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.
Chapter Fifteen
Three too many people at dinner...
It was like being under a microscope.
He was going to kill his sister for practically forcing this invitation on Effie, especially as she had made sure she hadn’t given her either the time or space to sort it all out since the awkward moment she had arrived like the cavalry in the carriage, intent on rescuing them from the rain. Eleanor had taken one look at the pair of them, grinned like a loon and doubtless started plotting that very same instant.
They had taken Effie home, where she had been pressganged into returning to Rivenhall, his sister stubbornly refusing to take no for an answer and, in case she changed her mind, had dispatched her carriage again to fetch her to be certain. And early to boot, which was probably why their obviously uncomfortable guest was wearing one blue sparkly earring and one red, when the lovely gown she had paired them with was green.
Tonight, Eleanor had crowned herself queen of the knowing looks, which she shared much too frequently with her husband, Adam. Adam, to his credit, was attempting to make conversation with his mother to fill the painful silences while Max wished himself invisible, the blasted meal over with so he could finally have some privacy to talk to Effie and clear the air.
Assuming, of course, that he could clear the air. It was entirely feasible she was furious at him for taking liberties and this almost guaranteed she bitterly regretted it. She hadn’t been able to look him in the eye since, which was no mean feat when she was sat directly opposite him at the table thanks to his blasted sister’s blatant matchmaking and was soldiering through her dessert with such speed she clearly wanted to be gone. Frankly, he couldn’t blame her. If he’d had somewhere else to go and hadn’t felt obliged to support Effie in Purgatory, he’d be atop Drake right this minute galloping towards the furthest point on any map just to escape. Scotland had never appealed more. Or Dublin. Or even France, despite the bitter war with Napoleon.
But alas, he was stuck, hoisted by his own petard, and desperate to make things right again. To that end, he had a little speech all worked out to avoid the inevitable ritual humiliation, which largely blamed the heat of the moment and the excitement of the find for kissing her like a starving man feasting at a banquet and giving his meddlesome sister all the ammunition she needed to royally embarrass the pair of them. Because Eleanor might not have witnessed the actual kiss, but she had certainly seen the two, large, muddy handprints on Effie’s breeches like the mark of Cain damning him for all eternity and announcing to the world that he had been the one to put them there.
To make matters worse, it had, in all reality, been the briefest of kisses. Seconds rather than minutes, yet intensely significant all the same. If he was going to be shot for a wolf rather than a lamb, then at the very least his damn sister could have postponed her unwelcome rescue a little longer so he could have prolonged the experience before it all came crashing down around his ears.
‘Surely the Society of Antiquarians will have to take you seriously now you have found the shield and the bracelet, Effie?’
She shot him a very furtive, very awkward look before she answered his sister. ‘One would hope. I have certainly never read about anyone finding anything similar.’
‘It’s staggering, isn’t it, to think that people lived here—at Rivenhall—two thousand years ago and that their belongings still exist even though they are long gone?’
‘I suppose even then this was the perfect sight for a settlement. The Fens would have been fertile hunting ground with an excellent source of water. It was why the Abbey was built here in the Middle Ages. The church and the aristocracy always built on the pr
ime spots...’ Her eyes wandered again to his and swiftly dipped. As if suddenly remembering the events of the afternoon was too awful to hold them.
‘You need to write that paper, Effie! Write it and submit it and we shall all march on their offices if they dare to send it back again! We could carry placards and protest outside until they relent.’
She smiled at his sister weakly, then glanced at him again, looking entirely horrified this time before she stared dejectedly at her empty plate. ‘Maybe they will read it this time without the need for all that fuss.’
‘I think we should make the fuss regardless. It will serve them right!’
‘Forgive my wife, Effie,’ said Adam, smiling in apology. ‘She’s always had a radical streak. But she is right—you do need to write about your discoveries. But if the blinkered society of crusty old men will not publish it, I know a few publishers who might.’
Eleanor beamed at her husband. ‘He does, too, Effie! Wouldn’t it be better to write a whole book which will be read by hundreds rather than an academic journal like Archaeologia that is only seen by a select few?’
‘I suppose...’ Her eyes only made it as far as his chin this time before she tore them away.
‘Just think of it... All leather bound with gilt lettering. Sat in bookshops and on library shelves all over the country as well as mine. It would certainly be a splendid way to thumb your nose at those crusty old antiquarians.’
‘Would these publishers baulk at an academic history written by a woman?’ Max saw hope blossom in her lovely eyes briefly before Adam unwittingly and insensitively quashed it.
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