A small figure came running toward her, her pale blond hair flashing in the sun. Anne. The girl must have lain in wait for the toffees she had been promised yesterday. The tin was in Hattie’s satchel, rattling against a flask with chamomile tea that had been provided by a pale but smiling Mhairi.
Her little friend halted at a respectful distance and ducked her head.
“Good afternoon, angel.”
A gap-toothed smile spread over Anne’s face. Hattie offered her hand. “Shall we have a picnic?” She gathered up her skirts and steered them off the path over hunks of heather toward one of the gnarly trees that were scattered across the plain. They settled in a sun-dappled patch, and Hattie opened the satchel and took out the tin. “Here you go, dear.” The girl took a long time to select a toffee, but then she grabbed one, unwrapped it, and stuffed it into her mouth rather quickly. She also took the parasol and put it over her shoulder to sit under it as though it were a tent.
“Shall I photograph you like this?” Hattie murmured. “With a parasol?”
Anne just looked at her while toffee ran down the corner of her mouth.
“Oh dear.” Hattie tugged off a glove and wiped with her thumb. “But yes, that is exactly what I shall do. And you could bring a toy. You have a toy?”
This invited a high-pitched explanation about a doll in half-comprehensible Scots, and Hattie nodded along as images took shape in her mind.
Anne left with her cheeks and pockets crammed with sweets, and Hattie rested against the tree. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves and carried the spirited song of a skylark across the valley. She curled her bare fingers into warm earth. The sweet scent of sun-dried heather rose from the soil. How simple, she thought, rubbing grains of sand between her fingertips, how simple to just be here under this tree. She did not even feel tempted to send her mind wandering off to Paris. And much as she loved and missed Oxford with its honied walls and domed lead roofs, the stained-glass windows and quaint parks, the punting and the Pimm’s and the leisurely strolls in the botanical garden, she couldn’t remember the last time she had had the pleasure of seeing such a pure, blue sky. The breeze had driven all fumes from the colliery away to the east. Lucian would have known such pristine skies as a boy. How did he bear London now, a city forever shrouded in smoke?
Lucian.
Hazily, she remembered her whining and groping the night before and she wanted to expire. But there were other memories, too. Warm, careful hands undressing her. Callused fingertips grazing the sensitive skin at the backs of her knees. Lucian’s lips, soft against her brow. A tender pulse began to throb between her legs. She was no longer indisposed, nor intoxicated. In several hours, her husband would return from his excursion.
In the near distance, the lark ascended toward the sky in an arrow-straight line. Hattie watched the small body hover in midair, teetering as if holding the balance on a precipice, and how it sang through the inevitable fall back to earth.
The sun was low on the horizon when she returned to the inn. She found fresh towels and heather soap on the bed, and she indulged in a lengthy sponge bath. She settled in the armchair wearing a clean chemise beneath her robe and waited.
Lucian’s heavy footfall announced his arrival, and her breathing turned shallow when he stepped into the room. His hair was damp. The hard look in his eyes diffused when he took in her state of undress, and her skin warmed beneath his gaze.
“Your hair is wet,” she said, and it came out too high.
He ran a hand over his head. “I went for a swim after the inspection. There’s a small loch near the north face.”
A vision of his naked white body parting the dark waters made her shift in her seat. “I trust your inspection went well?”
He shrugged out of his dusty overcoat and hung it on the clothing rack next to the door. “It didn’t.”
“Oh no.”
He took a medicinal brown bottle from his trouser pocket and placed it on the table. “Two of the newer tunnels along the northern coal face have unsafe ceilings,” he said and sat down heavily. “It appears Rutland had coerced the miners into pillar mining. Seems like dancing at the wedding sealed their trust in me enough to share this information,” he added cynically.
“I don’t understand pillar mining,” she said, “but I’m sorry you are encountering trouble.”
He began unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Pillar mining means advancing a tunnel into the coalface to extract the coal, and when it is time to retreat again, miners also get what they can from the pillars that were left to ensure the static safety of the tunnel,” he explained. “The tunnel collapses as the miners withdraw.”