The neat rectangles of twine that had marked out the longest row of houses had been obliterated as well, while the rest of the site remained unchanged.
The sun chose now to shine so brightly as to hurt Charlotte’s eyes, though the breeze was cold. That chill reinforced a sense that she should not have come, should not have intruded into matters she knew so little about.
“Pull up next to the large white tent,” Charlotte said. “The one all the shouting is coming from.”
In the privacy of their domiciles, Windhams occasionally raised their voices, though Charlotte did not deal well with being shouted out. Sherbourne had left the house within ten minutes of waking, Turnbull at his side, while Charlotte had stood about in her husband’s dressing gown and worried. An hour later, somebody had sent a note: No fatalities, extensive damage.
Charlotte thought she recognized Sherbourne’s handwriting, but the only time she’d seen it previously had been when he’d signed documents following the wedding ceremony.
An hour more of pacing and fretting, and Charlotte had made up her mind to cease dithering and do something.
“Heulwen, you and Morgan see to the food.”
One of the tent flaps had been tied back. Inside, Mr. Jones was marching about and waving his hands, while Sherbourne stood with one shoulder against the central tent pole. He wore no cravat, no top hat, and his boots were caked with mud.
“Hillsides do as they damned well please,” Jones said. “We build walls and God laughs. If I’m tempted to skimp on materials, I’ll skimp on the materials for the damned palaces you want to build for your workers, not on the simplest wall ever to be overcome by mud.”
Sherbourne visually tracked Jones’s peregrinations while Charlotte slipped into the tent. The piles of paper she’d tidied and organized on her last visit were once again in disarray, with stacks held down by rocks, a pen tray, an abacus, and other makeshift paperweights.
“If that wall had chosen to give way later this autumn, a dozen households would have been buried in mud,” Sherbourne said. “How can I trust you to build a safe mine when you can’t manage a single retaining wall?”
Jones strutted up to him. “I told you when I signed on here that I’m a mining engineer, not a perishing architect. I deal with the insides of the hills, not a lot of bloody landscaping.”
Charlotte let the foul language go unremarked, for at some point in this altercation, Mr. Jones had unearthed the calculations upon which the construction of the wall was based. While Jones ranted about timbers and cross-stabilization, she took a seat and studied the figures she’d found under an unlit carrying candle.
“The men can live in damned tents,” Jones went on. “You don’t need to build the houses before you sink the shafts. What kind of businessman builds a village before his colliery is making any money?”
“One who wants his mine to attract only the best talent, the hardest workers, the most trustworthy crews in Wales. Why should any competent miner bestir himself to leave his post and join my crew, if I’m offering him less protection from the elements than I expect for my horse?”
“Why should he expect any different?” Jones stuck his nose in Sherbourne’s face. “You can find an experienced miner a whole lot more cheaply than you can a well-trained horse. A simpleton can work the mines.”
“The men might disagree with you,” Sherbourne said with ominous quiet, “though the next thing to a simpleton should have been able to design a retaining wall that held up for more than a few months.”
Sherbourne’s words lashed the air. For the first time, Charlotte glimpsed why people gave her a husband a wide berth. The view was intimidating.
Also impressive.
Chapter Eleven
To Charlotte’s relief, Mr. Jones had the sense to take a step back. “I checked my calculations, Mr. Sherbourne. I don’t do shoddy work. I measured the land, did the math, and made allowances for the soil containing a disproportionate share of rocks, and then I used only sound timbers in sufficient quantity for the mass involved.”
A silence stretched, as Jones produced a flask and tipped it up to his mouth.
“You did not account for the weight of the water in the soil,” Charlotte said. “Your figures for the soil were likely correct, but water weighs on the order of 1,674 pounds per cubic yard. Mr. Sherbourne’s treatises all more or less agree on that figure. Your wall held up until the rains came in quantity.”
Both men stared at her. Mr. Sherbourne in particular did not look pleased to see her, though if he intended to upbraid her for intruding into his business, he’d apparently do so at home behind a closed door.
Which was in a way worse. Charlotte held the calculations out to Jones. “You made no allowance for the incessant rain.”
Jones snatched the papers from her. “The water doesn’t stay in the soil. It percolates, drains down deeper into the earth, or evaporates.”
“With as much wet weather as we’ve had,” Sherbourne said, pushing away from the support, “the soil hasn’t been draining. The lanes and pastures are full of standing water. Mrs. Sherbourne’s explanation makes sense, and rain water probably isn’t a factor in most of your subterranean calculations.”
Jones set the figures aside. “I am a mining engineer, and I stand by my figures. Why have those men stopped digging?”
Across the expanse of supplies sitting under tarps, beyond the muddy lane, the men had jabbed their shovels into the great heap of earth and left their work.
“I brought food,” Charlotte said. “Hot soup, bread, butter, cheese, and ale. I suspect you both could use some sustenance.”
“I could at that,” Jones said, slapping a hat onto his head. “A pint or three of ale won’t go amiss either.”
He stormed past Charlotte, and she was abruptly alone with her muddy, scowling husband.
“How do you know what a cubic yard of anything weighs?” Sherbourne knelt by a parlor stove at the far end of the tent and tossed more coal onto the flames. “I barely know what a cubic yard of dirt weighs, and I own this colliery. Such as it is.”
He wasn’t shouting, wasn’t castigating her for her presence. He also wasn’t convinced by her assessment of the calculations. Charlotte was confident of her explanation, even if her marriage was feeling a bit tentative.
Or more than a bit.
She kept to her seat, a lesson she’d learned from Aunt Esther. Kings and queens ruled from their thrones, not that Sherbourne was Charlotte’s subject.
“I like numbers,” she said, “and weights and measures don’t change. If I have occasion to learn one, it sticks with me. According to the treatises in your library, the weight of soil can vary greatly, depending on rocks, as Mr. Jones noted, or how much sand is in the earth. Water is always water.”
Sherbourne shut the parlor stove door and stared at the flames dancing behind the glass. “This entire project turns on Jones being as competent as his reputation suggested. I’m paying him a fortune, though all I do is argue with him, and now this.” Sherbourne rose stiffly and stood in the middle of the tent looking weary and lost in the thought.
Brooding, which would not do. This bewildered, angry specimen was the same man who’d been so patient with Charlotte last night, so generous, and intimate. She untied the tent flap and put her arms around her husband.
“The rains have been severe,” she said. “Mining engineers probably design many retaining walls, but not above ground. Shall I have a look at his other calculations?”
“He’ll quit on the spot, and I’m tempted to let him go.”
“Then you’ll get an undeserved reputation for being difficult to work for,” Charlotte said. “May I bring you some lunch?”
Let me help. Let me matter to you. She would not beg, neither would she give up.
Sherbourne smelled of wet earth and coal smoke, a far cry from the freshly bathed, scrubbed, and shaved husband Charlotte had shared a bed with last night. His shape was the same, all lean muscle on long bones.