Forever and Ever (8 page)

“How’s that?”

“Because the ground is so much harder in Cornwall than it is here. Generally speaking.”

He made a vague sound; it was news to him.

“I visited the Charleston mine in St. Austell a few years ago, when my father was still alive. There, of course, a portion of the mine is open for several fathoms, so the study of a lodestone’s characteristics for once doesn’t have to be done by candlelight. I found it fascinating. Have you ever been there?”

He decided to tell the truth and say no. “But I imagine that would be interesting, seeing how the copper veins lie and so forth.”

“The tin, you mean. Charleston is a tin mine.”

“I meant tin.” Before she could bring up another topic he didn’t know anything about, he asked her about ventilation at Guelder; the subject would figure in his report, after all, plus it might keep his mind off the way her left hand felt, resting on his forearm, or the brush of her hair when a strand of it floated across his chest. The rustle of her clothes when she moved. The scent of her, faint as a whisper, potent as an aphrodisiac.

“Yes,” she answered, “I’ve contracted for a new ventilator that ought to improve the circulation of air, and especially of smoke after a blast. It sounds simple, just a pipe, a valve, and an internal cylinder, but I’m told it can pump out twelve thousand gallons of air in an hour. If it really works, I may buy another one.”

“And, of course, that would be a purely humanitarian gesture on your part, toward the health and safety of the men you employ.”

She looked at him blankly. “What?”

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’ll save money with every degree you lower the temperature in the mine with your new ventilator. That would be an afterthought. Just a happy by-product.”

Her hands stilled; she straightened. Her fine blue eyes studied him for so long, he wanted to fidget. “Why do you dislike me so much?”

“I don’t dislike you.” He felt churlish; he felt like a fool. He wanted to know why his liking her or not mattered at all to her.

“I think you do, but I don’t understand why. I can’t think of anything I’ve ever done to hurt you.”

Now he did fidget. The honest confusion in her face made him ashamed. “You’ve done nothing. Nothing at all. I’m— I’ve been worried about my brother.” The explanation slipped out so easily, he decided it must be only half a lie.

“Your brother?”

“He’s a miner, too. Was a miner—he can work no longer because his lungs are gone. Consumption.”

“I am very sorry.” It rang true: sympathy softened every feature. “Does he live in Cornwall?” she asked.

“No, he’s here in Wyckerley with me.”

“You take care of him.”

He smiled slightly. “In a way. It’s a new role for me. He’s older than I am. It . . .”

“Seems strange,” she finished softly. “And . . . it makes you sad.”

“That’s it.”

They exchanged a long, thoughtful look, and he imagined his face reflected the same subtle surprise hers did, because they were speaking for once without subterfuge or hostility. Almost like friends.

“This is all there is for a large bandage,” she said, recollecting herself. She held up a white square of cloth, like a split pillowcase, which she’d found in Annie Whited’s bundle. “I’m not sure it’ll go around you.”

It did, barely, and he enjoyed her efforts to tie the two ends together across his chest. She glanced up at him once, then back down, quickly, and he noticed her cheeks were a deeper pink than usual. Interesting. All this intimate nursing hadn’t fazed her while they were sniping at each other; but now that they were being civil, she blushed.

“The cut here is much deeper,” she said briskly, turning her attention to his arm. “I’m afraid it’ll have to be sewn.”

“Is that your professional opinion, Doctor?”

Her eyes twinkled. “It is. If I were you, Mr. Pendarvis, I would go straight—”

“Well, well, what ave we ’ere? Pick me liver! If I’d’ve knowed what were in store fer the disabled, by Jakes, I’d’ve hurtled myself down the main shaft ages ago.” Tranter Fox, tracking mud onto Miss Deene’s clean-swept floor, whipped off his miner’s helmet and sent her his biggest gap-toothed grin.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Fox,” she greeted him, pressing down a smile. “What brings you up at this time of the day?”

