The Wedding Night (16 page)

"Ancient stone phallic objects," she offered.

"Exactly." Not that he was intimidated by the specimens in the drawer, or by the one she was fondling. He would measure up against the lot of them quite nicely, thank you. He nearly said as much, but Mairey had gone back to her minute examination, and he was having trouble breathing. "This isn't a subject to be discussed between a man and a woman."

"My parents did."

Jack felt feverish. Sweat ran like molten rivers down his back as the woman handled one ancient but hugely virile penis after another.

"In fact, my father presented my mother with a phallus on every one of her birthdays that I can remember."

"Christ, woman! They were married to each other."

"Devoted." She shut the offending drawer and opened the one below it. "Ah, ha! Just as I expected, Jack. You see, the Celts had a great reverence for their women, too. A belly-god-
dess
."

The figure in
Mairey's
hand was beautiful and lushly primitive, with large, ripe, pink granite breasts at rest on a belly full of child, and a glistening, hand-polished cleft between her kneeling thighs.

He swallowed hard, his pulse dancing madly, his own phallus as alive as if it were sheathed within Mairey.

"I suppose your grandmother collected those, too."

"Oh, no," she said, smiling fondly at the figure. "But my grandfather did."

Jack threw out his hands. "Well, fine. Fascinating. But it's time we get back to looking for that Willow-knotty thing." He broke away to a place where he could adjust his clothes, grateful for the fullness of his greatcoat.

Jackson Rushford, you're a prude!

Mairey never would have credited it for an instant. But he had turned as red as a beet the moment she had opened the drawer, and redder still with every phallus she'd picked up.

She hadn't meant to tease him, but he was disarmingly handsome with streaks of crimson on his cheeks and smudging his brow.

And all that tight-lipped stammering! The blustering! She'd nearly laughed. But he was a prideful man, and as much as she distrusted him, she would never purposely hurt him.

She had always found the ridges and curves of stone-worked penises elegant and … well, oddly stirring. But still, they had only seemed like ancient carved stone to her.

Until today, when Jack had taken such a blushing interest in the stones she held in her hands. They'd seemed heavier with him looking on, vibrant, and warmed through to the core.

Organic. Yes, and alive.

Mairey flushed to the tips of her toes.

Every single, lovely one of them had been Jack's penis! That's where her imagination had
gone,
running wild in the woods—no wonder she'd been light-headed!

She peeked around the corner of the next set of shelves. Jack was rattling through a cabinet of goblets, scrubbing at his hair and muttering, his coat buttoned to his collar.

What the devil was she going to do with the man? With the days and the weeks and the years stretching out before them? She loved being around him, loved his humor, and the way he smelled of sandalwood soap in the morning and
woodsmoke
in the evenings. His nightly visits to the lodge had become a precious end to the day.

"Excuse me." The curator came through the doorway, a piece of paper fluttering in his hand. "Ah, Lord Rushford! A telegraph message for you."

Jack took the note from the man and read it swiftly. "My God, no. Not Glad Heath."

"What is it?" Mairey ran to his side, fearing news from
Drakestone
—Caro falling out of a tree or Poppy lost in the woods.

"A cave-in. Christ." He'd gone pale, his great hands shaking, even as his jaw squared and he looked up at the curator. "Can I get a message sent back?"

"Certainly."

Jack was already scrawling something on the back of the telegram, efficient and furious.

"Tell them I'm on my way," he said, handing the note to the man.

"I'll see to it, my lord." The curator left on the run.

"The
Willowmoon
will have to wait, Mairey. Come." He grabbed her hand and her satchel and started down the hallway, as though she would naturally agree to follow him anywhere.

Mairey twisted out of his grip and drew away against the cold wall. "Where are you taking me?"

"I've got a ceiling of coal collapsed in one of my tunnels. You're coming with me."

Trouble in your lair, Sir Dragon?
"To one of your mines? Where?"

"Two hours by train. I don't know what I'll find when I get there."

Death, surely. And broken lives. A chill shuddered through her. He couldn't force her to go with him. Not to a mine.

"I can't help you, Jack."

He slipped his fingers through hers, brought their clasped hands between them, and kissed her knuckles. "And I can't think of anyone who could help me more."

"How?" Her heart was in her throat: a coward's heart that didn't want to know what kind of man she had grown so fond of.

"Bring your fairy tales, Mairey—the children will need them."

Chapter 11

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G
lad Heath was a devilish place. Its slag-barren mountain and bristling silhouette of infernal machines was visible for miles before the train thundered out of the dark moors and into the brightly lit station that served the spur line into Rushford's colliery.

The platform was swarming with men running alongside the railcar as it steamed to a stop.

"Stay close, Mairey." Jack was on his feet and stepping down from the private compartment before the car came to rest.

Mairey watched from the top step of the train as he was swallowed up for a moment by a surging sea of coal-blackened miners. They pulled at him, shouting,
each
one vying for his attention, until he finally lifted himself back onto the step beside Mairey.

