Forever and Ever (11 page)

***

The next morning, he looked for Sophie before he went down to work, but didn’t see her. Sometimes she could be found outside, early, exchanging a few words with the bal girls, examining the dressed ores from the day before. Not today.

At dinnertime he climbed up, under the pretense of changing the shirt he’d torn on a piece of scaffolding. Why he wanted to see her, he couldn’t say; maybe to show her he was just the same, completely unaffected by her . . . “betrayal” was too strong, even though that’s what it had felt like. Her change of heart. But he couldn’t find her, and when he asked one of the men in the smithy if she’d come in today, he said he didn’t know.

No one below knew anything either. When the cores changed, Connor loitered in the yard, passing the time of day with the new men while he kept an eye on the mine office door. Just when he’d run out of reasons to hang around any longer, the door opened. The grass captain came out, and Connor accosted him as he was walking toward the engine house.

“Mr. Andrewson! I haven’t seen Miss Deene today. Tranter Fox and I had a question about our wage,” he fabricated, “and when we asked Jenks he told us she’d be the one—”

“She’s not here. She’s home sick.”

“Sick.”

“Well, not sick, more stove up. She got in an accident yesterday. Doctor doesn’t know when she’ll come back.” He started walking again. “You have problems about money, talk to Dickon Penney, he’ll be—”

Connor moved between Andrewson and the engine house, cutting him off. “She’s hurt? What happened to her?”

The captain eyed him curiously. “Driving accident. Fell out of her gig, going for a ride after church. I heard she can’t walk. You see Mr. Penney, he’ll answer your question about wages.” He stuck his pipe back in his mouth, nodded, and left Connor standing in the yard.

***

Stone House lay about a mile from the mine, north of Wyckerley on the toll road. Connor had passed the weedy entrance once before, on his way to Tavistock, but he’d never ventured through the crumbling granite gateposts—the gate was long gone. He hurried up the carriageway, wondering a little at the raggedness of the borders and the pitted wheel ruts in the worn, dusty gravel. The lane was straight and level until the last second, when it curved up and sharply right, hiding the house behind a stand of low-branching willows for another thirty yards. Its eastern side came into view first, high and many-chimneyed, covered with ivy, rather grand-looking. Then the drive turned again, and the humbler front revealed the building’s farmhouse origins. It wasn’t at all what he’d expected.

The gabled roof was worn blue slate, so old the individual tiles looked as if giant teeth had been gnawing on the ends. A small porch that served for an entrance was the reverse of stately, but undeniably welcoming. Roses were climbing up the two and a half stories of Dartmoor stone, which had weathered and mellowed to a soft shade of honey yellow. The windows, mullioned and studious-looking, made an odd contrast to the rest of the house with its heavy eaves and blocky, earthbound aspect. He’d thought she would live in a newer place, maybe something like her uncle’s Tudor-style mansion in the village High Street. This old house . . . the only word for it was “cozy,” and that didn’t quite fit with his image of fashionable, no-nonsense Sophie Deene, mine owner.

The front door was wide open. He knocked on it, and knocked again, louder, when no one came. Across the narrow foyer, he could see worn wooden stairs from the second floor widen out in a graceful arc at the bottom. He took a few steps into the hall. To his right was a formal parlor, and to his left an informal one, the friendlier, seedier one it was obvious everyone used; he made out blackened fireplace stones, comfortably worn furniture, a thinning carpet. A dim corridor to the left of the staircase led to the back of the house, and he could see the lighted doorways of more rooms. “Hullo,” he called. “Is anyone at home?” No answer. But he could smell food cooking, the odor mingling with the scent of roses on a side table in the foyer.

He went back outside. Broken flagstones made a path through dark, overgrown shrubbery, leading to the back of the house. He followed it around, coming out on a crescent-shaped stone terrace in front of a glass-walled sunporch. Self-conscious, he shielded his eyes with his hand and peered inside. Empty.

The odor of roses was stronger now. He turned around toward the garden—and there was Sophie. Thirty feet away, past a high hawthorn hedge bordering what looked like an old apple orchard, she lay on a low wicker divan, sleeping.

