A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance (10 page)

“I reckon that was no more than a quarter ton o’ Tom from up top and three more loads I’ll be after afore the sun goes down,” he offered. “Name’s Hamish. Care to have a look about? It’s no more than half an hour’s walk.” He pointed to a zigzagging trail that led up the hill.

“Half an hour?” Like a diamond glittering among the shards of slate, Miss Frost drew the attention of most of the workers when she spoke.

“Aye,” Hamish grinned outrageously at her. “I can bring you down a mite faster if you don’t mind a bumpy ride.”

An almost imperceptible hush fell in the steady hammering, as if for the breath of an instant, each and every one of the quarrymen suspended their noise in anticipation of her response to the undeniably outrageous suggestion.

Miss Frost was not at all amused. Nose in the air, she ignored Hamish, saying tartly to Reed, who was hard put to suspend his amusement at the idea. “Surely we need not spend half an hour trudging up the side of a mountain to look at what amounts to nothing more than a hole in the ground?” She did not speak unduly loud, but her words, beautifully enunciated, carried.

Reed watched the light of interest fade in the eyes of a courageous man, and felt shamed that a lady should be so heartless in expressing herself. With a polite tug on his forelock, Hamish hoisted an empty barrow upon his shoulders, as if it were a shell, and set off up the mountain, turtle-like.

“Penny for your thoughts.” Oblivious to her own impact, Miss Frost attempted to charm Reed with the same tongue that had just cut into his fellow man.

“I was thinking, that there, but for the grace of God, go I.” He said the words softly, and yet they carried. Megan turned to look at him with an expression of approval.

Miss Frost laughed.

Giovanni, who had been silent up to this point, spread his arms in a grand gesture and turned his sorrowful gaze upon the group. “Let us go. It pains me to see such a scar upon the land.”

A week earlier, Reed would have agreed with Giovanni. The maps with which he papered his walls were dedicated to a depiction of the mark man made upon pristine British soil. Yet in watching Hamish trudge away from them, Reed realized his outlook had been too simplistic, too removed from the realities these men faced every day in making a living.

Tom responded to Giovanni’s remark with a chuckle. “It was your invading countrymen, the Romans, who first started these quarries, Giovanni. They were clever enough to realize that slate made a superior roofing material for their granaries.”

Giovanni flung back his head and ran his fingers through the artistic marvel that was his hair. “I apologize for my countrymen. They have blemished the face of England.”

Megan regarded the Italian intently--too intently for Reed’s taste.

“Is this quarry a blemish, then?” she asked. “Or is it instead a Monument to Man? See you no evidence of imagination, of ingenuity here? Even courage. I do.”

Reed was impressed by the sensible nature of her question. Not so, Giovanni.

“You cannot truly believe such blasphemy.”

Megan’s chin rose. “Why not? This is a scene that brings to mind the story of David and Goliath--tiny men chipping away at a mountain’s knees, courageously wresting a living out of nothing more than stone.”

“I agree with Giovanni,” Miss Frost declared. “There is nothing in the least picturesque in this business.”

“The picturesque is a pursuit of the leisure class,” Megan snapped. “The penny wise and pound foolish throw away their riches on such folly as hiring hermits to live in huts, building imitation ruins and grottos in their gardens--all undeniably picturesque and yet I find something grotesque in such wasteful ways being deemed acceptable while men who toil to feed and clothe their families, are condemned. Would you put Hamish out of work, Miss Frost, in the name of the picturesque? Would you pauper any of these hard working fellows?” She waved a hand.

Laura eyed her with undisguised contempt and pretended she was confused. “Do you know I cannot hear more than one word in four above this din, Miss Breech. Do you mind repeating yourself, or was it after all, of no importance?”

No one else seemed to have remained deaf to Megan’s words.

Giovanni frowned, dark eyebrows knit above troubled eyes. “Nature is violated that men might have full stomachs?” he suggested.

Megan nodded. “Why would God have created so varied and plentiful a world if He did not expect men to make use of it?”

“Change stimulates growth,” Tom took up the argument. “And growth stimulates progress.”

