Chapter Six

Endymion squinted into the sun and tried to ignore Voil’s diatribe against riding out “before the break of day because His Grace cannot keep up with his duchess.” He tried to remember why he’d allowed the marquess to accompany him to Cornwall. Not a single logical reason came to mind. Frankly, logic and reason had been in short supply this past week. He had not set eyes on Rhiannon in nearly six days.

The house his grandfather had simply called Pendeen was a large and sprawling configuration of wings, orangeries, and gothic towers assembled over the centuries of deWaryn family occupation. Endymion had been prepared to present his case for the conception of an heir to his wife. He had not been prepared to have to search the entire house on a daily basis in the hope of coming across said wife.

She’d been playing least-in-sight since that first night. Since he’d fought the urge to kiss her and lost. Since he’d filched the keys to the doors between their chambers and spent the night wondering what she’d do should he make use of those keys.

“What did you say to make a woman like your duchess cry craven and avoid you like some pox-ridden old roué panting after her virtue?” Voil asked as they turned their horses up the wide road leading to the mineworks.

“A woman like my duchess?” Endymion tightened his hands on the reins enough to cause Dunsdon to toss his head in protest. He patted the big bay’s neck and relaxed his grip.

“A hoyden of the first order.”

“Her Grace is not a hoyden.” Endymion tightened his jaw to quell a grin.

“She greeted us upon our arrival with one of Manton’s finest fowling pieces on her arm,” Voil reminded him. “Or is that something she reserves for wayward husbands?”

“Do you have a point, Voil, or is it your intention to simply annoy me to death?”

“Of course not. Being your friend has never been as much fun as it has been these past few weeks. And if you ever find yourself in the same room as your duchess, I daresay it will be vastly entertaining.”

Entertaining. Not the word Endymion chose to describe a week of formal dinners with only Voil for company whilst Her Grace took a tray in her rooms or in her study. A study to which Endymion had not been allowed entrance since that first day. Nor was it entertaining to traipse about the house making inquiries of servants as to the duchess’s location only to be told by the next servant “You just missed her, Your Grace.”

His life had become a scavenger hunt in a house replete with half-remembered memories, none of them good. The only good memories he held of Cornwall featured a dark-haired girl who seemed determined to avoid him at all costs. He’d been taught long ago not to give anyone the power to dictate his feelings. Rhiannon Harvey de Waryn had done a damned fine job of establishing herself as dictator of his every mood these past few days. He might deny her ability to tie him in knots to the world, but he was not so foolish as to deny that damnable truth to himself. She didn’t want to see him. The very idea bruised his…something.

“Good God, man, where have you brought me?”

The din and dust of the works settled across the road ahead, a wall of smoke, steam, voices, and toil. They rode up a hill into the noisome fog until it surrounded them. Voil covered his mouth and nose with his handkerchief. They skirted a deep drop-off edged with a railed fence until they came to a series of buildings. Several grizzled old men, mine workers, if their clothes were any indication, sat on stools surrounded by large baskets of rocks outside the closest structure. Endymion and Voil dismounted and walked toward them. The men slowly rose and removed their caps.

“Morning, Yer Grace,” they mumbled as one and then bowed. They nodded at Voil. “My lord.”

Endymion and Voil exchanged a look. Voil shrugged.

“His Grace has the look of the late duke,” one bent, white-haired man said in answer to their unasked question. “‘Cept for his eyes and his hair. Those you have from your lady mother, Your Grace, if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

“You knew my mother?” Endymion’s chest tightened. He forced himself to breathe—in, out, in, out.

“Jim Digby, Yer Grace. Prettiest girl in three counties. Eliza Bryant, as was. She was a great lady.” A few of the other men nodded in agreement.

Endymion cleared his throat. “Thank you, Digby.” He briefly studied the other structures. “Her Grace was to have a meeting with the mines manager this morning. Might you know where I will find her?”

“Oh, aye,” Digby said. “She’s down t’mine with Mr. Thomas.”

“Down?” Endymion walked to the fence and looked into the deep chasm excavated out of the hillside. Several mine openings were framed into the hill. “The duchess has gone into the mine?” He didn’t wait for an answer.

With Voil shouting his name, Endymion ran along the fence to the gate at the top of the crudely cut stairs down to the mines. He vaulted over the gate and stumbled, slid, and slipped his way toward the bottom of the pit. His Hessians were not meant for such a descent. Poor Meeks would be in tears when he saw them.

Dammit!

His heart thundered against his ribs. His lungs squeezed against the invasion of the thickening air the closer to the bottom he descended. Once he reached the bottom step, he pushed his way into the cauldron of people, shaggy mine ponies, and bins of ore. The light at this level greyed as if in preparation for a storm. Voices—human and equine—fought to be heard above the chinks and clangs of the miners at work. His height afforded him an advantage, but to no avail. He twisted and turned, buffeted by the hive of activity. Still no sign of his wife.

