Through the Smoke (17 page)

It had been a week since he’d seen her, and he still couldn’t stop thinking about her. Truman pushed his palms into his eyes, but the vision of Rachel staring up at him in her bookshop remained. He could even smell the soft, clean scent of her skin, taste the sweet fullness of her lips—lips that had once opened for him, responded to him, just like the rest of her had. The night he found her in his bed she’d moaned at his touch, arched into him. It made his pulse race just thinking about it.

But memories of the village bookseller usually bothered him at night, when his bed was empty and cold and he shifted restlessly, wishing for dawn. He had no excuse for staring off into space in the middle of the day!

“Mrs. Poulson!” he snapped, irritated at his lack of self-control. He never should have bedded Rachel. He let his physical desires get the best of him and lost a small piece of his soul in the process. “Mrs. Poulson!”

“Aye, I’m here, m’lord.” His housekeeper stepped into his study from just down the hall, where he had overheard her giving instructions to one of the maids.

“Send Linley for”—he checked his notes—“Mr. Bandoroff. Tell him I want to speak to the man straight away.”

“Aye, m’lord.” She dipped into a shallow curtsy and left, and it was nearly two hours before she reappeared.

“The gentleman you requested is waiting in the front parlor,” she said. “Mr. Linley sent him ahead.”

Truman scooted his chair back. “Ahead? Why? What is Linley doing?”

“Looking after some of your other concerns. His message indicated he will be back shortly.”

“Fine.” Truman gave up on the letter he’d been writing. Perhaps he should head to London and track down his own leads, he thought as he made his way to the winding staircase that led to the first floor. He was growing impatient with those he had hired to look for the paintings. If he were there, in the flesh, people would be more responsive, and things would happen more quickly.

And if he broke away from Blackmoor Hall for a time, perhaps he could forget his fascination with Rachel McTavish.

“M’lord.” Mr. Bandoroff, a short, wiry man Truman had met once before, bowed deeply the moment he entered the room. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face covered with salt-and-pepper whiskers, and he smelled like fish.

Trying to ignore the unpleasant odor, Truman offered him a welcoming nod. “Thank you for coming.”

“’Tis a pleasure, m’lord.”

In an attempt to conceal the degree of his interest in what Mr. Bandoroff might say, Truman crossed to the window. “You make your living off the sea, is that correct?”

“Aye, sir. But I spent nearly twenty years in the mine before that.”

A gentle flurry of snow had begun to fall since lunch. “As a hewer?”

“For the most part. Some days I would like to return. I miss the pay, I do. But the wife, she won’t ’ear of me goin’ back, which is why I’m willin’ to pick up a little extra on the side, workin’ for Mr. Linley.”

Truman turned from the window. “I understand. But it has been ten days or more since Linley hired you to keep an eye on the McTavish cottage, and I have not received a report.”

Bandoroff’s eyes widened. “M’lord? Linley said to let ’im know if anythin’ unusual ’appened, but it has been quiet as a graveyard. What with the shop closed down an’ everybody treatin’ Rachel like she’s got the plague—”

“What?” When Truman stepped forward, Bandoroff moved back by an equal distance.

“Did I say somethin’ wrong, m’lord?”

“The bookshop is closed?”

“Aye. I thought ye knew. Been closed for over a week.”

“But why?”

Bandoroff’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He started to say something, then stopped and shrugged. “Ye got me.”

The fisherman’s body language told Truman he knew exactly why the shop had been closed. He was hesitant to state the reason, which could mean only one thing. “What does its closing have to do with me?”

“You, m’lord?”

“If you want to be paid, you will speak plainly.”

“As you wish.” He cleared his throat. “Ever since word got out that Rachel is yer… well, yer woman, if ye know what I mean, decent folks won’t ’ave anythin’ to do with ’er. I guess she closed up the shop because it wasn’t doin’ ’er any good to keep it open.”

