Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,43
six times in his quest to happen upon her casually, looking delightfully flustered but in matching boots this time for a change.
‘If they built a wattle-and-daub structure, driving thick posts deep into the ground as the frame, then the people who built this dwelling were not nomadic at all. Dio was wrong! Or at least he was wrong about the tribes here in Cambridgeshire. They were obviously much more sophisticated than the barbarians he painted them as. Perhaps their paint distracted him exactly as you said... That would make sense. The Romans were invaders so they would only initially see the Celts on the battlefield and formed their opinions based on that!’ Her grubby fist pumped the air in triumph that she had worked the problem through. ‘Why do people always judge solely on first impressions, Max? Especially when they are invariably always wrong. Take you, for instance. On first impression you were loathsome and now after a few short weeks of acquaintance you are...’
‘Tolerable? Invaluable? Wonderful?’
Mischief danced in her eyes while she made him wait for her verdict. ‘A little less loathsome, but very handy with a pickaxe.’
‘I am touched.’ He fluttered his hand in front of his face as if overcome with emotion and she laughed out loud. Effie’s laugh was as delicate as she was—in other words, not delicate at all. It was loud and exuberant and refreshingly impossible to fake. ‘Such gushing praise will go to a man’s head, Miss Never-one-to-beat-about-the-bush. What’s for lunch?’
Her face wrinkled as she slapped her palm to her forehead. ‘I forgot to pick it up from the kitchen table.’
‘You mean there is nothing edible in your satchel? Not even a slice of Mrs Farley’s famous fruitcake?’
‘Perhaps one of these days you will surprise me and turn up with some food yourself for a change rather than like a sullen bad penny, complaining you are only offering to help because you are so eager to hasten my departure from your land.’ They both knew that was a pathetic excuse and he came because digging with Effie was a much more effective distraction from his black thoughts than counting the floorboards in his study. He hoped she had no clue that he also came because he needed to see her.
‘Besides...’ she wagged her finger ‘...you’re the one with the battalion of staff and the enormous kitchens. If you are hungry, you can take your mind off it with some digging. I need another trench here.’
‘But I have to go. I’ve wasted two hours suffering your presence already.’
‘Another two will only hasten my eventual departure from your land and you are so very good with a pickaxe.’ She walked saucily to an unspoilt piece of grass and jumped on it then grinned when Max tugged his forelock before going back to stare into their latest trench to contemplate the post hole and ponder its secrets.
Even silent, he could hear her brain working and while he understood that many might find her intelligence intimidating, for reasons he could not fathom because his own official education had stopped at twelve, Effie did not intimidate him. Bizarrely, he understood her.
She was endearing and charming, funny, alluring and irritating all at the same time and quite unaware of all of it. Max, on the other hand, had never been quite so aware of a woman in his life or quite so smitten by one. He couldn’t deny the smitten part was a worry, but as he had absolutely no intention of ever daring to act on the attraction for fear of more catastrophic humiliation, he tried to push his concerns to one side and simply enjoy having something other than his own woes to occupy his mind.
‘That’s three post holes in total so far and all exactly three feet apart.’ To make doubly certain, Effie paced the distance again which was always entertaining to watch. She couldn’t just pace the distance like a normal person, she had to do a funny half-marching, half-high-kicking pace which she had explained was deliberate as it gave a near exact twelve inches and negated the need to bring a measuring stick—which she doubtless had always forgotten in in the first place. Then she stopped and held one arm out straight like a blade