“Bentley. David Bentley from Nether Barton. I look forward to seeing how the delightful Miss Hooke’s son turned out. And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“I’m Miss Brotherton.” She dropped a reluctant curtsey but he showed no particular reaction. There were other Brothertons, though it wasn’t a common name. Her suspicions somewhat assuaged, she decided to see if he could be useful. “Please tell me, sir, anything you remember about the villa. It would help me plan where to look.”
Mr. Bentley turned out to have a considerable knowledge of his subject and an excellent memory. As they walked around the site together, the shape and arrangement of the rooms came to life before Anne’s eyes.
“I believe the remains of a hypocaust were found along that side of the building and Hooke speculated that the furnace lay at one end.” He pointed out a corner that appeared never to have been touched. “But he kept trying new areas willy-nilly. He didn’t proceed methodically, like you.”
“As soon as I have cleared the terrace and the rest of the atrium I shall start on that area. I’m quite fascinated at the ingenuity of the Romans in heating their houses.”
“I’ve always thought it a tragedy for the English that they lost the art. I must be off if I’m to be home before dark. May I come again and see your progress?” He held out his hand and reawakened her discomfort by raising hers to his lips.
“I’m usually to be found here from the middle of the morning onward,” she said stiffly, snatching it away and tucking both hands behind her back. Mr. Bentley was a useful consultant but there was something about him she didn’t like. Their encounter reminded her of her first meeting with Lithgow, though the latter’s initial advances had been far more subtle.
“And does Lithgow join you?”
“When his estate doesn’t keep him busy,” she said, not anxious to confide her opinion about his incredible lack of interest.
As she stared in blissful admiration at the mosaic terrace, she forgot about the departed Bentley and thought about its owner. Surely anyone, even the ruthless Lithgow, would be thrilled by such an amazing discovery on his land. To tell the truth, she couldn’t wait to show him.
Anne was bright-eyed this morning, no trace of reserve or arrogance about her. Marcus found her adorable as she burst out her big news.
“The terrace? That’s wonderful!” he said. “I truly doubted you’d find anything of value.”
“I knew it had to be there! I cleared almost all the earth away before the carriage arrived to collect me at dusk. I can’t wait to see it in daylight.”
“What are we waiting for? Let’s go and look at it.”
“Immediately?” Her lips pursed and she shook her head. “I’d rather do my work here first. Once I get to the villa I won’t want to leave it.”
“My dear Anne. A discovery like this is worthy of celebration and a celebration means a holiday. No housework for you today. Besides, I want to see it too.”
“Aren’t you too busy?” She was halfway out of the door as she threw the words over her shoulder with a hint of a taunt but no bite in her sarcasm.
The chill mist failed to dampen her spirits. She hurried across the meadow, her skirts gathering water from the long wet grass. “I worried all last night that the rain might damage the tiles,” she said, running the last fifty feet. “It’s all right! The water has washed them. Oh Marcus! Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”
The mosaic glistened wet under the gray sky in shades of brown, yellow, black, and white, forming the figure of a ferocious lion, fully four or five feet wide. Here and there a small section of tiles was lost but she was right. It was a fine example. Marcus had, of course, seen better. This couldn’t compare to the intricacy and splendor of bright colors and gold under blue Italian skies. But none of those, he was certain, had ever evoked greater delight by its discovery. Anne gazed down at it, hands clasped and eyes bright with ecstasy.
And she’d called him Marcus.
“It’s marvelous, Anne.” He put his arm around her, a spontaneous gesture of congratulation and shared joy. “Who would think to find the king of beasts under a muddy field?”
She didn’t pull away. “He’s very fierce, isn’t he? Perhaps he’s angry about the cold.”
“Maybe he wants to frighten away marauding mice.”
“Or badgers.”
“You deserve credit for uncovering him. It was a lot of work.”
