Modesty

Tomb-raider in training

Modesty Langdale, former village urchin and action-archaeologist in training!

Modesty is an estate girl through and through, born and raised within five miles of the great house itself. But she had a somewhat unorthodox beginning, flatly refusing to study or learn, choosing instead to spend all her time splashing through the estate's streams and rivers, endlessly digging up slippery rocks from the bottom and delving ever deeper into the hidden pools and lagoons.

Almost everyone had given up any hope of ever steering her into anything of value, when one day Veronica Ravenblack returned unexpectedly to the estate, taking advantage of the shelter Lady Jasmine freely offers her from the nastier side of her life outside, and discovered the girl digging neat holes in the riverbed below the deeping pool, claiming she was hunting for buried treasure. Veronica introduced Modesty to her own somewhat unorthodox brand of archaeology - and Modesty's life was transformed! In just one Summer she devoured every book on the ancient world she could find in Lady Jasmine's extensive library, and within two years she had made up all the lost education she'd missed, and is now studying for a degree in Darkest Peruvian Antiquities - and spends her Summers as Veronica's understudy on exploration trips overseas, and the rest of her spare time practising her jungle explorer skills.

Which of course means she spends an awful lot of time fully clothed and soaking wet, waist-deep in the rivers of the estate.