Forever and Ever (3 page)

He stood with his legs spread, holding the cane in both hands behind his back, exactly like a London bobby. “I’m not surprised; I thought you might. It’s why I stopped here before going home.” Salem mine was a few miles north on the Tavistock toll road; Uncle Eustace lived in Wyckerley—as befitted the mayor—and Sophie’s house was on his way home.

“I don’t know how it could’ve slipped my mind. I—I’ve been looking forward to it all week.” She thought his shrewd eyes looked skeptical. “You go along. Tell Honoria I’ll be there in one hour.”

“Ha. Three is more like it.”

“No,” she said with a smile, “you’re mixing me up with your daughter.” Honoria could easily take three hours to dress for a simple family dinner. “An hour, I promise, and I’ll have Thomas drive me in the carriage.” This was a concession: she’d much prefer to drive herself in the gig, but Eustace hated it when she went “haring about” alone, especially after dark.

He nodded grudgingly. “But you’ll still need longer than an hour.
Robert Croddy
is coming.”

“Yes, you mentioned that.” She sent him a humorous look, but he wouldn’t smile back. Slipping her arm through his, she began to walk with him around the path to the front of the house, where he’d tied his big bay horse. “Why don’t you try to marry Honoria off to Robert instead of me?” she teased.

She felt him stiffen. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well, you might have better luck. Or doesn’t she think he’s rich enough?” He wouldn’t respond, but she thought that was very likely it. Robert had an interest in Uncle Eustace’s mine; he was eligible and unattached, fairly sophisticated—being from Devonport, a metropolis compared to Wyckerley—and comfortably off, a successful brewer’s son. But that was probably his fatal flaw for Honoria: she couldn’t see herself married to the son of a beer maker.

There was nothing really wrong with Robert Croddy; when her uncle threw them together, Sophie always found his company agreeable enough. But Eustace wanted her to
marry
Robert, and that was an entirely different thing. Sophie didn’t want to marry anyone, not for a long, long time. Her life was much too interesting just now to throw away for the dubious reward of a husband.

“Try to arrive by eight,” Uncle Eustace said sternly as he untied his horse.

“I will.” She gave his hard cheek a kiss, and he finally eked out a smile for her. She had a thought. “Are you still looking for a mine agent to take William Ball’s place?”

“I am,” he answered, seating himself on his horse, drawing on his riding gloves.

“So you haven’t hired anyone yet?”

“Not yet. Why?”

“Nothing, I only wondered. I saw someone in the village today, a stranger. I thought he might be your new man.”

“No, couldn’t be. I’ve not even advertised for the post yet.”

“Oh.” She backed up so he could turn his horse.

“Eight o’clock,” he reminded her, settling his hat on his head. It was a tall, citified hat; he’d bought it last year in Exeter, and he was inordinately fond of it. She always thought it looked out of place in the country, especially when he wore it on horseback.

“Eight,” she echoed. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

Her shoulders dropped once he was out of sight. Dejected, she went inside to change. So she could go out again.

III

On Monday morning Connor walked the mile and a half from Wyckerley to Guelder mine and applied for work. A man named Andrewson, the captain-at-grass, asked him a few questions—where he’d worked last, whether he wanted tribute or tutwork—and told him to wait in the countinghouse until Miss Deene came. Connor sat in the mine office’s tiny anteroom for twenty minutes, staring at ore samples on shelves against the wall, staring at the closed door to the inner office, drumming his fingers, thinking Miss Deene didn’t put herself out much getting to work on time. After five minutes more, he got up and walked outside.

