The Wedding Night Read online

  “Stay close, Mairey.” Jack was on his feet and stepping down from the private compartment before the car came to rest.

  Mairey watched from the top step of the train as he was swallowed up for a moment by a surging sea of coal-blackened miners. They pulled at him, shouting, each one vying for his attention, until he finally lifted himself back onto the step beside Mairey.

  “One at a time!” he bellowed in a voice that must have carried itself into the very bowels of the mountain, as surely as it stilled the chaos at his feet. “Where is Stephen Richmond? Stephen! I want my engineers here immediately.”

  He got a hundred answers at once, waved them all quiet, and pointed at a man. “You, Gadrick! Where’s your boss?”

  “Inside, my lord.” The frantic man shoved closer. “He’s one of ’em that’s trapped inside.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Jack rubbed his temple but recovered an instant later. “Where?”

  “The Shalecross, sir. Number Four, at a thousand feet. And the ventilation shaft with it.”

  “At the new steam-winding? Bloody hell!”

  Jack slammed hold of the handrail and swabbed his face with his sleeve. So, the man’s investment had gone awry. No wonder he was angry. He was probably already counting up his losses.

  “Who else, Gadrick? How many more?”

  “Eight men, sir—as far as we know.” General agreement murmured across the platform, then all those faces looked up at Jack again, as though he were their savior and not their bloodthirsty master.

  “All right. I’ll want names, Gadrick.” He swept his arm across the crowd, an iniquitous saint dispensing a costly blessing. “And I want the team bosses to meet me in the schoolhouse in ten minutes.”

  Schoolhouse? A schoolhouse at a colliery? Of course. There would be children here, hiding out from the nightmare and the terror, clinging to each other, lying bleak-eyed and wakeful in their beds.

  Eight fathers trapped in the earth. All at the mercy of the man who was calling out orders and dispatching streams of miners into his pit with picks, to his timber-yard for shoring-stock, sending word to his Strathfield colliery and to London for more engineers and more equipment.

  Jackson Rushford was masterful at his disasters.

  Above and beyond the rail station, an undulating trail of flickering orange coiled up the side of the mountain and disappeared into a gaping hole that must have been the mouth of the pit. She was trying to make sense of the light and shadows when Jack loomed on the step below her, his eyes shining with intensity.

  “Will you visit the families for me?”

  She bit back a curse and yanked her hand out of his when he took hold of it. “Which families would that be?”

  He sighed, shook his head. “I need someone who can talk with the families of the men who’re trapped down there, to let them know what’s happening. Will you do that for me?”

  He was asking her to represent his villainy, to excuse it to the grieving widows and fatherless children. Now, there was madness. What would her father say?

  “I can’t. You said fairy tales.”

  He seemed surprised, disappointed—a look that made her stomach twist. “Please, Mairey. This is leagues outside the bounds of our partnership, but I need you here.” He captured her hand and held it this time, unwilling to let it go. “The waiting is hellish for the wives. And so much worse for the children as they wonder if they’ll ever see their fathers again.”

  A shadow crossed his resolute features, lingered within his plea, and made her heart contract.

  “I’ll do it for the children, Jack.” She couldn’t refuse him in the midst of a catastrophe—not even one of his own making.

  He led her swiftly through the crowded, dark lanes of stone block row houses, past windows and the tiny faces peering out of the pale lamplight. People had gathered in the torchlight outside the schoolhouse, reaching out to Jack as he quickly passed them, seeming so grateful for his nod or a clasp of his hands.

  Such misbegotten devotion.

  The schoolhouse was a surprisingly tidy, whitewashed place, with large windows and a wall heavy with books, reminiscent of Jack’s own library. His team bosses broke into a brawl of opinions and facts as Jack made his way to the front.

  “Austin, you tell me!” he shouted, and order descended in the echo.