His heavy boots sounded loud on the two shallow steps to the garden, and louder still on the white pebble path to her clearing in the screened, latticed, and trellised maze of roses that seemed to be taking over everything. He stopped eight feet shy of her, acutely conscious of the house and all its windows at his back. She’d hurt her foot—it rested on a plaid pillow at the bottom of the divan, bare except for a strip of gauze around the ankle. She wore no shoe on her other foot, only a sheer white stocking, and for the life of him he couldn’t stop staring—at her long, pretty feet and trim ankles, and that startling four inches of naked white calf below the frilly hem of her petticoat. But she couldn’t be hurt badly; she was fully dressed, and the ground around her was littered with the debris of her recent occupations—newspapers, a sewing basket, crumbs and a half-eaten piece of cheese on a plate. She had a closed parasol at her side, a book lying open on her chest. A straw bonnet hung by its ribbons from her slack fingers. He went closer.

The white of her eyelids looked delicate, vulnerable; they quivered once, as if she was dreaming. Her lips were not quite touching; he watched the flare of her nostrils, the rise and fall of her bosom with every slow, quiet breath. She looked paler than usual, more fragile. She’d piled all her hair on top of her head in a hasty-looking knot, and half of it had slipped out and fallen around her shoulders, loose golden curls shining like coins in the waning sunlight. Seeing her like this was an illicit thrill he wasn’t ready to give up. He took another step toward her, and gravel rasped under the sole of his foot. She opened her eyes.

And smiled. His level, predictable world tilted sideways. But Sophie’s lucid blue gaze, calm, dreamy-eyed, unbearably lovely, steadied him even while it drew him closer, captured him, and bound him to her.

“I was watching you sleep.” He barely spoke above a whisper; she didn’t move, but she was so intent, she seemed to strain toward him with her body. “I didn’t want you to wake up, because then I’d have to stop. You are . . . beautiful,” he finished, smiling a little because the word was so inadequate. “I wish I could touch you. If I thought we were alone, I’d have to kiss you. Would you let me?”

She didn’t move; the invisible thread that held their gazes had hypnotized her, too. Finally she whispered, “I’m afraid of you.”

It floored him. It evened the score, because he was afraid of her, too. But she was braver: she could admit it, and he couldn’t.

He came to her, knelt beside her on the grass. “You’ve hurt yourself,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

She shook her head, touching the side of her face with her fingertips. He saw two things then: a bruise on her cheekbone, just in front of the ear, and a long white bandage on her forearm, uncovered when the sleeve of her dress fell back. “It’s nothing, really.” Her voice was husky from sleep. “A silly thing—an inconvenience. Really nothing, I promise.” She must have felt his alarm, or noticed the chill that was creeping over his skin.

“My God, Sophie,” he breathed. “Andrewson said a driving accident.”

She pushed herself up straighter, clutching at the book that still lay on her breast. He took it from her, his hand brushing the open pages, warm from her body. “It’s nothing,” she said again. “I was daydreaming, and I drove too far after the path turned rough—should’ve stopped the cart and walked the rest of the way. There was a rock, an
enormous
rock, big as Gibraltar—I have no idea how I missed it. One of the wheels hit it, and I flew up in the air like a jack-in-the-box.” She was smiling, rueful—but he felt the chill again. “Luckily I let go of the reins, or there’s no telling what I’d have done to Valentine. He has a very tender mouth.”

He sat back on his heels, and somehow he managed to keep his hands to himself. But they wanted to touch her, comfort her. Comfort him.

“I landed in the ditch, and at first I thought my ankle was broken. Sweet Val—he came back, but I couldn’t manage the step on the cart, so I had to unhitch him hopping on one foot; can’t you picture it?—and finally got up on him by standing on the same rock that upended me in the first place.”

“Where did it happen?”

“At that place where the road gives out and it turns into a rock quarry,” she said humorously.

“On the way to Abbeycombe?”

“Yes.” She sounded surprised by the question. “You were waiting for me, weren’t you?”

He nodded, looking down at his hands, half-afraid that if she saw his face, she would know all the bitter, unjust things he’d thought about her while he waited.

“Well,” she said with a light laugh, “at least it wasn’t raining. So—anyway—the rest isn’t very interesting. I rode Val to Dr. Hesselius’s house, and after he patched me up, he took me home in his carriage.”

“What did he say about your ankle?”

“That it’s probably not broken, just sprained.”

“Probably?”

She waved her hand in the air. “Maybe a tiny fracture, a ‘hairline,’ he called it, but he’s not sure. But, of course, he’s very conservative; if you so much as sneeze he wants to put you to bed.”

Connor looked at her skeptically; he was familiar with this minimizing, deprecatory talk. Jack was a master at it.

“He says I shouldn’t walk at all for a week, maybe even two. Which is absurd. I’ve told my uncle to find me some crutches, and I’ll probably be back at work in a couple of days.”

