Not Wicked Enough (27 page)

From atop his horse, Mountjoy gazed at them, careful, so careful, not to look at her any longer than was polite. Possibly his gaze lasted less than was polite. His coat was indifferently cut, and his cravat had not survived whatever
journey he’d been on. The folds were now uneven though, knowing him, he’d probably started his day with his cravat tied like that. “You are about to dig up my field, aren’t you?” he said.

“Yes.” Lily smiled because anything else might give away the state of her nerves. Their encounters so far did not mean they were engaged in an affair. They weren’t lovers yet. They might never be. How could they when she would not be at Bitterward much longer? Her heart was not involved. Nor was his. So why, then, was her pulse racing so?

“Where will you start?” he asked.

“We’ll dig here.” She pointed at Mountjoy. “If you wouldn’t mind moving aside, your grace? We have a Roman garrison to uncover.”

Lord Nigel said, “Isn’t this the site of the old stables? I remember hearing somewhere that the second duke tore down the original house and rebuilt where Bitterward now stands.”

“Not another word from you, Lord Nigel.”

“What about at Romansford?” Ginny said, all sweetness and innocence.

“Romansford?”

“You remember, Mountjoy. Where you and Nigel found the coins?” Ginny spoke without the slightest indication she believed the story was a false one. “Over there, by those rocks. You remember, don’t you, Mountjoy? The Easter after we came here from Haltwhistle.”

Mountjoy frowned. “Was it there?” He gave a more convincing performance than his brother. “No, it was closer to the river than that, wasn’t it, Nigel?”

“Infamous, your grace,” Lily said.

His eyebrows rose in that infuriating way he had. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re in on the plot with your devious brother.”

He dismounted and dropped the reins to the ground. His mount flicked its tail and nudged a clump of grass under its nose. Its back hoof dislodged a small rock. Lily stared at the
rock and the too square bottom surface. That was no naturally occurring shape. He turned, one hand resting on his saddle. “Nigel, take Eugenia to the awning to await the excavation of the Romansford Garrison. I need a word in private with Miss Wellstone.” After his brother and sister left them in relative privacy, he looked her up and down with a gaze that would have broken a woman of weaker will than her. “What plot would that be, Wellstone?”

She did not bother hiding her annoyance. “You and your brother have colluded to be sure we dig by the river and not here.”

Mountjoy returned his attention to her, and her stomach took flight again. “Why would we do that?”

“So we find the artifacts you buried for us to discover.”

The duke scanned the area before he replied. “The ground would be softer by the river, and it is where Nigel and I once found some Roman coins.”

“You, sir, are incorrigible.”

He returned his attention to her. He crossed his arms over his chest, and it did not matter to her one bit that his waistcoat had no style whatever or that his coat and buckskin breeches both should have long ago been handed over to his valet for disposal. He met her gaze, and her stomach went spinning away. They had been intimate. He’d been inside her. She knew what he looked and sounded like when he climaxed.

“I don’t think you can produce a single Roman coin, your grace. In fact, if you can produce even one of the coins you claim you found, why, why…”

“Yes?”

“Why, I’ll wait on you hand and foot for an entire day, that’s what.”

“And if I cannot?”

“You will do the same for me.” She held out her hand and met his gaze straight on. “Be forewarned, your grace. I am without mercy.”

His mouth curled into a smile that made her too giddy to
think straight. She wanted her hands on him again. Her mouth. Her tongue. She wanted to feel the weight of his body over hers. More than anything she wanted to look into his eyes when he slid inside her. “Bloodthirsty girl, aren’t you?”

“You’ve no idea.”

With that devastating smile still hovering around his mouth, Mountjoy tapped his riding whip against his open palm. “I never make a wager I am not confident of winning.”

“Nor do I, your grace.” Was it possible he wanted her with the same intensity? Heavens, she hoped so. “Do you accept?”

“Done.” Mountjoy clasped her hand.

“Prepare to grovel, your grace, for when
I
win our wager, I’ll have you on your knees to me.”

“Delightful as that sounds, Wellstone,” Mountjoy said far more evenly than she liked to hear from him, “I never grovel.”

“I am adding, Mountjoy, to my very long list of tasks I will demand you perform. I hope you enjoy dancing.”

“I abhor dancing,” he said.

Lily took her notebook and her pencil from her pocket and prepared to write. “Item the first,” she said to herself. “Dan…cing…duke.” She made a flourish underneath the words. “There.”

“When I win,” he said in a low voice, “I’ll have
you
on your hands and knees. Again. Tonight, I hope.”

She licked her lower lip. “Best go, your grace, and join your brother and sister. I’ve serious work to do.”

Mountjoy bowed, and while he walked away, she returned the notebook and pencil to her pocket. Coolly as she could, she walked to where Walter and the other footmen waited. “If you would,” she said, closing her parasol and using it to indicate the area she meant, “dig a trench from here to about there. At least two feet deep, I should think. More, if possible. Do not, under any circumstances, disturb the foundation when you’ve reached it. The goal is to uncover what
remains and leave it in place. We are not here to salvage the stones.”

Walter bobbed his head. “Miss.”

