Forever and Ever (10 page)

“Dairymaid, is she? My brother knows his place, then. It seems I’m the only Pendarvis who has trouble recognizing his betters.”

Sophie stared at him, thinking,
So we’re back to that again.
But she didn’t say it, because she was weary of the argument it would start. Their conversation seemed to go around in loops, always circling back to the subject of social status.

Her heart sank a little lower. Thirty feet away, Honoria was sailing toward them, skirts in her hands, chest out, dark eyes trained on them like an eagle’s before a midair strike. She thought of warning Jack—but of what? Imminent insult? Besides, Honoria was her cousin, her kinswoman; one didn’t say, “Uh-oh,” to bare acquaintances at the approach of a relative.

“Sophia.”

Honoria was incapable of calling Sophie “Sophie,” and had been all their lives. As a child Sophie had once committed the grave error of calling her “Honor” for short, a lapse never to be repeated after the humorless lecture she’d been treated to on unseemliness, frivolity, and ill breeding. “Hullo, Honoria. Did you enjoy your picnic?”

Wasted words; Honoria waved her hand in the air, as if erasing them, and said, “Sophia,” again, with even more displeasure, surging to a halt in front of them. Her color was high and her eyes were flashing: always a sign that she was ready to do her duty.

Sophie tried another diversion. “May I introduce Mr. Pendarvis? Mr. Pendarvis, this is my cousin, Miss Vanstone.”

She realized from his tone—formal, wary—that he didn’t need a warning. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Vanstone.”

Honoria ignored him. “Sophia, will you come with me, please?”

“Mr. Pendarvis is one of my—”

“I know who this person is. Come, Sophia, my father is waiting for us.”

Cheeks flaming, Sophie spaced her words carefully. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. As you can see, I’m engaged.” Honoria’s features went stiff with alarm. “But perhaps I misunderstood,” Sophie added. “Perhaps you were inviting both of us to join your party.”

“You did not misunderstand.”

“I see. In that case, I decline.”

Standoff. She couldn’t imagine Honoria making an actual scene; surely this was as beastly as things were going to get. She stood still, returning her cousin’s furious glare impassively, waiting for her to turn around and stomp away.

She’d underestimated her outrage. “You cannot mean to stand here any longer with this person,” she enunciated in a low, shocked, venomous tone. “Surely you cannot. I insist that you come with me now, Sophia, this instant.”

Her acute embarrassment fell away, like a heavy coat she was suddenly too hot to wear, and wholesome anger took its place. “Honoria, please leave us. Mr. Pendarvis is my escort.”

“Sophia—”

“I will not join you or my uncle this afternoon.” Sometimes anger made her reckless. “And I won’t join you this evening. Mr. Pendarvis has invited me to watch the bonfire dance, and—I’ve accepted.”

The horror in her cousin’s face would have been amusing if the situation hadn’t been so ghastly. Her mouth opened and closed twice, but no words came out. She backed away, as if from the scene of an accident, whirled, and ran off to tell her father.

Sophie’s relief that she was gone mingled with a strange elation. Curbing an impulse to laugh out loud, she leaned back against the cold stone of the bridge and smiled up at Jack in shaky triumph. “She’s gone. Thank God.” He didn’t smile back. In fact, his lips were pale with anger. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said hurriedly. “My cousin was unconscionably rude to you. She’s insufferable sometimes. I do apologize—”

“Did you think I’d be glad that you told her we were together?”

“What? I—”

“The worst thing you could think of? The thing guaranteed to shock her and send her on her way?”

“No, you don’t—”

“That wasn’t a kindness to me, Miss Deene. That was condescension. Sorry, but I’m not flattered, and I’m not able to thank you for it. Excuse me.” He made her a stiff bow and walked away.

Sophie blinked in shock and gathering dismay. “Mr. Pendarvis!” She’d whispered it—he didn’t hear. She ran after him, then slowed her steps self-consciously.
“Mr. Pendarvis.”

He stopped, halfway across the green, heading who knew where, and slowly turned. Acutely aware that they were probably being observed by a dozen people, she approached him casually; but she couldn’t keep the distress from her face, or from her voice when she said softly, “I must speak with you.
Please.
”

He streaked his fingers through his hair again, as upset as she was. “Speak, then.”

“No, not here.” She looked around, flustered. “The churchyard—follow me there. In a moment. Will you?” He nodded once, and she left him.