"One at a time!" he bellowed in a voice that must have carried itself into the very bowels of the mountain, as surely as it stilled the chaos at his feet. "Where is Stephen Richmond? Stephen! I want my engineers here immediately."

He got a hundred answers at once, waved them all quiet, and pointed at a man. "You,
Gadrick
! Where's your boss?"

"Inside, my lord." The frantic man shoved closer. "He's one of 'em
that's
trapped inside."

"Oh, Christ." Jack rubbed his temple but recovered an instant later. "Where?"

"The
Shalecross
, sir. Number
Four
, at a thousand feet. And the ventilation shaft with it."

"At the new steam-winding? Bloody hell!"

Jack slammed hold of the handrail and swabbed his face with his sleeve. So, the man's investment had gone awry. No wonder he was angry. He was probably already counting up his losses.

"Who else,
Gadrick
? How many more?"

"Eight men, sir—as far as we know." General agreement murmured across the platform,
then
all those faces looked up at Jack again, as though he were their savior and not their bloodthirsty master.

"All right. I'll want names,
Gadrick
." He swept his arm across the crowd, an iniquitous saint dispensing a costly blessing. "And I want the team bosses to meet me in the schoolhouse in ten minutes."

Schoolhouse? A schoolhouse at a colliery? Of course. There would be children here, hiding out from the nightmare and the terror, clinging to each other, lying bleak-eyed and wakeful in their beds.

Eight fathers trapped in the earth. All at the mercy of the man who was calling out orders and dispatching streams of miners into his pit with picks, to his timber-yard for shoring-stock, sending word to his
Strathfield
colliery and to
London
for more engineers and more equipment.

Jackson Rushford was masterful at his disasters. Above and beyond the rail station, an undulating trail of flickering orange coiled up the side of the mountain and disappeared into a gaping hole that must have been the mouth of the pit. She was trying to make sense of the light and shadows when Jack loomed on the step below her, his eyes shining with intensity.

"Will you visit the families for me?"

She bit back a curse and yanked her hand out of his when he took hold of it. "Which families would that be?"

He sighed, shook his head. "I need someone who can talk with the families of the men who're trapped down there, to let them know what's happening. Will you do that for me?"

He was asking her to represent his villainy, to excuse it to the grieving widows and fatherless children. Now, there was madness. What would her father say?

"I can't. You said fairy tales."

He seemed surprised, disappointed—a look that made her stomach twist. "Please, Mairey. This is leagues outside the bounds of our partnership, but I need you here." He captured her hand and held it this time, unwilling to let it go. "The waiting is hellish for the wives. And so much worse for the children as they wonder if they'll ever see their fathers again."

A shadow crossed his resolute features, lingered within his plea, and made her heart contract.

"I'll do it for the children, Jack." She couldn't refuse him in the midst of a catastrophe—not even one of his own making.

He led her swiftly through the crowded, dark lanes of stone block row houses, past windows and the tiny faces peering out of the pale lamplight. People had gathered in the torchlight outside the schoolhouse, reaching out to Jack as he quickly passed them, seeming so grateful for his nod or a clasp of his hands.

Such misbegotten devotion.

The schoolhouse was a surprisingly tidy, whitewashed place, with large windows and a wall heavy with books, reminiscent of Jack's own library. His team bosses broke into a brawl of opinions and facts as Jack made his way to the front.

"
Austin
, you tell me!" he shouted, and order descended in the echo.

A scruffy-bearded man rocketed to his feet, his hat crushed in his fist. "
Richmond
took a crew down to inspect the balance pit track, said it didn't look right, it was buckling. Just before the whistle, it was. We've been digging ever since, waiting—"

"Five hours. For me, yes. What else do we know?" Jack continued asking questions sharply, writing with fury and huge strokes on a set of maps, making circles and crosses along tunnels and tracks.

Mairey could only wait and watch him conduct his urgent inquest, while one of the bosses compiled the list of families for her to visit. In the midst of it all, she helped Jack don a set of leather over-trousers and a jacket; then laced and tied his hobnailed boots as he carried on his meeting.

It felt wrong to be there in the enemy camp, fastening the dragon into his armor while he made plans to minimize his losses. But as the meeting broke up and Jack settled a metal cap on his head, as he cinched a vicious-looking pick to his work belt, she was struck with a sudden, terrifying realization.

"Where are you going, Jack?"

He was dressed like the other miners, and already had a black streak slashed across his forehead that resembled a fatal bruise. "Into the mine—where else?"

"You can't."

"Can't I?" He gave a small, dry laugh, watching her as he clipped a screened lamp onto his belt.

"Jack, it's dangerous."

"It is
now
. Those are
my
people down there, and I plan to bring them up personally—and alive, God willing."

"But—" She had expected him to stay safely above ground, to conduct the rescue without creasing his collar, without breaking into a sweat. Without putting his own life at risk.

Now he looked as fragile as the rest of them—made of flesh and blood and crushable bone.

"Dooley has the list of the men who are missing," he told her quietly, with a grave intimacy that drew her unwillingly into his circle. "I'll send someone to you as soon as I know anything."