“Consarn fer my dear friend, ma’am,” he intoned solemnly, coming closer, pretending to examine Connor’s bandaged ribs and the still-oozing cut in his arm. “How’re ee faring, Jack? Ee’ve got a angel o’ mercy tending to yer wounds, I see. If you was t’ pass on right now, at least yer last eyeful on earth ud be a beauteous one.”

Sophie snorted.

“That’s a comforting thought,” Connor allowed. “I’ll try to hold on to it as I’m slipping away.”

“Do that.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked on his toes, darting secret glances at Sophie when she wasn’t looking. “What are ee doing for the invalid, ma’am? If I may be so bold as to ask.”

“Nothing much, only cleaning the cuts. And putting some of this on,” she added, holding up her brown, vile-smelling bottle, “to make sure he stays awake.”

“That’s the ticket,” Tranter cackled, rubbing his hands together. “Keep ’im on ’is toes.”

“Exactly.”

They smiled at each other—and for Connor, the raillery between them was a revelation. It confirmed the crush Tranter was reputed to have on his employer, and also revealed a side of Sophie that Connor had thought he might never see again, the girlish, lighthearted side.

“Don’t you have three hours or so left on your core, Mr. Fox?”

“Yes, Miss Deene, but I were that et up wi’ worry, I could barely hold up a pick. Had t’ see how the boy were doing, like, or go mad from the strain.”

“Ah. And now that you’ve set your mind at rest, there’s probably nothing to prevent you from returning to your work.”

Tranter screwed up his face, thinking hard. “Prob’ly not,” he finally begrudged. He edged toward the door. “Now, Jack, ee want to be layin’ out fer a day or two or three, lest you open up and bleed all over everything. Don’t worry about me being on my own, not fer a second, for there’m plenty o’ things I can be—”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Connor interrupted.

“Oh, will ee? Well, ain’t that fine. That’s—”

“I very much doubt that,” Sophie said severely. “In my opinion, Mr. Pendarvis, that would be very foolish.”

“Very foolish,” Tranter echoed, nodding adamantly. “I very much doubt ee’ll do any such thing. You listen to yer nurse; Jack, and obey ’er wise words. Miss Deene, she’m knowed far and wide for ’er wisdom, see, not to mention ’er loveliness, which she’m famous for, too, and a base, low miner like yerself, or
my
self, come t’ that, couldn’t do better’ n take ’er advice in all matters, great and small. Because she’m truly a pillar o’—”

“Thank you, Mr. Fox,” Sophie cut in, laughing. “Good afternoon to you now.”

Tranter bowed from the waist. “Yer sarvant,” he said to the floor, and sidled out of the room.

Before he could consider his words, Connor said softly, “I like to hear you laugh.”

She kept her head down and made no answer.

“You were laughing the first day we met. Do you remember?”

She’d been dabbing gently at the cut on the inner side of his biceps, supporting his arm in the crook of her elbow, so that his wrist rested lightly against the side of her breast. Because of what he’d said, the innocent contact was too personal now: she stepped away to rummage in the paper parcel for another bandage.

“How’s Birdie?” he asked smoothly.

“Ah, Birdie. She was very taken with you, you know.”

“Was she?”

“She still speaks of you.”

“What does she say?”

“She calls you ‘the nice man with big hands.’ ”

Connor chuckled. He waited until she had to touch him again, to wind a strip of gauzy white cotton around his arm, to say, “Will you go for a walk with me next Saturday afternoon, Miss Deene?”

Her face was a study. He saw pleasure light up her eyes before she averted them and said quickly, “Oh, no. I can’t.”

He studied her profile, the aristocratic nose with its fine white nostrils, like porcelain, and her pretty mouth, the lips meeting at just the right, seductive angle. She wore her hair in a little net at the back of her neck today, a snood, he thought it was called, but a few long, wavy wisps had escaped, softening the severity of the style. Her refusal to see him came as no surprise. He shouldn’t have asked her anyway.

