Dinner was a tremendously awkward affair. The sudden outburst of mutual lust joined them at the table like an ill-behaved inebriated uncle: avoiding addressing it felt wrong, but doing so also felt quite impossible. Lucian appeared fairly at ease, considering; he ate with appetite and he had loosened his cravat to a scandalous degree so that one could see the hollow at the base of his throat. Harriet kept sneaking glances at it, and eventually, he caught her doing so. His half smile made her feel hot in all sorts of ways, and she dropped her gaze back into her stew. Could one despise a man and still crave his kisses?
“You’re getting on well with the lass, then?” he asked.
He meant Mhairi, she assumed. “She is wonderful, thank you. I’m indebted to her by an additional two pounds.”
Lucian’s spoon stopped on the way to his mouth. “Whatever for?”
“Her accompanying me to Heather Row today.”
“That’s more than a maid’s monthly wage in London,” he said, comically outraged.
“Oh, I know,” she said, “I was trained in household management.”
Whatever his response was to that, he swallowed it with a big gulp of ale.
“Some of the children I saw coming from the pits today can’t have been older than eight or nine years of age,” she ventured.
“They’d be that, yes,” he replied.
“That’s rather young.”
He gave a shrug. “Old enough to work as a trapper. If not a hurrier, when they’re boys.”
“A trapper?”
“They open the trap doors for the coal tubs coming through. Or to ventilate the shafts. Children much younger than the ones you saw today used to do this.” He was rolling his right shoulder while he talked until he became conscious of it and stopped abruptly.
“Much younger?” She was thinking of Michael, sweet cherubic Michael bouncing on Flossie’s knee. Sending him to work in such frightening conditions in five years’ time? Impossible. “How could any parent inflict this upon a little one? Isn’t it terribly dark in the tunnels?”
Lucian’s features hardened. “Yes. It’s dark. So dark you can’t see the hand in front of your eyes sometimes. But every child in a working family is one more mouth to feed; it’s best if they learn early and earn their keep.”
She drew back. “At that age? You don’t mean that.”
“You seem to believe in the goodness of my heart despite much evidence to the contrary,” he remarked.
It seemed so. She had been temporarily swayed by the tenderness of his kisses and claims that he’d rather see his skin burned than hers.
She put down her spoon. “I’m certain that it is unlawful for young children and women to work underground.”
“Aye, there was a law passed in the early forties. The Mines and Collieries Act.”
“That’s it,” she said. “And doesn’t it prohibit women and children from working underground?”
He nodded. “No more women and girls in the tunnels. Boys must be aged ten and older. They mustn’t work more than ten hours a day. Officially.” His voice was caustic irony.
“I presume women and girls are still going underground,” she murmured.
“Here in Drummuir?” he said. “Yes.”
Her appetite left her altogether. “Will you put a stop to it?”
He gave a curt nod.
“I’m glad.”
“The women won’t be,” he said. “Often enough they’re the ones breaking the law on their own accord.”
“Why is that?”
“This notion that women are delicate creatures who should idle the hours away with letter writing in a parlor is a reality only in your circles, you know.”
“Our circles,” she said mildly.
He looked surprised for a beat, then picked up his ale again.
“I’m aware that most women work,” she said. “Bailey works with me every day, but she earns a wage she finds agreeable. Why not pay the miners a decent enough wage for work that is safe? I doubt the women here break the law because they crave being in a tunnel.”
“Aye, I could raise their wages until they are all very nice and comfortable on ten hours a day aboveground and raise the boys’ age to fourteen,” he said. “You know what would happen then?”
“You would have less profit?”
“In this case, I wouldn’t have a mine anymore—because other mine owners wouldn’t follow suit, so they’d be pricing Drummuir coal out of the market. And if they don’t have Drummuir, where will they go? Seen any factories nearby where they could make a coin?”