Guelder looked typical of the majority of small mines he’d observed lately, no worse than most, better than a few. It was situated on a denuded upland, the ground barren all around, with grass sprouting through mud and rumble and a half century of mineral waste brought up from the bowels of the earth and left where it lay. The entrance was small and undramatic, just a ladder sticking up from a hole in the middle of the attle-strewn clearing, covered with an open trapdoor and a makeshift roof to keep the rain out. Twin chimney stacks towered over the engine house, from which the sound of the machines pumping out water from fathoms below was low, monotonous, and never-ending. Chains, pulleys, bell cranks, and winding machines littered the ground, and stacks of timber and enormous coils of rope on wooden platforms. The dressing area was partially under-roof, and from here he could see the children and “bal girls”—women, most of them miners’ wives—cleaning and dressing the ores. The first core began at eight o’clock, so there were no miners about now, only grass workers and machinery men, and the drivers of mule-drawn carts full of rock and metal and the crude implements used to unearth them.

Over the crest of the hill that wound down to the toll road, a different sort of vehicle came into view, a jaunty, yellow-wheeled cart pulled by a pretty gray pony. A bright red feather waved from the driver’s dashing straw hat. Watching the cart draw near, Connor leaned back against the mine office’s clapboard side and jammed his hands in his pockets, trying not to be seduced by the beguiling frivolity of the sight, the charming unlikeliness of it in such homely surroundings. But it wasn’t easy. He’d been thinking about Miss Sophie Deene for a day and a half. This morning he thought he’d finally banished the last outlaw impression of her as an attractive woman rather than as the owner of one of the copper mines he’d committed himself to investigate. Now here she was, handing the pony cart’s reins to Andrewson and jumping gracefully down to the ground in the muddy mine yard, and it was impossible to think anything at all except that she was beautiful.

She didn’t wear white today, but she was just as fresh and fetching in a stylish tartan skirt, green blouse, and red kid boots. Connor tried to feel sullen, tried to sneer mentally at the impracticality of those little boots, the silly feather in the girlish, oversize hat. But no luck again; one look around at the men nodding or lifting their caps to her in the yard told him he was exactly the same as all of them: bewitched.

Andrewson was saying something to her, gesturing in Connor’s direction. She threw him a brief glance and went back to her conversation. Hadn’t she recognized him? Pushing away from the shadowed wall of the countinghouse, he moved toward her.

The wide brim of her hat hid him until he was nearly beside her. When she looked up, she started slightly, and then her lovely face lit up in a smile only a blind man wouldn’t know was glad. “Why, it’s Mr. Pendarvis,” she said wonderingly, while pretty pink color stole into her cheeks. It tantalized him to see that she was flustered. He almost offered her his hand before he remembered himself. He pulled off his own hat, a heavy felt miner’s helmet, and said, “Good morning.” It was hard not to smile back, hard to bear in mind that everything had changed since the afternoon he’d untangled her hair from Birdie’s button. They weren’t enemies—not yet—but they would certainly be adversaries, she unwittingly, and so he’d damn well better keep his head.

Andrewson scratched his chin, puzzled. “Didn’t know you knew him,” he said to his employer. “He never said.” She looked at the grass captain in perplexity. “This is the one I just told you about, Miss Deene. He’s here wanting work in the mine.”

She turned her head on her long neck by slow, subtly incredulous degrees. The pleased smile faltered, lost its charming self-consciousness. If disillusionment had a color, it was the shade of slate-blue her eyes turned behind her thick lashes, like a cloud-shadow moving across a clear, deep pool. “Mr. Pendarvis, you . . . you’re a miner?”

Connor felt hot blood rush to his cheeks, at the same time he became exquisitely aware of his loose-fitting pants and dirty gray smock frock, his heavy, mud-caked boots, his graceless hat. There was no mistaking her tone or her look, and her disappointment was as sharp and clear as a slap in the face. “Yes, I’m a miner,” he said through his teeth. With enough disbelief in his voice to insult, he said, “Don’t tell me
you’re
the owner of Guelder mine.”

It was her turn to blush. Her posture, already finishing-school perfect, stiffened, and she grew an inch. Her chin went up; she had to reach for the brim of her hat to keep it on. “Yes, I am,” she said, and it was a shock to hear chilliness in the warm, melodic voice that had been haunting him since Saturday. “Would working for a woman pose a problem for you, Mr. Pendarvis?”

