Redeeming The Reclusive Earl (HQR Historical)

by Virginia Heath

  ‘Perhaps your ancient dwelling is built on an angle?’

  ‘Which would still necessitate a straight wall, Max.’

  ‘They could simply be very bad builders?’

  From her expression, he could tell she was already engrossed in trying to formulate a theory, so he rested his forearms on his shovel and simply enjoyed watching her do it. After a long ponder, which for Effie was about twenty seconds, her eyes wandered to the original hole she had found the pot in. ‘Unless...’

  Then she was off pacing again, only this time from the post holes to the spot he had originally encountered her with her head in the ground. Typically, she checked each measurement twice and then positively beamed from ear to ear. ‘I think this hut is round, Max! Exactly like the hearth! And the hearth has to be the centre because it is exactly fifteen feet from it to each of those posts.’

  ‘If that is the centre, then this hut of yours is huge.’

  She blinked and her lips parted as she considered it. ‘Good heavens! I think you’re right! Forget the trench I suggested. We need another one exactly fifteen feet opposite this one to test your theory... Now if my mathematics is correct...’ which of course it would be ‘...a circle of a diameter of thirty feet has a circumference of ninety-four. Gracious—that is big!’ She tapped her lip and he watched her long lashes flutter in time with her rapid blinking as she calculated with baffling speed. ‘And as we already know the post holes so far are three feet apart, then we have at least another twenty-nine post holes to excavate! Or thereabouts as it is not exact but I am assuming the doorframe to be narrower—as doorframes so often are... Why are you staring at me like that?’

  At some point his jaw must have dropped without his knowledge. ‘Because you are a marvel, Effie. A tremendously odd, tremendously irritating marvel.’

  * * *

  ‘It sounds as if you had a very productive day and an exciting one.’

  When he’d sent word that he would not be home to take afternoon tea with her as he’d promised, his sister had insisted on dinner instead and insisted on inviting Effie. Which meant Max had been subjected to hours of scrutiny as she watched the pair of them—first over the dining table and now in the drawing room as they enjoyed a nightcap. It was subtle, because he had categorically warned his interfering sibling against attempting to matchmake two weeks ago after the first meal the bane had attended, but it was obvious to him she still held out hope romance would kindle and that hope bothered him. So much so he had even considered broaching the subject and having the cringingly awkward conversation with her to set the record straight.

  His sister believed Miranda had been shallow and heartless in not marrying him or even waiting until he was properly healed to terminate their engagement. She believed his former fiancée’s reaction was unique to her because she was vain and selfish and that another woman wouldn’t be so lily-livered about a few scars.

  As much as Max wanted to cling to that belief himself, he had long accepted it wasn’t going to be the case. His deformity inspired revulsion. He’d seen it first-hand both in Miranda’s eyes each time she glanced at him before he released her from the commitment and in the eyes of every man, woman and child since. The constant horrified looks had been one of the main reasons he had imprisoned himself in his sister’s London house. On the few occasions she had dragged him out when he was well enough to walk, people pointed and stared. And those were the better reactions. A few crossed the road, others recoiled in horror and one mother had clutched her child towards her and covered his eyes with her hand—no doubt to prevent the poor thing from having nightmares. Never mind the nightmares her extreme reaction had given Max. From that day on he’d taken his exercise in Eleanor’s garden and hadn’t cut his hair since.

  Effie might not obviously recoil in horror, she was much too intelligent and kind for that sort of behaviour, but tolerating his presence or even befriending him was a completely different thing to allowing him to kiss her or caress her and he couldn’t imagine her wanting to do either of those things to him in a million years. Not when he couldn’t stand the dreadful sight of himself without wanting to be sick on the floor.

  ‘The prospect of a round dwelling is incredibly exciting! Unheard of, even. We’ll have to dig a few more trenches to properly confirm it, of course.’

  ‘By we, Eleanor, she means me.’ Max rolled his eyes for effect. ‘While she wafts around with a trowel on the last six inches of soft, flaky peat once the hard labour is done.’

  As he had expected, she poked her nose in the air and peered at him imperiously down it. ‘I managed to dig my own trenches quite well enough before you moved to Rivenhall, so I dare say I’d manage if you stopped insisting on assisting, Max. Not that I ever recall asking you to assist. You took the task upon yourself.’

  ‘That is because Max is still a gentleman beneath his sour exterior, Effie, no matter how much he tries to hide it. Clearly you bring it back out of him.’ Eleanor shot him a loaded glance over her sherry glass. ‘Isn’t that right, Brother?’

  ‘When are you going home, Sister? Surely you must miss your poor, put-upon family even if they are undoubtedly glad of the respite?’

  ‘I do miss them. Two weeks is a long time.’

  ‘It is. A very long time. Long past time you were off, in fact.’

  Typically, Eleanor decided to ignore him to speak to their guest. ‘And if your roundhouse is an exciting new discovery, what do you intend to do with it?’

  For the first time, he watched Effie deflate as she shrugged. ‘What can I do with it? Nothing, I suppose. Although on principle I will doubtless write a paper to torture myself and send it to the Society of Antiquaries which they will, as usual, completely ignore. Then I shall have to wait for a man to make the discovery somewhere else years down the line and get all the credit for it when his work is published in Archaeologia.’

