“Understandable, of course. You lack our experience. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
She gritted her teeth. “I realize—.”
“Where’s the rest of it?” He slid into the trench, even though he had his own perfectly good trench on the other side of the barrow. His required a ladder and went deep enough to be of proper use. The least he could do was leave her to her own shallow grave.
“Mind your boots!” she snapped when his heel dislodged one of the toes, snapping it like tinder. One of the girls giggled behind her hand. One didn’t speak to earls in that way, especially not ruined girls such as Persephone Blackwell. But then one did not go tramping through a dig site like that either. Honestly. She rather hoped Henry’s grandfather’s ghost wandered by to slap him on the back of the head.
Lord Darrington wasn’t listening, he was too busy calling for Sir Reginald Barton, who led most of Fairweather’s very successful expeditions. They squeezed into the trench beside her, knocking her back onto her heels. Someone trod on her skirt. Someone else nearly broke her finger when she curled over the rest of the leg bone to keep it from being splintered. It might not be much of a find, but it was hers. And Henry wouldn’t want it getting damaged. It was the least she could do.
“That’s enough,” Conall interrupted. His voice sliced between them like an arrow. “You’re stepping on Lady Persephone,” he added stepping into the trench, effectively silencing the men. They stared at him, as surprised as Persephone was. “Move.”
Sir Baron nearly lost his footing in his haste to eject himself from the grave. Lord Darrington wasn’t as easily cowed, seeing as he was also an earl. He did eventually move. He might be an earl, but he wasn’t nearly as wide in the shoulders.
“Lady Persephone, you were saying that these bones are too recent to have been buried at the time the barrow was built?” His eyes were dark and calmly calculating, as if he saw through her. People looked through her all of the time, but no one had yet to see through her with a single piercing glance.
She nodded, not enjoying this much attention. “The grave is too shallow,” she said finally, quietly. She wondered why she suddenly felt like blushing. She turned her attention back to the bones and the things she actually understood—earls, especially dangerously attractive ones, not being one of them.
One of the ladies giggled. “You truly are the Bone Lady.”
And there went her first public social interaction with a handsome man.
If you didn’t count falling in a hole on the village common.
It had been a rather trying day, come to think of it.
Persephone brushed dirt back off the ankle bone, dislodging it carefully. The four remaining toes squirmed. Lady Louisa Edgeworth gasped theatrically, clutching Conall’s arm. Persephone rolled her eyes before she could stop herself. Conall’s mouth lifted in a half-smile. “He’s dead,” Persephone told the other girl bluntly. “He’s not going to hurt you. Or rather, his one solitary leg is unlikely to.”
“What about his ghost?” Miss Holly Carter, asked, eyes wide as teacups.
“Very true,” Persephone nodded briskly. “Best step back. No telling what might happen.”
It gained her a little bit of space, enough to breathe again.
She continued to work both her trowel and brush as they chattered excitedly. Lord Darrington puffed up his chest though she had already stopped listening to his prattle. There was something else buried with the body. It looked like some kind of decanter, the stopper tilted inside the broken neck. Prying it loose from the packed earth too quickly would shatter it. She angled herself so she was blocking the discovery. She wanted a moment before the other antiquarians swooped in again.
All sorts of pottery might be found in graves; rounded, beaker-shape, filled with ashes of the dead, or imported olive oil. Canopic jars, used by the ancient Egyptians to store internal organs during the mummification process. But this was a cut lead crystal decanter, painted all over with delicate curlicues of gilt. There was wine sediment in the bottom, thick and muddy. Henry’s grandfather had loved his claret.
She needed more time to bury everything back up properly. But if the footman suddenly standing over her was any indication, she wasn’t likely to get it. The ladies were being summoned to change for dinner. And her grandmother would keep sending footmen until there was a battalion of them in their white hose and curled wigs.
Conall winked at her, before drawing the others away toward the house. She watched him for a long moment, before realizing he’d successfully distracted her from her work. She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. Actually, she could.
And look how well that had turned out.
“Did you hear?” Holly asked Louisa. “He’s looking for a wife.”
As it happened,he was looking for a murderer.
But he could pause long enough to eject a few pompous lords from a trench. Conall never could abide a bully. And a handful of aristocratic bullies descending on a young lady who looked for all the world as through she’d rather be left alone to play in the dirt, was more than he was willing to overlook. It was curious that no one else had come to her defense. It was common courtesy and Lord knew, he had a current deficit to begin with, under the polished manners he put on. There’d been the usual intelligence and curiosity in her expression, but the wariness was new. He’d been gone for a long time. Something had clearly happened to her.
He wondered if she was the one he was looking for. It seemed unlikely, but after years of gathering intelligence for the crown, he knew perfectly well that “unlikely” was not the same as “impossible.” Persephone Blackwell might very well be a traitor.
She was clever enough.
Even if she didn’t seem the type.
“Well?” he asked of the woman hiding behind the oak tree.
Priya emerged from the shadows, annoyed. The sun glinted off her dark hair, so much darker than his own. He had their father’s nose; she had her mother’s colouring. Priya was his half-sister, born to his father’s second wife, a lady he met in a palace garden in India. “You can see through trees now?”