by Zoë Archer
Dazed, the three men headed toward the door. But Murton paused at the threshold. “This won’t go unanswered,” he spat. “Anyone can throw some papers around and say they’re genuine, but the truth will be uncovered. And then you’ll all be imprisoned, thrown into an asylum, or forced into a workhouse—if you’re fortunate.”
“You’re right about one thing,” Simon noted. “The truth will be uncovered. But it won’t be the truth you want.”
“Hang on,” said Gorely. “You don’t sound the same.”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Simon smiled. “I’m from Nemesis.”
The three men bolted, the door swinging wide open behind them like a gaping mouth.
* * *
It didn’t take long for word of the managers’ firing and the change of ownership to reach the mine itself. Simon watched from the doorway of the bachelors’ lodging, Alyce beside him, as the high street filled with jubilant workers. An impromptu celebration broke out, full of cheers, some tears, and much shaking of hands and slapping of backs. The tavern opened casks of ale outside. Men knocked tankards together, toasting their new freedom. Someone played a fiddle and women danced. Children played in the street, reprieved from work and school.
“They don’t know,” Alyce murmured beside him. “It’s not over.”
“Some understand.” A few dozen men talked quietly, soberly among themselves, their women listening attentively. Mostly they were the men who’d been involved in Simon’s scheme from the beginning, and who’d heeded his warnings. Henry was among them, his arm protectively around Sarah’s shoulders. Tension radiated from the group, which some of the celebrants seemed to notice. Others continued to make merry, little knowing what was coming.
“And not everyone’s celebrating.” She nodded toward a grim-faced Tippet, standing outside the constabulary office and watching the celebration. The constables Oliver, Freeman, and Bice stood close by. Oliver kept a tight grip on his truncheon, and Freeman had his arms crossed over his big chest. Bice’s expression seemed deliberately blank. “Why don’t they clear off, too?”
“The managers and owners didn’t pay their salaries—that’s county business. No doubt Murton and the others filled their pockets to keep things even more orderly. They’ll stay until they know for certain that the old regime’s out.”
Alyce gave a small shiver. “Won’t be pleasant when it sinks in.”
Thus the reason why he’d declined offers of free drink. All they had were hours before the final confrontation.
Only hours left with Alyce. He’d have to go back to London as soon as the situation was resolved here—always more missions, more in need of help. Each minute now slipped by, impossible to hold.
Damn it, he just wanted to hold her sodding hand, touch her a little, but he couldn’t. Not here, on the high street, where anyone could see and know. If he were a village lad, he could clasp her hand with his, an announcement of his intentions. He wasn’t a village lad. To hold her hand in public, declaring his claim, and then to leave her—it’d be considered a humiliation. He couldn’t do that to her.
He sucked in a breath when she took his hand. Pressed her palm and wove her fingers with his. A bold assertion, and when he glanced over at her, she stared back, defiant.
Let them look, her gaze said. This is ours.
But only for now.
A true gentleman would’ve pulled his hand free, protecting her from herself. But she was a grown woman and could make her own decisions. And he was selfish enough to want the feel of her skin, for a little longer. For as long as he could have it.
Edgar disengaged from the group of new owners of the mine and ambled toward Simon and Alyce. The older man’s gaze snagged on their interlocked hands, and he raised a brow, but said nothing about it.
“Come and help us convince Henry to manage the mine,” Edgar said.
“Couldn’t think of a more perfect bloke for the job,” Simon answered.
Alyce snorted. “I’d wager he’s being his typical modest self.”
Edgar grinned. “That’s the way of it.”
Without another word, Alyce marched to the group of men. She didn’t relinquish Simon’s hand, so they walked together, and with each step, his heart ached more. Another pleasure that was fleeting.
They reached the gathering of the mine’s new owners. Everyone stopped talking, staring at Alyce and Simon’s joined hands. Expressions of shock flitted across many faces, especially Henry’s. Alyce returned every stare with her own cool resolve. Judge me or don’t, her look said. I don’t give a ruddy damn.
