Читать книгу Redeeming The Reclusive Earl - Virginia Heath - Страница 13

There was only one metal Effie knew of which did not tarnish underground and that was gold. Although where this ancient Celtic civilisation had gold in Cambridgeshire was anybody’s guess. Cornwall perhaps was the closest place, or Wales. Both hundreds of miles to the west—not that she was an expert on British gold deposits. Yet the heavy, perfectly twisted bracelet in the palm of her hand was undoubtedly made of solid gold and completely unlike any other old jewellery she had ever seen or read about.

Judging by the sheer weight of the metal, and ancient provenance aside, it was also incredibly valuable. An inescapable fact which presented a dilemma. While Lord Rivenhall might not care about pottery or hearthstones, precious metal was another matter. It had come out of his land and so by rights it was his. Not telling him she had just uncovered a huge chunk of solid gold was dishonest.

She had to tell him.

Which necessitated breaking her agreement to stay well out of his way. And might irritate him all over again and potentially damage their truce. But what other choice did she have? Right was right, after all, and hopefully he would be reasonable enough to understand that.

She wrapped the bracelet in a handkerchief, tucked it into her battered satchel and set off in the direction of the house.

Smithson was, understandably, horrified to see her and she apologised profusely for putting him in the unenviable position of telling his unpredictable master she needed an audience. However, to the great surprise of them both, Lord Rivenhall apparently took the news well and suddenly appeared in the doorway of the drawing room looking extremely wary.

‘Miss Nithercott.’

That he did not invite her to join him in the drawing room or make any move to come towards her was telling.

‘Lord Rivenhall, I apologise for disturbing you, but I have found something I need to give you.’ Effie rummaged for the bracelet and held it out. ‘It’s gold, my lord. A very substantial piece of gold.’ The dark eye she could see dipped to the bracelet before fixing back on hers.

‘And?’

‘And I thought you should have it. It is obviously very valuable.’

The dark eye widened as she walked towards him and offered it. ‘I found it a few feet from the hearth all on its own, which leads me to believe it was accidentally dropped or buried, perhaps to keep it safe, much like Samuel Pepys did his Parmesan.’

‘I’m sorry...?’

‘Pepys...’ What had possessed her brain to jump forward fifteen hundred years in one sentence? No wonder Lord Surly looked confused. ‘The seventeenth-century diarist? He buried his cheese in his garden during the Great Fire of London.’ He was staring at her now as if she were mad, as people were prone to do when she allowed her brain to speak freely without tempering her words. ‘Because Parmesan was expensive in sixteen sixty-six. I suppose it still is now, although I cannot say I know the exact price of it...’ She huffed out a sigh and gave her odd mind a stiff talking to. ‘Anyway, I digress... I suspect this bracelet is of a similar age to the pot. Which would make it at least two thousand years old. Perhaps more. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

He reached out and took it and she found herself contemplating his hands. They were big, making the substantial bracelet appear almost delicate as he held it. Hands which had obviously seen real work once upon a time, rather than the typically genteel, idle hands of the aristocracy. The strong, blunt fingers were tipped with neat, clean nails which made her feel self-conscious about the state of hers after a long day of digging. So embarrassed, she hid them behind her back and felt compelled to fill the silence. Typically, the only thing she could think to fill it with was history.

‘The presence of gold in such an ancient dwelling here indicates that the Celtic tribes which lived on this island before the Roman conquest traded as well as fought with one another—and perhaps even with other tribes across the sea. It suggests a civilisation which was both advanced and thriving. That bracelet is not a crude piece of jewellery either. It takes great skill to smelt the gold, hammer it into a perfectly round cylinder and then twist it with such precision before seamlessly welding the join. Something which contradicts many of the Roman accounts from the time of the invasion which state the Britons were basically savages. No savage moulded that bracelet. That is a high-status object created for someone of great importance who must have been devastated when they lost it.’

‘I thought they buried it. Like Pepys’s Parmesan.’ He said it with a straight face, but for some reason she got the distinct impression he was poking fun at her.