She felt blind, deaf; people waved and spoke to her as she hurried across the grass toward the church, but she barely acknowledged them. She had been accused of a sin she truly didn’t think she’d committed, and she was wild with the need to justify herself. But that was only part of it, and not even the biggest part. Worse was that she’d hurt Jack, truly hurt him. And he’d let her see it. For once he hadn’t hidden behind coolness or cynicism. What was between them wasn’t fencing or posturing anymore, it was real.

The lych-gate grated on rusty hinges as she slipped inside the graveyard, hidden from the green and the vicarage by high, centuries-old yew hedges and then the crumbling churchyard wall itself. Voices and shouts became a murmur, muffled by the heavy blanket of shrubbery and stone. She went along the cinder path past the monuments and headstones, some of them new, some nearly as old as Wyckerley itself. Her father was buried here; she saw his granite marker, and the wilting clutch of daisies she’d laid on it early this morning—but she hurried by, moving toward an angle in the path that would hide her from view if anyone but Jack came in through the gate behind her.

A distant peal of feminine laughter came to her from the vicarage garden. The rummage sale would be winding down by now, and she remembered her promise to Anne that she would help clean up afterward. What on earth was she doing? She felt breathless with the impropriety of this, the riskiness, the calamitous nature of the consequences if she were found out.

She heard the scrape of the gate, the soft thud of footsteps. Her yellow dress would give her away in an instant—but surely it was he. She stepped into the path.

He saw her and stopped, and the nervousness that swept over her then brought home the full significance of what she was doing. But discretion had come too late. He started toward her again, and she drew back, behind a screen of dense green holly. A thrush that had been singing in the copper beech abruptly fell silent. Mr. Pendarvis appeared in the angle of the path and came to her.

She spoke before the intimate stillness could unnerve her even more. “I’m sorry. I think you were right. What I did—it was an insult to you, but you must believe that I didn’t intend it to be. I didn’t think.
Truly
I didn’t mean to condescend. You—you have me thinking things that are
new
to me, and I . . . well. I apologize to you. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, and for an awful second she thought he was going to scorn her. “None of this was your fault. I was wrong to be so angry. My brother calls me stiff-necked, and I always deny it. But this is one of those times when I know exactly what he’s talking about.”

When he smiled, the cloud of anxiety around her lifted, and she felt light and airy, quite weightless, dizzy with relief. “You mustn’t forgive me so easily,” she laughed shakily. “What you said on the green—”

“You’re easy to forgive. And . . . you have me thinking new things, too.”

“Do I?” It was a double entendre, she was almost certain. His handsome face was serious, but his eyes held a meaning she couldn’t possibly misconstrue. She was resting her hand on the trunk of a locust tree, running her fingers along the rough fissures in the bark. She could claim agitation but not surprise when Jack took her hand and held it in both of his, gently, anything but possessively. He studied it, the white back and then the pink palm, and when he traced his thumb lightly across the crease of her life line, she lost her breath. She didn’t move, had no desire to snatch her hand back. This was different, nothing like the other times when the tension between them had been half-sexual, half-antagonistic. For her he had let down a wall, and behind it she saw a man she couldn’t resist.

Their eyes met, and she knew they were going to kiss. Slowly, giving her a chance to break away if she wanted to, he bent toward her. She closed her eyes when their lips touched, the better to contain the excitement welling up at the simple, feather-light brushing. He wasn’t holding her hand anymore, he was lifting the hair from the back of her neck and caressing her there with his fingers, while his mouth grazed and nuzzled her mouth, taking the most delicious kisses.

They pulled away, just a little, to look at each other. If she had seen anything in his eyes like triumph, anything like complacency, she’d have bolted, heartsick. But all she saw was the same gladness she was feeling, and it gave her the courage to tell him, “I didn’t come here for this—”

“I know.”

“But I’m not sorry. How could I be?”

“Sophie,” he whispered, lowering his gaze, touching her cheek with his fingertips. She loved the strong, masculine slash of his eyebrows, the shiny lushness of his long black lashes. The sound of her name on his lips. She brought her hands to his shoulders, let her fingers drift to his throat. She could see his pulse beating; she wanted to put her mouth there, just there, under his jaw. But he dipped his head and caught her in another sweet, drugging kiss, and the thought drifted away. They pressed closer, held each other tighter. She felt his urgency, the same as hers, the same craving to know more.
Who are you?
they were both asking in these deep, wordless kisses.
Tell me. Show me.

“We must stop,” Sophie managed at last, breathing fast, feeling his warm breath on her face.

He kept her in the circle of his arms, holding her fast. “I want to see you,” he said boldly. “Not tonight. I won’t dance with you round a fire while everyone you know looks on, gossiping about you.”

