Unnerved, Mairey made her way around the brute, almost certain that she had no ulterior motives for stroking him repeatedly—quite apart from the hard-packed brawn. “I’ll do my best to keep them away from your house. But I cannot absolutely guarantee that you won’t find honey on the greenhouse door.”
“Drakestone will survive, Miss Faelyn.” His voice rumbled against the palm of her hand. “I had young sisters of my own once.”
“Did you?” Ah, then he was used to the changeable fancies of little girls; he would have learned patience under their constant disruptions. “I have just the three, but they often seem like twice that. How many do you have?”
He shook his head and left her for the hearth, giving a dry laugh as he crushed the maple leaf in his hand. “Three. Imagine my surprise when I found yours in my lodge. I thought for a moment—”
But he stopped there, on the very brink of something that Mairey couldn’t see beyond. He seemed altogether tame now, curled up in defeat. Weary to his soul. And for some unfathomable reason, she wanted to wrap her arms around him and put his head against her heart. It pained her immeasurably to think of him asleep outside her window when there had been so much room inside.
“Your sisters must be grown and married by now.”
He nodded, staring at the flames, but offered nothing more.
“Do you see them often?”
“I haven’t for a very long time.” He tossed the wadded leaf into the hearth and turned to her. “Look, Miss Faelyn, I…I waited for you outside the lodge because I didn’t want to interrupt the felicitous scene I had leveled with my earlier outburst. I was going to knock as soon as you’d put your sisters to bed. So I listened and waited—”
“And fell asleep.”
He nodded, sighed with the breath he’d been holding. “It was a long day.”
She wanted to ask more about his family, but he’d obviously closed the subject. “What was it you wanted of me?”
“This. What I’m trying to say now. That I overreacted and I’m sorry for it. That I won’t gobble up your sisters or your aunt should I come upon them in the garden. And that I won’t fall upon you in a rage thinking that you’re destroying evidence. That would be absurd, when both of us are chasing the same thing.”
“Yes. Well.” A little snake turned in Mairey’s stomach, cobalt blue and glass-eyed. Deception wasn’t the most ennobling skill, even when practiced against one’s greatest adversary. “Come, then. I’ll show you what I was looking at just now.”
Mairey knelt in front of the hearth and added a handful of kindling. The fire brightened and snapped as Rushford joined her on one knee.
She extended the page of washed-out ink. “I read at least a hundred letters today. I’d just begun to read this one.”
“There’s nothing on it.”
“So it seems, until you hold the paper just so against a—Dear God!” Mairey’s heart slammed up against her throat. She brought the page closer, and then back again so the runny blue coalesced into sharper lines. “Adam Runville! It’s him!”
“Who?” Rushford squinted closer and closed his hand over hers to keep the page steady. “Where do you see a name?”
Oh, Papa! Just like that! First Henrietta’s papers and now the keeper of the woman’s treasury! And here she was, blurting out his name with Rushford looking on, holding her hand, letting her pulse run wild with his. She’d grown too comfortable with the man, forgetting to temper her excitement, to shield her successes from him. There was nothing to be done now.
“Here,” she said, pointing to the first line in the letter. “Adam Runville—the captain of Henrietta’s guards.”
“I see blurred blue. And I don’t read French. You’ll have to read it to me.”
Of course! She’d forgotten—another artifice to employ against him. She sniffed away the blink of guilt. It didn’t matter that the man was unwavering heat, or that he had fallen asleep under her window, listening to her fairy tales—he was her nemesis. There was no other word for his relationship to her. And no hope for anything better between them.
“It says, ‘Dearest husband of my soul, our favorite Runville de Donowell left Windsor this night with ten carts, and under God’s good grace, should make Aylmouth in a fortnight.’” Mairey still couldn’t believe their great good fortune, couldn’t have predicted Rushford’s part in these miracles.
He handed back the page and studied her face. “You’re certain this is Henrietta’s infamous shipment of the treasury?”
Mairey always felt borne up off the ground when he watched her, as though her hair were lighter, and her eyelids kissed.