But he was tired of doing what he was supposed to do. “We wouldn’t go far,” he pressed lightly, “just along the river in the village. You’d be perfectly safe.”

She lifted one eyebrow at that, and the side of her mouth curved slightly. But she said again, “No, I can’t.”

He stood up, so abruptly she started. “You must forgive my impertinence. I’ll not ask you again.” Grinding his teeth against the pain, he tucked the loose end of the gauze strip roughly inside the neat bandage she’d made. He looked around for his shirt.

She snatched it from the desk before he could reach for it. “Mr. Pendarvis,” she said, and the low urgency in her tone stopped him. “I can’t meet you because—I
can’t.
Next Saturday is Midsummer Day, and I’m the precentor of the children’s choir—we’ve a program planned outside on the green. If it doesn’t rain, there’s a festival as well. It’s—an important day in Wyckerley.” She subsided, and he could swear she was blushing again. Because she thought she’d sounded too eager to explain herself to him?

He made a great business of having trouble with his shirt, so she would help him put it on. It worked; and then he pretended his left arm was too stiff to bend, so she’d button the shirt for him. While she was doing it, he watched her face, which had gone very still, so close to his, so very lovely. She was anything but indifferent to him, he knew that now. Because he wanted to, he lifted his hand to one of the strands of her golden hair and drew it gently behind her ear. An audacious liberty. What would she do?

Her hands at his chest froze. She looked up, into his eyes, and he saw all her innocence and interest, the trepidation and the excitement, in her level blue stare. He bent his head to her; in one second, he knew they would kiss, and in the next, he knew they would not. Her doing—yes, but his, too, because such a thing was forbidden, and it was unthinkable. Still holding her gaze, unable to break it, he took a step back, then another.

The distance steadied them. She ran her left hand nervously up and down her right arm, clearing her throat. “Go and see Dr. Hesselius tonight. He’ll be home by six, I should think. His house is directly across from the inn. The First and Last Inn,” she specified—unnecessarily, since there was only one inn in Wyckerley. “You’ll go and see him, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

She nodded, relieved. “And don’t come to work tomorrow. He’ll probably sew up your arm, and you’ll need a few days to rest it.”

“No, I’ll be in tomorrow.”

“But that’s
foolish.
”

He walked to the door. “Will you pay me for the time I spend recovering?”

“Pay you? No. Pay you when you’re not working?” She was nonplussed—honestly bewildered.

“It’s a novel concept,” he conceded mildly. “Coal miners in Durham are striking for it.”

“Striking.”
Her eyes widened in horror; she said the word like a curse.

He couldn’t help smiling. Or saying the word again. “Striking.” He tipped an imaginary hat. “See you on Saturday, Miss Deene,” he said, and left her alone.

VI

Midsummer Day, June twenty-fourth, wasn’t what it used to be. Twenty or thirty years ago, people from all the neighboring villages in St. Giles’ parish flocked to Wyckerley for the annual festival, which in those days had also served as a midyear hiring fair. But that function had gradually fallen into disuse, superseded by bigger, showier fairs in Tavistock and Plymouth, and now Midsummer Day in Wyckerley was chiefly an opportunity for the locals to have a half holiday, gather on the green on a typically glorious day, and amuse themselves with games and entertainments, contests and music, refreshments, a rummage sale, and anything else the All Saints Ladies’ Vestry Committee could think of—because the proceeds of the day went toward financing church programs for the rest of the year.

The rummage sale this year, thanks to a vigorous solicitation campaign for donations led by Anne Morrell and Emmaline Nineways, was, by eleven o’clock in the morning, a rousing success. Villagers eager for bargains scoured the tables set up in the grassy back garden of the vicarage, choosing from a wide array of secondhand treasures. Two items were deemed to be so especially desirable—Captain Carnock’s collection of military memorabilia and a dozen of the blacksmith John Swan’s finest handmade fishing lures—that written bids were being taken on them for an auction to be held at the end of the day.