  A scruffy-bearded man rocketed to his feet, his hat crushed in his fist. “Richmond took a crew down to inspect the balance pit track, said it didn’t look right, it was buckling. Just before the whistle, it was. We’ve been digging ever since, waiting—”

  “Five hours. For me, yes. What else do we know?” Jack continued asking questions sharply, writing with fury and huge strokes on a set of maps, making circles and crosses along tunnels and tracks.

  Mairey could only wait and watch him conduct his urgent inquest, while one of the bosses compiled the list of families for her to visit. In the midst of it all, she helped Jack don a set of leather overtrousers and a jacket; then laced and tied his hobnailed boots as he carried on his meeting.

  It felt wrong to be there in the enemy camp, fastening the dragon into his armor while he made plans to minimize his losses. But as the meeting broke up and Jack settled a metal cap on his head, as he cinched a vicious-looking pick to his work belt, she was struck with a sudden, terrifying realization.

  “Where are you going, Jack?”

  He was dressed like the other miners, and already had a black streak slashed across his forehead that resembled a fatal bruise. “Into the mine—where else?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Can’t I?” He gave a small, dry laugh, watching her as he clipped a screened lamp onto his belt.

  “Jack, it’s dangerous.”

  “It is now. Those are my people down there, and I plan to bring them up personally—and alive, God willing.”

  “But—” She had expected him to stay safely above ground, to conduct the rescue without creasing his collar, without breaking into a sweat. Without putting his own life at risk.

  Now he looked as fragile as the rest of them—made of flesh and blood and crushable bone.

  “Dooley has the list of the men who are missing,” he told her quietly, with a grave intimacy that drew her unwillingly into his circle. “I’ll send someone to you as soon as I know anything.”

  “And what do I tell these families?” What would she tell Anna and Caro and Poppy if their Lord Jack died inside the mine?

  He studied her, his mouth firm. “Tell them I’ll do my best for them.”

  His best against a whole mountain!

  He turned to go, but she grabbed his wrist and held him tightly. “Be careful, Jack.”

  He answered with a half-smile and rakish lift of his devil-dark brow, clamped his cap on tighter, then walked into the swarm of miners and out into the night.

  “Godspeed,” she whispered, praying that God looked after men like Jackson Rushford.

  Jack and his team bosses clambered over the rubble, their lanterns casting fitful shadows inside the tunnel.

  “It shouldn’t have fallen, sir,” Gadrick said, craning his neck toward the roof of coal a dozen feet overhead.

  “Hellfire,” Jack said, sliding his hand along a ridge of glistening new coal, “a new seam.”

  They were a thousand feet into the incline shaft that had once been the main Shalecross seam, a vein so ancient that it had been opened in the thirteenth century. It had played out centuries ago and now functioned as a faithful friend, holding back the mountain above it to allow the miners to follow the crosscut passageways into other seams. The walls and the roof had been tightly shored up, were minutely and frequently inspected. The shaft was ready for the installation of the new steam-winding system that would drag coal trams up the rails to the main shaft and then into the pit brow more quickly and far more safely.

  And now old Shalecross had given up a secret stash of coal she’d been hiding just beyond the shell of rock. Odds were that the stash wasn’t large and nee
ded only more supporting, but it had caused a room-sized collapse into the main tunnel—impossible to predict, impossible to shore against.

  But the responsibility was his alone, and it made him ill to think of the lives that were at stake.

  “Richmond must have suspected it when they were measuring for the new track, sir,” Wilson said, leaping out of the way of the brigade of workers who were pulling loose coal and rock away from the fall. “He didn’t want anyone but his crew to follow him in here.”

  How deep this new roof of coal descended along the tunnel, only time and toil would tell. He prayed that Richmond and his men had been far beyond it when it fell in. Even then, without fresh air circulating from the venting system, the coal gas might kill them. There was no time to waste.

  “All right, I want every coal tram in the entire colliery on these tracks.” Jack tossed a clod of coal into an empty tub. “Then bring everyone you can find into the tunnel. We’ve no winch, no windings to help us. We’ll dig the men out of here the old-fashioned way: loading one tram after the other until the rubble’s gone.”