“Of course I’m not entirely certain.” All that lightness made it a little difficult to breathe, and whenever she managed to do so, his scent thrilled her. “But here Henrietta writes that the shipment was bound for Holland. The very place where two similar transactions happened in the course of the war. Runville is one of the few who could have stolen an entire cart from a caravan without anyone suspecting.”
Rushford rasped his knuckle along his jawline, across the midnight sheen of his day-old beard. “There’s a Donowell on the coast in Northumberland. It was on your map of items already recovered.”
“Yes.” She knew that, was already planning a secret excursion without him. But not until she’d found Runville’s will, and she needed to do that without Rushford eavesdropping. “The evidence piles up against our Baron de Donowell, doesn’t it?”
“So it seems.” He was still on one knee, the other bent firmly, his fine leg collecting hearth light along its length. “What next, madam?”
It was difficult to think of ways to outflank him while he was tangling his fingers in the ends of her hair. “If Runville died during the Interregnum, then his will was probated in London and will hopefully be in the Tower. I’ll go back there tomorrow. And the day after….”
He laughed lightly. “You’re quite marvelous, Mairey Faelyn.” It was a simple statement made breathtaking when he began to trace the line of her cheekbone with his hand. “Softer than I imagined.”
A week ago she would have scorned him; tonight she dammed up an immodest sigh and braved the alluring pleasure, looked up at him and into those flame-brightened eyes.
“Do you imagine such things, Rushford?”
His answer was to touch his fingers to his mouth. “Honey,” he said.
She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right—surely not an endearment. “What?”
He smiled down on her, catlike, indulgent.
“You have honey on your cheek, Miss Faelyn, and here on your lips—” Because he’d put it there with his fingertip, and now followed after with his mouth and then the tip of his tongue—a grazing of lightning that dazed her, made her take hold of his lapel to keep her balance.
“You taste of honey, madam.”
“Do I?” Are you sure? Please do try again. Mairey’s heart was a scramble of thumps and pauses, made useless by the man’s utterly ravenous smile.
“Far sweeter than my imaginings, my dear.” He was breathing unsteadily, a sheen of dampness gilding his forehead. “That being so, Miss Faelyn—and my manners sorely lacking—before I take you back to the safety of the lodge, I’d like to know of this Princess Gwynella person—”
“From the fairy tale?” Mairey’s head was spinning; he was still so close, still tracing her mouth with his fingers, as though he might sample there again.
“Tell me the woman doesn’t take up with the prince. He was an ass.”
Mairey’s heart swelled; she nearly kissed him. He hadn’t heard the end of the story. Her impossible dragon must have fallen asleep even before Caro had.
“The Enchanter came after the princess, my lord. Married her on the spot.”
He nodded sagely, satisfied. “Wise man.”
“Steel, Rushford?” Herringham laced his fingers together and settled his hands on top of his briefcase. “I am advising against such an investment.”
“Noted, Herrin
gham.” Jack slid his gaze along the ridge of stiff-faced men sitting like blackbirds around the conference table in his office at Drakestone. “However, the 25,000 pounds is mine to invest, not yours.”
“But sir, Bessemer’s invention has yet to be thoroughly tested. British hand-forged iron, replaced by mass-produced steel? Preposterous! What of your own forges? They’ll need to be refitted.”
“Exactly—and as soon as possible. Here you’ll find Richmond’s engineering drawings, showing how my factories will be quickly changed over to the new process. We’ve already begun negotiations to purchase Wright & Sons Tooling. Show them, Richmond.”
“Certainly, Jack.” Richmond had spent the entire day on his feet, pacing, pointing, commenting. He was Jack’s best mining engineer, the very best in the Empire, perpetually charged as if ready to explode. When he did sit, he constructed odd structures out of whatever was at hand. “Rushford Mining and Minerals will not only be the largest foundry to manufacture Bessemer’s new steel, we’ll also force our competitors to purchase their new machinery from us.”