“I never enjoyed anything so much in my life.” She looked it over with a critical eye. “I wonder if the border is undamaged all the way around, and how wide it is. There may be a great deal left to do.”
“Shall we start?”
They knelt in the mud at either end of the terrace. Even Travis would never be able to clean his breeches, but to hell with them. As they scraped away, Marcus following the example of Anne’s method, they speculated on the possible age of the villa, fruitlessly since neither had the knowledge to place it.
“We could make a drawing and send it to an expert,” he suggested.
“Mr. Warner of Bath, perhaps?”
“Ah yes, Mr. Warner. How did you find his book?”
“Tedious beyond belief.”
“I apologize for the recommendation then.”
“Some of the content was interesting but I see no reason why scholarship has to be presented in such dull prose.”
“I’ve often thought the same myself. When you write your report on the Hinton find you must make it as entertaining as a novel.”
“How would I do that? I’ve never written anything except letters and I’m not at all amusing.”
“I wouldn’t say that. You have quite a ready wit under your prim exterior.”
She looked up, always suspicious of compliments. “Oh no,” she said. “I’m quite dull and too prosaic for wit.” Then she grinned. “Anyone seeing us on our hands and knees, staring at each other, might think us a pair of dogs fighting over the carcass of our lion.”
Our lion. He liked the implication of shared ownership.
“He needs a name.”
“A Roman lion should be Leo,” Marcus said.
“Commonplace.”
“Richard, for King Richard the Lionheart since we’re in England.”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t look like a Richard to me.”
“Leonidas? Lancelot? Lorenzo?”
“Or Lewis. Wasn’t your father Lewis?”
“I think not,” he said. “What was your father’s name?”
“I’m sorry to say that Brotherton eldest sons are always named Chauncey.”
“No.” They spoke in unison.
“F—” He was about to suggest Felix, a suitably catlike name, but thought better of it. He didn’t want her thinking fondly of her late fiancé. “Frederick.”
“Frederick.” She tilted her head this way and that. “Fred. Frederick. I like it. Frederick it shall be. Well, Frederick, I think you’re as clean as we can get you when the ground is so muddy.” She scrambled upright and, after carefully stepping away from the terrace, flung her arms wide and her head back. “I do believe Hinton Manor is the most amazing place in the whole world. You are so lucky to own it.”
This was the perfect moment to suggest it could be hers if she wed him. He was already on his knees. The words of a graceful proposal of marriage formed in his brain, but they felt wrong. There was something honest and true about the morning they’d spent with Frederick, and their conversation had been without either pretense or rancor. He wanted to maintain this new friendship. Besides, she’d probably turn him down and feel called upon to leave Hinton. With the worsening weather there’d be less and less time for digging and she’d surely like to escape her housecleaning duties. In fact he had precious little time to win her—or compromise her reputation beyond hope of recovery.
“I am lucky,” he said instead. “And I thank you for improving my property this way.”
“The pleasure is all mine, my lord. What sh
all we do next?”
“It’s up to you. Your methods have been effective so far. Clearly you have a talent.”
She might shrink from compliments to her person, but this kind of praise delighted her. “Thank you. It’s the only useful thing I’ve done in my life and I was afraid of making mistakes. It seemed to me an orderly system is best.”
“I like order.” He’d never thought it of himself but it was true.
“On the other hand . . .” She looked longingly at the west side of the villa, several yards away.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Bentley said the hypocaust was over there and I would dearly love to see it.”
“Who is Mr. Bentley?”
“I forgot to tell you. He’s a neighbor who stopped and spoke to me yesterday. An interesting man. He saw the villa when Mr. Hooke originally found it. He knew your mother too.”
“I expect I’ll meet him sometime,” Marcus said, relieved that Bentley wasn’t a young man. “You know, Anne, method and order are all very well but don’t you think occasionally one is allowed to follow one’s fancy? If you want to look for the hypocaust next, I think you should.”
“Since I have the permission of the owner, that’s what we shall do.”
