Page 4 of The Time for Love
Hinckley gave his men their orders and followed. “I saw the flame didn’t look quite right.”
“There’s something wrong with the additives.” She yanked her work gloves from her pocket and pulled them on, then climbed the short ladder so she could look into the bucket containing the mix of additive ores. She peered inside.
Hinckley climbed up on the conveyor belt’s other side.
Sophy raised her head and looked at the ore lying on the conveyor belt, then reached out, picked up a handful, and examined it closely before letting the rough mixture slide back through her fingers. “Something is missing—namely, the spiegeleisen.”
Hinckley frowned. “But how can that be? I watched it being loaded into the feed bucket.”
Quickly, Sophy descended the ladder and hurried past the three smaller conveyor belts that fed the crushed ores into the mixer bucket, her goal the ladders that led to the three feed buckets fixed on the wall.
She hurried up the ladder beside the first bucket, the one reserved for spiegeleisen given it was an essential ingredient for all the steel Carmichael’s produced. She looked into the bucket. “Huh! It’s still full.”
Frowning, she followed the trail the ore should have taken and saw... “Aha!” Lips setting grimly, she reached into the narrow chute through which the crumbled rock needed to pass and gripped and wiggled and finally pulled out—
Spiegeleisen rattled down the chute and onto the smaller conveyor belt as she held up the lump she’d pulled free. “A piece of coal. It was blocking the chute.”
Hinckley frowned.
Before he could say it, she did. “It couldn’t have got there on its own.”
While there was plenty of coal around the shed—it fueled the boilers that produced the steam used throughout the works—the lump simply could not have got wedged in the chute without the help of human agency. Holding the lump in her fingers, grimly furious, she glared at it.
“So what do you want to do now?”
Hinckley’s question jerked her back to the issue at hand. She thought, then ordered, “Open up the valve again and let the blow run, but keep the feed going until all the spiegeleisen is in and fired. Essentially, extend the blow until everything that should have gone in is in and has been incorporated. As long as everything that should go in does go in, the resulting steel will be the same.” Still clutching the lump of coal, she descended the ladder as Hinckley called instructions to his crew.
On reaching the works’ floor, Sophy backed away from the converter, then halted. With her head tipped, she watched the blow fire up and studied the flame that, once again, shot up from the converter’s mouth. Eventually satisfied that all was as it should be, she handed Hinckley the lump of coal, then dusted off her gloves, pulled them off, and stuffed them into her pocket.
After one last look at the flame, she caught Hinckley’s eye. “You were about ten minutes into the additive run when I called a halt, so it’ll be about another ten minutes or so of extra time that will be needed.”
Like all the men in sight, Hinckley had taken note of the looming presence beside her, the one she was doing her damnedest to ignore, and was understandably curious. Nevertheless, her foreman merely nodded respectfully. “I’ll keep an eye on it.”
Correctly interpreting her consequent nod as a dismissal, Hinckley lumbered back to his crew, who were standing to one side of the now-firing converter.
She folded her arms and, as soon as Hinckley was out of earshot, without deigning to glance Cynster’s way, inquired, “Why are you still here?”
Despite not looking, she heard the amusement lacing his voice as he replied, “Because I’m persistent.”
Martin paused, then in a lower tone, added, “Especially when pursuing something I want.” As of a few moments ago, that something included her. He resettled his hat on his head and shot her a glance. “Am I to take it that you’re the resident metallurgist?”
She was frowning at the converter flame and answered absentmindedly, “Yes. I was always interested in the process, so Colonel Tom taught me.”
“Vickers?” He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice. Although still young, Colonel Tom Vickers was well on his way to becoming a legend in steelmaking.
“Hmm. We more or less grew up together. He’s like a big brother to me.”
The converter was once more in full blow, yet with a faint frown knotting her fine eyebrows, she continued to study the flame.
Martin shifted his gaze to the converter as well.
After a moment, without glancing at her, he quietly asked, “Am I right in thinking that, had you not noticed the anomaly in the flame and the batch of steel had progressed through forging and on to product, then when your customer subsequently used that steel, it might well have failed?”
She remained silent and unmoving for nearly a minute, then replied, “I’m not sure it would have passed through forging, but if it had…yes.”
He glanced at her; although she continued to stare at the converter, her lips—those exceedingly luscious and distracting lips—had thinned. “I imagine,” he murmured, “that such an outcome would have adversely impacted Carmichael Steelworks’ reputation.”
Her gaze shifted to him in a narrow-eyed glare, then she lowered her arms and faced him. “And I have to wonder whether there’s any connection between a piece of coal wedged into the spiegeleisen chute and you turning up to press your offer to buy the works.”
