Obsession (10 page)

My lady love. Aye. She was that.

“Go, then,” I told her, my gaze still fixed on Maria. “Before I change my mind.”

With a quick nod, Bertha shouldered open the door, paused for a moment in the threshold as she gazed back at me, then closed the door in my face.

Again, I moved to the window, the wind and cold making my eyes tear, burning my cheeks. The powerful gusts rocked my body. I watched Bertha drape a shawl around Maria’s shoulders, then prod the fire so the flames leapt high and cast bright gold light within the cozy room.

Resting my forehead against the windowpane, I exhaled wearily and watched her image grow dim behind the condensation of my breath upon the glass.

“Goodnight,” I whispered.

Y
ET
I
REMAINED, REFUSING TO RETURN TO
T
HORN
Rose, unable to remove myself from Maria’s proximity.

As the wind whipped wildly through the scattering of trees and the occasional spear of rain drove into the ground, the cold cut me to the marrow as I huddled with my back against a rowan trunk and gazed from a distance through the window, occasionally catching a glimpse of Bertha, and less frequently, Maria, until the lights in the window were extinguished and all that was left for me was the fiery glow of the burning smelt stack.

“Y’ll catch yer death, man,” came a feminine voice behind me, and I turned to discover Louise.

Strong and horizontal thundered the current of wind from the north; it whipped the woman’s long, loose hair and molded her skirt against her slender legs as her eyes, shadowed by night, regarded me fixedly.

“Come into the house until the rain passes.”

I followed her, my body numb from the cold.

The small house was identical to the Whitefields’. A cot close to the fireplace revealed her invalid husband, his face blue-tinged, his chest heaving with every labored breath.

Waiting with my back to the closed door, I watched her tug the shawl from her shoulders and point at the chair before the hearth.

“Sit,” she commanded.

I sat, my focus still on her pitiful husband.

As Louise prepared tea, she glanced at me occasionally, then at her husband, her countenance weary, and I noted that she had a good face, too marked, perhaps, by life’s hardships, but of fine character.

“ ’Tis a horrible thing to watch a loved one die, sir.”

“Aye,” I said, forcing my gaze back to the flames, thinking of the pain I felt over Maria and my fear of losing her—that I might have already lost her.

“Lou,” her husband called faintly.

She hurried to his side and took his hand, smiling bravely. “Aye, my love?”

“Who’s come, lass?”

“An acquaintance of Thomas and Bertha.”

“Let me see him.”

She looked at me, and, reluctantly, I joined her at the bed.

His dark dull eyes fixed me, and he smiled weakly. “Welcome, sir.”

I tried to smile.

“Have you brewed him a pot?” Richard asked.

“Aye, love.”

“Good wife.” He struggled for a breath. “You look cold, sir. Fetch him a blanket, Lou.”

As I continued to look into his eyes, I felt a chill more biting than the cold of the climate. Death loomed around us like a shroud. It crawled over my damp skin and pressed upon my heart like a heavy stone.

“What are you called, sir?”

“Trey.”

“Are you from these parts?”

“He works for Thorn Rose,” Louise said, as she tossed a blanket around my shoulders.

“Ah. More’s the pity to ya, sir.”

His eyes drifted closed and he groaned.

“Hush now,” Louise whispered. “Save yer strength, husband.”

“ ’Tis little strength to save, love.” He managed a weak smile and lifted his hand to her. She clasped it to her bosom, against her heart. “Ah, lass,” he whispered. “I’ve failed ya and I’m sorry.”

“Nonsense.” Her eyes flashed.

“No children to take care of ya once I’m gone. What will ya do, love?”

“I’ll manage.”

His chin quivered and I moved away, back to the fire where I sat staring into the flames, the sound of his soft sobs making my face burn that I should witness this sadness.

When he at last rested, Louise prepared the tea and placed the steaming cup into my hands. She took a chair next to mine and pulled her shawl tightly around her thin shoulders. Her face looked haggard with grief.