He said nothing; it wasn’t his place to argue with her. Or tell her she was being ridiculous, which was what he wanted to do. “And this?” he said, lightly touching the bandage on her wrist. “And this,” his fingers barely grazing the bluish swelling on her cheek.

She closed her eyes for a second. “A nuisance,” she murmured. “Nothing hurts anymore except my ankle, and that’s only when I move it. Dr. Hesselius gave me medicine that makes me do nothing but sleep. I’ve stopped taking it.”

“So you’re a bad patient.”

“Not at all. I just know how I feel better than anyone else does.”

He couldn’t help smiling at that, she sounded so much like Jack. She smiled, too, and for a little while he was lost again, not a coherent thought in his head.

She sobered, and the humor faded from her eyes. “Mr. Jenks is coming. I’ve just remembered. I asked him to come at five o’clock.”

The spell broke. Without a word, Connor got to his feet. Jenks mustn’t find him here, of course. Nor anyone else. He became aware for the first time of his uncouth miner’s garb, his dirty hands, dirty hair, the mud caked on his ungainly boots. “I’ll say good-bye, then,” he told her, trying not to sound stiff. “I’m sorry you were hurt. Glad you’re on the mend. If there’s anything I can do . . .” He forced a laugh. “Well, that’s not too likely, is it?”

“Yes, there’s something.” She sat up straight, wincing, holding one hand out toward him. “Come and see me tomorrow. If it’s fair. I’ll be right here.” Her sweet, hopeful smile could have eclipsed the sun. “Will you come?”

He promised.

IX

He came every day after that, always in the hour before dusk, always to her mother’s rose garden. She began to watch the skies anxiously from about noon on, because if it rained he wouldn’t come. That was their rule, although they never spoke of it. She told Maris and Mrs. Bolton that he came on “mine business,” and they believed it, because anything else would have been unthinkable. She made sure no one else paid her a visit at the same time by inviting her cousin or her uncle or solicitous friends earlier in the day, and by asking Jenks or Dickon Penney to come (on
real
mine business) at night.

So they were alone, or as alone as it was possible to be outside in the garden, in full view of the house or any passing servant, including Thomas who lived over the carriage house. After the first day, he came to her in his best clothes, his hair still damp sometimes from bathing. She offered him some biscuits once; he devoured them, and she realized he was starving. After that, she made sure Maris brought out a plate of sandwiches and a pitcher of orange tea or lemonade before he came.

They never touched. They talked. They sat in chairs beside the rose-covered garden house, she with her left foot propped up on a pillowed stool, and told each other everything they’d been doing—which in Sophie’s case was not much—since the day before. In the beginning, naturally, their chief topic was copper mining, the thing they most had in common. But after he left, it would strike her that she’d done most of the talking, and she would wonder at the notion that, for a miner, he didn’t seem very interested in the actual process of mining. He cared more about mine
conditions
, ancillary issues like heat and air, whereas she spent her life puzzling over the mysteries of vein stones and fissures, champion lodes and elvan courses, thinking of ways to eke more ore out of a finite underground cache.

Gradually, though, their talks began to range over wider ground, touching on subjects she would never have guessed he cared about. How clever he was for a self-educated man. He’d always read a lot, he explained when she marveled at it, and changed the subject. He rarely spoke of his family, and she wondered if there was some secret there that embarrassed him. But despite her intense curiosity, she respected his reticence and didn’t pry. Instead, she found herself telling him about her own childhood, the closeness she’d shared with her father, her devastation when he died.

“He must have had a lot of faith in you to leave you the mine,” Jack said one afternoon, sitting beside her under the acacia tree, surreptitiously feeding Dash tiny pieces of ham.

“He did. He told me I was destined for great things, and he said it so often I almost came to believe him.” There was no “almost” about it; she
had
come to believe it. But she thought saying that out loud might sound conceited. “I suppose he spoiled me—Honoria says he did, anyway. He treated me more like a son than a daughter, telling me I had a ‘masculine’ mind, making sure my education wasn’t frivolous. But do you know, I had no idea he was thinking of giving me the mine until the night he died.”

“How did it happen?”

“He collapsed at his desk in the countinghouse. They brought him home, and he died a few hours later. It was his heart—it just—gave out.” She blinked the tears out of her eyes, unashamed. “He was conscious until the last moment. I think even
he
was surprised when he asked me if I wanted Guelder—we’d both assumed Uncle Eustace would take it over if anything happened to him. When I said yes, he changed his will right then and there, with Christy Morrell for a witness.”