She would stay here, valiantly supervising the work. She opened her parasol again, shading herself from the sun and, incidentally, hiding her face from Mountjoy, who was by now back at the awning. She stayed near the footmen as they worked and soaked in the scent of fresh earth, the
shick
of a spade biting into the dirt, the soft comments from time to time between the men. She kept her parasol over her head, but the sun beat down unmercifully, as hot as Lord Nigel had predicted.

Half an hour later, Ginny called to her from the awning. “Lily, darling. Do come have something to drink.”

“No, thank you.” She waved. A trickle of sweat ran down her spine. “Would you be so good as to have someone bring the men something to drink?”

Refreshment was duly brought to the men, who leaned on their shovels while they drank from the clay jars brought to them. In the meantime, Lily fidgeted. She never wanted to sit or stay still when she was outside. She wanted to walk, to explore. To see the world around her and breathe it all in. She wanted to be alone with Mountjoy.

She walked to the edge of the hole and looked in. As yet, there was no sign of a foundation.

“What do you see?” Ginny called from the edge of the awning.

“A great amount of dirt.” She turned. Underneath the awning, a maid handed Mountjoy a glass of lemonade. Ginny cooled herself with an ivory fan. She held a glass in the other.

The footmen dug steadily, leaning over more and more as the trench became deeper and longer. There was nothing but dirt down there, and it was unrelentingly dark and dampish from the spring storms. Perhaps her idea of digging for treasure had a flaw. Days and days of uncovering nothing
but dirt wasn’t so very adventurous. Oh, perhaps they’d uncover the occasional root or rock, but the predominant finding was going to be dirt.

She ignored the entreaties from the others to come out of the sun or to have a cool, refreshing glass of lemonade. There was a minor bit of excitement when one of the men uncovered a bit of metal, but examination proved the object to be a horseshoe nail.

The sun climbed higher in the sky. More sweat rolled down her back and beaded at her temples. She blinked because for a moment, she was sure she saw something that wasn’t the color of dirt. After all this time, even a rock would be a thrill. The merest hint of the foundation would be lovely. Even if it was all that remained of a stable.

One of the servants brought up a clump of something on his shovel, but after another bit of excitement, the object turned out to be a piece of broken slate and yet another horseshoe nail. Ginny called her again, and Lily turned just enough to see her.

“Strawberries,” Ginny said, holding up a plate. “They are excellent. Will you come have one?”

She waved a refusal. “How good of you to ask, but no, thank you.” She ought to sit under the awning with the others, drinking lemonade and eating strawberries. In the shade. She could admire Mountjoy’s shoulders and imagine him naked. Bother with her commitment to the tedium of treasure hunting.

In the trench, Walter emptied his shovel of dirt and went back for another. The shovel made an odd sound, and he stopped before the bottom of his stroke down. Another of the footmen stopped digging, too, arrested by the sound.

“What is it?” Lily asked. Had they reached the foundation at last? Or had they found a horseshoe to go with their collection of nails?

“A root, miss,” Walter said.

A root. She could practically hear him thinking how much he’d rather be digging by the river.

“Have you found something?” Lord Nigel called.

Lily waved a dismissive hand. “Carry on,” she said to the footmen. They did, all three in a line and all of them more miserably hot than she was.

“Walter,” said the man at the far end of the trench. “Give me the smaller shovel?”

The implement was duly handed over and Walter tossed the larger one onto the lip of the trench. Lily considered walking to the awning. The shade would feel delicious.

“Oi!” Walter waved one arm over his head. “Oi there, miss!”

She arrived at that end of the trench in time to see the other footman drop to his knees and reach into the hole. “Have you reached the foundation?”

When his hand came out, by some trick of the sun, his fingers glittered with gold.

M
OUNTJOY ACCOMPANIED
E
UGENIA AND
N
IGEL TO
see what was causing the fuss, but hung back when they reached the edge of the trench. The scene was eerily familiar. All three of the footmen had taken off their coats and hats and rolled up their sleeves. As in his dream, one stood at the rim of the trench, leaning on his shovel and staring down into the trench they’d dug. The other two stood in the excavated area. Lily, on the other side of the excavation, stared at something in the trench. Her parasol was closed and on the ground at her feet, exactly as he’d dreamed.

He’d known for days about the treasure hunting project and that it would involve digging. Therefore, his dreams about this weren’t so unusual. Women commonly had parasols outside. The details of Lily and her treasure hunting were hardly earth-shattering, and yet, the hair on his arms prickled.

The servant nearest to Lily held out a bit of twisted, dirt-encrusted metal. The piece wasn’t much larger than his palm but he’d scraped off enough dirt to expose the unmistakable
gleam of gold. There appeared to be flashes of red, too. The man grinned as if he’d just been handed a fortune of his own.

Mindful of Lily’s accusation that the field had been seeded with treasure, Mountjoy looked at Nigel, but his brother looked as shocked as everyone else. If this was whatever Nigel had buried here himself, which he suspected his brother had done, Nigel was a better actor than Mountjoy thought.

He walked to the lip of the trench and peered down. A jumble of objects, all of them covered and encrusted with dirt to the point where he could not form the shapes into anything recognizable, lay at the bottom. Most appeared to be quite small. He didn’t see anything that looked like pots or glassware or the sorts of jars that turned up in areas where the Romans had established forts or cities. Another of the footmen crouched in the trench, bringing out what looked at first glance like more dirt-covered rubbish.