Listen to the lady, friends, his own countenance said. If she didn’t care, neither did he. All he wanted was what he couldn’t have.
“What’s this nonsense about you not wanting to be the new manager, Henry?” she demanded without preface.
Her brother tore his surprised gaze from her joined hand up to her face. “I’m a miner, not a manager. You need classes or schooling or something for a big job like that.”
“The only qualification the old managers had was their greed,” Simon answered. “Nobody knows the working of the mine the way you do.”
“You’ve always looked after us,” Nathaniel said. “Settled differences between the workers. Tried to keep us happy even when the managers didn’t give a pig’s arse. There’s nobody better for the job than you.”
The gathered men and women added their agreement.
Uncertainty flickered across Henry’s face, but beneath that was pleasure and eagerness. He’d be a good manager, if only because he couldn’t dissemble.
Henry glanced down at Sarah with a worried frown. “Might not be around as much to help with the baby.”
“It’s too bad these are so useless.” Alyce let go of Simon’s hand, then held hers up. She rolled her eyes. “I’ll always be there for you and the baby, and all the other babies.”
The sentiment was a good one, but it only served to remind Simon that Alyce’s life was here, in this village, with her family. They needed her.
So do you.
He smothered that voice. He’d given up more than he could enumerate for Nemesis. Alyce would be another loss. One he’d have to learn to endure. It might take him a lifetime to learn, but he’d force himself.
Sarah rose up on her toes and kissed her husband, pride shining in her eyes. “This is what you were meant to do.”
After a moment, Henry nodded. He seemed to grow a foot taller, his chest widening, his shoulders broadening, as he accepted his new responsibility. “Edgar, Nathaniel, Travis—you’ll be assisting me.”
“Yes, sir,” the men answered, smiling.
Uncertainty fell away from Henry. “First thing that needs to be done is a full survey of the mine itself. We’ve got equipment down there that’s needed replacing for years. Edgar, grab Douglas and Percy to run the man-engine so we can get down into the pit.”
“Now?” Edgar asked, glancing at the celebrating workers.
“Now.”
Alyce grinned. “You put a Carr in charge of the mine. Did you think we’d take even a day off?”
Though he grumbled, Edgar smiled as he hurried off to find the lads to run the man-engine. Hopefully, they hadn’t drunk too much of the free ale.
“Change begins today,” Nathaniel said with a smile.
“Three and a half hours,” Simon answered.
Questioning frowns were angled in his direction.
He pulled out his pocket watch. “By now, the managers have already made it to St. Ursula and the telegraph station. They’ve wired the owners in Plymouth. It’ll take the owners thirty minutes to round up their attorneys, then head to the train station. Figure about two more hours by train—it won’t be fast or direct. St. Ursula isn’t on a main line. The owners will reach it by one-thirty, and meet up with the managers. They’ll hire some carriages since they can’t all fit on the managers’ trap. The roads between here and St. Ursula aren’t straight, and even at top speed, it’ll take them an hour to
get to Trewyn. That’s a total of three hours and thirty minutes until we see them again.”
He snapped his watch shut and slipped it back into his waistcoat pocket as the people around him gaped. Only Alyce didn’t look surprised at his precise analysis. She knew him—more than anyone. Better even than Marco, Eva, and especially his family.
“Whoever isn’t going with Henry to the mine,” he continued, “we’ll need you here for when the managers and owners arrive.”
“They won’t try anything, will they?” asked Dan Bowden. “The mine’s legally ours.”
“Men forced into a corner do anything to survive,” Simon answered. “Doesn’t matter if they’re street-born brutes or supposed gentlemen. In three and a half hours, be prepared—for anything.”
“This is what we’ve been wanting for over ten years,” Alyce added. “And if it comes down to a fight, then I’m damned ready. You’d better be, too.”