“Refitting the Rushford foundries and factories will cost thousands,” Herringham said as he leafed through the report so quickly he couldn’t possibly have read it, let alone understand it. “And what if the process fails?”
“It won’t,” Jack said, weary of the man’s dire predictions. Prudence was one thing, but fear of the future would eventually bury the Rushford operation in silt. “I’ve seen the process myself, from extrusion to finished rails laid down on the roadbed. I’ve watched rail stock pushed to the limits of speed, with excellent trials and better safety than has ever been possible. Within a few years every rail-bed in Britain will be replaced with Rushford steel.”
“Just as every mining operation will soon employ the new Rushford steam-windings,” Richmond said, flipping through the report for Herringham, “as I’ve shown there on page twelve. This is the refitting design for the Glad Heath Works, already under construction. I’m supervising it myself.”
Richmond’s excitement soon reached the others around the table: a few investors, two geological engineers, Jack’s site-viewers, three factory men, and a Parliamentary official. Eventually even Herringham joined, though he looked completely overwhelmed.
Jack leaned back against the bookcase and let Richmond have his due, pleased that Glad Heath would soon be the very safest colliery in all the world as well as the most efficient: a showcase that might bring other mine owners to his side.
He was pleased to his soul that it was Glad Heath that was prospering. His father would be proud of what Jack had accomplished at the mine—the unblemished safety record, and the profits despite it all.
Revenge, Father, he thought with some satisfaction. A tribute to you.
The guilt was so much more piercing since Miss Faelyn had come into his life, immeasurably so since she’d brought her sisters to live here. He couldn’t fault her love for them; he could only stand in awe of her devotion.
She was an ethereal and inconsistent contraption, and she wore her fragile sentiments on her sleeve, yet he’d never seen a more granite determination. He’d seen little of her and nothing at all of her sisters in the last few days. He’d spent long hours with Richmond finalizing the designs for the refitting, and Mairey was gone to the lodge before he got home at night. Although he had apologized for being a great raging boor with her family, he still felt the distance and the loneliness like a sharp stick through his chest.
He found himself drifting toward the lodge every evening, his heart feeling as wild as the woodlands and the creek in springtime. Sometimes she briefly let him into the hall, answering his questions in her smoked-silk voice with her hand on the door, ready to exclude him from her delicious scents and the sounds of delight just beyond the darkness.
Sometimes she allowed him to sit with her in her little parlor, discussing the Willowmoon Knot or her father’s work, but glancing nervously at the ceiling as though she thought her sisters might descend upon them and set him off.
He wasn’t ready to meet the children head-on; he was still wrestling with his own shadows, and frightened as hell of such bliss.
Miss Faelyn was digging around in the Tower again today, looking for Cromwell’s probate records. Tedious stuff, and he had no doubt that her every move was dogged by Walsham and his coweyed infatuation. Though the woman had denied any interest in the little man, if he ever showed up at Drakestone House with a wad of flowers in his fist, Jack would personally throw him out on his skinny backside. The thought burned a hole in his gut, made him want nothing more than to end this meeting and meet Mairey at the Tower.
He’d never taken honey in his tea, but now he found himself ladling it into every cup because it tasted of her, of her perfectly bowed mouth, her sweet tongue. A fact that Walsham couldn’t possibly know! Ha!
“We’ve already begun the refitting work at Glad Heath.” Richmond was standing at the huge map of Britain, which rose nearly twenty feet to the ceiling and spanned the wall from corner to corner. Jack had commissioned it to be painted in the finest geological detail, directly on the wall, behind a set of sliding mahogany panels. His mine works and forges dappled the valleys and ridges, from the Severn to the River Tyne. An inset map showed the sprawl of his North American holdings. All of it his.
The Willowmoon and its bed of silver were there somewhere, winking up at the sunlight, waiting for him. A fortune, a quest for the impossible, and one that was leading to places he could never have imagined.
Because he’d never in his life imagined Mairey Faelyn.
“Show them the new outcropping at Ben Alden, Richmond.” Jack joined him at the map, and the others rose to surround him.