“Not necessarily, Miss Deene.” He let his eyes travel down her elegant body and slowly, deliberately, back to her face. “I expect it depends on the woman.” Tension held their gazes, stretching, pulling tighter—until Andrewson cleared his throat and muttered, “Well, now.”

Then they both looked away, and Connor told himself to calm down. What the hell did he care what Miss Sophie Deene thought of him? She was pretty; once they’d flirted with each other. That was all. He’d better relax, because interests much more vital than his almighty dignity were at stake. But pride, Connor had been told a hundred times, was his biggest weakness, and she’d made the mistake of wounding it. When that happened, his most natural defense was aggression.

At least he’d made her angry, too—a childish but satisfying consolation. “Will you come into my office, please?” she said, regal as a queen, and his only regret was that she turned and sailed away before she could see his carefully careless smile.

Her cramped office was dominated by an enormous battered oak desk piled high with papers, books, and little bags of copper ore assays. Shelves on every wall bulged with more papers and files, books, maps, boxes, and sacks. There was no rug on the plank floor, no curtain at the one dusty window; the only feminine touch he could see was a jar of wilting wildflowers on a small table, under a pen-and-ink drawing of a white-haired man with a mustache. The late Mr. Deene?

She took her hat off and hung it on a hook on the back of the door, then went behind the desk and sat down in a huge, squeaky leather armchair on wheels. She looked so dwarfed and out of place in her aggressively masculine surroundings, Connor grinned at her. Up came the chin. She folded her hands on the desktop and stared at him down the short length of her perfect nose. “Have a seat,” she offered with studied politeness, and even though it was more of a command than an invitation, he sat down in the room’s only other chair, a shabby ladder-back with an uneven leg, directly in front of her desk. “So you would like a job. Is it tribute or tutwork you’re seeking, Mr. Pendarvis?”

“Which are you offering, Miss Deene?”

“Neither, until I’m satisfied with your qualifications. What experience do you have?”

“I’ve told all of this to the captain.”

Her nostrils flared ever so slightly. “Well, now you can tell it to me.”

He had to stop baiting her; Christ, he
wanted
a job. He dropped an ankle over one knee and folded his arms, sliding down a little in the chair. “I worked for the Fowey Consols at Lanescot for seven years, four years at Wheal Lady in Redruth, and at Carn Barra for another four.”

He could see her adding it up. “You’ve been a copper miner for fifteen years?” She kept the dismay out of her voice this time, but he thought he could still see it in her eyes.

“Copper or tin; I’ve worked both since I was twelve. Oh, and lead once at Portreath, back in ‘fifty-three. Forgot to mention that.” Although this was Jack’s history, not his, he found it surprisingly easy to lie to Miss Sophie Deene. It felt like evening the score.

“When did you leave Carn Barra?”

“Six months ago.”

“And since then?”

“I’ve not worked at all.”

This was the tricky part, since he didn’t look like a sick man. Staring her straight in the eye, he said steadily, “I left because of ill health.”

Her guarded look lifted. “I’m sorry.” She said it as if she meant it. “Do you mind if I ask the nature of your illness? Only because—”

“It was my lungs, an infectious fever. The doctors thought it might turn consumptive, and told me not to work underground for half a year.”

Compassion softened the corners of her mouth; just for a moment he saw again the sweet-faced girl on the village green. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“No need to be. As you can see, I’m fine now. Fit and able-bodied, Miss Deene, and ready to work.”

He was, but Jack wasn’t. Jack’s lung fever was indeed tubercular, and the last doctor had said he’d kill himself if he went down in a mine again. Even with that, his chances of reaching middle age were barely even. It was a cruel and bitter sentence, but Jack had come to terms with it. It was Connor who couldn’t.

“As is happens,” Sophie said carefully, “there’s to be a setting next week for pitwork in a new excavation. I’m aware that one of the gangs could use an extra man. That is, if tribute work interests you, Mr. Pendarvis.”