The group made sounds of agreement. They dispersed, looking grim but resolute, with Henry leading several of the men in discussion.
Three hours. Thirty minutes. Less, now. Each minute crept away. He couldn’t slam his boot heel down on time to keep it in place.
“You can’t be nervous,” Alyce said quietly.
“A little.” He had to give her perfect honesty. “Wounded animals are the most dangerous, unpredictable, and the managers and owners are wounded. And it looks like Tippet and his crew are spoiling for a fight.”
Standing in the doorway of the constabulary office, the chief loomed, primed as dynamite, waiting for the spark. A spark that would arrive in a little over three hours.
“Can’t imagine that a bunch of fat men in bowler hats mean trouble to someone from Nemesis.” She cast him a glance. “But I’ve learned that appearances aren’t reliable. A machinist can be a gentleman’s son.”
“And a bal-maiden can be an Amazon warrior with a kiss like sin and redemption.”
He liked that even after all they’d done together, and despite her bravado, he could still make her blush.
Hand in hand, they walked away from the high street, turning down one of the little lanes that led out of the village. In a moment, they wandered about the surrounding hills. The sky was a hazy, pale blue, not quite sunny, not quite overcast. As if it, too, held itself in suspension, waiting for what was to come.
The countryside had a spare, wild beauty, the wind brisk as it curved along the hills—so different from the racket and crowding of London. Getting used to that cacophony, beloved as it was, would be an adjustment. He imagined many restless nights when he returned.
But it wouldn’t be the noise that would keep him awake, or make closing his eyes a torment.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked.
It took him a moment to realize she was speaking of the managers and owners returning to the village.
“Words won’t be enough,” he said. “With Tippet at the ready, and the others out for any kind of blood, there’ll be some kind of explosion.”
Solemn, she nodded, her gaze fixed on her boots. “We’ll be ready.”
He stopped walking. Pulled her to him. They sank into a deep, aching kiss, and he hoped she was memorizing the taste and feel of him the way he did her sweet fire. He had a good memory. He’d never lose these sensations. Would force every part of himself to hold to her memory.
How could he miss her, when she was right here, in his arms? Yet he did.
They broke apart, their heads tipping together so their foreheads touched and their breath mingled. Though they stood in the middle of a field, with the countryside rolling all around them in green waves, the world was pared down to them, and them alone.
Her fingers laced behind his back, her arms tight and strong. A single tear coursed down her cheek. But she didn’t move to wipe it away—letting him see her in her vulnerability. She, who showed her softness to no one, shared it with him. Trusting him.
I love you.
But the words wouldn’t leave his mouth. He couldn’t allow himself to say them. Not when they both knew he couldn’t stay. The words would be more of a curse than a pleasure, offering them both something they couldn’t possess. Yet they throbbed in his chest, each one a brand.
“Talk to me,” she whispered.
He brushed strands of dark hair from her face, touched the damp streak on her cheek and rubbed it between his fingers. “What should we talk of?”
“Anything. Everything. What you liked to eat when you were a child. Your first memory. The sound you hate the most. The most beautiful place you’ve ever been.”
These were intimacies greater than sex for the brief time they shared now, and he was glad to give them to her.
They resumed their walk. “Carrots,” he said. “The other boys were always stealing boiled sweets from the shop in town, but I nicked carrots from the stables. The grooms pretended not to see me—maybe they were afraid they’d be sacked. But I’d eat carrots by the bushel.”
“Bilberries,” she answered. “I’d go out into the fields in August and stuff the berries into my mouth as soon as I found them, instead of saving them and bringing them home to make a pie. My mother always knew because I’d come back with blue lips.”
They smiled softly together and continued to stroll. Leisurely. As if they were just two sweethearts courting, enjoying the day, enjoying the discovery of each other.
He continued, “I remember being very small—couldn’t have been more than a year old—and my nanny slapping my hand when I tried to pull down the fire screen. Seems that was a habit of mine. Always trying to stick my hand in the fire.”