Giovanni flung up his hands. “Growth! Bah! A plague on progress. The mountain does not grow. It is, in fact, diminished before our very eyes. What price prosperity? Do we pay homage to the mountain in raiding her of her riches or is this, instead, a rape in our passion for growth?”

“Change is not all bad.” Tom cheerfully tried to diffuse the growing tension. “Only look at what is being done to the center of London. Streets widened, nasty tenements torn down. Where vermin once troubled the heart of the city, beautiful new rowhouses stand. It is inevitable that man will leave his mark on even the most remote of areas.”

“Well, Reed.” Megan prodded him. “What have you to add?”

Reed shrugged. “I think that no matter how much we might wish things would remain the same, change is inevitable, a vehicle either for growth or for destruction. It is up to the individual to determine in which direction it takes him.”

The direction Reed’s curiosity took him, was up the mountainside. He felt himself a Pied Piper of sorts. Megan fell in beside him, then Frost, Gussie and Tom. In the end, only Giovanni and Miss Frost refused to make the climb. In a way, Reed was relieved. The Italian was an uncomfortable reminder to him that he could no longer expect to monopolize Megan’s time and attention, and Miss Frost annoyed him, always hanging on his arm and breathing hotly into his ear.

The quarry was unusual, well worth the effort it took to hike to the mouth of its man-made cavern. Unlike most of the quarries in the District, it was not open to the weather. Strange too, was the sight of men with tallow candle stubs attached to the brims of their caps dangling from chains in the ceilings as they brought the slate down from above as well as below.

“A bit like a cathedral, this,” Gussie said as they craned their necks to stare at the arched ceilings.

A slab of slate crashed to the cavern floor. Rock splinters flew. Both women flinched.

Megan eyed the heights. “I would guess that so real is the potential of sudden death that one cannot help but be reminded of one’s maker here.”

Reed decided the place was not so much a cathedral as it was an abbey. The men slept in makeshift shanties at the quarry site, going home to their loved ones on the weekends. A hard life. Lonely. The most interesting aspect of the quarry was its birds. Carrier pigeons were used to wing speedy messages over the mountains, not only to the quarry’s main offices, but also to wives and families.

To whom would he send messages, Reed wondered as they walked back down the zig-zag path to their horses. His mother, father and Megan came to mind. No one else. Who else cared for him? Who else did he care for? And Megan might soon be marrying.

“Do you mean to invest in a quarry, then?”

It was Frost who asked. The question pulled Reed from the well of his thoughts. Invest in a slate quarry? The idea was an intriguing one.

He shrugged. “Can’t say. As it stands I haven’t the ready to do anything of the kind.”

“Oh? I could see no other reason for the intensity of your interest.” Frost drew forth a silver case from which he extracted a cigar. “Have you money troubles?” He offered the case to Reed, who shrugged it and the question aside. Surely his financial status was too personal a matter to discuss with a gentleman he ill knew. He had been loose-tongued to let slip as much as he had.

“Never seems to be enough of the stuff hanging about, does there?” Frost made light of the question as he lipped the cigar and tucked the case back into his pocket. Expression serious, he slowed his pace so that they fell behind the others, all the while patting his pockets until he found what he was looking for, a silver cigar cutter. He pulled the cigar from between his lips. “I’ve a question to ask of a rather personal nature. Hope you don’t mind.”

More personal than the condition of his finances? Reed was intrigued. He frowned. “Yes?”

“Miss Megan Breech?”

“What about Megan?”

“Are you in love with her?” Frost asked the question as bluntly as he snipped the end of the cigar.

Reed reacted to the frank question as he had reacted to the man’s sister the day before, with a sense of disbelief. “What you ask is personal indeed. Why do you wish to know?”

Frost spread his hands, as if to smooth the air between them, the cigar like a bent and discolored sixth finger. “Laura says you must be in love.”

“What led her to believe that?”

“She told me she has gone out of her way to flirt with you. That you are completely resistant to her charms. They are considerable, you must admit.”

“Of course,” Reed floundered.

This time it was a silver matchbox that emerged from the man’s pockets. “The reason I ask, is that I am, myself, captivated by the young lady’s passion.”

“Your sister’s?”

