“Digging! Sir Aedan, I came here to ask a favor.” She folded her gloved hands in her lap and looked at him as primly as if they were at tea, not both recovering breath and tremble and temper.
He waited expectantly, admired the tilt of her fine-boned oval face, her wide eyes, framed in dark-auburn curls. She was alluring. Distracting. He tipped a brow. “Aye?”
“The site on Cairn Drishan merits closer investigation.”
He sighed. “I cannot say I am surprised.”
“I believe it is part of an ancient structure. It could prove to be a magnificent find. So it must be excavated.”
“What does that entail? Apart from stopping my roadwork.”
“Careful digging must be done to clear the area.”
“Your raced here to borrow a shovel from me?”
“Several shovels, and men to use them. And I did not mean to race.”
He scowled. “My men have a great deal of work to do here.”
“I need them for only a few days. The turf layer must be cleared away carefully so I can better examine the walls.”
“A few days of digging would hardly make a dent up there.”
“Longer, then. But I need a crew of men to do the labor. Or I could do the digging myself, which would take a long time.”
He raised a brow. “Do not tempt me, Mrs. Blackburn.”
“I cannot make a complete report until I have some idea what is buried in that hill.”
“More rock, and lots of it,” he said. “Digging up there would exhaust my crew men unnecessarily and use days of good weather needed for roadwork. That pile of stone up there was created by the hand of man, I agree, but drystone walls are common in the Highlands, and it could still be a black house. They are so called from the dark color of the interior from the smoke of peat fires.”
“I know all about black houses. I lived in one.”
“You what?” He blinked at her.
“I lived in one. My mother was a Highlander, and when I was younger, she went north to teach English to Gaelic children, and took my sister and me. My father went to Italy to paint and teach, and took my brother. We rented a crofter’s house. My mother had grown up in a similar house before her father inherited some property and their situation changed. So I know a black house when I see one. And that, sir, is not one.”
“Then what is it?”
“It may be a Pictish house of great antiquity.”
“Any Pictish structure is of great antiquity,” he pointed out. “Can you support this outside of fervent academic hope?”
She glowered at him, then reached down to the floor of the gig to lift a dark chunk rock the size of her fist. For a moment he thought she might lob it at him. “I brought this. Somehow it did not fall out of the gig.”
“A rock,” he said.
“It is vitrified. The result of burning timbers inside a stone structure, creating a fire so intense that the very stone melts and forms a vitreous, glassy surface. Sometimes it is froman accidental fire—or it might have been burned purposely to increase the hardness of the walls and make it impervious.”
“Let me see.” He reached for the rock, turning it to examine the dark-greenish glaze. “You may be right, Mrs. Blackburn. This has a glassy surface. Odd.”
“I saw many stones with just one face like that, as if the interior of the wall was burned. Wherever I scraped away some of the earth, I found vitrification on one side of the stones.”
“A black house could have burned. It does not prove an ancient structure.”
“But it is curious. We need time to dig. This rock is suggestive evidence. Even you must admit it.”
He sighed, exasperated, but reluctantly seeing the truth. “Very well, then. You may have some of the crew for a few days. I assume the museum will pay extra wages?”