  Jack gave the job to his best team bosses, then rounded up a crew of young men who had more courage than sense and led them with his maps to a shaft that ran parallel to Shalecross Number Four for two hundred feet before swinging east and diving deeper into the mountain.

  “There’s twenty feet of solid rock between us and the Shalecross tunnel, gentleman,” Jack said, hanging his lamp on a timberpeg. “We’re going to dig a connecting tunnel, and with any luck, we’ll be shaking hands with Richmond before noon.”

  God help them if it took longer. Twelve hours was just about how much air the men had to sustain them.

  Jack set his muscles and took a satisfying swing at the granite wall with his pick. A fist-sized chunk came spinning off and smacked him in the knee.

  The men were grinning at him. “Pretty good, boss,” said the youngest, a strapping lad that reminded Jack of himself a decade ago.

  “Not bad for an old man, eh?” Jack gave another swing, following through with arms and shoulders that had labored too long at a desk. The impact made him grunt. But he worked steadily with the other men, each doing a five-minute shift at a killing speed, then stretching out their kinks as another man took his place.

  Two hours later they had removed less than three feet of stone, and Jack began to despair.

  “Lord Rushford wishes you to know that he’s doing his very best for you.” Mairey repeated Jack’s words a hundred times during the interminable night as she went from house to house, giving comfort in his name to the women and children whose husbands and fathers and sons were held hostage by his despicable mine. She had prayed beside the families, embraced the children as fiercely as if they were her sisters, wept and wiped away others’ tears.

  She had sought proof of withered souls in Jack’s colliery, and instead she had discovered not only unflagging faith and bone-bred courage to carry on but also a terrifying acceptance of the risks. Disasters were part of Glad Heath’s history, and these people blamed no one, especially not Jack.

  “We are blessed to be here in Glad Heath,” one woman had said through her tears, clutching her children. “He’s a fine man. His lordship won’t let us down.”

  “If any man can find a way to rescue my husband, it’s Jackson Rushford.”

  “There is no man in the world like our Jack.”

  Their Jack.

  The truth was that he’d also become her Jack. And she was petrified for him, couldn’t imagine never seeing him again.

  She’d received three oral messages from him, delivered each time by a different young man. The messages were brief and impersonal, but she’d clung to them like a lifeline.

  Yet he was only as safe as his last message, and that had been hours ago—and her heart leaped to her throat every time she looked toward the mine and saw the bonfires on the hillside.

  He was down there in the stench and the steam and the darkness, and she couldn’t do a thing to help him but pray.

  He’d asked her for fairy tales, and so Mairey gathered the frightened children into the schoolhouse to soothe them with her stories.

  And did her best to bring back the light.

  Be safe, Jack.

  Six hours remaining and at least a dozen feet to go. Jack changed out his crew, bringing on fresh brawn, but he stayed himself until he was forced to meet the train from his Strathfield works.

  He wanted to see Mairey—just see her, because he couldn’t afford more time than that. She’d been sharp tempered and accusing, as though his recklessness had caused the accident.

  She’d have to get used to the dangers inherent in mining. He would take the silver from the Willowmoon site in the same way: an open pit as long as it was profitable, and then following the individual veins with a shafts-and-tunnel system.

  The streets were nearly deserted, almost peaceful. The night wind had picked up a laughing melody in its dance through Glad Heath, and not at all to his surprise, he found Mairey at the end of it.

  The lamps in the schoolhouse were turned low and sleepy, and all the chairs and tables were pushed to the perimeter. The floor was littered with blankets and children, some soundly asleep in their mothers’ arms, most looking up at Mairey as she spun one of her stories.

  “Gwynella and the Enchanter.” Oddly, the Enchanter had a different name now: Balforge. And he seemed to be a dragon.

