and arms disappearing into the hole, her booted feet braced as she wriggled from side to side. The fabric of her breeches pulled taut on the rounded flesh of her delectable behind. He could hear her little grunts of exertion as she wrestled beneath the dirt and wondered, as he looked his fill, why the blazes there weren’t laws forbidding the wearing of breeches by females. Especially females who filled them as exquisitely as the troublesome Miss Nithercott.
‘Stop being so stubborn.’ She was talking to herself—or perhaps to her beloved pot—and with a sigh groped for the discarded trowel on the ground beside her. ‘You know you will lose in the end...’
Was it wrong to watch her so intently without her knowledge? Thinking less-than-pure thoughts? Probably—only he couldn’t seem to stop. There was something strangely charming as well as alluring about the sight. The stupid pot must mean a lot to her if she was prepared to go to these lengths in the middle of the night for it. Digging by candlelight couldn’t be easy.
Guilt pricked again. Because of course he knew this meant a lot to her.
He had seen the panic and desperation in her eyes when she had pleaded with him to allow her to dig and he had ruthlessly ignored it out of self-preservation. Then, determined to impose his will, he had loomed over her, intent on putting the fear of God into her, too.
Which was the only reason he was here.
She was owed an apology and then he would send her on her way with the pot and that would be the end of it. If they never crossed paths again it would be too soon and Max never wanted to have to smell her blasted intoxicating perfume again. Despite several feet of distance, the subtle scent of it assaulted him now. The heady aroma of lilacs and roses. Of lazy summer days and warm summer nights. Why the hell was she wearing perfume while her head was shoved in the mud?
Making sure his hair covered the worst of the damage on the left side of his face, he stepped out of his hiding place and was about to let her know he was there and get the cringing awkwardness over with, when she started to mutter again.
‘Come on... Come on... That’s it...’ Several frustrated yet determined grunts and a great deal of torturous wiggling later a single fist pumped the air as his feet came level with the edge of the hole. ‘Yes! Got you!’ She scrambled to her knees, grinning, and then promptly shrieked as she spotted him beside her, falling back on to her delightful bottom as she clutched at her heart, the silly lenses magnifying her rapidly blinking eyes.
‘Lord Rivenhall! Are you trying to give me an apoplexy?’
‘Sorry for startling you...’ Although it was technically she who should be sorry for trespassing again rather than looking irritated at his intrusion as she was now. Of its own accord, his hand reached out to help her up and to his horror she took it. The effect of her touch was staggering because he felt it everywhere as he pulled her to her feet before hastily letting go.
‘If I had been holding the pot, I might have dropped it! What were you thinking creeping up on me like that?’
‘If your head hadn’t been under the ground—my ground—you would have heard me.’
And he most definitely should have alerted her of his presence sooner. That he hadn’t had been down to damned cowardice again. Alongside the fruitless yearning.
Get it over with, man!
‘Actually, I came down here to...er...’ Max felt his toes curl with embarrassment inside his boots. ‘Apologise for my overly...um...aggressive tone when we last met. And the looming, of course.’
‘The looming?’
‘Yes. That was unnecessary and I am sorry if I frightened you... Both then and just now. I should have said something sooner, but...’ Good grief, he was babbling and feeling more uncomfortable by the second. He’d been staring at her. That’s why he hadn’t made his presence known sooner. ‘But I could see you were busy.’
‘How did you know I would be here?’
‘Because as you rightly pointed out the other day, I am not an idiot, Miss Nocturnal. Granted you hid the evidence of your clandestine visits reasonably well these past two days—but 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.
