“All right,” Boyd said after a long pause. “I’ll do that.”
“And I want the accommodation communally owned. Discuss that, too.”
Boyd was left bewildered by these developments, but his wide shoulders relaxed and he became talkative, first about the weather, then about the idiosyncrasies of the different coal seams that couldn’t be found in the ledgers and official reports. He was eventually interrupted when the kitchen door behind him opened and a black-haired child entered, a boy. He was five or seven years of age, impossible to tell, stunted in growth as he was. At the sight of the visitors, he dropped the bucket and the contents spilled across the floor. Turnips, thin and pale like bones.
“Och, Ruri,” said Boyd, and shook his head.
The lad didn’t move; his eyes locked on Lucian and Lucian instantly knew what he saw: a man in a fine suit and a tall hat, with a thick silver pocket watch chain on display, flanked by other men who looked to be from the city; a picture that spelled trouble—a mum walking on eggshells for days, perhaps, or an angry da, or less food in the larder. Lucian’s chest tightened with resentment, and it worsened while he watched Boyd’s gray-haired mother pick turnips off the flagstones. Absolution came from the clanging of a distant bell—five o’clock. The shift was over for the day, and they took their leave.
Outside, the weather had turned, and beneath the coal odor the refined air smelled like soil warming after the rain. Boyd walked with them, demonstrating his approval. “My eldest daughter’s wedding is in five days’ time,” he said, nodding and raising his healthy hand in greeting at some of the miners returning from the field.
“My congratulations,” Lucian said. It was a request for him to pay for the festivities, which boded well. Boyd wouldn’t take his money if he still distrusted him.
The next moment, he did a double take. A vivid flash of red had drawn his attention to the bench in front of the last house in the row. His wife. Sitting at the center of a pack of small children like a happy hen in a nest. Briefly, it was so silent in his head he thought he could hear the clang of the chisels from under the rocks.
Chapter 19
Earlier in the Day
She had stood by the window for an hour, watching the purple hues of the heather field change depending on the shifting afternoon clouds, and when the sun finally broke through, she examined the dresses Lucian had purchased for her more closely. Save the russet silk gown and one in emerald green, her trunk contained plain wool dresses in earthy colors. Which, admittedly, were perfect, since given the choice between waltzing into the village like a Marie Antoinette in fine silks or staying in the room, she would have elected to stay in the room, where she would have gone mad. If she couldn’t create, she had to move. She picked a plum-colored dress, laced up her boots, and with her sketchbook satchel and her parasol, she went downstairs to request Mhairi’s company. This put Mrs. Burns in an embarrassing position, for Mhairi was quite indispensably at work in the kitchen, until Hattie suggested one pound for the service, which was an offer Mrs. Burns thought unwise to refuse. Then, on a whim, she requested pen and paper and wrote a note in passable French, which informed the mistress of Mytilene of her arrival as soon as next month, and that she would make herself useful in the community in whichever way required. She knew the address by heart—a safety measure she had taken before setting out for France—and offered Mrs. Burns another pound for discreet delivery of the note to the post and telegraph office in Auchtermuchty.
“It’s peculiar,” she said to Mhairi, as she strode briskly along the path toward the village a while later, “I keep expecting the air to smell fresh in a valley and yet my nose tells me I’m in the middle of the city.”
“It’s the coal field, ma’am,” Mhairi supplied after a pause. “There’s an open seam and there’s always small fires.”
“Have you been to London, Miss Burns?”
Mhairi glanced at her sideways, clearly amused. “No, ma’am. I’ve been to Dundee.”
“Charming—and I suppose this is Heather Row.” Entering the village felt like walking into a Dutch Renaissance painting: all colors had a brown tinge to them and a somberness lay over the scene. The two rows of houses would have appeared abandoned had it not been for a group of children chasing a hoop down the road.
“I suppose everyone is at work.”
“They’ll return very soon,” Mhairi said, nodding at the furnaces steaming in the distance. “At five o’clock.”