Redeeming The Reclusive Earl. Virginia Heath

      Less than half an hour later and all his suspicions were confirmed. The new bane of his life was on her knees, using some sort of hand tool as she bent over the pot she was obsessed with. A plethora of lanterns ringed her, casting her face in ethereal light, glinting off her ridiculous glasses and ensuring that even from his hiding place in the trees, Max could see she was smiling.

      She did that a lot, did Miss Nithercott, although he wished it wasn’t such a beguiling and pretty smile because it drew his eyes to her lips. It also made her dark eyes sparkle, which inevitably pulled his gaze to those ridiculously long lashes when he really needed no reminders of her attractiveness or the sorry fact that she was exactly the sort of woman he would have once been compelled to flirt with. Back in his flirting days when he had adored women with spirit and gumption.

      Before...

      And there was the rub. Any acknowledgement of his undeniable attraction to her inevitably reminded him of everything he had lost and was trying desperately hard to forget while he readjusted to his life in the skin he had been doomed to live within for ever.

      Reluctantly, he tied Drake’s reins to a sturdy branch and started towards her. Now that he had reassured himself she was quite safe, he wanted to get his apology over with quickly and get as far away from her as it was humanly possible to be. She unnerved him. Perhaps a tad more than the rest of the world currently unnerved him. He would be quick. Concise. Apologise for the delivery, but explain the sentiment remained the same.

       I appreciate you were given certain privileges by my uncle on this land, but times change and I have plans for it now...

      Plans! As if counting the ruined stones she put so much stock in, in an pathetic attempt to distract him from his lonely pit of despair, could feasibly be categorised as plans. He would just tell her the truth. He wanted to be left alone and needed the reassuring ring of three hundred acres of empty parkland to be assured that he was. This was his land—not hers!

      Max was a few yards away when, clearly oblivious to his presence, she suddenly sat back on her heels and he instinctively darted back into the shadows, not quite ready to face her just yet.

       Coward! My land! Not hers! Just apologise!

      She stretched, her back arching, and her bosom he had tried not to think about jutted seductively against the soft linen of her shirt as she raised her arms in the air and rotated her shoulders. The sight made him forget his lofty purpose and he simply stared and, to his complete horror, yearned until he ruthlessly suppressed that pointless emotion. He could yearn all he wanted. No woman was going to yearn back.

      To further taunt him, she rearranged her body to lie on the ground, her head 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