“No,” she admitted.
“Even if there were,” he said, “ask any pit-brow woman, and they’ll tell you they prefer the coal field over inhaling fluff all day in a hot cotton mill.”
She digested this while drinking wine, then she said, “Something is not right when the viability of a mine depends on the lowest pay possible for the workers.”
His dark smile went through her bones. “You have that right,” he said. “Something is very wrong with that.”
“I should have paid more attention to Lucie’s work with the women’s trade unions,” she said glumly.
“I’ll tell you what they say,” Lucian said. “They usually object to women worker protection coming out of Parliament, because it always aims to keep women from working. All right if they’re married and their husbands earn well, but what of the single women and widowed women? Wives of poor workingmen?”
“Or the ones who desire to be independent in any case?” she said pointedly.
“That, too,” he said. “And forbidding women to go underground was never brought on by concern for their health. The public and the church wanted it so for moral reasons. Can’t have women in the nude, they said. I say let the church compensate for the difference in earning, but they don’t.”
If he was trying to shock her, he had succeeded. “In the nude,” she repeated.
He took the bread from his plate and tore off a chunk with strong teeth. “It’s hot as hell underground and often wet,” he said when he had swallowed. “Stripping off makes it more bearable.”
Much as she was reeling from this news, it was remarkable that he knew such details. There was a lot of talk at the Greenfield dining table, but her father probably knew little of the conditions in the mines where he owned stakes, and even Flossie, for all her fervor, had never set foot in a tunnel. Hours of clever discussion and snarling at the ills of the world suddenly rang hollow.
It felt strange to pay Lucian a compliment, but she did try to be fair in all things, and so she said, “I find it commendable that you took care to learn such a great deal about the plights of the communities.”
He paused. Studied her more closely. Then he shook his head. “I thought you knew by now,” he said. “You’ve a very keen eye, after all.”
Her nerves shrilled with alarm. Quite like when he had been on the cusp of kissing her for the first time next to a pair of Han vases.
“I used to be one of them,” he said. “I’m Argyll mining stock.”
Chapter 20
Judging by his wife’s blank expression, she hadn’t had a clue. Ah well. He supposed if she had married him knowing he was illegitimate, she would in time come to terms with this, too.
“You said you worked for an antiques dealer near Leicester Square,” she said, sounding shaken. “And that your mother was employed as a maid in a manor.”
“I said I was thirteen when I took up apprenticeship in the shop. I lived on the street for nearly a year before that. I had come down to London from Inveraray when I was twelve.”
“The street,” Harriet whispered. “You were alone in London—what of your parents?”
“Both dead at the time,” Lucian said, and she flinched at his harsh tone.
She took her napkin from her lap, folded it into a sharp triangle, and put it aside on the table.
“Please, do tell,” she said.
“My mother was from the mining community,” he said. “She had a rare flight of fancy and thought to better herself by taking a position at the manor. Well, she soon returned to the pits, but in the family way.” He realized his hands were in fists, and he could relax them only slowly. “After she was gone, I stayed with her husband until the man who had sired me died. A cousin of his took over his estate; he was of the zealously religious sort and made the rounds through the county to collect all his cousin’s bastards, to shorten his time in purgatory, I reckon. He meant to send us all to a religious boarding school in Kensington.”
Harriet’s eyes were huge. He wondered what possessed him to speak of these things. The coal-infused air, the boy Ruri spilling the turnips, her soft mouth beneath his, salty with tears his rudeness had caused. A potent mix, enough to make a man talk about himself.
“I thought your stepfather had given you his name,” she said. “Why would they care to take you from him?”
“They knew who I really was. Everyone did. My mother had worked at the manor until her condition became impossible to hide; she had stayed for the richer food and lighter work, you see, for as long as she could. They knew, and they came for me.”