by Sophia Nash
She had no one to blame but herself. She must lock away her sentiments in the coffer of her soul and throw away the key. It was the only answer.
She pushed down the sheet, struggled into an upright position and drank the stone-cold tea in one long gulp. Then she fell out of the bed and recovered all her articles of clothing strewn about the room, save one. She searched high and low before she finally spied her corset hanging from a wall sconce.
Oh, for heaven’s sake.
Fully dressed in evening satin, she tried to arrange her hair in a simple chignon with little success. Her hands were trembling as she remembered what she had done with the duke this past evening.
She listened at the door before gaining the nerve to turn the key in the lock and peek into the hallway. She silently rushed to her apartment, three corridors east of his. She felt dizzy and realized she had forgotten to breathe while she dashed.
Never so grateful that there was no maid assigned to her, Roxanne calmed herself by taking a cold sponge bath and then dressed in the clean, newly mended gown she had been wearing when Alex had found her hanging on the cliff of Kynance Cove. She didn’t dare ruin any of Mémé’s. But she was going to need help if she was to succeed in the endeavor she must face today.
Time had run out.
She had gotten as much revenge as she was ever going to get by seeing Lawrence’s ruined lawn and gardens. And more importantly, she had the answer to why Lawrence had tried to discard her from his life. Now she must go, if only to avoid the awkwardness of hiding her sensibilities from Alex.
By the time she finished her toilette, her hands had stopped fluttering. She stared at her reflection in the looking glass, and there were roses in her cheeks. There was no doubt who had put them there. She felt more womanly than she had ever felt in her life.
And more alone than ever before.
Roxanne wended her way down the servants’ stairs and stopped a footman to ask the whereabouts of Isabelle.
“In the music room, ma’am.”
The music room? Roxanne was certain Isabelle had said she didn’t play any instrument. She stopped at the room’s entrance and heard one of the worst renditions of some sort of sonata on the flute. She made her presence known.
Isabelle stopped instantly. “Oh, thank heaven you’ve come to release me from my delusions of talent.”
“But you loathe playing instruments. You told me.”
“Yes, well, that was before someone mentioned his admiration of music and the woman who played with amazing flare.”
“Don’t tell me Mary has talent in that corner as well.”
“All right, I won’t. I shall only say that she plays the pianoforte like Mozart and sings like an operatic genius.”
“I really don’t like her.”
“Oh, stop it. We all like her.”
“She’s impossible.”
“Impossibly perfect.”
“Nobody likes perfection.”
“Except Cando—”
Roxanne interrupted. “He doesn’t. Oh, do let’s stop. We could go on all day and I have something important to ask you.”
“Yes?”
Roxanne retraced her steps and closed the music room door. “Isabelle, I’m sorry to ask this of you, but may I share a confidence? It is something gravely important, and I would require that you not speak of it to anyone. Ever. And it will likely change your opinion of me forever. But I have no other recourse.”
Isabelle’s eyes grew round with excitement. “Oh, I adore secrets. Does it have to do with your cousin? He’s proposed? Or did he . . .” She clapped her hands and covered her mouth with glee. “You can count on me. I shan’t tell a soul.”
“No,” Roxanne said sourly. “It has absolutely nothing to do with him.” She grasped Isabelle’s hands. “Look, my life depends on this. Truly.”
“Tell me.”
And following those two breathless words, she told Isabelle who she was, where she had lived, to whom she was married, the person she was indebted to for saving her life and hiding her, and finally that she would be leaving very soon to create a new life but needed her help.
“So, if I have the right of it, you’re really Harriet somebody?”
“No. Roxanne Vanderhaven. The daughter of Cormick Newton of Redruth.”
“Hmmm . . . Roxanne. I’ve always adored that name. Much lovelier than Tatiana, which never really sounded very English.”
Roxanne sighed.
“And you’re a tin miner’s daughter, not Kress’s third cousin four times removed? And the countess of an idiot.”
“Precisely.”
“And you’re in love with Kress.”
“I beg your pardon? I never said that.”
“Perhaps,” Isabelle said slyly. “But I knew it.”
Roxanne sighed again. “So will you help me?”
“Do what?”
“Recover my fortune. I can’t do it alone. And I do not trust anyone but you.”
“What about Kress?”
She looked at her feet. “I’d rather not.”
“Well, then,” Isabelle said. “Let’s be off.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Isabelle insisted. “Let’s take the servants’ entrance so no one will see us.”
“I shall forever be in your debt,” Roxanne said, taking up her friend’s hands. “You are the first noblewoman who doesn’t seem to mind the smell of tin.”
“Tin? Really? I’ve always thought you smell like honey if anything.”
“That’s just soap,” Roxanne said quietly. “Thank you, Isabelle. Thank you so very much.”
“Oh, botheration. Let’s go now before Mary comes and makes me feel even less capable of producing music with this bloody instrument than I am.”
Roxanne smiled and pulled her toward the door.
