Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,14
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