Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,41
was nothing fussy about the woman stood before him in well-worn breeches and practical shirt and he liked that about her. When she dined with them at Rivenhall, which she had done twice since the first awful meal, she always wore a lovely gown and made more effort with her hair, yet as beautiful as she looked in a dress, it was this Effie he preferred. This one who encroached on his dreams at night and regularly consumed his mind when he wasn’t with her. The one he allowed himself just two hours a day with, at random times, always pretending he and Drake happened to be passing by when he counted the minutes until each casual visit.
Max tried to rationalise his obsession using common sense because the facts were undeniable. Firstly, she was a stunningly attractive woman. Secondly, he hadn’t had a woman in nearly two years so his rampant lust was only to be expected. And thirdly, she was the only woman in his current acquaintance who he wasn’t related to and the only person he had allowed a little into his life since leaving London. Therefore, it was hardly a surprise she had come to feature so much in his thoughts.
However, regardless of all those pertinent and undeniable facts, he had had enough affairs in the past to know there was something unique about Effie which called to him in a way which was entirely different from all those other women. Even his former fiancée, who he was certain he had loved with all his heart.
Yet the way he felt about Effie was different. It wasn’t love. Love hadn’t felt like this. Nor had simple lust. The first had made him want to pick flowers, then parade Miranda all over town so everyone could see how lucky he was to have won the heart of such a sought-after woman and the second was always short-lived and entirely carnal. While he felt lust for Effie, he also felt affection. Friendly affection because he enjoyed her company. That was new, too. He had never had a female friend, aside from Eleanor and as his sister she didn’t count. Max had always been a man’s man. Or maybe he had merely been that because there weren’t any women to befriend in the Royal Navy? In which case, perhaps that explained his bond with Effie?
Her mind fascinated him. Never in all his thirty-four years had he ever witnessed anything quite like it. The way she worked her way through problems by asking herself questions was astounding, coming to reasoned and substantiated conclusions in minutes when most would take hours deliberating such complicated things. But then most people would have to seek out the answers in books and tracking down the exact piece of research in a book was usually a mission in itself. But if Effie had read it—and lord only knew the woman must have read every book on antiquity in existence—then it was already stored in her cavernous head so she did not need to bother.
‘Cassius Dio was one of the great Roman historians. He wrote eighty mighty volumes of the history of the Roman Empire spanning its conception one thousand years before the birth of Christ to the end of the second century. There are other eminent Roman historians, of course, but his work is one of the few which includes their early occupation of our island. He records the Celts as possessing “neither walls nor cities nor farms”. He describes the tribes as aggressive, warlike and nomadic in nature. Hunter-gathers rather than civilised or advanced enough to grow their own crops. In Dio’s books—which are written in ancient Greek, by the way—the Celts are little better than savages who lived in tents without clothes or shoes. But I have always taken issue with that. The English climate is not at all conducive to nudity for at least three-quarters of the year, so unless they were all covered in a thick pelt of hair they would have frozen to death in the winter. And if they were indeed hairy beasties, which not one of the old histories suggests including Dio’s, then the Celts wouldn’t have painted themselves blue because I sincerely doubt the paint they used would cover dense fur that well.’
‘Blue?’
‘They used woad as a dye and painted themselves blue when they went into battle to