Sherbourne delivered a few sincere blows to his pillow. His explanation had sounded like Haverford giving a Boxing Day speech at the punch bowl. Sherbourne had bathed thoroughly before leaving the house that morning, and in the normal course would have bathed again before retiring.
He was married now, and the normal course was nothing but a fond memory.
* * *
“I know you’re awake,” Sherbourne said, stretching his chin up and scraping a razor along his throat.
“I’m admiring the view,” Charlotte replied, from the cozy haven of the bed. Some of the leaden fatigue of travel had eased, and she’d shared a bed with her husband for the first time. She was also getting her first look at him naked from the waist up. “You don’t use a valet in the morning?”
Sherbourne tapped the razor against a porcelain basin and took another smooth swipe over his throat and jaw.
“I did without a manservant for years, and Turnbull has enough to do seeing to my wardrobe. You don’t snore.”
“Neither do you, though you talk in your sleep.”
He shot her an amused look in the mirror, as near as she could tell. His left cheek was still covered with lather. “I do not.”
“You mutter about timbers, ventilation, and hoses. Very romantic.”
“Very profitable, I hope. Would you like to see the colliery today?”
Charlotte would like to see her husband without his breeches. She was reassured to learn that she found him attractive in a semi-undressed state. Very attractive.
“I would, if it’s not too much bother.”
“No bother at all.” He was soon finished shaving, and donning a shirt and waistcoat.
Charlotte climbed out of bed to tie his cravat, and from a tray on his vanity she chose a simple silver pin to secure it.
“This is the most subdued waistcoat you own.” Plain black, though silk-lined and well made. He had several more like it in the wardrobe—dark green, grey, brown. Charlotte had gone through his clothes press as well, finding that fewer than half of his waistcoats adhered to the peacock style of his London attire.
“A colliery is a monument to dirt, or mud depending on the season. You’ll take a chill without your dressing gown.”
Charlotte was wearing a lawn nightgown that fell below her knees. Before she could assure Sherbourne that she was warm enough, he’d draped her night robe over her shoulders, though she caught him glancing down and then fixing his gaze over her head.
Oh. Oh. “Do we ride or drive to the colliery?” Charlotte asked, finding the robe’s sleeves.
“Drive, given the dampness.”
Heulwen interrupted with the tea cart, and an awkward moment arose as Sherbourne grumbled about the kitchen forgetting his damned tea in their haste to impress the lady of the house.
“Share my chocolate,” Charlotte suggested, taking a seat at the table by the window. “I’m sure the teapot will be on the tray tomorrow.”
“It had better be,” Sherbourne muttered, taking the opposite chair. “How soon can you be ready to leave?”
Charlotte set down her chocolate and threw caution to the wind. “If you’ll lace me up, fifteen minutes after we finish our meal.” Husbands did that. Charlotte had been assured of same by no less than three sisters and five cousins.
The look Sherbourne gave her was wary and intrigued. “Lace you up.”
“If you insist that we share a bedchamber, then you’d best be prepared to make yourself useful. I tied your cravat, and I assume you’re capable of dealing with my stays. They’re not complicated.”
Sherbourne applied strawberry jam to a triangle of toast and set it on Charlotte’s plate. “I can manage your stays. Wear boots. The colliery will be a swamp given all the rain here lately.”
Charlotte served him eggs, they shared the pot of chocolate, and the meal progressed in domestic tranquility. Sherbourne excused himself to let the stables know to hitch up the landau, and Charlotte chose an older carriage dress that was more comfortable than stylish.
As it happened, Heulwen came back to collect the tea cart, so Charlotte prevailed on the maid for assistance with her stays. When Sherbourne returned, Charlotte was putting the finishing touches on her coiffure, a simple knot secured with pins.
“You managed without me,” he said.
“I gather time is of the essence,” Charlotte replied, rising. “Shall we be off?”
He held the door, and Charlotte could read nothing in his gaze. Not relief, but not disappointment either.
Chapter Eight
Somewhere between pummeling the pillow, staring at the bed canopy by the hour, falling asleep to the sound of Charlotte’s sighs, and waking in a state of procreative readiness well before dawn, Sherbourne had had a brilliant insight.
He was a married man.
As Charlotte had said, no sensible person arrived to the married state free of all misgivings. His misgivings were the sort that would abate with time or grow worse. He couldn’t think himself into trusting Charlotte’s regard for him, and he couldn’t talk himself out of his regard for her.
