“Does such a thing exist, you think?”
He glanced away. “I used to think it didn’t,” he said.
“You’re a powerful man. What do you dream of?”
“I don’t dream,” he said. “I plan.” He fell asleep.
Because they could not while yet another day away in a lustful haze, not even a Sunday, Lucian worked on his list of MPs he wanted to lobby for tax reform after lunch. Hattie waited until Mhairi was free, and they paid a visit to Rosie Fraser to acquire her permission to use the miners’ photographs in an art exhibition.
“Art, in London,” Mrs. Fraser said, one hand on her sturdy hip, the other on her gleaming kitchen counter. “About us.” She exchanged a glance with Mhairi. “Who’d want to look at that?”
“Plenty of people as long as tickets are terribly expensive,” Hattie said. “They all have to have one then.”
“Pfff.” Mrs. Fraser shook her head. “And all proceeds would go to Drummuir?”
“Yes,” Hattie confirmed. “Including any money paid for the pieces.”
Mrs. Fraser considered it while she poured tea into mugs. “I’ll ask round,” she then said. “I’ll have a list of people who gave permission. But there’s one thing that I’d like to say, ma’am.”
“Of course.”
“How did you arrive here at Drummuir?”
“Why, by coach.”
“And before that?”
“By train.”
“Aye, and there’s a ferry, too, across the firth, isn’t there.”
She nodded. “Indeed. A feat of engineering.”
Mild sarcasm crinkled the corner of Mrs. Fraser’s eyes. “And all fueled by coal,” she said. “As are the factories that make the iron and steel. More than half the homes in Britain are kept warm thanks to coal. They say it’ll even fuel electricity one day. Mhairi, what do you put into your clothing iron?”
“Hot coal,” said Mhairi.
“So even our clothes are nice and smooth, thanks to coal,” Mrs. Fraser said, sounding satisfied. “You see, we rarely leave the collieries. But the fruit of our labor is in every house in Britain and out on the railway tracks and the high seas. Without these”—she held up her hands, raw and cracked—“there’d be no modernity. So, indeed it’s fine to have an exhibition, ma’am. But don’t make us a freak show.”
“I couldn’t,” Hattie said hastily. “We shall use your words, if you like. No, I shall hire you as my consultant while I’m working.”
Tawny brows pulled together. “Hire me—what for?”
“It’s quite simple—you think of the message you wish to communicate to the Londoners, and I shall put it into practice.”
“And how much does it pay,” Rosie Fraser said, “the consulting?”
“I have a generous budget,” Hattie said, thinking of her two thousand a year. “We could have a photograph of your hands, too. Next to the portrait. What do you think?”
Hamish ambled into the kitchen from the parlor, his blue eyes sparkling first at Mhairi, then at Hattie. “You’ve my permission to exhibit this perfect mug, Mrs. Blackstone,” he said, and stroked his angular jaw. “Watch out, Michelangelo.”
“Aye, it’s the perfect mug,” his mother said, “for a cartoon.”
Back in the inn, Hattie’s imagination was spurred to great heights. She was mixing silver nitride solutions with the help of Mr. Wright’s written instructions, because the engineer had returned to St. Andrews. She experimented with different light and aperture settings on her camera in the main room—the brighter the light, the better, she found, but then she had turned to practicing on her parasol instead of breathing, twitching subjects, so who knew how it would be once Anne held the parasol? She worked on mastering the exposure time, which required her to monitor her pocket watch while moving the lens cap from the lens and back again at the right interval, over and over, until the watch became superfluous.
“I shall master this,” she told Lucian, covered in chemicals and sweat, with the smell of dark cloth cloying her lungs.
He looked up from his two-days-old newspaper. “Of course you will,” he replied, and she detected no hint of sarcasm.
The following day, she paid one of the Burns sons, Calumn, to help her carry her equipment to the village school, and while he set up her camera, she went to visit Anne’s house. Anne’s mother answered with a naked, dribbling toddler on her hip. She barely reacted to the large tin of shortbread Hattie had purchased from Mhairi to bring along as a gift; she was not unfriendly, but rather harried and exhausted. She called over her shoulder for Anne while the toddler drooled stains onto the already dirty blue bodice.