Truman had to tell himself to breathe.
God!
The villagers had turned on Rachel because of him? He remembered her sitting in his drawing room, saying that business had never been better, but even that was a lie. Why? Why had she come to him with some concocted story about her father when she should have been asking for his help? Demanding he take responsibility for what he had done?

Damn her bloody pride! And damn his own foolish thinking. He had taken Rachel’s virginity and then simply walked away, as untouched as she had once accused him of being. Meanwhile, she was suffering the approbation of her friends and neighbors for what had happened that night. “And her little brother?” he asked numbly.

“’E stays with the neighbor while she works at the mine.”

“It’s true.” Linley appeared at the door, a grim look on his face. “I just came from speaking to Mr. Tyndale.”

Truman fought the violent emotions swirling inside him. He wanted to kill Wythe for not telling him that Rachel had come to the mine for work. There were other women there, sorting on the screening belts, but not a lot. Even if she were someone else, it would have been remarkable, something he should have mentioned.

Truman also wanted to get his hands on the person who had spread the news that Rachel was his doxy. They had ruined her reputation and cost her the shop. When he found out who was to blame, he would make them pay dearly. And if it was Wythe… heaven help him. “That will be all, Mr. Bandoroff,” he said. “Linley will compensate you and show you out.”

“Would ye like me to keep watchin’ the cottage, m’lord? It has been awful quiet, like I said, what with Rachel in the pit all day. But ye never know. I would certainly be willin’ to keep—”

“No. That will be all.”

Truman listened to the hum of Linley’s voice grow faint as he saw Bandoroff to the door. Leaning against the wall, he pinched the bridge of his nose while waiting for his butler to return.

“Tell me what happened,” he said as soon as Linley reappeared.

The butler closed the door. “Everyone claims one of Elspeth’s girls started the rumor.”

“How could someone at Elspeth’s have known what happened here, unless Wythe told them?”

“Wythe’s not the only one who lives here, my lord. As you know, servants gossip something terrible.”

Dropping his hands, Truman headed for the door. “Have Arthur ready my horse. I am going to the mine.”

“My lord?”

“You heard me.”

Linley’s lips slanted into a frown. “She won’t thank you for it, my lord. The more you interfere, the worse you make her look.”

Truman whirled around, raising his voice at the aging butler for almost the first time in his life. “And if I don’t? What would that make me? How can I live another day knowing men and women who aren’t worthy to wipe the dust from her feet are ostracizing her, because of me? Because of one blind moment of lust and desperation? How can I eat each meal in luxury knowing she is going without for the sake of her young brother? Even there I am to blame! Had I not used Jacobsen to gain some ground with her, her mother might not have died.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know she was a virgin, Linley. I took something I can never give back. But I will not allow whoever is behind all of this to capitalize on it further.”

Linley’s face filled with worry. “What will you do?”

Truman didn’t answer. His butler would think he was mad. Hell’s fire, he probably
was
mad. But no matter how many times he tried to blame Wythe or someone else for Rachel’s lot, he kept coming back to one irrefutable fact: They couldn’t have ruined her without his help.

And now he was going to do the only thing he could to save her.

Chapter 10

Rachel’s back ached from stooping as she moved through the narrow tunnels, and the muscles in her arms and legs quivered even when she stood still. After three days in the pit working in conjunction with four hewers—Greenley, Henderson, Thornick and Collingood—she wasn’t yet accustomed to the physical demands of her job. As a putter she had to take empty tubs to those working at the coal face, then bring the full ones back to the “flats” or shaft bottom so the coal could be lifted to the surface.

Thanks to Wythe, who, on her second day, had moved her from the relatively comfortable place Tyndale had assigned her, she’d been working Number 14 Stall, an isolated area that traced a narrow seam of coal a quarter of a mile from the shaft bottom. She had been at her new location for nearly six hours, since before dawn, struggling to move wheeled containers that sometimes weighed as much as two hundred pounds. Damp with sweat, her skirts sodden from wading through stagnant pools she couldn’t see in the dim light of her safety lamp, she could scarcely breathe amidst the foul odors that permeated the workings, which mostly came from men who relieved themselves without care or concern for the comfort of those around them.