She found her handkerchief and blew her nose, shaking her head at herself, smiling through the tears. “Afterward, that’s all that made losing him bearable for me. He always believed in me, and never stopped being proud of me. Carrying on and trying to make the mine profitable gave me a reason to do something besides grieve. And I’ve never regretted my choice. In fact, I can’t even imagine living any other way.”

Another slight disingenuity; like any woman, she often thought about marriage and children, a quieter life, domestic contentment. But she always pictured them in the vague future, seductive contingencies she didn’t have time for right now. Someday, but not yet.

The shadows lengthened slowly, inexorably; Jack would have to leave soon. She watched him lift Dash onto his lap and pet him, scratching him under the chin until the cat flopped over on his side and purred in ecstasy. “Does this animal do anything except sleep?”

“No.”

He smiled, leaning back in his chair. He was quiet today, content to listen to her and say little himself. There was a secret about him, something hidden and unspoken. But she never feared or distrusted him, and she felt strongly that whatever he was keeping to himself couldn’t hurt her. She was sure of it, and she always trusted her instincts.

“Feel like going for a stroll, Sophie?”

Lately they’d been taking a slow,
very
slow turn around the garden, she using a cane while leaning heavily on his arm. Dr. Hesselius had been right and she’d been wrong: the injury to her ankle was severe, and her cocky plan to be back at work in a day or two seemed, in retrospect, foolish in the extreme.

Jack helped her to stand and gave her her cane, which she preferred to her crutches when he or Maris were around to lend assistance. Anne Morrell had found a wheeled chair for her somewhere in the parish, and when she was tired she rolled herself around in it in the house and the upper part of the garden. She was a nuisance to herself and everyone around her; she felt like a senile old lady, and she suffered her invalidism with little patience and not much grace. And yet . . .

And yet she didn’t really want to hurry her recovery. Sometimes she lied and told herself she wanted this holiday from the mine because it was the first she’d had in almost three years. But that wasn’t really it. The truth was that she didn’t want these hours with Jack to end. She couldn’t name—chose not to name—what was happening to them, but she knew it would change once she went back to her old life. Her real life. This was an idyll, a time out of time, not completely real and yet completely irresistible. She wanted to hang on to it as long as he could.

She was teaching him the names of the roses. “Sweetbriar,” he guessed, pointing to the white and pink eglantine sprawling over a trellis along the path side.

“Correct. And that?”

“Mmm . . . moss rose?”

“White damask.”

“Damask. I knew that. This is maiden’s blush.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s Glory to thee John.”

“Gloire de Dijon.”

“And General Jack-me-not.”

“General Jacqueminot,” she laughed, letting her temple rest on his shoulder just for a moment. How could she give up these sweet, slow walks? She loved the sturdy feel of his arm as they ambled along, the smooth texture of his coat under her fingers. She loved it that he smelled like fresh soap and water, and she loved the way he looked down at her, his gray eyes warm and smiling, seeing nothing but her. If anyone saw them, Maris or Thomas, Mrs. Bolton, they would have to know that “mine business” was the last thing on their minds. She might be the belowstairs talk of the town by now. She almost didn’t care. Anyway, she doubted that the news had spread any higher—to Uncle Eustace, for example. What if it did? She knew how he would react, but how would she? Would she defy him for Jack’s sake? She didn’t know. She was living dangerously, and she almost liked it.

They had walked farther this time, past the hawthorn hedges and into the old orchard. “You’ll have to carry me back,” she joked—and gave a low, delighted shriek when he bent and picked her up right off her feet.

“I don’t want to carry you back. I want to carry you over there and kiss you.”

They were almost kissing already, their mouths only a breath apart, their faces smiling and tense with the same flushed anticipation. “Over where?”

“Behind those trees.”

“No,
those
trees,” she said breathily, pointing vaguely. “There’s a bench—we can sit—”

It was what they had both been wanting for days, and the only wonder was that they’d waited so long for it. She looped her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead to his cheekbone, shutting her eyes tight, trembling already. The novel sensation of being borne along, will-less, appealed to her on some level of herself she hadn’t indulged in for so long, she’d forgotten it existed. He found the bench, white-painted wrought iron, rarely used anymore, and sat down. But he kept her on his lap, an intimacy she hadn’t anticipated. His laughing eyes reassured her, and when he pressed his face to the side of her neck and inhaled, sighing, “Ahh,” on the exhale, as if he’d never smelled anything sweeter, she laughed with him from sheer happiness.

