She’d worried about him.
The image that stayed with Sherbourne on the chilly drive to the colliery was Charlotte, barefoot, her nightgown dipping low across her bosom, while she tied a neat Mathematical knot in his cravat. She’d fashioned it perfectly the first time, though even Turnbull occasionally resorted to fresh linen to get the look just so.
The confluence of emotions assailing Sherbourne as Charlotte had knotted his cravat had been uncomfortable: desire, affection, protectiveness, tenderness, joy, and some messy, inconvenient yearning that blended all of the above. Maybe Haverford had a word for it, not that Sherbourne would inquire.
“Can we see the works from the house?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes, though only from the upper floors of the east wing. By the lanes, the distance is nearly a mile and a half. Across the fields, it’s less than a mile.”
“I read about coal mining yesterday. You have many books on the subject.”
Was that a rebuke for leaving her unattended? “Feel free to add to the library so the collection reflects your interests as well as mine.”
“Elizabeth is the bookworm. Has she driven you daft with her lending library scheme?”
“Yes.” Daft and somewhat short of coin. Sherbourne had agreed to finance Her Grace’s charitable libraries in part as consideration for Haverford’s acceptance of the mine.
“Then you must assign the library project duties to me,” Charlotte said. “Elizabeth means well, but I won’t allow her to ride roughshod over common sense. She’d turn every schoolchild into a literary critic and leave the nation devoid of farmers, laundresses, and other useful people.”
“You have no interest in libraries.”
“Neither do you.”
A gentleman didn’t argue with a lady when she was right. Instead Sherbourne handed his wife down from the landau carefully, making quite certain she had her footing before he dropped his hands from her waist.
As she linked arms with him, he came to another brilliant insight, this one not half so cheering: Their marriage would best be consummated at the time and place of Charlotte’s choosing. For both of their sakes, she should not merely endure his attentions, but welcome them.
“You’re constructing houses of stone?” Charlotte asked, as he guided her along a gravel path. “That has to be costing a fortune.”
The “works” were a warren of cart tracks, stacked supplies, excavations, and tents. Heavy machinery sat under tarps, and some of the property was staked with ropes and cords. An enormous pile of building stone lay in a great, grey heap beyond the tents.
Why on earth had he thought she might be interested in any of it?
“We have lumber here in Wales,” Sherbourne said, “unlike most of England, but we have stone in greater abundance. Stone dwellings will last, whereas anything constructed of wood falls prey to the elements. Besides, stonemasons are easier to find locally than carpenters, and local craftsmen will do a better job than itinerants.”
“You’ve even accounted for kitchen gardens.” Tidy rectangles had been laid out with twine behind where the long rows of houses would stand.
“Haverford’s idea, and we’re to have hogs, sheep, and chickens, also a few dairy cows. The colliery will be an estate of sorts, an experiment.”
A young man trotted forth from one of the tents. “Beg pardon, Mr. Sherbourne, Mr. Hannibal Jones would like a moment, if you can spare the time.”
“Tell Mr. Jones—” Sherbourne began.
“Tell Mr. Jones that Mr. Sherbourne will be along directly,” Charlotte said.
The lad tugged his cap and darted back the way he’d come.
“I spent all of yesterday with Mr. Jones,” Sherbourne said, “and I left him with a list of tasks that’s so long, he ought not have the time to bother me today.”
“You could hire a manager.”
Well, no, Sherbourne could not. The basic idea—dig a hole, haul out the coal—was complicated by issues of drainage, ventilation, safe accumulation of the slag, and safe construction of the shafts. Miners—women and children included—died every year as a result of tunnels collapsing, flooding, or catching fire. Slag heaps in the wrong position caused landslides, and abandoned shafts filled with water that then flooded the working portions of the mine.
Even the housing area had a substantial retaining wall behind it, reinforcing the steep rise of a hillside.
“I will not hire a manager,” Sherbourne said. “Not yet. Managers have a way of creating more problems than they solve when an undertaking is getting started. They make independent decisions when they should consult me and fail to show initiative about trivial matters. When the mine is producing a profit, then I’ll find somebody trustworthy to oversee daily operations.”
Above all else, managers cost money.
“Deal with Mr. Jones,” Charlotte said. “I’ll be fine on my own.”
Sherbourne would not be fine. “Rescue me in about five minutes, please. Jones likes to spout numbers for the sake of impressing his audience.”
“I’ll count the timbers in yonder stack,” Charlotte said. “Or pace off the distance between the last house and the first garden. I like how geometrical this place is and I can’t wait to see it when it’s a working mine. Where will you put the schoolhouse?”
What schoolhouse? “Haven’t decided yet. Perhaps you’ll have some ideas.”
She smiled at him, Sherbourne smiled back, and then—because a newly married man should be allowed to express a bit of affection for his wife when on his own property—he brushed a kiss to her cheek.
“Five minutes, madam.” He moved off toward the main tent, though something—perhaps a lady’s gloved hand—brushed softly over his fundament before he’d taken the first step.
*
Charlotte saw a side of her husband at the colliery she would never have glimpsed in the library or the bedroom: Sherbourne was passionate about his mining venture.
All the fire and focus he could bring to a kiss expressed itself just as eloquently when he waxed poetical about cables, steam power, tram tracks, and drainage. His vision went on for miles and decades, to the point that his works would someday have a private dock for loading coal directly onto coastal barges.
The mine was still mostly equipment and raw materials stacked under tarps, but Charlotte could smell that watchword of commerce in the air—progress.
She slipped into the tent perhaps fifteen minutes after parting from her husband and eavesdropped on an argument between Sherbourne and a white-haired, red-faced terrier of a man who seemed irate about the masons’ schedule.
The tent was ringed with tables, and on every available surface lay maps, graphs, bills of lading, and technical drawings. All quite lovely—quite numerical.
“The damned miners can sleep in tents,” the smaller man was saying, as Charlotte perched on a stool. “They’re accustomed to dwelling in the very bowels of the earth. Put the masons to building the tram now, so you’ll have it ready to go in the spring.”
Charlotte ran her finger down a timber merchant’s bill. “Language, Mr. Jones.”
Both men looked up sharply, as if she’d materialized from the celestial beyond.
“Beg your pardon, ma’am. Humbly beg your pardon.”
Charlotte rose. “Mr. Sherbourne, won’t you introduce us?”
Her husband obliged and stood by silently while Charlotte asked Mr. Jones a few questions. How had he chosen the scale upon which to draw his elevations? What had first interested him in engineering and how had he been trained? Was there a Mrs. Hannibal Jones?
“Gone these five years, God rest her soul.”
Sherbourne took out a gold pocket watch, flicked it open, then snapped it closed.
“You must miss her very much,” Charlotte said.