“Would they mind if I sat and sketched the lodgings?” She pointed at the wooden bench in front of the first cottage in the row, from where she could conveniently sketch the cottage across.
“I don’t think they’d mind, no,” Mhairi said, “Hamish’s mother’s lives there, Rosie Fraser; I know her well.”
She looked on curiously as Hattie unpacked sketchbook and pencils.
“Sit with me,” Hattie said, and with an embarrassed giggle, the young woman settled next to her, and was soon watching intently as the house across the way began to appear on the page.
It took not long for the children to find them more interesting than their hoop, and for Hattie to find them more interesting than her sketch. Their little group brought field mice to mind with their round eyes and dull brown coats. One of the girls was chewing on a strand of blond hair. Hattie smiled at her. “Hello, angel.”
Encouraged thusly, the children encroached. Grubby little hands were touching the shiny blue silk of her folded parasol. She laughed when Mhairi tried batting away the boldest ones. “Let them,” she said.
The blond girl promptly climbed onto the bench between them and cuddled close to study the sketch. Then she said something incomprehensible in Scots.
Mhairi snorted.
“What did she say?” Hattie asked.
“Anne’s being daft, ma’am. She wants you to draw her.”
“Anne.” The girl’s eyes were wide and blue, and eerily serious. “Would you like me to draw you, Anne?”
A nod.
“You would have to hold still for a while,” Hattie said. “Can you do that?”
“A shilling that she’ll not last a minute,” Mhairi said.
“Why don’t you hold her on your lap?”
Bemused, Mhairi hoisted the girl onto her apron, and the pen flew over the paper again, easily capturing round, dirt-smudged cheeks, a pouty mouth … The challenge was always the eyes, and in this case they held a very complex little soul … When Hattie finally glanced up, she found several elderly women had joined the circle and were craning their necks.
“It looks like a photograph,” Mhairi said, amazed.
She shook out her hand. “It’s just a sketch.”
Anne seemed sufficiently smitten with her likeness; she gripped the sheet and held on tight.
“I suppose you shall have to take it home to your mama, hmm?”
The cozy atmosphere shifted as the miners were returning to the village, groups of men and throngs of children, and judging by their overt stares when they noticed Hattie, the curiosity was mutual. But when she comprehended what she saw, her stomach sank. “The children,” she murmured. “Were … they working, too?”
Mhairi followed her gaze to a couple of boys trotting past. “Yes, ma’am.”
They looked not much older than little Anne. Her next shock followed right at their heels—the women streaming in … were wearing trousers. They wore a sort of loincloth on top, the hems of which didn’t even reach their knees, and they were linking arms and chatting as if they weren’t practically in the nude. Outrageous. Intriguing. None of it half as startling as her husband moving into her field of vision. A hat covered his shaggy hair, but his purposful stride was unmistakable. Her belly clenched with a visceral emotion, and the elderly women who had been studying her sketch exchanged glances, grabbed the children, and dispersed.
“Um,” said Mhairi.
“Why don’t you return to the inn,” Hattie suggested. “It appears I have an escort.”
The girl had disappeared by the time Lucian reached the bench.
He was glowering down at her in a by now familiar manner. “Mrs. Blackstone.”
“Sir.”
“Will you accompany me to the inn?” Why did he even bother phrasing it like a question?
She collected her pencils. She had woken this morning with the strange notion that his presence in their bed had ensured her warmth and safety in those bizarre new surroundings. She was most powerfully deluded, for he looked moody and not at all pleased to see her.
He noticed her troubles to adjust to his pace as he steered her toward the dirt path, and he slowed at once, but he made no effort to make conversation.
“There were women coming from the mine in trousers,” she tried, because the silence felt awkward. “Is this commonplace?”
“Pit-brow lasses,” he said, keeping his eyes on the inn ahead. “They’re very common. They all but run the coal fields down in Wigan.”