had asked?

Or threatened, more like.

He huffed in disgust and thumped his head against the cool pane of glass. Actively trying to intimidate a woman was a new low, even for him. Max still winced each time he thought about the way he had loomed over her and wished he’d handled the entire situation differently. Been more reasonable, commanding and resolute as opposed to a snarling, panicked mess. But she had caught him off guard and unprepared and he’d lashed out. Lashing out had become a bit of a habit and another thing about himself he had come to loathe. Not that the intrepid Miss Nithercott had listened one jot.

All credit to her, she had neither run nor screamed, or even looked slightly intimidated by his irrational performance. If anything, she had seemed amused, almost as if she saw right through him before she had pierced him with the perfect set down to bring him up short and remind him his behaviour was wholly unacceptable no matter what the provocation.

Am I supposed to be terrified now, Lord Rivenhall?

Words which had haunted him since. Not his finest hour and not a memory he could easily forget thanks to his constantly niggling conscience which ensured he felt heartily ashamed of himself. It was one thing being bitter and twisted and unpleasant to be around, it was another entirely to be a bully to boot. There was never any excuse for that. To have sunk so low as to have attempted to bully a woman was beyond the pale.

Shameful.

He had scarcely slept a wink since.

He’d even given serious consideration to apologising for his ghastly treatment of her—but hadn’t. Out of cowardice—pure and simple. Because apologising meant seeking her out, which inevitably meant leaving the sanctuary of this sprawling estate in the middle of nowhere. Exposing himself and feeling vulnerable. Enduring the curious stares. The pointing. The unsubtle whispers about the horrendous state he was in as if the flames had rendered him deaf as well as hideous and devoid of all human emotion.

It also meant having that reasonable discussion she wanted, when he really wasn’t up for one of those either. A discussion required extended conversation which he had lost the knack for. It was hard being erudite when you knew all focus was on the ugly scars rather than his sentences and being reasonable might open the floodgates and before he knew it, every Tom, Dick and Harry would assume they could call on him unannounced and engage him in conversation. A prospect which was, frankly, terrifying. Besides, the people of Cambridgeshire were already proving themselves to be an over-familiar lot. At least one new neighbour took it upon themselves to traipse up his new mile-long drive every day seeking an audience. So much so, it was becoming a job of work simply avoiding them. All much too neighbourly for Max’s liking. All much too intrusive and overwhelming when what he wanted was to be left well alone to lick his wounds in private and find a way to reconcile himself to his future as he mourned the past.

Not that he was alone now because she was out there. He could sense her even though he couldn’t see her. Not that he could really see anything tonight. With the moon and the stars obliterated by cloud, it was as black as pitch out there and would be for the next hour at least.

He groaned aloud this time when his conscience pricked. While he shouldn’t care, the thought of a woman all alone in the dark bothered him. That she was all alone in the dark thanks to his boorish and disgustingly bullish behaviour bothered him immensely. If something happened to her as a result, he would never forgive himself...

Blasted woman!

Was it any wonder he couldn’t sleep?

As he was wide awake and unlikely to get any rest unless he had reassured himself she was quite safe, he might as well take a wander out towards the ruins to check on her. And while he was about it, he should probably grab the bull by the horns and apologise for looming over her, seeing as her blatant trespassing meant he did not have to leave the sanctuary of his new estate to do it.

Less than half an hour later and all his suspicions were confirmed. The new bane of his life was on her knees, using some sort of hand tool as she bent over the pot she was obsessed with. A plethora of lanterns ringed her, casting her face in ethereal light, glinting off her ridiculous glasses and ensuring that even from his hiding place in the trees, Max could see she was smiling.

She did that a lot, did Miss Nithercott, although he wished it wasn’t such a beguiling and pretty smile because it drew his eyes to her lips. It also made her dark eyes sparkle, which inevitably pulled his gaze to those ridiculously long lashes when he really needed no reminders of her attractiveness or the sorry fact that she was exactly the sort of woman he would have once been compelled to flirt with. Back in his flirting days when he had adored women with spirit and gumption.

Before...

And there was the rub. Any acknowledgement of his undeniable attraction to her inevitably reminded him of everything he had lost and was trying desperately hard to forget while he readjusted to his life in the skin he had been doomed to live within for ever.