Digging in ground softened by rain was easier and dirtier. Working side by side—Anne’s shovel technique had improved—they cleared the accumulated earth from around one column of bricks, about three feet tall.
“Remarkable,” Marcus said, hopping down into the hole to get a closer look. “Very similar to ones I saw at Pompeii. Which way now?”
“Mr. Bentley speculated that the furnace was over there. I’d like to find it and see if we can work out how the hot air was projected between the columns of the hypocaust.”
“You’re in charge.”
Judging by the compacted earth, Mr. Hooke hadn’t reached this section and they found it hard going. Anne fussed about causing damage and her care was proven necessary when Marcus’s spade dislodged a small metal object, caked in mud.
He expected a retort but she was too excited to chide him. “Let me see.” She knelt beside the hole, leaning in precariously. “There are other things here. Perhaps we’ve found a rubbish heap.” From her voice he gathered she couldn’t imagine anything more thrilling. He admitted to some excitement himself.
“Careful!” Too late. Scratching at a protruding knob with her fingers, she lost her balance and toppled forward. His body stopped her descent. They ended up in the mud, with her half prone between his bent knees, her arms around his neck.
Her body heat seeped through their damp, filthy garments. Her scent, subtle and costly, pierced the ambient odor of earth and rain and rotting leaves. Her breath was warm on his chin.
“Uh . . .” She interrupted a long, fraught moment and he wondered if she was as stunned and incapable of coherent speech as he was. Was that his heart hammering or hers?
He freed a hand to touch her cheek, pink and tantalizingly smooth, and she shifted a little, stirring his desire. The fact drew a low crack of laughter from him. It was impossible to imagine less propitious circumstances for lovemaking.
“What?” Her lips parted. By God, she was a lovely thing.
“I was thinking how much I’d like to kiss you, and how ridiculous that is.”
“Why?”
“Because we are lying in a mud hole and it’s raining.”
“When did it start?” She made no attempt to break away.
“I don’t know either. So, Anne Brotherton. Shall I kiss you? Shall you kiss me?”
She looked at him for what felt like an age. Say yes, he thought, staring at the curve of her mouth.
“I don’t know.”
“Would you like it? Tell me you want a kiss.”
Her silence spoke volumes. She wasn’t reluctant but he could see the wheels turning in her mind. She liked to think things through, and he tucked the fact away as an addition to his dossier on Anne Brotherton.
Her mouth moved. To speak or to kiss? He waited in delicious anticipation.
“Good God! What is going on here?”
He groaned. A perfect moment for a negligent chaperone to make an appearance. Not that Lady Windermere, in a dusty pink ensemble that could have been made in Paris, resembled any duenna he’d previously had to dodge. There could be no guardian dragon less alarming than this pretty young woman, peering through the misty rain into their hole.
“Are you hurt, Anne?”
Anne clambered up, not without kneeing him rather painfully. That took care of that, at least. “Cynthia! I fell into the hypocaust but no harm done.” Marcus winced. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d come and see your mosaic for myself. It started raining on the way but luckily I had my umbrella in the carriage. Do you want to come in out of the rain? It’s coming down harder.”
Water flowed off the brim of Anne’s bonnet. “First you must meet Frederick. Our lion. Isn’t he splendid?”
“Lovely, my dear. Can I look at him when it isn’t raining?”
Anne felt obscurely guilty about driving off in the carriage, leaving Lithgow to trudge home in the rain.
“He was so helpful today,” she told Cynthia. “And he seemed to be truly interested in the villa.”
“I see.”
“He didn’t even make me do any housework. He gave me a holiday to celebrate finding Frederick.”
“What generosity!”
“We want to have a drawing made of him—Frederick, I mean. I have no talent with a pencil. You draw, don’t you?”
“I used to. I wouldn’t mind, if it ever stops raining. Next time could you conduct your excavations in the summer?”