“I want that camera,” Anne confided out of the side of her mouth as she poured two cups of tea from a heavy urn and handed one to Sophie. “Your cousin bought it in Exeter a year ago and she’s never used it, and now she’s asking
four guineas
for it.”

“Highway robbery,” Sophie agreed, glancing at the item in question, a Knight and Ottewill double-folding camera with a collapsible bellows covered in black waterproof cloth. “How much did she pay for it?”

“Well, that’s not the point, is it? It’s not
new
, and whether she used it or not, the price should reflect that. I think it should be a third lower. To take into account depreciation.”

Sophie smiled at the illogic in her friend’s reasoning. Anne could afford a brand-new camera—she was an heiress—but it was like her to hold out for a bargain on a used one. Especially if she could get the better of Honoria in the process. “What did you contribute to the sale?” Sophie asked her, taking a coin from her pocket and a biscuit from a covered tray. Tea was free at the rummage sale, but biscuits and scones were three pennies apiece.

“You mean besides my backyard? Books, mostly, plus a lot of bric-a-brac and curios that looked as if they’d been gathering dust in the vicarage for a few hundred years. Junk, really,” she admitted, “but I don’t feel guilty about donating it anymore. People are
buying
it, Sophie, and not even haggling over the price.” She broke off to smile and say good morning to Miss Pine and Mrs. Thoroughgood, who were carrying their purchases over to the table where Mrs. Nineways sat, taking money and making change from a biscuit tin. Sophie noticed with satisfaction that Mrs. Thoroughgood was buying the plaster fruit compote she had just this morning convinced Mrs. Bolton she couldn’t bear to see on the dining room sideboard one more day. “What did you contribute?” Anne asked her a moment later.

Sophie made a face. “Clothes, what else? Scarves and hats, the prettiest silk shawl. Kid gloves, four pairs. Two chemisettes I’ve never worn.”

Anne laughed. “You’ve
got
to stop buying these things.”

“I know, I know.” But clothes, Sophie liked to think, were her one and only vice; no dress shop was safe from her, no fashion catalog. The problem was that she rarely went any place fancy enough for her new finery, and as often as not she ended up giving it away.

“Mrs. Morrell, Miss Deene, how lovely to see you!”

It was Jessie Carnock, the captain’s new wife. Whenever she saw her, Sophie marveled anew, for the former Miss Weedie looked less and less each time like the shy, nervous, middle-aged spinster she’d been only four short months ago. Marriage had transformed her. She was
pretty
now, her gray-flecked yellow hair positively girlish in its charming disarray, her rather long, pink-cheeked face full of animation and enthusiasm. “The sale is going so well,” she exclaimed with a little bow—her arms were too full of booty to shake hands. “Someone’s bought my thimble collection, Emmaline couldn’t remember who, and Margaret Mareton just purchased my jade plant—imagine that! It was the captain,” she said confidingly, leaning toward them, “who suggested we might like to donate it.”

“He didn’t care for it?”

“He said it was eating up the hallway!” She laughed merrily, turning her face up to the sky, and the sight was so unusual, so unexpected, Sophie and Anne could only stare at her in amazement. Sobering, she told Anne, “Reverend Morrell’s prayer on the green this morning was very fine, just the right beginning to the day, we all thought.”

“Was it? I didn’t hear it; I was madly setting up tables with Emmaline and the others. I hope he didn’t go on too long.”

“Oh,
no
,” Mrs. Carnock denied, a little shocked. “Not at all, oh, not in the least.”

Eyes twinkling, Anne lowered her voice. “You’ll never guess what Reverend Wilke said to Christy about Midsummer Day.” The ladies bent closer. Reverend Wilke, the fiery Evangelical preacher from Horrabridge, was known for his colorful rhetoric. “He said it was a pagan ritual celebrated by the ungodly, and that from sunup to sundown today Wyckerley will be ‘an abode of moral darkness.’ ”

Sophie laughed; Jessie gasped, then laughed with her. “Well, there is dancing later,” Sophie acknowledged. “Around a
bonfire
, no less.”