  ‘You should get the credit for it.’ Max hadn’t intended for his statement to come out quite so vehemently. It was so passionate it made his meddling sister pause mid-sip before making a poor show of covering her delighted smile behind the delicate glass as he tempered his voice. ‘Your work should be published.’

  ‘It’s always been my dream to be published! To be recognised as significant in something at least... That would mean the world.’ She caught him staring at her and, as if she realised she had just revealed an important part of herself, shrugged and looked towards Eleanor, pretending feeling insignificant was of no matter when it had to be. Max had felt a lot of things in his life, but being insignificant wasn’t one of them. ‘But I won’t and that is that. My own stupid fault for being born in this body.’

  Unconsciously she gestured to her chest and it pulled his eyes there, to the hint of cleavage visible over the neckline of her pretty dress before he wrenched them away. Something which his blasted sister clearly noticed, too, judging by her broad grin visible alongside either edge of her glass.

  ‘Maybe you should submit it under a pseudonym... A male one. I have heard many female authors do that as it is the only way for them to be published.’

  ‘I suppose I could...’ She didn’t sound keen. She sounded disappointed and rightly so.

  ‘But Effie still wouldn’t get the credit.’ And that felt grossly unfair. She was so smart she’d wipe the floor with all those fusty, narrow-minded antiquarians. ‘I say you should persevere. In fact, I am inspired to write them a sternly worded letter on the subject.’

  ‘You? Write a strongly worded letter!’ His sister burst out laughing. ‘He would send them a list, Effie, like he sent me whenever he arrived in port. If that. Max is incapable of creating prose which does not read like a ship’s manifest.’

  ‘Then I would send them a strongly worded list, listing all the reasons why those lofty antiquarians are actually cretins.’

  ‘That is very kind of you, Max.’ Effie reached across the gap betwe
en their chairs and touched his hand and he felt it all the way to his toes. ‘But entirely pointless. They will not budge. Lord Richard wrote them several letters, but they will not change their rules. If anything, I think the letters annoy them almost as much as my papers do. Perhaps, for the sake of progress, I should try a pseudonym as Eleanor says. At least then others can learn from my discoveries—even if I have to pretend to be Mr John Smith.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Dig Day 790: sixteen post holes. One spear head. No pickaxe-wielding earls...

  Effie retied the ribbons of the glasses around her head and then arranged her belly flat on the bottom of the trench to resume the painstaking task of gently scraping away another layer of soil from the metal object which stood proud above it. It was very likely an axe head similar to the one she had uncovered yesterday or perhaps a tip of a spear. This particular part of the dwelling seemed to have been used for storing weapons and tools because she now had quite a collection. If she focused, she would know the answer before the afternoon was done. The only problem was today had proved itself a bad day for concentration because her vexing assistant had failed to turn up at all.

  That was, of course, his prerogative. They never made any firm arrangements and certainly never discussed times. Max arrived when he felt like it, stayed for only as long as he wanted and then always bade her a good day, making sure she knew he found her presence and her purpose irritating. Rationally, she understood he probably had a hundred better and more pressing uses for his time and it was not as if he had promised to be here to help her—but none of that made her feel less bothered by his absence because since the first day he had picked up her pickaxe three weeks ago, he had always come. In fact, he had not missed a single day in all that time and since they had started on their quest to prove the dwelling was round, he had taken to spending longer and longer with her.

  Yesterday, he had worked solidly by her side for six hours despite the hot June sun beating down on them. Not having him a few feet away, asking her questions and rolling his eyes or demanding sustenance, felt wrong.

  She missed him.

  Worse, she was worried sick about him and had no earthly idea why. But since late morning she had been plagued with a bad feeling which not even the painstaking excavation of a two-thousand-year-old Celtic axe head could banish.

  Again, his fault because he was such a closed book.

  After their one and only discussion about his scars, they had never discussed anything too personal. All conversation was limited strictly to the dig or the superficial. Obviously she still had a million questions about Max, concerning both his past and his present and all the complicated pieces in between, all frustratingly unasked because she knew instinctively they would not be welcomed. He had remained entirely true to his word—he never minded the question, but there were a great many he blatantly refused to answer. He never said no outright, but he was an expert at sidestepping them. Yet sometimes, she could see his torment in the fleeting bleak expressions which often skittered across his face or see the swirling unreadable emotions in his eyes which his slightly detached, frequently belligerent permanent mask couldn’t always hide.

  But seeing as he resolutely avoided asking her anything about herself which could be construed as intensely private, he gave her no way in to probe him and doubtless did that on purpose for exactly that reason. Therefore lord only knew why he wasn’t here today and more fool her for allowing herself to care.

  Except she did.

  With a huff, she tossed her trowel aside and sat up. Her own jumbled thoughts regarding the wretch were slowly driving her mad. Something he would know because he knew more of her than she usually allowed the world to see.

  Would it have killed him to send word? Something? Anything? Just to let her know he wasn’t drowning in a deep pit of despair all alone.