A setting was an auction, when miners bid for the pitches they wanted to work, and instead of a wage they earned a percentage of the value of the ore they dug. It was a subterranean lottery, riskier than tutwork—which was merely driving shafts and sinking levels, clearing the way for the tributers—but sometimes it could be much more lucrative. A man could strike a lucky pitch and do pretty well for himself. Or he could lose his shirt. Usually he just eked out a living, and a hard one at that.

But it was nice of her to offer. Connor hadn’t expected it. But ore extraction was a complicated skill requiring years of experience—experience like Jack’s—and Connor’s entire underground experience consisted of four months of tutwork in all of two Cornish copper mines. If he tried to bluff, he’d likely be found out for the novice he was in about two days.

“I appreciate it,” he said truthfully. “But I haven’t the money to lay out for my share of the grinding and dressing.”

“The mine could lend it to you in advance of your earnings.”

He smiled thinly. He was familiar with that ruse. “At what percent, Miss Deene?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “At zero percent, Mr. Pendarvis. It’s a free loan with a three-month term, payable in full.”

Unusual. Most owners were only too glad to advance capital to miners in need, at prodigious rates that kept them beholden to the company indefinitely.

“Thanks,” he said, “but I’ll stick with tutwork. It’s what I do best.” Slow, plodding, molelike labor; it took some skill, a lot of sweat, and no imagination. He loathed it. As she watched him speculatively, he found himself almost wishing she didn’t believe him—that she was thinking he
didn’t
look like a man who would cheerfully spend his whole life burrowing holes in the ground so people like her could grow rich on his sweat and blood.

“Very well,” she said slowly. “Tutwork, then. What tools do you have?”

“Pick, shovel, wedges.”

“Blasting tools?”

“Sledge, borer, claying box. Cartridges and fuses.”

“Can you buy your candles?”

“I’d need a subsist,” he lied. “Two pounds would see me through until payday.” Candles were a miner’s biggest expense, running to roughly a tenth of his earnings.

She nodded. “One of my tutmen lost his partner and has been working alone for the past two weeks. I should think you could team up with him. I pay five pounds for a fathom, and I pay my men every—”

“
Five?
I’ve never worked for that. I earned six guineas at Carn Barra.”

Then you should’ve stayed there
, she wanted to say, he could tell by her eyes; it was fascinating to watch her trying to hold on to her temper. She sat back in the squeaky chair, deliberately relaxing her stiff fingers over the leather-covered arms. “Carn Barra is four times the size of Guelder, Mr. Pendarvis. It’s owned by a consortium. Until a year and a half ago, it brought up ore that sold at the coinage for three, sometimes four times the price of my copper. If I could pay my men more, I would, but as it is . . .” She trailed off, giving her head a little shake, as if thinking,
Why am I telling him this?

She stood. “Five pounds per fathom, that’s my wage, and if I hire you, you’ll have to subscribe to a list of mine regulations. Once you sign, there’s a twenty-shilling penalty for nonfulfillment of your contract. I don’t know what the practice is at Carn Barra, but here—”

“Carn Barra has contracts,” he said pacifically, getting up, too. “With penalty clauses. Only it’s thirty shillings for nonfulfillment, not twenty.” Jack had coached him well.

Slightly mollified, she went to a bookcase beside the window and took a sheet of paper out of a box on one of the shelves. Using the window ledge for a table, she bent over the paper and began to scribble on it with a fountain pen. Connor went closer, watching dusty sun shafts light up the copper strands in her blond hair. Her fragrance was roses again, subtle as a whisper, barely there. He liked her flounced skirt; it had a bustle in back, a silly little bulge, charmingly useless. Her green blouse had long, loose sleeves, and she kept pushing the right one up so she wouldn’t get ink on it. He noticed the tiny hairs on her forearm were golden, like the hair on her head. He wanted to see if his hands could fit around her trim little waist.