Redeeming the Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath Page 0,56

bringing his distracting muscular thighs level with her eyes. ‘Your trench appears to be filled with bilge water. We can’t dig that until it dries out.’

‘I know.’ She tapped the wooden pail sat half-full beside him. ‘I thought it might aid the drying if I removed most of the water but it’s proved futile. As fast as I remove it, it fills up again. Clearly, man can drain the Fens all he wants, but the moment they are fed with a little rain they return to type and flood. I blame the peat beneath the soil. There seem to be more old peat bogs around this dwelling than over by the Abbey... But then I suppose the Abbey needed to be built on solid foundations and a wooden house would not.’

Stop procrastinating and tell him. Fall on your sword. Beg for mercy.

‘Are they all as bad?’

‘Fortunately, thanks to your covers on the other side of the dwelling, those trenches seem to have avoided the worst.’ Max had predicted the storm several hours before it had happened and then appropriated every piece of oilskin, canvas and wood at Rivenhall to cover the most important trenches which had yielded the most finds thus far.

‘Then let’s work on them while the weather holds. It is bound to rain later. Just look at that sky.’ He pointed upwards at the single paltry, dark cloud in the sky.

‘It is not going to rain, Max.’

‘I might not know my Iceni from my Catuvellauni, Miss Naysayer, but like any good sailor worth his salt I know my weather and I smell another storm.’ He offered his hand to haul her out and then frowned in disgust when he saw the state of hers. ‘Good lord, you are filthy! I mean, you are always filthy so I’m used to it, but that is a new level of muddiness, even for you. Yet despite the mud, I can still see you are wearing odd shoes. How hard is it to match a pair of shoes, Effie?’ He walked off, shaking his shaggy dark head and leaving her ankle deep in water.

‘Don’t mind me. I can get myself out.’

‘Probably best.’ He returned with the wheelbarrow which he deposited next to one of the covered trenches while he watched her clamber up the sticky mud. ‘Did you have the foresight to bring a towel?’

‘Of course not. But I brought cake.’ His favourite, as a sweetener in the hope it would make him less inclined to hit the roof when he learned she’d used his name without permission.

‘Mrs Farley’s...?’

‘Well, I certainly did not bake it.’

‘Did I tell you I am thinking of marrying that woman? What she can do with a humble currant and a bag of flour is a miracle. Is she single, perchance?’

‘Not yet. But Mr Farley is seventy-seven and as such could feasibly turn up his toes at any moment. Mind you, at seventy-six, so could she.’

‘If you are expecting me to baulk at that, I should warn you, I’ve always been partial to an older woman.’ He had bent over to remove the pegs from the canvas protecting trench sixteen, allowing her to admire his spectacular bottom unencumbered. ‘There is an earthiness to them which is...’ She could hear the wistful smile in his voice and groaned aloud in mock disgust. The disgust might be false, but the pang of irrational jealousy felt very real.

‘I have no desire to hear about your many conquests, Max—old or otherwise.’

‘To be fair, seventy-six is a bit old. I always drew the line at late forties. After that, gravity tends to have taken its toll.’

‘Ugh!’

‘And how old was Rupert? Eighty? Ninety?’

‘Fifty-nine.’

‘Fifty-nine! You really were going to marry an old man! I assumed, when you said he was older, it was by less than twenty years. But fifty-nine, Effie...?’

‘You sound as though you disapprove.’

‘Of course I disapprove. What sort of a marriage would you have had with a man old enough to be your father? When you are so full of life...’ His voice trailed off and she watched him shake his head in