Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,12

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