Reluctantly, he tied Drake’s reins to a sturdy branch and started towards her. Now that he had reassured himself she was quite safe, he wanted to get his apology over with quickly and get as far away from her as it was humanly possible to be. She unnerved him. Perhaps a tad more than the rest of the world currently unnerved him. He would be quick. Concise. Apologise for the delivery, but explain the sentiment remained the same.

I appreciate you were given certain privileges by my uncle on this land, but times change and I have plans for it now...

Plans! As if counting the ruined stones she put so much stock in, in an pathetic attempt to distract him from his lonely pit of despair, could feasibly be categorised as plans. He would just tell her the truth. He wanted to be left alone and needed the reassuring ring of three hundred acres of empty parkland to be assured that he was. This was his land—not hers!

Max was a few yards away when, clearly oblivious to his presence, she suddenly sat back on her heels and he instinctively darted back into the shadows, not quite ready to face her just yet.

Coward! My land! Not hers! Just apologise!

She stretched, her back arching, and her bosom he had tried not to think about jutted seductively against the soft linen of her shirt as she raised her arms in the air and rotated her shoulders. The sight made him forget his lofty purpose and he simply stared and, to his complete horror, yearned until he ruthlessly suppressed that pointless emotion. He could yearn all he wanted. No woman was going to yearn back.

To further taunt him, she rearranged her body to lie on the ground, her head and arms disappearing into the hole, her booted feet braced as she wriggled from side to side. The fabric of her breeches pulled taut on the rounded flesh of her delectable behind. He could hear her little grunts of exertion as she wrestled beneath the dirt and wondered, as he looked his fill, why the blazes there weren’t laws forbidding the wearing of breeches by females. Especially females who filled them as exquisitely as the troublesome Miss Nithercott.

‘Stop being so stubborn.’ She was talking to herself—or perhaps to her beloved pot—and with a sigh groped for the discarded trowel on the ground beside her. ‘You know you will lose in the end...’

Was it wrong to watch her so intently without her knowledge? Thinking less-than-pure thoughts? Probably—only he couldn’t seem to stop. There was something strangely charming as well as alluring about the sight. The stupid pot must mean a lot to her if she was prepared to go to these lengths in the middle of the night for it. Digging by candlelight couldn’t be easy.

Guilt pricked again. Because of course he knew this meant a lot to her.

He had seen the panic and desperation in her eyes when she had pleaded with him to allow her to dig and he had ruthlessly ignored it out of self-preservation. Then, determined to impose his will, he had loomed over her, intent on putting the fear of God into her, too.

Which was the only reason he was here.

She was owed an apology and then he would send her on her way with the pot and that would be the end of it. If they never crossed paths again it would be too soon and Max never wanted to have to smell her blasted intoxicating perfume again. Despite several feet of distance, the subtle scent of it assaulted him now. The heady aroma of lilacs and roses. Of lazy summer days and warm summer nights. Why the hell was she wearing perfume while her head was shoved in the mud?

Making sure his hair covered the worst of the damage on the left side of his face, he stepped out of his hiding place and was about to let her know he was there and get the cringing awkwardness over with, when she started to mutter again.

‘Come on... Come on... That’s it...’ Several frustrated yet determined grunts and a great deal of torturous wiggling later a single fist pumped the air as his feet came level with the edge of the hole. ‘Yes! Got you!’ She scrambled to her knees, grinning, and then promptly shrieked as she spotted him beside her, falling back on to her delightful bottom as she clutched at her heart, the silly lenses magnifying her rapidly blinking eyes.

‘Lord Rivenhall! Are you trying to give me an apoplexy?’

‘Sorry for startling you...’ Although it was technically she who should be sorry for trespassing again rather than looking irritated at his intrusion as she was now. Of its own accord, his hand reached out to help her up and to his horror she took it. The effect of her touch was staggering because he felt it everywhere as he pulled her to her feet before hastily letting go.

‘If I had been holding the pot, I might have dropped it! What were you thinking creeping up on me like that?’

‘If your head hadn’t been under the ground—my ground—you would have heard me.’

And he most definitely should have alerted her of his presence sooner. That he hadn’t had been down to damned cowardice again. Alongside the fruitless yearning.

Get it over with, man!

‘Actually, I came down here to...er...’ Max felt his toes curl with embarrassment inside his boots. ‘Apologise for my overly...um...aggressive tone when we last met. And the looming, of course.’

‘The looming?’