Within a half hour they were dashing across the shingle path to collect the horses they would need. As they rode toward the home of her childhood, Gwennap near Redruth, Roxanne felt a great calm settle over her. They took the older, forgotten lanes to avoid notice. But when the familiar scent of fresh, hot pasties drifted from a lone miner’s cottage, Roxanne begged Isabelle to go inside to buy two while she hid behind a stand of trees.
Isabelle bit into hers and moaned with delight. “Like apple pie. Mmmm.”
Roxanne grinned. “You started on the wrong end.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Isabelle mumbled as she took another inelegant, large bite.
“You’re supposed to start on the savory end—with the meat and potatoes and peas—and then you work your way to the side with the fruit.” Roxanne sniffed one end and bit into the flaky crust.
“How convenient,” Isabelle said, not at all following Roxanne’s directions. “But I shan’t stop now. I think I now prefer dessert first. One never knows if one will have room for it. True? Who cares about peas and potatoes when one can have something sweet?”
Roxanne adored Isabelle. She had never had a friend like her. Oh, the wives and daughters of the miners had enjoyed her company, but Roxanne had had to follow her father’s instructions to always remember that they were employees, and so to always be friendly and respectful, but never to confide anything of importance. Isabelle was the first lady with whom she could be fully herself.
“So where are we going?” Isabelle dabbed at her dainty mouth with the cloth Roxanne handed her from the saddle pouch.
“Very few people go to this place, Isabelle,” she warned. “For good reason. It was a mine my father started two decades ago. But it was abandoned after an accident. Miners refused to work it, saying it was haunted by those whose lives it claimed.”
“That is where he left your fortune?” Isabelle’s eyes were huge in her face.
“Don’t worry so. You’re not going down there,” Roxanne said with a smile. “I am.”
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“Not at all. I know all the mines very well, even this one. While there is an old wives�
� tale suggesting women in mines are bad luck, that never stopped me from going with my father. I was always fascinated by every aspect of the trade.”
Roxanne took up the reins again and clucked to urge her horse forward. Isabelle followed suit. The petite duchess asked an endless number of questions the rest of the ride to the deserted Wheal Bissoe mine.
Roxanne knew her father would have left everything she would need, as his attention to detail had been unparalleled. Indeed, when she drew closer to the narrow, stone engine house, and the smaller structure which housed the miners’ dry goods, she could almost sense her father’s spirit hovering nearby. In his old locker, she found a set of canvas jacket and trousers along with traditional wooden-soled boots, and several felt tulle hats hardened with pine resin. He had not forgotten to leave beeswax candles—one at each end of a very long wick. She swung several about her neck.
“I forgot the clay in the saddlebag, Isabelle,” she said to her friend, who appeared more terrified than Roxanne had hoped. “Don’t worry. It will only take an hour or so to negotiate the ladders. I’m certain my father accounted for the varying level of the water. The pump was destroyed by the blast, but not the series of platforms and ladders at the top.
“Why do you need clay?” Isabelle was desperately trying to act much calmer than she was.
“I’ll show you.”
Isabelle didn’t need any further hint to fetch the packet. Roxanne peered into the dark entrance to the mine and took a deep breath as she mumbled an old Cornish mining prayer.
Placing a dab of clay on top of the hard felt hat, Roxanne stuck one of the candles in the middle to secure it before lighting it.
“How convenient,” Isabelle murmured, biting her lip. “Are you certain it wouldn’t be better to have Kress here? What if you should require help?”
Roxanne dragged out a huge coil of rope. “See those two pulleys over there? I’ll thread one end through them both and all you’ll need to do is let out the safety line when I tell you. I might really need it depending on what I must haul out of there.”
“Why don’t you attach it to your waist?”
“Because it would be too easy for it to become twisted and catch on something and I can’t take the risk of getting stuck. But I can try to keep it free. Please don’t worry. I know how the platforms and ladders are positioned.”
“Well, I refuse to continue on like a mother hen. It’s obvious you know what you’re doing, Tatiana.”
“Roxanne.” She looked at Isabelle pointedly.
“I think I’ve the right to call you whatever I want at a time like this—when you’ve asked me to watch you possibly fall to your death.”
“Good point,” Roxanne said with a grin and tugged the rope through the pulleys. She then took a step down the first ladder. “And by the way . . . thank you, Isabelle.”
Her friend was flustered, and biting her lip, but refused to say another thing. Her clenched hands on the rope said everything.
Roxanne nimbly felt her way down the ladder, taking care not to look down as was a miner’s way. As she descended the second and third series of ladders, the light from the mouth of the entrance grew dim and her candle only shone enough light for her to see her hands. She counted the rungs, knowing exactly when the next platform would be reached.
There were eleven ladders to negotiate. The scent of stone and minerals invaded her nostrils as did the damp from the water below, and the sweat from the mine’s walls. It grew hotter with each level down, and she remembered how wonderful and brave the mining families had been who worked in her father’s mines. She began to hum a song to calm herself.
Every now and again Isabelle would call down all the while feeding out more line. Her voice echoed and Roxanne would reassure her. “You’re letting the line out too slowly, Isabelle!”
Roxanne couldn’t make out Isabelle’s reply, but her tone was annoyed.