"And what do I tell these families?" What would she tell Anna and Caro and Poppy if their Lord Jack died inside the mine?

He studied her, his mouth firm. "Tell them I'll do my best for them."

His best against a whole mountain!

He turned to go, but she grabbed his wrist and held him tightly. "Be careful, Jack."

He answered with a half-smile and rakish lift of his devil-dark brow, clamped his cap on tighter,
then
walked into the swarm of miners and out into the night.

"Godspeed," she whispered, praying that God looked after men like Jackson Rushford.

* * *

Jack and his team bosses clambered over the rubble, their lanterns casting fitful shadows inside the tunnel.

"It shouldn't have fallen, sir,"
Gadrick
said, craning his neck toward the roof of coal a dozen feet overhead.

"Hellfire," Jack said, sliding his hand along a ridge of glistening new coal, "a new seam."

They were a thousand feet into the incline shaft that had once been the main
Shalecross
seam, a vein so ancient that it had been opened in the thirteenth century. It had played out centuries ago and now functioned as a faithful friend, holding back the mountain above it to allow the miners to follow the crosscut passageways into other seams. The walls and the roof had been tightly shored up, were minutely and frequently inspected. The shaft was ready for the installation of the new steam-winding system that would drag coal trains up the rails to the main shaft and then into the pit brow more quickly and far more safely.

And now old
Shalecross
had given up a secret stash of coal she'd been hiding just beyond the shell of rock. Odds were that the stash wasn't large and needed only more supporting, but it had caused a room-sized collapse into the main tunnel—impossible to predict, impossible to shore against.

But the responsibility was his alone, and it made him ill to think of the lives that were at stake.

"
Richmond
must have suspected it when they were measuring for the new track, sir,"
Wilson
said, leaping out of the way of the brigade of workers who were pulling loose coal and rock away from the fall. "He didn't want anyone but his crew to follow him in here."

How deep this new roof of coal descended along the tunnel, only time and toil would tell. He prayed that
Richmond
and his men had been far beyond it when it fell in. Even then, without fresh air circulating from the venting system, the coal gas might kill them. There was no time to waste.

"All right, I want every coal tram in the entire colliery on these tracks." Jack tossed a clod of coal into an empty tub. "Then bring everyone you can find into the tunnel. We've no winch, no windings to help us. We'll dig the men out of here the old-fashioned way: loading one tram after the other until the rubble's gone."

Jack gave the job to his best team bosses,
then
rounded up a crew of young men who had more courage than sense and led them with his maps to a shaft that ran parallel to
Shalecross
Number Four for two hundred feet before swinging east and diving deeper into the mountain.

"There's twenty feet of solid rock between us and the
Shalecross
tunnel, gentleman," Jack said, hanging his lamp on a
timberpeg
. "We're going to dig a connecting tunnel, and with any luck, we'll be shaking hands with
Richmond
before
noon
."

God help them if it took longer. Twelve hours was just about how much air the men had to sustain them.

Jack set his muscles and took a satisfying swing at the granite wall with his pick. A fist-sized chunk came spinning off and smacked him in the knee.

The men were grinning at him. "Pretty good, boss," said the youngest, a strapping lad that reminded Jack of himself a decade ago.

"Not bad for an old man, eh?" Jack gave another swing, following through with arms and shoulders that had labored too long at a desk. The impact made him grunt. But he worked steadily with the other men, each doing a five-minute shift at a killing speed, then stretching out their kinks as another man took his place.

Two hours later they had removed less than three feet of stone, and Jack began to despair.

* * *

"Lord Rushford wishes you to know that he's doing his very best for you." Mairey repeated Jack's words a hundred times during the interminable night as she went from house to house, giving comfort in his name to the women and children whose husbands and fathers and sons were held hostage by his despicable mine. She had prayed beside the families, embraced the children as fiercely as if they were her sisters, wept and wiped away others' tears.

She had sought proof of withered souls in Jack's colliery, and instead she had discovered not only unflagging faith and bone-bred courage to carry on but also a terrifying acceptance of the risks. Disasters were part of Glad Heath's history, and these people blamed no one, especially not Jack.

"We are blessed to be here in Glad Heath," one woman had said through her tears, clutching her children. "He's a fine man. His lordship won't let us down."

"If any man can find a way to rescue my husband, it's Jackson Rushford."

"There is no man in the world like our Jack."

Their Jack.

The truth was that he'd also become her Jack. And she was petrified for him, couldn't imagine never seeing him again.

She'd received three oral messages from him, delivered each time by a different young man. The messages were brief and impersonal, but she'd clung to them like a lifeline.

Yet he was only as safe as his last message, and that had been hours ago—and her heart leaped to her throat every time she looked toward the mine and saw the bonfires on the hillside.

He was down there in the stench and the steam and the darkness, and she couldn't do a thing to help him but pray.

He'd asked her for fairy tales, and so Mairey gathered the frightened children into the schoolhouse to soothe them with her stories.

And did her best to bring back the light.