How to Marry an Earl (A Cinderella Society 1)

“Are you hurt?”

“Only my pride,” she muttered.

“Let’s get you out of there then, shall we?”

“Yes, thank you.”

People always said they wanted to be swallowed by a hole in the ground. She wouldn’t recommend it. Even if the sight of Conall shrugging out of his coat and clad only in his shirtsleeves was diverting. He rolled up his sleeves, displaying strong forearms. Muscles tensed under his skin when he leaned down to offer his hand. “Take my hand,” he said.

She swallowed and reached up. His fingers closed over hers and he pulled her up so quickly the sky tilted. She pushed into a sitting position, trying not to look as dishevelled and awkward as she felt. Her knee twinged sharply. She shifted her weight. “Thank you.”

“You’re welc—”

“Oi, miss, are you hurt?”

Persephone glanced over at the man hurrying their way. “I’m all right, George.”

“Oh, it’s you, my lady.” The alarm in his gait faded to his usual amble. The local blacksmith was accustomed to her. She’d once begged him to teach her how to make an iron buckle like the one she’d found under the plum tree. She’d dated it to the fourteenth century and her father had agreed. She’d dined on that pride for a week. Until their next discovery.

“Who else would it be, George?” She smiled wryly. She stood up, wobbling slightly when her knee gave another protest. Conall’s hand was suddenly at her elbow, steadying her.

George touched his cap to Conall as it was clear by the shine on his boots and the starch of his cravat that he was a gentleman. Not to mention the silver threaded waistcoat. She remembered him as a solemn and shy young man. Clearly, he’d outgrown his shyness and adolescent awkwardness. By miles. Leagues, even. “Sir.” George blinked at the hole. “Rather spooky, that.”

“Indeed.” She discretely wiped her cheek. Mud had a habit of traveling in all directions. “Though I suppose being buried is better than having your brains pulled out through your nostrils.”

George blinked again. “Your ladyship?”

“It’s how they buried their dead in Ancient Egypt. Stuffed full of salt, with their internal organs preserved in tidy canopic jars.”

“Aye?”

“Never mind.” She was used to that particular expression. At least George didn’t scare easy. He only looked mildly alarmed. He’d become accustomed to her.

“Are you hurt anywhere?” Conall asked.

“Fit as a fiddle,” she assured him. “This is rather deeper than I intended,” she added to George. “Can we have it filled in some, please? It’s meant to be a much shallower trench, for the children to practice digging for treasures.”

“Of course, your ladyship.”

“Excellent. Have Mrs. Hastings give you luncheon when you call at the house. I have a feeling it’s going to be a busy week.”

“Thank you.”

“Bring your boys too, I happen to know the duke’s cook made a batch of treacle tarts. She’s too fussy to serve them above stairs as the pastry cracked, but they taste divine. I had two yesterday.”

“I’ll do that. And I’ll set to filling the hole right away.” He hurried away in search of a shovel.

Persephone tucked a lock of hair back into its pins. There was more dirt on her pelisse, it had to be said, than in all of the fields of Little Barrow. Just as she liked it. Usually.

The mist was burning off the fields and the main road of the village was currently home to more pigeons than people.

Also, just as she liked it.

It was so much easier to get things done without an assortment of the local gentry—busybodies—looking down their noses at her. Not that she wasn’t accustomed to it. Truly, she hardly noticed any more. But sometimes they messed with her excavations or jostled the artifacts, and that, she could not tolerate. Not from an earl, not from a duke. Not even from her own grandmother whom she adored. She’d been accused of being a trifle autocratic when it came to her antiquarian pursuits. Actually, her grandmother had likened her to a donkey.

She’d been accused of worse. And all of it true.

Luckily, the only duke she knew was Lord Atticus St. James, the Duke of Pendleton, and he was rather more autocratic than she was, and this was all his doing, anyway. The Little Barrow Antiquarian Festival had been his idea. She was its first devout acolyte.