‘Is everything quite all right, Miss Effie? Only you don’t seem yourself.’
Mrs Farley placed another cup of tea on the desk alongside a slice of fruitcake. Fruitcake which instantly reminded her of him. Dratted man. ‘The rain is getting me down. It has barely stopped in a week and I am eager to get back to the dig site.’
A big fat lie.
For the first time since she had seriously picked up the trowel after Rupert’s death, Effie was actively avoiding the ruined Abbey. Or rather she was actively avoiding a certain irritating gentleman who technically owned it and wasn’t in any hurry to reacquaint herself with him after he had kissed her senseless and then likened it to a mere bumping of faces in a confined space, before calling her the bane of his life and reminding her she was peculiar.
It was entirely his fault she had been staring out of the rain-soaked window feeling sorry for herself all day rather than finishing the detailed sketch of the Celtic spearhead lying in front of her. The sketch she had promised herself she would finish today to add to the expanded paper she was writing, which doubtless nobody would read anyway so what was the point? Thanks to Max, everything felt futile and her thoughts were sending her mad, largely because they all revolved around him in some way.
She hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything except Max.
In her pocket his lacklustre note of apology seemed to burn against her thigh, reminding her she was a fool. She did not need to read it for the six-hundredth time to know exactly what it said or feel aggrieved at the dull and impersonal prose. Prose which read more like a list than a heartfelt apology, the penmanship atrocious and all in all it only served to rub more salt in an already painful wound.
Dearest Effie
I am sorry I offended you.
I made a hash of things.
Please allow me to clarify so we may clear the air.
Max
Clarify! When he had been insultingly quite clear enough! And as to making a hash of things, she wanted to shake him by his annoyingly broad shoulders and scream that he had made more than a hash! He’d run roughshod all over her feelings, behaved exactly like everyone else, when she had convinced herself he was different and, if the constant dull pain behind her ribs was any indication, he had also broken her heart and certainly wounded her spirit.
Her own stupid fault, she supposed, when she knew his predicable and unoriginal reaction was bound to come eventually. If only he hadn’t kissed her, then perhaps she wouldn’t feel so awkward about things. It was hard to brazen it out and behave as if it was no matter when she had clung to him like a limpet, thrust her body against him like a wanton and kissed him back as if her life depended on it.
Which in those scant, reckless and significant moments it had.
On top of being a thoughtless and huge disappointment rather than the man she had stupidly convinced herself he was, Max was also the best kisser she had ever had the misfortune to bump faces against.
Effie was furious at him. And furious at herself for allowing the instinctual female part of herself to make a complete fool of her again, when she had long worked out that books and digging were better than men and she had made herself perfectly comfortable on her dusty shelf after her last hope of leaving it died with poor Rupert on a battlefield across the sea. Damn Max for giving her false hope!
Frustrated, she snatched up the rusty spearhead and stabbed it in the cake, then sprung out of her chair to pace. Pacing had become her only source of exercise these past few days thanks to both the weather and her cowardice. In the gaps between the showers, she convinced herself to go out and then talked herself out of it each time in case she encountered him. She had refused every single one of Eleanor’s invitations to visit Rivenhall, too, citing the paper she was eager to write and pathetically using the weather as the perfect excuse to get it finished without distraction. And when Eleanor had called upon her yesterday to see how she was getting on, Effie had lied and said the words were flowing and perhaps they would become a book after all and then feigned uninterested nonchalance whenever the other woman had dragged the name Max into the conversation. Which she had tried to do with alarming frequency.
Although she had hinted he was miserable, too, although she had no idea why, but suspected it was something to do with what Eleanor called theirtiffand that knowledge had made Effie feel slightly better. He deserved to suffer. The thought of him blithely carrying on oblivious when she felt absolutely wretched seriously galled. She was glad he realised he was in purgatory, because she was quite determined to make him stay there. They weren’t friends any more as far as she was concerned and, as he had plainly stated, there was no chance of them ever being anything more than friends, ergo they were now nothing to one another beyond acquaintances. She would maintain a cordial and polite distance because she still needed to dig on his land. But on principle she would refuse any and all assistance from him in the future because she didn’t want to be within ten miles of the dratted man—let alone ten feet.
Once she stopped avoiding him and the ruins like the plague, of course, because she still wasn’t the least bit ready to have to face him.
Mrs Farley poked her head around the door. ‘You have a caller, miss. From the big house. Shall I show him in?’
‘Him?’
‘I didn’t ask his name. But he’s big and brooding and soaking wet.’
Effie’s stomach plummeted to her toes. ‘Tell him I am indisposed, Mrs Farley.’ What was good for the goose was good for the gander after all. And she wasn’t ready. Might never be ready if her bouncing nerves and aching heart were any gauge.
‘Tell her I will wait, Mrs Farley!’ The deep voice came from the room beyond. ‘Until Miss Nom de Plume is disposed.’
Nom de Plume!Oh, dear...
Max’s dark, dripping head appeared over the housekeeper’s shoulders, an opened letter scrunched in his raised hand and his expression as stormy as the sky outside. ‘And then tell her I intend to wring her manipulative, duplicitous, libellous neck!’
‘I can explain...’
‘Explain what? That you wrote to the Society of Antiquaries pretending to be me? That you submitted a scholarly paper without my knowledge which they are about to publish in my name?’ As Mrs Farley reversed in subtle retreat, he stalked in and tossed the letter on her desk.
‘Or that you invited them to come tomyhouse, Effie! At their earliest convenience no less! To join me at the dig!’ Then she saw more than anger in his eyes. She saw fear. ‘I can’t have people in my house, Effie. Strangers... How could you? I am not...’ As if he realised he was showing her so much more of himself than he intended, his expression hardened once more. ‘I am not having it!’