Why was everyone so leery of a little rain? Yes, her cloak was wet through, but it wasn’t as though she would melt, and she never caught cold.
“What I want to know,” Cynthia said, “is what you and Lord Lithgow were doing in that hole.”
“Er, nothing.”
“It looked to me like you were kissing.”
“No.”
Cynthia looked skeptical. “Really? It just happened that you were lying on him with your arms about his neck and your face on his?”
“That’s exactly what happened. I fell in and my face wasn’t on his.” Not quite. “He didn’t kiss me.”
“You sound unhappy about that fact.”
“We talked about it. He asked me if he should kiss me. If we should kiss each other.”
“The wretch! He left it up to you so you couldn’t blame him afterward.”
It was wonderful to have such an understanding friend. “Why couldn’t he have just gone ahead and kissed me instead of making me decide?”
Anne pursed her lips and thought about the kiss that wasn’t and the kiss that had been, back in London before she discovered Lithgow’s scoundrelous nature. Why hadn’t he seized the opportunity to kiss her? The hours they’d passed together had been so delightful she hadn’t thought ill of him once. He’d been offered the ideal opportunity to take advantage of her when her defenses were weak.
The truth was she wished with all her heart that he had done so. She had really wanted to be kissed and hadn’t wanted to ask because that would have given him the upper hand.
Something was wrong with that thought. If she wanted to be kissed, surely she should have said so? Leaving the decision up to him so that she could blame him was dishonest. Yet making the advance herself put her in a position she wasn’t ready to be in. Shouldn’t be in.
“Do you know something, Cynthia? Dealing with men is complicated.”
“You don’t need to tell me that.”
Chapter 15
As the days passed, Marcus wished he’d seized the moment and kissed her. He didn’t get another chance, and his regret didn’t merely arise from a lost opportunity to advance his plans. Anne Brotherton, in her rough maid’s clothing, her single-minded pursuit of knowledge, and her quirky temper, was getting under his skin. They settled into
a routine, Marcus, his little household, and his strangely distinguished guests. Lady Windermere now accompanied Anne every day, ostensibly to make drawings of the objects excavated from the villa, probably because she was taking her chaperone duties more seriously since the muddy hole incident. Travis and Maldon took charge of the laundry and condescended to ameliorate the condition of the household linens and other fabrics. Anne diligently performed her cleaning duties and Lady Windermere turned out to be a talented polisher of furniture.
Marcus spent much of his time with his tenants, helping them make repairs to their cottages to keep out the weather as winter closed in. The drainage of the fields was a continuing cause of concern; completely dry days had ceased.
Whenever it wasn’t actually pouring, Anne insisted on poking around at the villa. Untroubled by cold, wet, and mud, her enthusiasm never flagged. Since the discovery of Frederick he’d stopped feigning indifference to the excavations and would have liked to share them, but the urgent estate work had become important to him.
He returned one afternoon, stripped off his topcoat, and went straight to the study, which Anne had commandeered as the center of operations for archaeological records. It was warm, clean, and smelled of beeswax. A tray of tea waited on a side table.
Anne’s smile at his entrance dealt him a jolt in the chest.
“You’re very wet, my lord.” The my-lord title didn’t annoy him as it did when Travis so addressed him for it felt like a tease. Her hauteur and sarcasm had vanished for the most part, reappearing only occasionally. When she remembered. She’d only addressed him as Marcus that one time.
“And you are quite dry. And remarkably well dressed for a housemaid.”
“Maldon brought a change of clothes for me.”
“And where is Lady Windermere today?”
“She believed the chambermaid at the inn when she told us the curl of her hair was an infallible sign of a deluge.”
“I should think iron gray skies and a stiff wind were sufficient prognostications.”
Anne’s coif, presumably through the ministrations of the impeccable Maldon, was smooth and gleaming without a stray wisp. He’d seen it frizzed, he’d seen it rumpled, and he’d seen it wet. He’d like to see it down.
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