Page 27 of Discovering Her Earl

It was still dark when the pounding on his door startled him awake. Julian groaned and stumbled to the door to answer it, forgetting he was naked until Miss Bantham gasped and averted her eyes.

“Pardon,” he mumbled as he donned his banyan and rubbed his eyes. “What is amiss?”

“Nothing is amiss, it is time to go,” she answered sharply, still looking away from him.

“Go? Where are we going exactly? It is the dead of night.”

“It is five in the morning.”

As he’d just said, the dead of night. At least for one who only went to bed at two.

After eating dinner alone last night, he’d made his way to the study and partook of too much whisky. He’d stared into the fire and tried to fathom what he could have done to earn Miss Bantham’s ire. And more importantly how he might charm her into friendship once more.

It seemed each time he made some bit of headway with the woman, she pushed him away and turned cold. He hated how long he’d spent trying to puzzle the woman out to no avail.

He hadn’t thought her the flighty sort, but she was all over the place with regard to how she interacted with him.

One moment she was angry, another she was laughing at his antics. One moment she was ignoring him, the next she was sharing intimate details of her life. One moment they were so close their knees bumped and then she didn’t come to dinner, leaving him alone in his huge house until he finally went to bed much too late.

She was an enigma. An infuriating one. He shouldn’t care that she didn’t seem to like him at all. What did her opinion count anyway? Other than allowing him to go to Egypt, and he didn’t have to be her friend to prove his competence.

He just needed to focus on impressing her with his skill. However, focus was not something easy to come by so early in the morning.

“It is still dark,” he said when the issue of the time didn’t result in her leaving so he could go back to sleep.

“By the time you have dressed, eaten, and gathered your supplies, it will be first light and time to leave for the dig.”

He took a deep breath and nodded. The fog of exhaustion had lifted somewhat, and he was better able to process her demands.

He couldn’t very well refuse to go with her the first day of his test. It would surely seal her decision to reject his request to join the larger expedition.

“I will be down in a quarter hour,” he promised, hoping to appease her.

“Ten minutes,” she countered and walked away.

“Very well.” He closed the door while grumbling how whatever was to be found by them in the dirt had already been there waiting to be unearthed for many years so another hour wouldn’t have hurt.

A bleary-eyed Bentley scurried in to assist.

“You can go back to bed, Ben. I am wearing simple work clothes today and don’t need assistance to dress.” In truth he only really needed Ben to get into his tighter-fitting evening coats. “Best one of us get a full night’s rest.”

“I will prepare your shave.”

Julian waved him off. “Don’t bother. It is just myself and the harpy digging in the dirt today.”

“Harpy? I found Miss Bantham to be a lovely young lady.”

“She is lovely, and then when you least suspect it, she transforms before your eyes into a bitter shrew of a woman that drags you from your sleep to go out in the dark to dig in the earth. She’s a witch.”

“You’ve always given to fits of dramatics when awakened too early,” Ben muttered.

“It’s true. You should be careful, old chap,” Julian said without the least bit of dramatics.

“I see.” Ben looked skeptical. “Consider me warned, my lord.” The valet busied himself in helping Julian get ready in the ten minutes he’d been allotted.

Still a bit disoriented, he arrived in the breakfast room as the woman who looked much too lovely for this hour had finished and set her napkin beside her plate. More proof she was a witch. When she stood to leave, all he could do was stare.

His mind was still a bit groggy from sleep, but he would have had difficulty with the scene before him even at midday.