“Pure wickedness,” Anne agreed, and they laughed again.

“Sophia!” The sharp falsetto voice put an end to their gaiety; the ladies’ smiles turned formal as they turned to greet Sophie’s cousin Honoria. “Sophia, it’s nearly noon—you must come round to the green, it’s time for Father’s speech.”

“Oh, but I’ve said I’ll help out here at the sale until the singing,” Sophie equivocated. Her uncle’s speeches always made her tired.

“Nonsense, you have to come. It’s expected. Anyway, haven’t you had enough of
commerce
for one morning?” she asked with an artificial laugh, while her dark eyes glided with delicate distaste over the tables of used merchandise and the villagers who were rummaging among them. She disapproved of Midsummer Day as thoroughly as Reverend Wilke, although not on moral grounds: Honoria deplored the opportunity it afforded for this unseemly blurring of social class boundaries that ought, in her very definite opinion, to remain discrete.

Sophie regarded her with tolerant exasperation. In some ways Honoria was a handsome woman, taller than Sophie and with a stately way of carrying herself, shoulders flung back, chin high. She was vain about her thick brown hair, naturally curly, which she arranged in finicky circles across her forehead to mitigate an abnormally high brow. Her color was high, too high, and Sophie wondered sometimes if she toned it down with rice powder. She was nearsighted but wouldn’t wear spectacles; as a consequence, she squinted and blinked at the world when she wasn’t staring at it down the generous length of her sharp-pointed nose.

Sophie protested again, and Honoria pinched her lips together like a darned buttonhole, the stubborn expression she’d been bullying her cousin with since their childhood. “Father will not understand,” she pronounced heavily.

There was a pause.

“I’ll be happy to help out here so you can go and hear the mayor’s speech,” Mrs. Carnock offered sweetly, innocently.

Caught. Avoiding Anne’s humorous eye, Sophie said, “Oh, very well, then.” She thanked Mrs. Carnock with as much grace as she could, and followed her cousin up the flagged path around the vicarage to the green.

Uncle Eustace’s speeches were always the same: intelligent, suitable to the occasion, and slightly condescending. Sophie no longer blushed for him, though. After six years as their mayor and chief magistrate, the villagers were used to him; indeed, he’d grown so adept at projecting his own superiority, most of his constituents had come around to accepting him for exactly what he thought he was: better than them.

“And so, in that very spirit of benevolence and cooperation, we come together today,” he was droning, standing on a platform in front of the stone cross, “gathering as neighbors and as friends, striving as one in this labor of affection and duty to endow for another year the plans and programs of our most beloved church . . .”

Her attention wandered. Under the oak tree across the way, a knot of men, miners from Guelder and Salem, shifted impatiently, anxious to get back to their quoits match. She recognized Tranter Fox and Charles Oldene. Lawrence Brill, her uncle’s mine captain. Big, beefy Roy Donne with his shirt off—trying to impress Cora Swan, no doubt. Her gaze focused suddenly, and she controlled a start. Jack Pendarvis was there—he was one of them.

She’d wondered if he would come. “See you on Saturday,” he’d told her in her office four days ago. All morning, off and on, she’d been looking for him.

Shielding her eyes with her hand, she watched him. He stood out from the others, although she couldn’t have said precisely why. It wasn’t his clothes, which were plain and unremarkable. He was with the men, and yet he was aloof from them, but not because of anything standoffish in his manner. It was something subtler that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but she knew she wasn’t imagining it. She’d noticed it before, in the way the miners treated him—affectionately, but more formally, a little more respectfully. The way men treat a leader.

Then again, perhaps she was imagining it. Deceiving herself, pretending he was different from the others because she wanted him to be,
needed
him to be different in order to justify her interest in him. In reality, he was probably treated differently only because he was a newcomer and the men didn’t know him yet. Yes.

No.

She didn’t know.