“Not much has changed since then.”
“Hot, dangerous things fascinate me. It’s worth being burned.”
She cast him a glance from beneath her lashes. “Then you get scarred.”
“Something to help me remember the fire.”
She shook her head, murmuring something about foolhardy men. “I remember Henry trying to teach me how to play rugby. This was before he’d formed those foolish ideas that girls shouldn’t play. I’d just learned to stand and he would try to toss me the ball. It’d knock me over.”
“And you’d pull yourself back up and try to catch it again.”
Her lips curved. “Not much of a mystery, am I?”
But he was serious when he answered. “It’d take lifetimes for me to truly know you. Time I’d gladly surrender.”
She turned to him suddenly. “Simon—”
“Don’t,” he said roughly. “Let’s … let’s keep walking. Asking questions. Answering.”
She silently acquiesced. And for hours, they roamed across the hills, talking until their voices rasped. A poem ran through his head, memorized long ago at Harrow.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Back then, he’d scoffed at Marvell, thinking the poem simply a fancy way of getting under a girl’s skirts. But the aching melancholy of it now seeped into his bones. An ache he suspected would never dissipate.
They’d made a loop around the village, and were heading back toward it, when he spotted a figure running in their direction. Christopher Tremaine, one of the mine’s new owners.
Both Alyce and Simon sped toward him. Christopher caught up with them, and bent over, gasping.
Simon saved him the trouble of speaking. “They’ve come.”
Christopher, panting, nodded. He pointed down toward the village. The streets were mostly empty now, but two carriages and a trap were parked outside the managers’ office.
Simon and Alyce shared a look. Time’s chariot had arrived. The reckoning moment had finally come.
CHAPTER 17.
Alyce’s heart thundered in her chest as she, Simon, and Christopher raced into the village. Speeding down the high street, she saw workers’ faces peering out of the windows, while some braver souls lingered
in the street. They all looked toward the managers’ office, where two hired carriages and the managers’ horse-drawn trap took up most of the space outside. She could already hear raised voices as she approached.
Simon led the way into the office. Once, Alyce had read a penny dreadful about men called cowboys in the wild American West. The end of the story had been two of those cowboys facing each other in the middle of town, waiting tensely to draw their guns. A “showdown,” it’d been called.
So it looked in the managers’ office as Simon entered, confronting not just the old managers, but the owners, too. At one end of the room stood the managers and owners, and at the other were some of the other miners—Nathaniel, Travis Dyer, and a few others. They looked to Simon gratefully as he stepped farther into the office.
The owners looked painfully out of place here. The managers might dress more finely than the workers, but they couldn’t compare with the city elegance of the owners. Two other men stood with the owners, both of them carrying portfolios and self-importance. Solicitors.
They didn’t frighten Alyce nearly as much as Tippet did, looming in one corner with the other lawmen, Oliver, Freeman, and Bice. The chief constable’s face was dark with barely controlled rage, and his men clutched their truncheons, ready for a scrap.
Harrold looked almost comically shocked as Simon approached. He stared at Simon’s rough worker’s clothes, then up at his face.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Simon said, cool as November.
“I want a full accounting, Shale!” Harrold demanded. “We received a telegram a few hours ago alleging the most preposterous claims.”
“Every one of those claims are true,” he answered. “But I’m not Shale. The name’s pure fabrication.”
“I’m not his wife, either,” Alyce said. “And I don’t have a brother in the government. But I’m one of the owners of the collective, and that makes me the owner of Wheal Prosperity. Not you.”
If Harrold and the other owners looked surprised at Simon’s appearance and words, when Alyce spoke, they could’ve been knocked on their arses by a bit of eiderdown. From her accent to her clothes to the way she spoke to them, there wasn’t anything of the simpering society lady in her now. And damn her if she didn’t love seeing their shock.