He’d offered for her because he was convinced they’d suit. She’d refused him, and then she’d changed her mind. Women changed their minds all the time, as did men.
Charlotte had put up with being hauled away from her family on her very wedding day.
She’d barely scolded Sherbourne for neglecting her on her first day in her new home.
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 st
one 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.
“I miss her smiles, her cooking, her—well, yes, ma’am. After twenty-two years of marriage, I miss my Florrie powerfully.”
“So you understand why the masons really ought to finish at least a portion of the houses before they start on your tram, don’t you? The men will be happier if they’re not pining for their families, and I’m sure Mrs. Jones would have agreed with me that happy fellows do better work. Of course, a temporary dormitory for the bachelors could be erected fairly quickly, but I’m sure Mr. Sherbourne has discussed that with you.”
Mr. Sherbourne was staring at his closed watch, though Charlotte knew he was listening.
“Right,” Mr. Jones said. “A dormitory for the bachelors, who are always the first to come around looking for work, and usually the least skilled, which means they are exactly the fellows to build my tram line.”
“We’ll discuss it later.” Sherbourne shoved his watch into its pocket. “I’ve promised my wife a tour of the premises, and unless I want her to get a soaking in the process, I’d best be about keeping my word.”
Charlotte sent a wistful look at all the figures, charts, and tabulations. “A pleasure, Mr. Jones.”
Sherbourne had her out of the tent in the next three seconds. “A bachelor’s dormitory isn’t in the budget.”
“You expected all of your employees to be married?”
“I’m guilty of an oversight. A budgetary oversight.”
Budgetary oversights apparently numbered among the deadly sins. “This is your first mine. How can you expect to get every detail right?”
This was Charlotte’s first marriage, but she suffered the same need to appear competent that plagued her husband.
“Because it’s not my first business, and all businesses require labor. Did I think the men would sleep in the trees?” He paced along in silence for some twenty yards. “This is why I should have taken on a partner sooner.”
A partner—not a wife. “I beg your pardon?”
“A partner, somebody who knows mining, as Lord Brantford does. I don’t bother with tenant farms because I know little about farming. What to plant where and in what order, when to fallow, when to graze sheep in the valley, when to move them up to the hillsides. I have no interest in such undertakings, so I rent out my acres year-to-year to those who know what they’re about.”
“You do have an interest in mining?” Charlotte did, and she’d been at the colliery less than an hour.
“I thought I did, but what sort of mine owner forgets that his men need a warm place to sleep between shifts?”
Charlotte let her imagination roam over the heavy carts stacked upside down in a neat bank, huge spools of cable sitting under an open-sided tent, the small mountain of gravel piled at
the top of a grade where houses would someday sit. The site was muddy and deserted on this bleak autumn day, but in six months, it would be bustling with people and productivity.
“Might I have a look at your site plan, Mr. Sherbourne? If the children are using your schoolhouse during the day, the bachelors can set up cots and make a dormitory of it overnight.”
“My schoolhouse,” he muttered, gazing off at the pile of gravel. “I suppose my lending library will be housed in the same palatial edifice?”
“A lending library can be a few shelves of books to begin with,” Charlotte said, taking his arm, “just as a mine can be a few sketches and some ambition. Do you have unoccupied tenant cottages on your land?”
“Three. My last tenants left a year ago.”
“Then use one of those tenant cottages for your schoolhouse dormitory, or demolish the largest cottage and put the materials to use here.”
Sherbourne looped his arms around Charlotte’s shoulders and drew her against him. Nobody was about, though Mr. Jones was shouting in the tent thirty yards away.
Charlotte held her husband, the experience novel, for all she’d done it before. They stood in the middle of a muddy, unattractive work site, under a grey, forbidding sky, and nothing of desire colored their embrace.
But something of marriage did, something of hope.
“I have a set of site plans at the house,” Sherbourne said. “I’ll be happy to show them to you. The best view of the works is from the top of that hill. Shall we have a look?”
He kept her hand in his all the way up to the summit. The trek wasn’t steep, but the way was wet and the wind became sharper the higher they climbed. When they reached the hilltop, Sherbourne spoke for a long time, about his reasons for choosing the site and for laying it out as he had.
When he pointed over Charlotte’s shoulder to indicate where the tram tracks would run, Charlotte relaxed back against him.
His arm came around her waist, and he fell silent, a warm, solid wall of husband at her back.
A Rogue of Her Own Page 11