Frost laughed heartily as he struck the match, held it to the end of the cigar and puffed it to smoking life amidst a sulfurous cloud. “I refer to Miss Breech, of course.”

“Oh?” Reed had never considered Megan a particularly passionate creature.

“She held forth with remarkable conviction this morning in favor of the working man, don’t you agree?” Frost’s lips, Reed noticed as they puckered to blow a series of smoke rings, were thick, rosy and as damp as the end of the cigar he pulled from his mouth whenever he spoke. He had never really noticed the man’s mouth before. Strange. He did not want that mouth interested in Megan.

He nodded, bothered by the smoke blown his way. “Megan has always been excellent at argument. She is both intelligent and erudite.”

“Passionately so,” Frost reiterated, licking at his already wet lips.

Passionate? The word, and the way it was uttered, struck Reed as inappropriate. His dear, sweet, naive Megan, was she passionate?

Frost troubled him further, admitting with a suggestive chuckle that belched breathy smoke clouds, “I should like to redirect some of that passion--but would not care to step on toes if you two are in some way committed to one another.”

Reed did not care for such ill-bred suggestiveness any more than he cared to admit, “We are committed to one another by eleven years of friendship. I would not encourage you to trifle with her affections in any way, nor would I think you shall be offered much opportunity with Giovanni so firmly planted between the two of you.”

Frost laughed from behind a veritable cloudbank and flicked ash from his cigar. “Giovanni is captivated by all things female. Females are in turn captivated by the depth of his awareness and his appreciation for their gender in general. But he is an inconstant creature.”

“You know this, and yet would leave your sister alone in his care?”

Frost chuckled. “Laura can take care of herself.”

Yet, when they reached the bottom of the hill, it appeared Frost over-estimated his sister’s self-sufficiency. Laura Frost had been swept completely off her feet by the Italian. She was resting, and quite comfortably it would appear, in Giovanni Giamarco’s cradling arms.

Chapter Eleven

T
he more she was around Laura Frost, the less Megan cared for her. The young woman reminded her of a vine. It did not seem to matter that it was always a different fellow, only that there should be some man to wind herself around.

“My ankle twisted on one of these dreadful rocks,” she said primly from the harbor of Giovanni’s arms. “Terribly tedious, I know, but Giovanni has offered to ride back with me, to Grasmere, while the rest of you continue your explorations.”

“Unless your brother insists on accompanying you.”

Giovanni looked to Frost, who waved away the idea, saying, “Good of you to go with her.”

Augusta and Tom were all sympathy.

“How dreadful for you,” Gussie crooned.

Tom questioned the propriety of the proposed plan. “Surely you will not want to go back with only Mr. Giamarco for company?”

Gussie agreed. “Perhaps we should curtail our side-trip to the Falls and make our way back to Grasmere with you.”

Megan thought her sister completely taken in by Miss Frost’s wiles.

Miss Frost did not sound at all inclined to lead a cavalcade back to Grasmere. In fact, she seemed to protest too much. “It was not my intention to divert the rest of you from the day’s entertainments. It will be a tedious journey. We mean to go very slowly, so as not to jolt my poor foot unnecessarily.”

After consultation, in which neither Tom nor Gussie voiced any objection to Megan continuing on to view the Jaws of Borrowdale and Lodore Falls, if Reed meant to see to her safety, the two groups of riders parted company at the village of Longthwaite.

Megan’s threesome, for Lord Frost came with them, set briskly off along a road that paralleled the Borrowdale River, north to the village of Grange. The afternoon was perfect for their excursion. The sky held no more than a wisp of cloud. The breeze was fresh with the smell of clover, heather and fern. The race of the river and the rustling voices of oak, beech and alder were the only sounds to be heard, apart from their horses, and the occasional alarm of a startled bird.

Just south of Grange, on the birch-covered slopes of Grange Fell, they stopped to examine what was known as the Bowder Stone, an enormous cube-shaped boulder, delicately poised on one edge and as tall as a townhouse.

It was in examining the oddity that Megan noticed how little Reed had to say, while Frost went to the opposite extreme and could not be stopped from expounding at length on his detailed theories as to how and why such an enormous boulder came to sit so precariously on a well-treed hillside.