She’d been wanting to touch his hair because it was dark and shiny, like rich black satin. She played with the ends that curled a little above his collar, and pushed her hands through the hair at his temples, relishing the cool, sensuous tickle between her fingers. He was sliding one of his hands slowly up and down her backbone; his other arm lay heavy across her lap, his hand curved possessively around her hip. She knew the precise moment when he realized she wasn’t wearing any corset or stays—she was an invalid, she’d rationalized for the last several days; she was allowed to recover in personal comfort in the privacy of her own home. His hand on her spine stopped in midcaress, and his face took on a rapt, intent look. They’d gone beyond flirting, but she couldn’t resist a mischievous, knowing smile when his startled eyes found hers. “Ah, Sophie,” he murmured, as if she’d given him some generous gift. Then he kissed her.

Memories of the last time they’d done this washed over her in a wave of sweetness. His lips were familiar now, not so stunningly new that she could barely let herself revel in the thrilling feel of them against hers. She could savor the subtleties of kissing him, all the blood-stirring nuances like long and short kisses, soft and hard, little nibbling kisses and deep, lingering, burning ones. She sighed his name, and he seemed to stiffen. “Hush,” he said, and before she could think about that, he nudged her lips open with his tongue.

This was new. She went still and let him caress her inside her mouth, startled at first by the strangeness of it, the unimagined intimacy. Her body knew before her mind did that this was pure pleasure, pure seduction. “I’m melting,” she whispered, opening her mouth to him, letting him take whatever he wanted. Thoughts spun away, and there was nothing but sensation. She stirred, restless, wanting him to touch her with his hands, and she sighed when his fingers drifted from her cheek to her throat, and then her chest, bare above the square white collar of her gown. “Jack, Jack,” she breathed—and he broke the kiss and pressed her head to his shoulder.

Gradually she caught her breath. She could feel the thud of her pulse slowing in time to his, and she put her hand on his chest, inside his jacket, soothing herself with the strong, steady beat of his heart under her palm. Above their heads a bird was trilling, cheerful and oblivious to their intense drama. The scent of apples mingled with the sweeter smell of Jack’s skin, and his hair, and his soft breath on her forehead.

“I was angry that day you didn’t come to Abbeycombe,” he said suddenly. She lifted her head to look at him. “I don’t know why I want to tell you this. I wasn’t going to.”

“You were angry with me?”

“I thought you’d decided not to see me again. Come to your senses.”

“Oh, no.”

“It hurt,” he said simply—a dear confession. “I blamed you.”

She smiled, forgiving him. “I think I’ve been out of my senses since we met.”

He looked up from playing with her fingers. “Yes,” he said seriously. “Yes, it’s like that.”

“Yes, it is.” Because she wanted to, and because she didn’t like the worry in his eyes, she brought her mouth to his and kissed him passionately, pressing against him, holding him tight. Her body heated up in an instant, wanting more, and she made herself stop kissing him to whisper against his lips, “What will happen to us, Jack?”

“Don’t talk, Sophie. Don’t talk about that.”

Each time he came after that, they eventually wandered, casually, seemingly by chance, into the fragrant apple orchard. But there was nothing casual about the way they touched each other as soon as they were alone and invisible. They were on fire. Sophie couldn’t think straight when he was away, couldn’t think at all when he was there. They began to talk less, touch more as the warm summer days drifted by. It wasn’t only the world of differences between them that made the future seem so complicated and hopeless. The mystery Jack carried inside him also kept them apart, in every way but physically. They were both constrained, equally unable to speak of what they were feeling. For Sophie it was at once the most exciting and the most distressing time of her life.

It came to an end on a hot July afternoon, with no warning except a soft
tap, tap, tap
from the direction of the house. She paid it no heed, didn’t associate it with the sound of her uncle’s cane until it was too late. She was too intent on securing the last flower in Jack’s clover wreath and then putting it on his head, which lay pillowed in her lap. “You look like Julius Caesar,” she told him, artfully arranging his hair in curls around the whitish blossoms. She put a kiss on his forehead, another on his nose. “No,” she said, reevaluating, “not Julius Caesar. Brutus.”

He sent her the tender, amused smile she couldn’t resist. “Lend me this,” he growled, gently pulling on her ear. She gasped when he gave the lobe a playful nip with his teeth, then hummed with excitement when he soothed it with his tongue. “Sophie,” he whispered, making her shiver. “
Et tu
, Sophie.”

She blinked down at him curiously, rubbing her knuckles across the whiskers of his chin. “How is it you know . . .”

She never finished the question. She broke off to listen, and before she could associate the faint swish of grass in the distance with footsteps, her uncle’s voice sounded out loud, clear, and frighteningly close by.