He was smiling, saying something to Tranter, hands in his pockets, making scuff marks in the hard-packed earth with the toe of his boot. All of a sudden he lifted his head and looked straight at her. She felt her face heat, realizing it was the intensity of her stare that had drawn his attention. Snared, she couldn’t look away, and her heart pounded in her chest. Was he daring her? No; his eyes were searching and alert, not mocking. The moment stretched to the other side of bearable—and then her uncle saved her by finishing his speech, and Sophie was able to turn away naturally, to clap her hands with the others in polite applause.

But when Honoria started speaking to her, she used her cousin’s straw hat for a screen, behind which she could look at him. He wore a collarless blue shirt with tan trousers and braces. She thought of the day she’d patched him up in her office, that mixture of alarm and excitement she’d felt while she’d done it. It wasn’t the first time she’d played nurse for a miner with cuts and bruises, but it was the first time there had been physical tension between herself and the injured man. Tension so thick she’d felt suffocated by it.

She’d learned from Jenks that Dr. Hesselius had put six stitches in Mr. Pendarvis’s arm, but they hadn’t prevented him from returning to work the next day, just as he’d told her he would. The wound, she saw, hadn’t affected his quoit-throwing ability; fascinated, she watched him stride to the line and take aim at the opposite pin. He had a side-arm delivery she hadn’t seen before—curlers in Wyckerley preferred the underarm throw. The nine-pound quoit sailed high and fast, landing in the clay circle; metal clanged against metal, but Sophie was too far away to see if he’d hit the pin or someone else’s quoit. A cheer went up from the Guelder men gathered around, and Tranter Fox yelled “Two!” A ringer, then.

Honoria’s voice, like a stern schoolteacher’s, finally distracted her. “Sophia, are you looking at those men? Stop it this minute. One of them has his
shirt
off.”

Coloring, Sophie said, “Don’t be so silly,” more sharply than she should have, and turned her back on the curlers. Suddenly her cousin grabbed her forearm and dug in her nails. “Honoria, what—”

“They came,”
she breathed in an ecstatic undertone, staring past Sophie’s right shoulder. “Oh, how gracious, how delightfully condescending. But”—her face changed from awe to worry—“
should
they have come?”

“Who?” Turning, she saw Lord and Lady Moreton, arm in arm, standing near the riverbank while they exchanged words with the mayor.

“No. No,” Honoria decided, “they ought not to have come.”

“Why ever not?” wondered Sophie, who was glad to see them.

Honoria made her
Are you mad?
face. “For heaven’s sake, isn’t it obvious? This is a most
common
occasion, completely beneath Lord Moreton’s notice. The rough element”—she looked around, feigning a slight shudder—“is capable of anything at any moment. No, no, it’s most unseemly of his lordship to attend.”

Sophie sighed with irritation. It wasn’t worth an argument, but she could have pointed out that half of the “rough element” Honoria disparaged were the men and women who worked for her father’s mine, the ones whose honest labor put food on her table and clothes on her back. “Don’t be silly,” Sophie said again, although she knew that was a futile suggestion, and started away to greet the Verlaines. Honoria hurried after her.

In fact, she beat Sophie to them, and had already dropped into a low curtsy when she arrived. “My lord, my lady,” she effused, clutching her hands to her bosom as if overcome with the honor their presence bestowed. “Welcome to—to Midsummer Day,” she said inanely. “Isn’t it a beautiful day? It’s as if the heavens knew you were coming and commanded the weather to be fair.”

It was either smother a laugh or drop through a hole in the ground from embarrassment. Sophie chose the former, and was rewarded by Sebastian Verlaine’s answering grin as he stuck out a forthright hand to shake.

His wife’s smile was subtler and confined to the eyes, but Sophie imagined she was no less tickled by Honoria’s absurdity. “This is a treat for me,” she confided in her low, rather reserved tone of voice. “It reminds me of the Midsummer fair in Ottery St. Mary, the village where I grew up. Once my brother won the smock race, I remember, and the prize was a baby chick. We kept it for a whole year.”