‘I suppose we’ll never know exactly who put it in the ground, but we can speculate as to who owned it... The tribal leader, perhaps? Although which tribe is hard to guess. Catuvellauni, perhaps? Or Iceni? Both occupied territory in Cambridgeshire. It is entirely feasible, I suppose—we could even throw the Trinovantes into the mix. They were very...’ His head had tilted as if he couldn’t quite fathom exactly what it was he was hearing or seeing. A stark reminder of all her differences from the rest of the human race.

‘Very...?’

She had started so she might as well finish the sentence. No matter how dull it truly was. ‘Very powerful before the conquest. Or at least so I’ve read in Caesar’s account of the Gallic War.’

‘You have read Caesar’s account of the Gallic War? As in Julius Caesar? He wrote books?’

‘The Romans were prolific writers. Without them, we would know nothing whatsoever of our history before they invaded.’

‘I had no idea we had a history before they invaded...’

‘Most people don’t. The records really do need to be translated.’

‘So you read them in... What? Latin? Actual Roman Latin?’

‘Wherever possible. Although some have been lost over time, so I had to...’ Why was she telling him all this? When this was exactly the sort of thing that made people give her a very wide berth. ‘Um...refer to the Anglo-Saxon histories which borrowed a great deal from the Roman.’

He now had that baffled look which people always got when they realised she was peculiar. No matter how many times she tried to hide it. ‘Are you fluent in Anglo-Saxon, too, Miss Nithercott?’

She was. And Norse. She could also get by in Ancient Greek, but her Hebrew was practically non-existent, although, in her defence, she had never had much cause to learn it. ‘Technically, the Angles and the Saxons originally had different languages, my lord, but over time they...um...’

‘Um...?’ Bemusement was rapidly turning into amusement. It was obvious he thought her quite the anomaly. Which, of course, she was.

‘They merged, my lord.’

‘I shall take that as a yes, then.’ The corners of his mouth began to curve into a smile which did odd things to her insides, until the unmistakable sound of a carriage outside turned it swiftly into a frown. ‘Smithson!’

The aged butler’s grey head appeared out of nowhere. ‘I know, my lord. I shall get rid of them.’ And with that, Lord Rivenhall disappeared back into the drawing room, taking the bracelet with him and slamming the door.

Effie stood awkwardly on the spot for several seconds until she realised she was in full view of the front entrance and not really in a fit state to be seen by any of the local gentry, who tended to disapprove of her insistence on wearing breeches when she worked. Not that they particularly approved of her in a frock either, but that was by the by. Impending disapproval aside, if they saw her in the elusive and mysterious Lord Rivenhall’s hallway, they might feel aggrieved at being sent away and, knowing the way their minds worked, that would inevitably lead to unwanted and entirely unwarranted gossip. When she had promised herself faithfully she would actively try to avoid any more gossip—at least for the next few months.

Until the dust settled.

Because the rector, it turned out, did not take kindly to having the story of Noah questioned during a sermon. Even though, to Effie, Lamarck’s hypothesis that new species were created all the time made it entirely improbable the animals which walked the planet today would be exactly the same as those which walked down the gang plank of the ark after the Great Flood several millennia ago. The ark would have had to have been at least the size of France to accommodate two of every species which walked the Earth now!

The congregation hadn’t appreciated her comment, either, and she’d been treated as more of a pariah than usual in the four weeks since which had made her feel significantly lonelier than she usually did.

A moment before Smithson opened the door and exposed her to the caller, she darted into the drawing room, too. Yet another thing which seemed to surprise Lord Rivenhall, who had taken himself to the French doors to stare out at the garden.

‘Do you mind if I hide in here with you for a minute or two?’

He looked decidedly uncomfortable with the request. ‘Do I have a choice?’

‘Not really. At least not till they’ve gone.’ She smiled to soften the blow. ‘Besides, it probably will not do your standing any favours to be seen consorting with me, so it’s for the best.’

‘Why should I not be seen consorting with you?’

‘Because—and I doubt this will come as a piece of mind-shattering news, Lord Rivenhall—I am a trifle odd.’

‘A little eccentric, perhaps...’

It was very decent of him to try to defend her and she found herself smiling at him and meaning it completely. ‘Eccentric is wearing breeches and digging holes in the ground, Lord Rivenhall. Odd is when you have a brain which retains every piece of information it happens to come across.’