  Then go seek him out.

  The obvious solution to her problem had also been there since late morning and was the loudest and most insistent current thought in her head. She had been ignoring it out of pride, knowing doing that would tip him off to the fact that she cared about him. Much more than was probably wise. Max had become her friend, companion and, to herself at least, she was prepared to acknowledge she had developed a teeny bit of a tendre for him against her better judgement and entirely at odds with her cynical attitude towards romance. Hardly a surprise when he filled his coat and breeches so well, when he had a voice which made her insides melt like butter and expressive dark eyes which called to her soul.

  The wretch.

  She absolutely did not want him to know that.

  Effie was an acquired taste. She understood that. And understood only too well she was quite capable of sending him running for the hills if she mishandled things by thinking out loud—something she had always done with alarming frequency throughout her life and which managed to damage every fledgling friendship she had tried to nurture. Her inadvertent openness and obvious desire to be accepted was a bit too much and nearly always put people off. It was the reason she was never invited to anything beyond the events everyone was invited to any more and why she had been left on the shelf to gather dust. For now Max tolerated her and that meant the world.

  So did his sister...who seemed to enjoy her company and spoke to her in a manner which suggested they were friends, too—or at least she thought they were. Eleanor had asked only yesterday if she could borrow Effie’s copy of Mrs Radcliffe’s The Italian because there were apparently only serious books in Rivenhall’s extensive library and she was in dire need of something salacious. Those were the sorts of things friends did...

  The Italian!

  She could deliver the book! Why hadn’t her enormous brain thought of that simple solution earlier? It was perfectly innocent and perfectly believable—meaning she wouldn’t have to come off the least bit clinging or needy at all. If anything, it made enquiring about Max an afterthought at the very most and, as long as she didn’t look desperate, he would be none the wiser that she cared.

  Deciding she had no more time to waste on worrying, Effie rushed home to fetch the volume.

  * * *

  Dashing back across the pasture with it in her hand, within half an hour she was knocking on the front door and less than a minute after that she had been greeted by a slightly drawn but smiling Eleanor, who welcomed her with open arms.

  ‘Effie, how lovely to see you!’

  ‘I brought your book.’ Be subtle. ‘I was going to give it to Max today, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him so thought I should deliver it instead of taking it back home. I didn’t want you to have to suffer another day with nothing salacious to read.’ Undoubtedly too much information, but at least her features felt nonchalant.

  ‘That is very thoughtful. Would you care for some tea?’

  Not having any of the answers she had come for yet, Effie enthusiastically nodded and Smithson was dispatched to fetch it. The tray came back with just two cups upon it, which threw up more questions about the new lord of the manor which she had to bite back so hard it hurt.

  ‘How is your quest going?’

  ‘Good. I believe we have located the door and while I cannot conclusively prove the house is round, it’s already a semicircle. But we... I...am making progress.’

  ‘Splendid.’ Eleanor took a sip of her tea to cover her suddenly uncomfortable expression before smiling over-brightly. ‘I am glad it is all moving in a satisfactory direction.’

  Effie’s bad feeling was getting worse because Eleanor still looked distinctly uncomfortable and her conversation was suddenly stilted when she was normally so open and sunny. Unless Eleanor had decided to tire of her oddness as people—even the kindest sort—tended to do eventually. A prospect which made her chest ache with sadness. ‘Of course, things move faster when Max assists me. I missed him this morning.’ So much for nonchalant.

  ‘He was indispose
d this morning and...’ The teacup clattered in her saucer and suddenly Eleanor’s face was wretched. ‘Oh, Effie—as much as I know he is going to be furious if I tell you, I feel I must because I really have no idea what to do and, so far away from home, nobody else to turn to!’ Eleanor was up and pacing, her odd mood doing nothing to calm Effie’s now wildly racing heart.

  ‘I hate it when he gets like this. When he withdraws from the world and will not let anybody in... And it’s all my fault. Poor Max... I should have handled it differently...’

  Fear constricted Effie’s throat. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘This.’ Eleanor reached into her pocket and retrieved a tightly folded sheet of newspaper. She unfolded it and handed it to Effie, pointing to the third announcement in Births, Marriages and Deaths. ‘He was devastated when he read it. I could see it on his face. Then he stormed out to who knows where and came back not an hour ago and shut himself away again. He refuses point blank to see me or speak to me about it.’

  Effie read it aloud. ‘“The Earl of Castlepoint is happy to announce that her Ladyship the Countess of Castlepoint, of Prittlewell House, here on the morning of Saturday last, gave safe delivery of a son and heir...”’ It was a standard announcement with two similar listed directly below. ‘I don’t understand?’

  ‘She was Max’s fiancée. Before the accident. She left him while he was recovering.’

  ‘Oh...’ This was the first Effie had ever heard of a fiancée. Her surprise at the news was rapidly overwhelmed by an emotion which churned her stomach. Anger at the woman’s thoughtless, callous treatment of Max tinged with overwhelming jealousy that he clearly still had feelings for the woman if this piece of news had caused him pain. ‘Oh.’