Page 94 of Not Quite a Lady
Trying hard not to catch Jack’s eye, and pretending she could not hear Penny’s stifled giggles, Lily followed the family party into the castle.
All very mysterious, the attraction of one human being to another. At least one could be sure that the worthy Mr Willoughby was unlikely to be making love to his betrothed on the drawing room carpet.
She felt the colour mount in her cheeks at the memory ofJack’s lovemaking on that wonderful evening. Was it better to have tasted such passion and then to have lost it, or never to have known it at all?
‘You are looking very thoughtful.’ Jack was watching her steadily, the dark gaze seeming to touch her skin like a whisper.
‘I was thinking what a momentous step it was for them, and hoping they will be happy.’
‘So was I.’ Jack lifted her hand in his, frowning down at it as it lay within his open fingers. His thumb rubbed idly across her palm and Lily shivered, but made no move away. ‘She has a knack of knowing what will make her happy, my sister, I have rarely found her mistaken. I only wish I had the same talent.’
Lily was still brooding over Jack’s dark mood the next morning when Caroline caught her after breakfast. ‘Would you like to go to the pithead today?’
‘That is kind, but surely you will be spending the day with Mr Willoughby?’
‘Jack has ridden over to see George so they can discuss tiresome things like settlements and endowments and reversions and goodness knows what else.’
Caroline smiled wistfully. ‘George will not even discuss the date for the wedding until all that is settled. He is mortified that I cajoled him into proposing before he had spoken to Jack. George,’ she added, with a hint of pride, ‘is very concerned for good form.’
‘Er, yes. I can tell.’ Lily could think of nothing to say to that.
Caroline’s eyes twinkled wickedly. ‘You are thinking that he is unlikely to prove very passionate?’ Lily, stumbled into a hasty denial, but Caroline simply smiled. ‘I think part of the attraction for me is the thought of breaching those walls of propriety.’
‘Forgive me, but perhaps underneath the propriety Mr Willoughby really is not…er…is not very passionate.’
‘Oh yes he is,’ Caroline whispered as they entered Lily’s bedchamber. ‘Very.’
She looked around to make sure none of the maids were within earshot. ‘I pretended I had to dismount because my stirrup leather was twisted, so he helped me down and so we were standing very close together – and he kissed me!’
‘That was all?’
‘Well, yes. But it waswonderful, my toes tingled.’
Lily rang for Janet and changed into stout boots, reflecting that it was a very good thing that the sheltered Miss Lovell had no idea of what her guest had been doing with her brother. Kissing Jack led to rather more than tingling toes.
Lily gave herself a brisk shake and, picking up her heaviest cloak, ran to join Caroline who had taken the reins of a sturdy cob in the shafts of a gig.
‘Have you ever been below ground?’ Lily asked, watching the plume of smoke come closer.
‘Goodness, no,’ Caroline forked off the main track and took a smaller one over the shoulder of the hill.
‘But women work down the pit, don’t they?’
‘Yes, but it is rough, dirty work. There is no safe, clean way to view a mine. I’m afraid. Here it is.’
They had come little more than a mile and entered a different world. Great piles of slag formed a wall around the area, like black battlements. Stone huts and bigger buildings were scattered, seemingly haphazardly, and what appeared to Lily’s fascinated eye to be a horde of figures went about their business in the midst of mud, straining wagon-teams, trucks on rails, groups of weary, filthy men and gaggles of children.
Near the centre of the chaos – which as she watched, she realised was in fact perfectly orderly in its way – the stone chimney rose over the engine house and from it cables snaked out and over a structure with a great wheel laid sideways at thetop of it.
‘Winding gear.’ Caroline pointed. ‘It takes the workers up and down and also the corves of coal. Not both at once of course – if that happens there is a dreadful coming-together and people get hurt. The miners call it a wedding.’
She flicked the reins and the cob made its way through the outskirts of the area to where a sturdy building stood. ‘We will see if William Sykes, the manager, is in,’ Caroline explained. ‘He will show us around.’
The manager obviously kept a sharp eye on his kingdom and he was at the door before they reached it, doffing his hat when he saw who it was. ‘Miss Lovell, good day to you, ma’am. What can I be doing for you?’
Lily found she had to concentrate to understand him. His accent had a strong burr to it, and he rolled his r’s like a Frenchman.
‘This is Miss France, a visitor from London, who is interested in mining, Mr Sykes. I was hoping you might have time to show her around.’