  They had come miles since he’d first seen her surrounded by so many captivated children. She’d been the irascible Miss Faelyn then; he’d been boorish. Three weeks, and everything had changed: Mairey had become the reason that he rose in the morning, the reason he came home.

  He was about to join her when Gadrick caught his elbow. “Sir, the train from Strathfield will be here in a moment.”

  It was for the best. He had work to do.

  A half hour later he was supervising the addition of more coal tubs onto the lift chain at the shaft, and soon coal was coming out of the Shalecross at an exhausting rate, bringing hope along with it.

  But his place was in the rescue passage. So with the better part of four hours remaining, he grabbed up his pick when his shift came and slammed his vengeance into the solid rock, letting the shock of it echo up through his arms, feeling the sting of the blisters breaking on his hands and building again.

  He knew the pulse of Glad Heath as he knew the sound of his own heartbeat. He’d been born in a cottage down the lane, had lived there until the night his father died.

  That grisly night had come on the heels of a cave-in—one tragedy following another. Cahill had sent his strikebreakers to make war against Jack’s father and the other miners, and his life had changed forever. He might have failed his sisters and his mother completely; he had surely betrayed the promise he’d made to his father to keep them safe; but he’d at least avenged the family’s memory.

  Glad Heath was his now. It had been idle for ten years before Jack had acquired it from that bastard Cahill’s estate. The man’s profane practices, his cruel disregard for his workers, had assured that his mine would eventually fail. And it had, while Jack was in exile in Canada, making his own fortune.

  The irony had been vastly satisfying when he’d returned with his wealth to Britain and found Glad Heath on the auction block. No one wanted a derelict mine—no one but Jack. He bought it for a song, and then invested a fortune in bringing the colliery up to his standards of safety and efficiency. He’d doubled the shoring-timbers, engineered innovative ventilation chambering to keep the air fresh, and had installed closed-gear winching and sumps to keep the passages dry. Flame was dangerous, but he found a way to lessen the threat, bringing light and air to the darkness.

  He would risk no man’s life in the pursuit of profit, so he judged every tunnel and fissure himself. He employed full-time engineers and the best mechanics, who had been instructed—at the peril of their jobs—to shut down production at the first sign of problems.

  He’d
learned from his father and from his own bleak years at Glad Heath that respect was the key to a man’s success, so he sacrificed profits for shorter hours in the tunnels and a living wage for the miners. Even more, he took a wild-hearted pride in sharing his profits with the men who worked for him, and he valued those elected to his advisory committees. His expenses were far greater than any other mining company, but so too were his revenues. His safety record was unparalleled, and he had made enemies of the other owners by hiring any miner who came to him.

  And come they did. So many more each year that Jack had opened whole other tunnels, opened new sites for those who wanted to work honestly and with a mind toward the community. Mairey’s Willowmoon silver would be one of those new mines. He hoped she would approve.

  Twelve hours gone, plus the five before he’d arrived on the scene. He’d never lost a man yet in his tunnels, but time was against them. He prayed as he lifted his pick, prayed as he sweated and strained and drove its steel point ferociously against the bedrock time and again, laboring through his shift and the next. Finally, the force of his own pick broke through to the blackness to the other side.

  “We’re through!” he shouted, his heart ready to burst with joy and fear and exhaustion. Three men crowded around the shilling-sized hole. “Moving air, sir! Feel it?”

  The air was moving, but it was rife with coal gas.

  “We’ll find ’em alive, sir. I’m sure of it.”

  But Jack wasn’t sure at all. Richmond should have heard the sounds of digging long before this; should have been digging from his side to meet them. He hefted the pick again, and took out his fear and fury on the rock until the hole was large enough to crawl through.

  “The risk is mine from here on; I’ll go in myself,” he told his men. “You’ve all done more than enough.”

  Jack crawled into the blackness, reached back for a lantern, and then started up the narrow incline toward the cave-in.

  Please, God, let them be alive.