‘Every piece?’ He wasn’t convinced, although to be fair to him, why should he be? Effie had never even read about another person like her. ‘It is impossible to remember everything Miss Nithercott.’

‘What proof would you like?’ It was probably for the best she get it over and done with. ‘Should I recite every monarch from Alfred the Great to King George? I could do it forward and backwards and give you the dates of their reigns. Or Ge Hong’s exact and original ingredients for gunpowder from fourth-century China? It’s sulphur, charcoal and saltpetre, in case you were wondering. Although rather interestingly, they tended to retrieve the saltpetre from decayed manure rather than mine it back in those days. I’ve always pondered how he discovered that. What exactly was Ge Hong doing with dung that made him wonder if it might explode? Unless it was a complete accident as so often scientific discovery is?’ His square jaw was hanging slack. ‘Which neatly leads me to the real crux of my oddness, in that my mind constantly asks questions or speculates and at such speed they often fly out of my mouth before I’ve given any thought at all as to whether or not it is appropriate to say them. Which inevitably means I either inadvertently offend people or terrify them. And as much as I don’t mean to alienate them, I completely understand why I do. It is hardly normal for a person to know all of the bizarre and convoluted things that I do.’

‘But not particularly unusual when the person’s father is a don at Cambridge who specialises in translating Anglo-Saxon texts.’ He had remembered and appeared charmingly smug that he did. ‘Hardly a surprise, then, that you have an extensive grasp of history, Miss Nithercott.’

‘Was a don. He died four years ago.’

‘Oh...’ She could see that brought him up short. ‘I am sorry.’ He stared down at his feet awkwardly for a moment and she felt bad for directing their conversation on to a morbid path when she had been rather enjoying it.

‘I am afraid my oddity is not confined to just history. I remember everything. Test me. If I’ve read it, it’s in here.’ She tapped her forehead.

‘Shakespeare’s sonnet number one hundred and sixteen.’

‘“Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments. Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds...” I’ve always had a soft spot for that one.’ The single dark eyebrow she could clearly see raised, impressed. ‘Is it your favourite?’

‘It used to be. How many miles is it to cross the Channel?’

‘At its narrowest point, just twenty-one. But if one is travelling the normal route between Dover and Calais and in need of a harbour it’s twenty-eight. Although that is as the crow flies. If I were being pedantic, and because we can neither fly nor walk to France, it is technically twenty-four miles because we would need to use a boat of some sort to get there and a nautical mile is two hundred and sixty-five yards longer than the standard mile, therefore there are fewer of them.’

His head tilted again and he stared at her for the longest time before shaking his head. ‘That is quite a gift, Miss Not-at-all-usual.’

‘Or a curse. Depending on how you look at it.’ She felt her smile falter. ‘Sometimes just listening to my brain is exhausting.’ Heaven only knew why she felt compelled to admit that.

‘I know what you mean.’ His gaze locked and held with hers, making her wonder if he meant he empathised rather than sympathised. But whatever emotion it was he hastily covered it by looking down. Then seemed surprised to find the ancient bracelet still in his hand. ‘Why did you bring this to me?’

‘Because it came out of your land and is very valuable. It did not feel right taking your gold.’

‘My gold rather than the nation’s?’

‘I shan’t deny it is of the utmost national importance, my lord.’

‘Then you had best study it, Miss Nithercott.’ He held it out and dropped it into her open palm. ‘I should hate to wilfully stand in the way of progress.’ Then he smiled, properly smiled, for the very first time and it had the most unexpected effect on her. Her pulse quickened and her tummy felt all funny. Effie found herself smiling back and gazing, perhaps a little winsomely, into his now-twinkling deep brown eyes.

‘Excuse me, my lord...’ Smithson’s head poked around the door, his expression apologetic, as he used the rest of it as a shield. ‘There is a lady here to see you.’

‘No visitors, Smithson. None. We’ve been through this. Do not even let her in the front door!’

‘I didn’t, my lord, but...’ The old retainer’s eyes swivelled to Effie and back again. ‘She is also refusing to leave, my lord, and is currently still on the drive, supervising the unloading of her baggage.’

‘She brought baggage?’ Lord Rivenhall was practically snarling now, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

‘She is under the impression she has come to stay, my lord.’ Then, his expression turned pained. ‘And claims to be your sister.’