“This ain’t no tea party, Miss.” The irritation in John Greenley’s voice rained down on her like a rockslide. “Git ter work.”

Rachel stretched her back as best she could, considering the tunnel wasn’t tall enough to stand up in, and shoved off the wall. She needed a few minutes to gather her strength, but the hewers were paid by the amount of coal they extracted. Their object was always the same: to get as much work out of their putters as possible.

“Coming.” She positioned an empty tub next to Greenley and took hold of the full one he had waiting for her.

“I got one what’s ready for ye, too,” Henderson barked, a few feet away.

Rachel acknowledged this with a weary nod before starting off. She pushed her tub across a dead level, followed by a slight rise, another short level, and then an abrupt fall. As usual, she fought to keep the heavy tub from getting away from her on the downhill. Every muscle felt pulled out, and her strength seemed to be running like sweat from her limbs.

When she reached the shaft bottom, where the coal was being loaded onto wagons, she grabbed her flask and swallowed a mouthful of tea, lukewarm but refreshing. Then she started dragging an empty tub back to Number 14.

A broad-shouldered fellow with Herculean biceps dipped his head when he saw her. They were both putters and had passed each other several times but had never spoken. Now he said, “After my first few days on this job, I thought I was dead.”

At the moment, Rachel wished she were. If not for Geordie, she would have given up.

Or maybe not. Wythe wanted to break her. He was trying to punish her for rejecting him, or hitting him, or both. But he deserved a good knock to the head, and Rachel couldn’t regret having delivered one. Maybe she was at his mercy now, but her body would grow accustomed to the labor. Somehow she would withstand it.

Sparing a grateful smile for her fellow putter, she summoned what energy she had left. “I suppose one gets used to it.”

“Aye, but it takes time.” He followed her partway back, pausing where the tunnel forked. “Look, if ye get behind, I’ll catch ye up if I can.”

“Thank you.” That simple kindness, amid all the hours of crude language and jibes she had suffered so far, gave Rachel the emotional lift she needed. But as soon as he saw her, Greenley started in on her again, complaining about her slowness. Doing her best to bear his tirade in silence, she wrestled another tub around to get it moving.

“Yer placin’ yer floor supports too far apart,” Collingood charged Greenley. “If ye don’t take care, yer goin’ ter cause a cave-in!”

“Bugger you. I know what I’m doin’,” Greenley mumbled.

Shaking his head in disgust, Collingood went back to using his shovel, but the exchange was enough to make Rachel glance uncertainly above her. Tommy had died in a cave-in. The thought of being buried beneath a thousand pounds of dirt and rock was enough to make the darkness seem more palpable, the passage narrower. Especially because she had no confidence in Greenley. Was he really setting the roof supports too far apart? He hadn’t been a hewer more than a few months and had less experience than the seasoned Collingood—or Thornick and Henderson, for that matter. Even worse, he struck Rachel as a man who was long on confidence and short on brains.

“My father always used ter say pit work’s more than ’ewing. Ye’ve got ter coax the coal along,” Thornick shouted over the
thwack
of their picks.

“Ye ’ave ter know yer place like a mother knows ’er young ’uns,” Henderson agreed, but neither man took up Collingood’s argument.

Rachel opened her mouth to say something just as Greenley maneuvered his mammoth-size body around to glare her down. Even in the dimness, she could see the scowl etched on his flat face.

“Any reason yer standin’ around like ye got all day?” he demanded.

“No, it’s just that I… that I—” She noticed a pile of dirt and rock had tumbled down from the ceiling not five yards away and swallowed against the sudden dryness of her throat. “I agree with Collingood,” she finished. “You might be setting the roof supports too far apart.”