“What will you do?” I asked softly.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“No family at all?”

“None.”

She withdrew the letter from her skirt pocket, opened it with her trembling hands, and read it again by firelight before turning her face to look at me.

“He doesn’t know it’s come. I don’t dare tell him. He’ll give up. Let go.”

I took the letter from her and read it—the demand that since her husband was no longer employable, they should vacate the company’s house within a fortnight as they would replace Richard with a new man to work the mine.

“I assume if he were to get better and return to work, there would be no issue of your vacating the house.”

“Aye.” She shook her head. “But we’re beyond miracles, sir. My husband is dyin’.”

Her stoic bravery crumbled and she covered her face with her hands, tears falling and her slender shoulders shaking.

Leaving the chair, I gently lifted her up and held her against me, feeling her body shake and her warm tears soak through my shirt. There was nothing I could say, no comfort to impart.

I simply held her.

10

A
T LAST, WITH GREAT RELIEF,
I
BID
P
ARKHURST
and Whitting goodbye. Still, I kept my distance from Maria, occupied the long hours by holding Edwina’s hand as she continued to heave into the chamber pot at every opportunity. I had given up on the idea that she would leave Thorn Rose, and no longer cared. She was company, if nothing else. She tolerated my ever worsening mood and mounting impatience.

We played an occasional hand of cards, read to one another, and debated names for the child that grew more active in her belly every day. I would lie in bed at night, staring out the window at the fiery halo of the smelt mill, Edwina’s belly pressed up against my back, and feel the movement of the babe against my spine.

Always I imagined the arms around me were Maria’s, and my fear mounted that they never would be.

I had heard nothing from my grandmother so far, and although I wanted desperately to believe she had washed her hands of me, and Maria, I knew at the bottom of my own black heart that she would eventually come scratching at my door.

No, it was best that Maria remain exactly where she was for now, whether I liked it or not.

Still, I had stood it as long as I could, and if I were going to survive this torture I would have to see her again—if only from a distance.

Would she look as beautiful as she had the last time I’d seen her, dressed in the pale blue dress, her hair shining like spring sunlight?

I imagined walking up to her, her raising her remarkable eyes up to mine, her face brightening with recognition and love. She would scream in pleasure and fling her warm, embracing arms around me. Then we could forget the last years had ever happened, and get on with our happily ever after.

So I trudged through the chilly dawn mist and arranged my seat next to the gnarled old tree with a perfect view of the Whitefields’ little house, knowing that as soon as the night shift ended, the miners would march out into the awakening daylight to be greeted by their wives. Not for the first time, I thought about Louise and Richard, of the man’s intense struggle to survive and the woman’s predicament.

No miracles.

It was then, the spark of an idea began to flicker.

Idiotic, surely.
Insanity!
I had never had an inkling of philanthropy in my self-absorbed body. Not like my brother, who epitomized goodwill toward all men.

Saint Clayton.

Often I had scorned him for it, angered that his generosity to his fellow man caused me to acknowledge just how deeply my own selfishness ran. Clayton had been a reminder of all the potential I had failed to attain, and I had come to believe myself incapable of achievement.

Yet, as I sat there with the first rays of sunlight filtering through the mist, I felt a surge of awakening—nay, hope—spring to life inside me. The heat of it made me sweat, my body vibrate, my mind whirl until the world tipped and swayed.

I hurried down the hill path, through the heather and gorse that slapped against my legs, dodging the birds who lifted from their disturbed thorny lairs to beat the air with madly flapping wings, along the wagon-rutted course, passing the Whitefields’ abode, bypassing the few women who were preparing to meet their husbands as they left their shift in the mine. Their heads turned to watch me, no doubt wondering what I was about as I marched up to Richard’s door and banged on it.

