‘Then let’s work on them while the weather holds. It is bound to rain later. Just look at that sky.’ He pointed upwards at the single paltry, dark cloud in the sky.
‘It is not going to rain, Max.’
‘I might not know my Iceni from my Catuvellauni, Miss Naysayer, but like any good sailor worth his salt I know my weather and I smell another storm.’ He offered his hand to haul her out and then frowned in disgust when he saw the state of hers. ‘Good lord, you are filthy! I mean, you are always filthy so I’m used to it, but that is a new level of muddiness, even for you. Yet despite the mud, I can still see you are wearing odd shoes. How hard is it to match a pair of shoes, Effie?’ He walked off, shaking his shaggy dark head and leaving her ankle deep in water.
‘Don’t mind me. I can get myself out.’
‘Probably best.’ He returned with the wheelbarrow which he deposited next to one of the covered trenches while he watched her clamber up the sticky mud. ‘Did you have the foresight to bring a towel?’
‘Of course not. But I brought cake.’ His favourite, as a sweetener in the hope it would make him less inclined to hit the roof when he learned she’d used his name without permission.
‘Mrs Farley’s...?’
‘Well, I certainly did not bake it.’
‘Did I tell you I am thinking of marrying that woman? What she can do with a humble currant and a bag of flour is a miracle. Is she single, perchance?’
‘Not yet. But Mr Farley is seventy-seven and as such could feasibly turn up his toes at any moment. Mind you, at seventy-six, so could she.’
‘If you are expecting me to baulk at that, I should warn you, I’ve always been partial to an older woman.’ He had bent over to remove the pegs from the canvas protecting trench sixteen, allowing her to admire his spectacular bottom unencumbered. ‘There is an earthiness to them which is...’ She could hear the wistful smile in his voice and groaned aloud in mock disgust. The disgust might be false, but the pang of irrational jealousy felt very real.
‘I have no desire to hear about your many conquests, Max—old or otherwise.’
‘To be fair, seventy-six is a bit old. I always drew the line at late forties. After that, gravity tends to have taken its toll.’
‘Ugh!’
‘And how old was Rupert? Eighty? Ninety?’
‘Fifty-nine.’
‘Fifty-nine! You really were going to marry an old man! I assumed, when you said he was older, it was by less than twenty years. But fifty-nine, Effie...?’
‘You sound as though you disapprove.’
‘Of course I disapprove. What sort of a marriage would you have had with a man old enough to be your father? When you are so full of life...’ His voice trailed off and she watched him shake his head in disbelief before his big hands spanned her waist and he effortlessly lifted her into the trench. Which once again put her eyes level with his distracting buff-clad thighs and reminded her of the hard muscles which pleasingly upholstered his strong arms and broad shoulders.
I am a cynic! A weak-willed and easily waylaid one.
‘I told you—it wasn’t a love match. It was more a marriage of convenience. He wanted a wife...’
‘What for? To bring his slippers? To polish his ear trumpet? To keep him company in his dotage?’
‘And I wanted...’ To feel part of something. To feel like a woman first rather than an oddity. Feel a baby grow in her empty womb. Watch it grow. Love it with all her heart and never be lonely again. She shrugged, not wanting him to see how depressing it was to know her one chance at having what every other woman of her acquaintance took for granted had passed her by and she would never know what any of those longed-for things felt like ‘...more than what I have now.’
‘I know—you wanted the security of marriage because life issodifficult for a woman on her own. I understand that—’ He didn’t look like he did. ‘But those same securities would also come with a younger man. Couldstillcome with a younger man. Preferably one still with all his own teeth. You were selling yourself short, Effie, and that is so sad.’
‘One cannot sell oneself short if there is only one bidder, Max.’
He scoffed as he rummaged in the wheelbarrow. ‘Do you seriously expect me to believe you were Miss Never-been-kissed before you met my uncle’s decrepit friend? Because I won’t have it. Oddness aside, you scrub up well.’
She decided to take that as another compliment because his tone had sounded flatteringly incredulous and despite being a little back-handed, it still made her tummy go all fluttery. ‘Hardly never. In fact, as long as I disguise my natural self from the first moment I meet a gentleman and talk about superficial things like the weather, they have always seemed rather eager to kiss me initially.’
‘So why the blazes didn’t you marry one of them?’
‘Getting them to kiss me has never been the problem. It’s getting them to want to continue kissing me after they discover the truth about me that’s always been the struggle. They seem to forget I am a woman the moment the real me slips out of my mouth...’ She paused, waiting pathetically for another compliment which never came while he continued to rifle noisily in the wheelbarrow with more concentration than she felt it warranted in view of the gravitas of what they were discussing. Then, in a moment of pathetic weakness and to her abject horror, she accidentally said what she was thinking out loud into the void.
‘I think I emasculate them.’
