Page 96 of Not Quite a Lady
‘It is so much quieter than I imagined,’ she marvelled to Caroline as they drove back. ‘Like a great beast, breathing heavily.’
‘An expensive beast,’ her friend sighed. ‘Jack says he wants two more if he is to open another pit, or go deeper with this one.’
‘Just how deep is the current pit?’ Lily asked. For some reason that had never occurred to her before.
Being underground, the dirt, the thought of mixing with dozens of strange men, none of that concerned her. But why had she not thought about the depth? If she was frightened of anything, it was heights, and Lily had a sinking feeling that gazing down a deep hole in the ground would be no different to looking over the edge of a cliff. Terrifying.
‘I have no idea,’ Caroline said cheerfully. ‘I just know it takes several minutes when they go down on the rope, so it must be a long way.’
‘On the rope?’ Lily asked faintly. ‘You mean, there are baskets, or a cage or something hanging from a rope?’
‘No, I don’t think so. They make loops in the rope and the adults put one foot in that and hang on. The lads stand on their fathers’ feet, or ride on their backs. It’s called a bant, a group all going down together. It looks like a big bunch of grapes.’
‘Oh.’ Lily swallowed. Just what had she let herself in for?
Jack sat back in his chair at the head of the long oak table and regarded the scene before him with a certain benevolence. Negotiations with George Willoughby had provedhighly satisfactory and he could congratulate himself that his elder sister was going to be well-provided for in a marriage to a husband who seemed to adore her.
His smile turned self-mocking. He was becoming positively patriarchal, taking credit for an alliance which had been entirely of Caroline’s own making, and earlier he had caught himself thinking seriously about managing Susan’s come-out to her best advantage. Yet he could not even achieve a suitable match for himself and ensure the future of the title.
He moved his attention to Lily who, to his increasingly experienced and concerned eye, seemed nervous. Her reserve had become even more extreme, her complexion paler, and several times she had appeared to be on the point of asking him something.
Jack was not at all certain he wanted to know what it was that was troubling her, he suspected it would be all his fault. But that was what you did when you cared for someone, was it not? However uncomfortable the results of trying to help were.
He chose his moment when they were in the drawing room and his family were poring over the fashion journals in search of wedding outfits.
‘Lily? Is something wrong?’
She started, blinked at him and then smiled, suddenly so much like his old Lily that he smiled back. ‘No, nothing at all. I was just making lists in my head and worrying about things I need to do. Very foolish at this time of night: I will dream about it now. Jack…’
‘Yes?’ He recognised the tone. It was the universal feminine tone he had come to dread and usually preceded remarks such as, ‘I have been thinking…’ or, ‘You know my allowance...’
‘There is no need to sound so wary. I was only going to say that Caroline took me to see the mine yesterday – no, do not frown at me! We were escorted by your manager, and did notgo very close to the activity at all. And there were some things I wanted to ask, but did not think of until we left. How deep is the shaft?’
‘Nigh on two hundred feet. We will not go any deeper.’
‘Two hundred. Fancy that,’ Lily said faintly. ‘Why no deeper?’
‘Pumping out water is one problem, but ventilation is the other. There are all sorts of tricks one can use to force air through, but there comes a point when nothing will work.’
‘Is it just that you cannot get fresh air in, or is there gas? I had heard about new safety lamps.’
Lily was looking brighter again. Trust her to know about something he did not expect his own family to have heard about.
‘We do not get choke damp here, the soils are wrong and the shaft too deep, but we do get fire damp, and that is the one that causes explosions. I will buy the new lamps when they have been tested a little more, but even they will not help if there is a stray spark.’
‘So what can you do?’ She was curled up on the sofa now, facing him.
Jack could feel himself sinking into the depths of those intelligent green eyes and had to stop himself reaching out and taking her hand. On the far side of the room the low voices of his family discussing Tuesday’s dance seemed a hundred miles away. He just wanted to be alone with Lily and, if talking about mining was a safely neutral way to free her from her façade of polite reserve, then so be it.
‘We test for it and then create our own controlled explosions.’
‘Dangerous, surely?’
‘Alarming, but not hazardous if one knows what one is doing. Which reminds me, I must talk to Sykes about seeing it is done again soon.’
Lily had gone pale. Jack yielded to temptation and gave her hand a comforting squeeze. ‘Truly, it is not dangerous.’
‘Oh, good,’ she responded earnestly. ‘That is a relief.’