It opened slightly, and Louise peered up at me. I pushed by her, entering the room that smelled of fresh coffee and baked bread, relieved to find Richard alive still. His head rolled on the pillow and his weak eyes looked into mine with an intensity that made my heart slam…as if he knew why I was there.

“I’ll take your place in the mine,” I said, breathless.

“What are ya sayin’?” Louise moved across the room and stood by the bed, her eyes sharp and cautious, as if she doubted what she’d heard.

I continued to look into Richard’s eyes. “The company needn’t know. We’ll write them and tell them you’ve recovered, that there’s no reason to send a replacement.”

I turned to Louise, whose face was flushed, her body tense as she held her breath. “At the least, it will buy us enough time to determine a way to remedy your situation after he…”

“You know nothing about mining,” Louise declared with a trembling voice.

“I’ll learn.”

She laughed sharply. “Yer too demn soft.”

I glared at her. “Madam, you needn’t be insulting.”

She lowered her eyes. “I meant no insult, sir. The pit is cruel even to those who have been honed by years of digging. Ya aren’t a young man.”

I said through my teeth, “Young or not, I
am
a man. I’m capable, regardless of how you or the rest of the world view me.”

She moved toward me, her step slow, her gaze steady. “Who are ya, sir, that ya should care about us? That ya would put yer own life in jeopardy for two strangers?”

I walked to the window and looked out toward the Whitefields’, and imagined Maria rising from her sleep, recalled the flush of her face when she laughed, the sparkle in her eyes, now gone because of me.

“What difference does it make? I’m simply a man with regrets.”

I
WAS SOFT.
H
UMILIATINGLY SOFT.
B
Y THE END OF
my first day in the pit, my hands were bloody and my knees barely capable of holding me up without buckling. The muscles in my shoulders screamed with every movement, as if a knife were being thrust into them and ripping.

When I fell into bed, covered by dust, my body racked with coughing, Edwina stared at me, horrified.

“What in God’s name are you doing? Working! You’re a bloody duke, for God’s sake, and you’re toiling alongside a lot of—of—”

I rolled and vomited filth into the chamber pot.

“You’ve lost your mind, Trey. Completely. What are you hoping to accomplish?”

I sucked in air, or tried to. My lungs rebelled. My body rebelled, my stomach cramping as if I’d taken a hard punch in my gut.

As Edwina ran to the bed to comfort me, I shook my head and wheezed through my teeth, “If you touch me, I’ll kill you.”

“You’re bleeding. Oh God, your hands, your beautiful hands—”

“Get away from me.”

She dropped into a chair, her face pale. “I told you, Your Grace, I’ll give you money—”

“I don’t want your goddamn money.”

Rolling to my back, I stared at the ceiling, eyes stinging with grit. “Christ, it’s like hell down there. Black hell. I expected Satan himself to rise up any moment and cut out my heart.”

“You’re doing this to spite your grandmother, aren’t you?”

“No.” I tried to move my arms, but they wouldn’t budge.

“Killing yourself in that perdition to help a total stranger is absurd.” Leaving the chair, she moved closer, wringing her hands. “You’re a duke,” she whispered. “You weren’t put on this earth to wield picks and sweat alongside commoners.”

“I’m a man, first. If it wasn’t for me, Maria wouldn’t be wounded now.”

“So this is penance.”

“I suppose it is, in a manner of speaking.” I closed my burning eyes.

She gently brushed the hair back from my forehead. Her fingers felt cool upon my hot skin.

“You needn’t prove your manhood to anyone, Trey.”

“I’ve come to realize, Edwina, that manhood has nothing to do with the organ between my legs.” I looked at her. “It’s counting for something. Contributing something. I’ve contributed not a bloody thing my entire life.”

“I’m sure there are ways to contribute without killing yourself.”

I reached for her hand, curled my dirty, ravaged fingers around hers, and watched her look at my hand as if it were a vector of some infectious disease. I gripped her tighter as she attempted to pull away.