‘Yes. That was unnecessary and I am sorry if I frightened you... Both then and just now. I should have said something sooner, but...’ Good grief, he was babbling and feeling more uncomfortable by the second. He’d been staring at her. That’s why he hadn’t made his presence known sooner. ‘But I could see you were busy.’

‘How did you know I would be here?’

‘Because as you rightly pointed out the other day, I am not an idiot, Miss Nocturnal. Granted you hid the evidence of your clandestine visits reasonably well these past two days—but sadly the pot gave you away.’

‘Ah...’ She had the good grace to look sheepish as she stared down at her boots through those ludicrous spectacles which did nothing for her.

‘Ah indeed. Unless it had begun excavating itself, it did not take a genius to work out you were creeping here under the cover of night to continue doing what I had expressly forbidden you to do.’

‘I couldn’t very well leave it half-exposed.’

‘Couldn’t or wouldn’t?’

‘A bit of both. In my defence, and despite your looming, I did intimate I was not going to take particular heed of your warning until the task was finished. You threatened to build a wall, remember.’

‘I did.’ He rather admired her tenacity and her unapologetic forthrightness. She was an honest trespasser as well as an annoyingly persistent one. ‘I also recall threatening to set the dogs on you, yet neither appeared to have worked—because I see you are here. Again.’

‘That’s because I knew you had no dogs and I would have scaled a twenty-foot wall if I’d had to just to get my pot.’

‘You mean my pot, surely, seeing as it has come out of my land?’

‘Semantics. If it is anyone’s, my lord, then surely it is the nation’s pot, as it is of the utmost national importance? A missing part of our history which provides new avenues for us to study. Whose land it happened to come out of is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things.’ She was smiling again. Teasing him. In a good-natured, not-the-least-bit-intimidated or bothered-by-his-presence way. Nobody had dared do that in quite a while. Not even his sister who had lived to tease him. Before...

The past slammed into him and sullied his surprisingly pleasant mood. Surprising because he couldn’t recall the last time he had felt anything other than bleak. To cover the onslaught, he stared down into the neat hole she had dug and the crudely made pot sat proud and whole at the bottom of it.

‘Now that your precious pot has finally been liberated, can I assume I am finally to be rid of you?’

‘I’ve removed the last of the soil.’ Her eyes dipped, avoiding his, and, more pointedly, the second part of his question. ‘Now I need to lift it out. Which is the tricky bit...pottery is notoriously delicate after centuries in the mud. But I have at least completed all the close work.’

‘Is that what the bizarre magnifying contraption is about?’ He gestured to the lenses tied to her head and, as if suddenly remembering she was still wearing them, she hastily tugged at the ribbon until they fell to rest about her shoulders like an ugly necklace. Bizarrely it suited her, although to be fair, even sackcloth would suit her.

‘Er... Yes. I liberated them from my father’s effects, but they kept falling off as I worked. Anyway...’ Clearly intent on continuing with the task regardless, she strode to her wheelbarrow and retrieved an old blanket which she arranged like a nest next to the hole. ‘This bit could take a while...’ She flicked him a dismissive glance. The sort he used to use on his men to great effect when they stepped out of line and needed knocking down a peg or two. It was a bold move when she had absolutely no right to be here. ‘But I promise I will be gone before dawn.’ When he failed to budge, her brows furrowed in irritation. Another bold response when she was the one entirely in the wrong. ‘There is no need for you to stand guard, my lord. I will go.’

‘But will you come back, Miss Nosy? That is the bigger question.’ One he feared he already knew the answer to.

‘Beneath the pot is a large slab—sandstone, I think. Possibly a hearth of some kind, although I haven’t found the edges of it yet to discern its exact size. But a hearth would suggest we are currently standing inside an ancient dwelling of some sort, don’t you think?’

He stared back at her blandly.

‘Wouldn’t that be exciting?’ The smile died on her lips when she finally accepted he had no intention of smiling back. Then she sighed and finally stared him straight in the eye, her expression achingly sad and the previous excitement tragically missing from her voice. ‘There is so much more to uncover here, Lord Rivenhall. Would it be so terrible if I continued my work?’

‘Miss Nithercott, I...’ Max didn’t want to feel suddenly sorry for her. Did not want to feel guilty or cruel for denying her. He wanted peace. Space. Endless open fields blessedly free from people. The wind in his hair and the sun on his ruined skin. ‘I came here to be left well alone.’ This estate was a poor substitute for the vast expanse of the ocean or the endless horizons he still pined for, but it was all his and he had missed being outside. Was so tired of feeling suffocated by the walls and ceilings he endlessly stared at.