An inkling of the difficulties involved in being with this man began to intrude on the thoughtless joy. “I don’t know. I’ve never . . . I don’t know
how . . .”

“Tomorrow.” He smiled at the worry in her eyes. “Say yes, Sophie.”

“Yes. But where?”

He shook his head, leaving it to her. “Anywhere you like.”

She pulled his hand away from her cheek, so she could think. “After church. Do you know where Abbeycombe is? It’s an old Roman ruin, south of here, maybe a mile, set back from the Plymouth toll road.”

“I’ll find it.”

They kissed again. “I can only stay for a little while,” she whispered against his lips.

“But you’ll come?”

“Yes, I’ll come. I promise.”

VIII

But she broke her promise.

Sunday was perfect, a replica of the day before, with cotton-puff clouds scudding across an azure sky, and sunshine like a warm blessing from some affable, even-handed god. Connor arrived at their rendezvous early, and had plenty of time to wander among the tottering stone arches and roofless corridors of the ancient abbey, beguiled by the stillness and the deep melancholy of the place. Yellow and purple wildflowers poked through the rubble, making a gay carpet. He found himself picking a bouquet for Sophie, like an eager swain waiting for his sweetheart.

But he was hardly that. He was a liar and an impostor, and everything he did or said to her was under false pretenses. He knew only one honorable way out of the complicated web of lies he’d not only spun but gotten hopelessly tangled up in, and that was to tell her they couldn’t see each other again.

He’d been telling himself that since this morning, and he wondered now at how long it had taken him to reach such an obvious conclusion. But he hadn’t been in his right mind. Those minutes in the churchyard with Sophie had temporarily deranged him, and he’d spent the time since then in a kind of cloud of sensual, romantic arousal. Until this morning, when his wits had finally come back, along with the first clearheaded realization of what he’d done.

He had no good explanation for his behavior, and no excuse. Jack was the ladies’ man in the family, not him. Chasing women had never figured in his image of himself, or distracted him from the vision he had of his own future. He was a serious man; he had responsibilities, a mission, life goals more important than self-gratification. He couldn’t
marry
Sophie Deene, and so he had no business keeping company with her in any way except professionally. Of course even that relationship was based on a fraud, but he’d squared it with his conscience long ago by declaring that the noble end justified the messy means. But consorting with her as a would-be lover went beyond the pale and could not be justified.

So. Today he would end it. He sat down on a flat granite stone and tried to think of a good way to tell her. It wouldn’t really be that difficult, and he wasn’t so vain as to think she would need consoling. And yet . . .

He smiled unconsciously, twisting a daisy stem, remembering how she had looked in the churchyard in that moment when she’d seen him on the path. Her face flushed, her eyes bright with trepidation and . . . excitement. She’d known exactly what she was risking by meeting him, there in the eye of the storm, the dangerous center of her village, her universe, where the walls could so easily be breached by any casual intruder. She’d courted disaster, and she’d done it for him. So she could apologize to him. That was the moment when he’d lost his bearings.

Afterward, touching her, kissing her—that had been a gift, magic, an indescribable pleasure. But her sweetness, the graciousness in her halting words when she’d said she hadn’t meant to offend him—that’s what had changed everything. Seduction had been the last thing in his mind, but when she’d leveled the last barrier of hostility and distrust between them, nothing had seemed more natural to him than holding her.

He had no watch, but the angle of the sun between two rust-colored columns told him the afternoon was slipping away. She was late. “After church,” she’d said. The Sunday service at All Saints was over by twelve-fifteen, twelve-thirty at the latest. Even if she walked instead of rode, even if friends delayed her to talk, she ought to have been here by now. He got up, restless, and began to pace.

What if she didn’t come? No, she’d come; she’d given her promise. Even if it was only to tell him they couldn’t do this, she would come. He kicked at rocks, then flung them at the crumbling stone walls of the abbey. When he tired of that, he watched squirrels chase each other in the thicket of vines and ivy crawling over the rubble. The cranking of crows in the oak tree branches was angry and impatient, and his mood began to match the sound. It couldn’t be true; she couldn’t be doing this. If she regretted her promise, she would tell him that to his face, wouldn’t she? Something must have delayed her, an emergency at the mine or—no, unlikely; Guelder shut down on the Sabbath. Well, something else, then, a last-minute complication she needed to attend to. She must know that he would wait. “I’ll come,” she’d said. “I promise.”