“Ah, yes,” Richmond said, as he climbed the rolling stairs to gesture at Northumberland. “For those of you who don’t know, the new coalfield at Ben Alden is here, three-quarters of a mile from the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway. It will be fitted out from the beginning with the very best in steam technology.”
“What about a spur line to the colliery, Rushford?” Ahearne was a diligent but steadfast investor, one of his most consistent. “Have you addressed that?”
Jack clapped the man on the back, pointed to the place where Richmond had his finger. “The right-of-way for a spur line has already been negotiated with the land contract, and the tracks are ready to be laid—new steel tracks.”
“What exactly do all those black spots mean, Lord Rushford?”
The voice came from behind them all, clear and morning-bright. Every man in the room turned in unison, bunching and backing away from Mairey as though she were a ghost.
A ghost wearing a small wad of violets in the lapel of her traveling cloak. Jack felt a blast of molten lead in his chest.
Walsham’s flowers! He wanted to singe them.
Jealousy. Pure, but not in the least simple.
“Gentlemen,” he managed, though his pulse raged in his ears. “I would like you to meet Miss Mairey Faelyn.”
He wanted to lift her out of his office and quiz her about her afternoon at the Tower. He wanted to back her into the library and make love to her.
“What are the black blotches on the map, Lord Rushford?” She was lost in her examination of the map, the deep wings of her brows canted in scathing disapproval.
Jack felt utterly chastened by her interest. He was used to digging with his bare hands, with shovels and picks and clamoring mine works when necessary. This digging into paper as she did, into the distant past, was mind-numbing, and it made him feel clumsy and cocksure. Here was the extent of his life painted in brilliant enamels, and it suddenly tasted of rust and salt.
And she smelled of Walsham’s violets!
“The black blotches, Miss Faelyn, indicate the coalfields owned by Rushford Mining and Minerals.”
She took a step closer to the map, craning her neck and touching her fingers to her lovely lips.
“And the red?” she asked, the worry in her eyes deepening.
>
“Those are my tin mines, Miss Faelyn, and the blue is lead.” He felt like a braggart who’d been caught in an awful truth. The other men were murmuring, approving of the woman or of the extent of Jack’s holdings, or his plans. It didn’t matter. He wanted to feel proud, but he felt roundly less than that at the moment, and hadn’t a clue to the reason.
She turned her glittering gaze on him. “What of silver, Lord Rushford? Do you own any silver mines?”
Jack nearly swallowed his tongue, and came up clearing his throat. What the devil was the woman up to?
“None in England, Miss Faelyn,” he said between his teeth.
“Actually, Miss Faelyn,” Richmond said, clumping down the ladder to interrupt with his usual enthusiasm, “there are no silver mines in all the British Isles.”
“No silver at all?” She still had hold of Jack’s gaze. “But what of the work of the ancient Celts?”
“The which?”
Richmond had no idea that he had just become a character in one of Miss Faelyn’s fairy stories. Where the hell was she going with this riddle?
“The Celts, Mr. Richmond. Early Britons. I just wondered where their silversmiths had gotten the metal for their artifacts. I’m an antiquarian, and though I see the elegant work of the Celts everywhere, I haven’t the vaguest idea how they got their silver.”
“Ah! Well, smelting silver from lead ore is a very old process. A fleck here, a chunk there, melted out of the rock, just as lead and tin are. Silver isn’t mined like coal. Not in veins and stock-works. At least not here in Britain.”
Jack decided that the woman had caused enough trouble; God knew where she was leading them all, “What is it you need, Miss Faelyn?”
To be free of you, Lord Rushford. Mairey had never seen Rushford’s map before, the grasping hold he had on the riches of the earth. Nor could she have imagined that his holdings so closely ringed the Willowmoon. A chill had come upon her the moment she’d opened the door; it curled around her heart, frightening her to the marrow.
“I’ll be right back, gentlemen,” Rushford said as he took her hand and slipped it over his arm.
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