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She bent to pick up her hat that he had tossed away. “All right, but let me help you,” she said, shoving it back on her head. “I can rake the dirt away,” she nodded to the pile of garden implements supplied by Smiggens, “as you dig it out. Won’t that be quicker?”

“Yes,” he admitted with a grin. God, she is wonderful!

He dug steadily for half an hour, until the muscles in his back and shoulders were screaming. After the work he’d already done that day, he was pushing even his strength. He would have to stop soon. He shoved the spade in the dirt one more time, and it jarred on something hard. He stuck it again and got the same thing. He shoveled the dirt away, working at revealing whatever his spade had hit.

“Em, I think I’ve got something.” She stopped raking and came to stand beside him as he worked to reveal the top of a flat stone.

Ten more minutes revealed the edge of the large flat stone and a bit more digging under it revealed another stone set beneath the top one. This one was inset, he soon discovered, in dry stone walls of smaller flat stones on either side. It was a lintel over an entranceway, he was sure of it.

With about a third of it uncovered, he stopped, sweating and panting, his muscles trembling with fatigue.

“We found it,” he said with a grin. “And I’m done in. Enough for today.”

She wrapped her arms round him. “You’re magnificent!” she said, looking up at him with such unmistakable warmth and pride in her eyes, his chest felt full and tight. No one had ever looked at him like that before.

He wrapped an arm round her and kissed her. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“And all the men who helped with the tree,” she pointed out.

“Yes, and them. I will have to thank them properly later. Come on, I need a bath so badly!”

She grinned, and they gathered up their personal belongings and headed back to the house. Smiggens and his lads had left them some time ago.