When the sun wavered and sank behind the trees on the western hillside, he knew she wasn’t coming. Still, he stayed where he was, marking the progress of the shadows as they inched, darkened, lengthened across the rough stones, dousing the light in the faces of the wildflowers he’d thought were so pretty before. He watched the bouquet he’d picked for Sophie wilt, droop, die. He wanted the lesson driven home, clear and unambiguous, so he let another full hour drag by while he contemplated his own folly. He was wearing his best coat and trousers, which he’d carefully brushed last night, wishing they were newer, sprucer, in better fashion. Jack had lent him his only good necktie, and he’d felt self-conscious putting it on this morning, thinking of all the times Jack had worn it in hopes of seducing some comely young thing he’d set his horny sights on. He had shaved with extra care, even trimmed his hair with a pair of scissors borrowed from one of the miners in the cottage. He’d cleaned his shoes, cleaned his teeth. Scrubbed his hands and fingernails until the last of the black mine stain was gone. God help him, he’d put some of Jack’s rosewater cologne on his clean, smooth cheeks.

It was good to think of these things, good to let the hot humiliation wash over him like fire. He would never forget it, and the memory would stand him in good stead if the temptation ever came again to believe in a mirage.

But he wasn’t angry. He told himself that all the way home. Anger wasn’t called for, wouldn’t have been appropriate. Had nothing to do with his decision to finish his report on Guelder mine, the one that had been stuck inside a book in his room for the last three days.

He didn’t make anything up, but he didn’t leave anything out. In dry, factual language, he set down every safety and health hazard and economic inequity he’d observed in the weeks he’d been employed at the mine. The worst was the system of ladders, so he began with that. Now a hundred and sixty fathoms deep, Guelder still relied on the old fifty-foot ladders it had been using for twenty years, virtually perpendicular, fathom after fathom, with no resting place except the narrow sollar platform and a manhole leading to the ladder under it. Calculating, he reckoned that at a hundred and sixty pounds, a man climbing from bottom to top exerted a constant force equivalent to raising the weight of one ton in the space of a minute. The consequence was exhaustion, which led to carelessness, which resulted in accidents. He cited the example of Tranter Fox’s partner, who had recently fallen off a ladder at the thirty level and broken both legs.

Wages were low. Tutmen and tributers earned an average of fifty shillings a month, but ended up paying about forty percent of it back to the company for supplies—candles, powder, fuses, drawing and dressing costs, use of the grinder, sampling and weighing costs. Was it a coincidence that the mine owner’s uncle held a de facto monopoly by virtue of operating the only store where a miner could buy supplies unless he went to Tavistock? Where, incidentally, the prices for his candles and fuses and so on were cheaper; Connor knew that because he’d checked.

The heat was intolerable at the deepest levels, where men routinely lost three or four pounds of body weight at a single eight-hour core. Although the owner had recently installed a ventilator, it was inadequate; at the lower fathoms the temperature never went below eighty degrees. Studies were still under way, but no one could dispute anymore that bad air contributed to the condition known as miner’s consumption. Dr. Barham’s report found that in four varied mining districts, out of one hundred and forty-six miner deaths, seventy-seven had been the result of consumption. And Mr. Lanyon’s report claimed miners died an average of sixteen years earlier than agricultural laborers.

There was no training at Guelder, no system of apprenticeship. No hot food available in winter, and no warm room for grass workers except the smith’s shop or the drying room where the miners hung their clothes. When accidents happened, there was no doctor; injured miners had to rely on the dubious nursing skills of a female grass worker, who might or might not be sober when her services were called upon. Otherwise, the mine owner herself had been known to dispense rudimentary first aid in her office, a contingency that, while no doubt kindly inotivated, couldn’t inspire much confidence in the injured worker.

Worst was an attitude of tolerance toward accidents and catastrophes, which were generally viewed as inevitable or unavoidable. Indeed, the mine captain himself had spoken of the loss of life of one or two men a year as “natural wastage.” Until that sort of complacence was recognized and eliminated, the author of the report could see little hope for real change.

Jack came in while Connor was folding the pages and stuffing them in an envelope. He hadn’t realized how late it was; he’d lit a candle earlier, but now it was pitch-dark outside, time to light the lantern.

Jack was smiling, but he looked tired. “So,” he opened, heading straight for the bed and flopping down. “How were yer afternoon wi’ the lady mine owner? Eh? Hurry and tell, I’ve a story o’ my own.”

“Tell yours, then, because mine’s short. She didn’t come.”

“What? The devil!”

Connor shrugged, affecting a nonchalance Jack probably saw through. “I thought she might not. It wasn’t definite.”

“Oh, it weren’t? The devil!” he cried again, angry for him. Jack’s loyalty was a constant in Connor’s life he usually took for granted, but he appreciated it now.

“Anyway, it’s over and done. No need for us to talk about it.”