‘I would leave you alone. I promise to keep well out of your way. In fact, I shall even hide if I catch the merest glimpse of you. I can continue to dig at night and...’ The thought of that had him holding up his palm in defeat, but she misconstrued the gesture and her face fell and her slim shoulders slumped, making Max feel like a brute all over again even though his resolve to evict her was already waning and all his hopes for peace evaporating.

‘Please, my lord... This place... This work... It is everything to me. All that I have.’ And, God help him, he believed her. ‘I beg of you not to take it away.’ And suddenly she looked lost and he couldn’t bear that because he knew exactly how that felt. He had been lost since the day he awoke in laudanum-blurred agony on that Royal Navy frigate over a year ago and hadn’t found any trace of himself in the interminable months since. ‘Please...’

Max tore his gaze away from her eyes, hating the desperation he saw in them when he much preferred the sassy and indomitable Miss Nithercott to the one his self-preserving, selfish actions had created. Perhaps with strict boundaries, allowing her to dig her blasted holes wouldn’t be the end of the world? But they would have to be very strict boundaries indeed. He did not want to have to see her. Talk to her. Smell her. Even think about her. Or anyone for that matter. He just wanted to be left alone.

He turned to her again, ready to give her a list of stipulations. ‘If you promise to keep to the confines of the Abbey...’

‘Oh, thank you!’ She grabbed his hand again and the rest of his planned list of rigid rules and parameters died in his throat. ‘I promise you will never know I am here!’

Max instantly extricated his hand and, because his nerve endings mourned her, fisted it behind his back where she couldn’t see it. ‘No night digging. I expressly forbid that. It is not safe for a woman on her own to be all alone in the dark.’ Not that he wanted to contemplate exactly why she was on her own whenever he encountered her, why she wandered around unchaperoned at apparently all hours of the day or night. Or why there was no ring on her finger. Nor did he want to explore why he had the compelling urge to stand guard over her now, when now was absolutely the opportune time to escape. He’d assuaged his conscience with an apology and had a rational discussion with her and both things had left him feeling off kilter.

She made him feel off kilter.

‘I shall escort you home, Miss Nithercott.’ Not at all what he had intended to say.

‘There is no need. It will be light soon and it will take at least that to get the nation’s pot out of the ground.’ To prove her point, the first hints of dawn whispered in the distance.

‘Then I shall bid you a good day, Miss Nithercott.’ Before the unforgiving daylight made him more disconcerted than he already was.

Chapter Four

Dig Day 763: hearthstone —if it is indeed a hearthstone—is round!

There was only one metal Effie knew of which did not tarnish underground and that was gold. Although where this ancient Celtic civilisation had gold in Cambridgeshire was anybody’s guess. Cornwall perhaps was the closest place, or Wales. Both hundreds of miles to the west—not that she was an expert on British gold deposits. Yet the heavy, perfectly twisted bracelet in the palm of her hand was undoubtedly made of solid gold and completely unlike any other old jewellery she had ever seen or read about.

Judging by the sheer weight of the metal, and ancient provenance aside, it was also incredibly valuable. An inescapable fact which presented a dilemma. While Lord Rivenhall might not care about pottery or hearthstones, precious metal was another matter. It had come out of his land and so by rights it was his. Not telling him she had just uncovered a huge chunk of solid gold was dishonest.

She had to tell him.

Which necessitated breaking her agreement to stay well out of his way. And might irritate him all over again and potentially damage their truce. But what other choice did she have? Right was right, after all, and hopefully he would be reasonable enough to understand that.

She wrapped the bracelet in a handkerchief, tucked it into her battered satchel and set off in the direction of the house.

Smithson was, understandably, horrified to see her and she apologised profusely for putting him in the unenviable position of telling his unpredictable master she needed an audience. However, to the great surprise of them both, Lord Rivenhall apparently took the news well and suddenly appeared in the doorway of the drawing room looking extremely wary.

‘Miss Nithercott.’

That he did not invite her to join him in the drawing room or make any move to come towards her was telling.

‘Lord Rivenhall, I apologise for disturbing you, but I have found something I need to give you.’ Effie rummaged for the bracelet and held it out. ‘It’s gold, my lord. A very substantial piece of gold.’ The dark eye she could see dipped to the bracelet before fixing back on hers.