On the ninth platform, Isabelle again called out, more faintly this time, and Roxanne lost her concentration. She failed to test the rung of the ladder before placing her full weight upon it.
The wood had rotted, and down she went, the force of her fall wreaking havoc on the rest of the rungs of the ladder. As she lay panting on the tenth platform in total darkness without the flame of the candle to help, her mind reeled. She could hear Isabelle shouting to her, but all Roxanne could do was lie there gasping, the wind knocked out of her.
And now Isabelle was crying and saying she was leaving to find Kress.
All Roxanne could do was rasp, “No! I’ll be fine.” But she knew it was a futile effort. She could barely hear herself. The oddest thing was that she wasn’t scared. Her father had taught her long ago never to be afraid of the dark. As she regained her breath and tested out her limbs, she knew she was not gravely injured. Finally, she sat up, her arms tingling.
Disentangling a new long candlewick from around her neck, she reached for the small flint box in her pocket. The flame from the beeswax candle confirmed that the arms of the canvas jacket had ripped and Roxanne’s arms now had more splinters than she cared to think about. Her head ached, but she was fine. She peered over the edge of the platform and wondered if the last ladder was safe. Of course, Isabelle had fled without letting out more line, and it hung just out of reach.
She was going to be sore tomorrow, but she was going to retrieve her fortune today. Inching down the ladder, Roxanne took more time than was necessary to descend to the eleventh platform. She removed the new candle from her hat and looked for a crack on the mine’s wall. Her father’s whispered instructions floated in her mind. Spying a fissure, Roxanne retrieved the chisel from her pocket and wedged it at an angle. Quickly, she popped open the inch-thick stone face hiding a carved out space beyond. Relieved beyond measure, she reached inside.
“She did what?” Alex said, his guts falling to his toes.
“Don’t have time,” Isabelle panted, barely able to talk. “Come . . . get to the boat . . . waiting.”
Alex picked her up like a child and began running down the steep path from the dairy on the Mount, his carefully drawn plans for the soon to be renovated structure fluttering behind them.
“Put me down, Alex!”
“No, not till you catch your breath.”
He nearly tossed her into the waiting boat as he spoke to the oarsman. “I’ll double your wage if you take us back in half the time.”
“Aye, aye, yer Highness.” The man had but one tooth in his gummy smile.
Isabelle tugged on his sleeve. “She might be dead,” she whispered, her eyes terrified in her pretty face. “We must prepare ourselves, Alex. I shouldn’t have let her do it.”
“Hush.” He couldn’t manage anymore. He was already plotting out a scenario for something he knew nothing about. “Is there rope or do I need to secure some?”
“There’s quite a bit of rope.”
“But is there enough? Think, Isabelle.”
“I told you, there’s rope. There’s so much rope in the building next door, it could probably reach China, for God’s sakes. Oh, Alex . . .” Tears welled in her eyes.
“Don’t you dare, Isabelle.” He had the sudden memory of Roxanne and how she had not shed a single tear when he had saved her.
“Fine,” she said raising her chin. “I told the stable master in Penzance to prepare his strongest animal for you since Bacchus is at the Mount. Another fresh horse awaits me.”
He couldn’t respond. Could barely say anything—his mind was racing. “How deep is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“How much rope did you drop into it?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“How wide is the mine’s mouth?”
“Maybe five or six feet? I—I don’t really know.”
“Well, what do you know?” He refused to shout, but he felt like jumping out of the boat and swimming to shore. The damned oarsman was grinning like a fool, and rowing far too slowly to his way of thinking.
“Alexander Barclay, you cannot talk to me like this. It is not my fault. I tried to talk her out of it. I told her it would be better if you were there.”
“You just told me it was your fault.”
“You were supposed to disagree with me.”
“Has she been giving you lessons?”
“In what?”
“Talking in circles?”
“Well, I like that.” Isabelle crossed her arms and turned in the other direction.
Neither said more than three words to each other the rest of the awful journey to the mine.
Alex had lost the habit of prayer long ago. Half the inclination had left him when he watched Mont-Saint-Michel go up in flames. The other half disappeared during the war when he had lied about his age and served as the youngest Hussar, only to face a terrible test and nearly lose his sanity.
As he threw himself off of the gelding’s saddle and ran toward the entrance to the mine, without waiting for Isabelle to dismount, he began to pray. But he could only envision one thing. And it wasn’t Roxanne.
It was that dank, dark-as-pitch prison cell, where he had been held for four long months during the Peninsular War. The Portuguese renegades didn’t care when he insisted he was half English and half French. They only saw his uniform and threw him in that small hole to rot, instead of wasting a bullet on him. It had been a miracle he had survived long enough on his keeper’s scraps to have been rescued. He had never told a soul about his ordeal. He had never wanted to think of it ever again. It was better that way.
But now . . . Now, he was about to live it all over again. His future was now the hell of his past. He prayed he could face it with courage he knew he did not possess.
He crawled to the edge, his legs cramping already. The first time he tried to shout her name, it was barely a rasp. The second time he bellowed her name so loudly surely they would hear it on the Mount. He closed his eyes and cupped his ear to listen.