“No? Well, whatever ee say, Con.” He was sneaking glances at him, making sure he was all right.

Connor laid the envelope aside and hitched his chair around so they were facing each other. “What have you been doing? You look like you’re guilty of something.”

“No, I ain’t, but not for lack o’ trying. Remember that gel I were talking to at the fair? Sidony is ’er name. Sidony Timms. Never knowed a gel called Sidony afore, did you? Pretty, ain’t it?”

“She’s the dairymaid at Lynton Hall Farm.”

Jack’s blue eyes went wide. “How do ee know?”

“I heard. Miss Deene mentioned it.”

“Aha. Well, she’m that, all right, and today being Sunday, she had a holiday. So who walked her all over creation after church, do you guess?”

Connor folded his hands behind his neck. “Did you, now. And what did you get for your pains?”

“Nothing like what ee’re thinking wi’ yer foul, wicked mind, my lad. Miss Timms, she’m above yer low suspicions.”

“I expect she’s above yours, too, then. So it’s
Miss Timms
, is it?”

He grinned. “In the morning. By afternoon twur Sidony. Sidony,” he said again, breathily, and fell over backward on the bed. “Do ee know why she limps?”

“Does she limp? I didn’t know it.”

“Didn’t ee see? Yes, she’m lame, but it ain’t turrible, not near as bad as she thinks. Twur ’er father that crippled her, years back, beatin’ on ’er. The vicar took ’er away from him and put her at the great house wi’ the lord. Moreton, as he is now, although he were D’Aubrey then. So now she’m doing brave, and happy as a pirate.”

“You like her.”

“Oh, I do, Con. She’m clever as can be, and sweet-natured, and I like the way she looks up at me through her black eyelashes, smilin’ like she were walkin’ wi’ some grand gentleman. She have a way about ’er, that’s pat.”

“Has she no other sweethearts, then?”

“Hm. Ha.” He scowled. “She have. Fellow called Holyoake. He’m the bailiff at Lynton.” He sat up and began to rub his bony knees. “But he’m old, forty, like, and she’m not twenty. I don’t take ’im into account.”

“Does she take him into account?”

Jack shot him a candid glance. “She’ve a grea’ deal o’ loyalty to ’im, see, on account o’ him being kind to ’er. I’m thinking ’tis more a friendship for her. For him . . .”

“He’s in love with her.”

He shrugged. “As to that, I couldn’t say. Never met the man and don’t care to, neither. I don’t,” he repeated, “take ’im into account.” He got to his feet slowly, giving the humorous, exaggerated groan that Connor knew masked real discomfort. “What are ee scratching at? Another letter to the Rhads?”

“I finished the report.”

“You never! This early?” He looked at him quizzically, and Connor turned back to his desk. “So, ’tis truly done, then? Ee didn’t hurry it along, did ee, Con?”

“Hurry it along?”

“Because she turned you down.” Connor looked up sharply, and Jack raised his hands. “Not but what ee wouldn’t be entitled, and not that I’d care one whit—her and her mine can rot for all o’ me. I’m only sayin’—”

“I know what you’re saying. The answer’s no, I didn’t tinker with the report.”

“No. No, o’ course ee did no such thing. ’Tis something
I
might do, Con, but never you. I’m sorry.”

Connor scrubbed his face with both hands, muttering a tired curse. “Ah, Jack. Forget it.”

But later, after Jack had gone to bed, he read over what he’d written and added a postscript. The mine owner spoke of installing more ventilators in the near future, he wrote, and if that happened, his findings with regard to heat and the cleanness of the air would alter significantly. In addition, morale was high. Wages were low—but not in comparison to other mines in the immediate vicinity. There had been no forced layoffs in recent memory. And although the law allowed boys to work underground at the age of ten, no child at Guelder went down until he was fourteen, and then only as a helper, working the windlasses or wheeling barrows.

He sat for a long time, listening to the hiss of the oil lamp, the muffled cadence of Jack’s snores through the wall. The church clock struck eleven, each tinny thud ringing loud and clear in the late night hush. When the last note died away, he made a decision.

“This report is preliminary,” he scrawled at the bottom, underlining the words. “In the interests of accuracy, completeness, and absolute fairness, the preparer needs more time. For purposes of the mining bill Mr. Shavers plans to bring in at month’s end, it is hoped that the two previous papers furnished on Wheal Looe and Tregurtha in Cornwall will prove sufficient. In any case, this investigation of Guelder mine should not be taken as final until a supplementary report is furnished in”—he tapped the pen against his lips thoughtfully—“approximately a fortnight.”