What was she thinking? Mines were not fit places for the men who worked them, let alone a lady. She was the Duchess of Pendeen. She really had no business putting herself in such danger. She was his wife. She was Rhiannon. She was his to protect and the enormity of that task scared him to death. He’d succeeded at every endeavor he’d taken on since the day his grandfather had whisked him off to London and the life and duties of the heir to a duke. He’d succeed at keeping her safe, as well. As soon as he found the irritating, unpredictable—

A deep rumble drew his attention to one of the far mine entrances. A cloud of dust and debris belched out of the darkness. It suddenly came to him. His maternal grandfather had died in a mining accident. The ferment of people around him did not even look up.

He’d had enough. He had to find her. Endymion grabbed the nearest man by the elbow. “Where is Her Grace?” he demanded.

“Whot?” The man cupped his ear.

“The Duchess of Pendeen. Where is she?”

“Aye. Herself is down Number Three with Mr. Thomas. Testing those new lamps of hers.” He pointed to the entrance from which the noise and smoke had issued.

Endymion shoved his way past workers—men and women—and around ponies and crates of ore. They may not have noticed the din and cloud from the mine, but they noticed him. They stopped in their tracks, some doffing their caps, a mixture of deference and curiosity on their faces. Their faces all blurred together as if in a macabre dream. He threaded his way through them, his heart in his throat. The mining detritus on their clothes clung to the black superfine of his coat in ghostly sprays and puffs. He reached the mine in question and ducked beneath the timber-framed entrance. He swept his arm back and forth to dispel the lingering smoke. A woman of middling years, with a kerchief tied over her nose and mouth, led a sturdy red pony toward him.

In a slow sort of dance, the woman pointed down a tunnel to the left and executed a clumsy curtsy all while leading the pony toward the mine entrance. He ran past her. The clang and thud of hammers and pickaxes melded into a melodic drumbeat. He barely heard it over the beat of his heart. A group of grimy young men scrambled out of his way, muttering a chorus of “Yer Grace’s.”

Endymion, having shed all curiosity as to how these people knew who he was, raced in the direction the woman had pointed until he came upon a wide chamber, shored up by thick timbers at regular intervals. He came to a precipitous stop. In the middle of the chamber, dressed in a dull brown kerseymere dress and pelisse, stood his wife, covered in dust and perfectly at ease.

I’m going to kill her…right after I turn her over my knee.

A bandy-legged miner, hat in hand, argued with the duchess whilst an older man with a greying beard and dressed like a gentleman farmer looked on, some sort of lamp in his hand. “I don’t like it, Yer Grace. It ain’t natural. Not a thing wrong with the lamp I had,” the man said, eyeing the lamp in the older man’s hands as if it were a snake poised to bite.

“I’ll tell you what isn’t natural, George Watts.” Rhiannon pushed a strand of hair off her face. “Blowing yourself and half your mates to kingdom come because you are too stubborn to try something new.” She snatched the lamp from the bearded man and shoved it into the miner’s chest. “Either you use the Davy’s lamp or you can join your wife and mother-in-law at the calciners.”

Torn between admiration and anger, Endymion stepped to his wife’s side and, before she noticed his presence, dragged her arm through his. “Do as she says, George. You’ll keep your wits longer. If this is settled, I’d like a word with you, madam.”

Her eyes wide and her color high, Rhiannon tried to free her arm. “What are you doing here? I don’t have time to entertain you, Your Grace. I have work to do.”

Endymion caught the attention of the older, bearded man. He’d seen him in the foyer the day he’d arrived and again in the duchess’s study. “Mister…?”

“Thomas, Your Grace. Josiah Thomas. I am Her Grace’s mines manager.”

“Her Grace’s?” Endymion turned his gaze on Rhiannon, who met him with a fulminating glare of her own. “Then I am certain you can take care of this matter whilst I discuss a few things with Her Grace.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” Mr. Thomas replied and inclined his head. He appeared almost amused as he turned back to the recalcitrant miner.

Endymion started toward the mine entrance. Rhiannon continued to try and wrest her arm free with as much subtle dignity as possible while he practically dragged her across the chamber and into the tunnel.

“I am not going anywhere with you,” she said through gritted teeth.

Endymion bent his head close enough for his lips to brush her ear. “If you do not come with me this instant, I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here by force.”

“You would not dare.”

He shrugged. “As you like.” Endymion ducked down, pressed his shoulder into her belly and hoisted her over his shoulder.

“Dymi!” she shrieked. “Put me down. This is beneath my dignity and yours.”

“So is digging one’s duchess out from under a pile of rocks.” He carried her out into the milling crowd of people gathered at the mine entrance.

“I’ll show you a pile of rocks, you great bully. Stop this.” She squirmed in an effort to dislodge his arm across the backs of her knees. Which gave him an enticing view of her lovely fundament. “Put me down and I will go with you.”

“I don’t trust you, Duchess. I think I’ll keep you up here until we reach the horses, at least.”

“Horses? I don’t need a horse.”

“It is a dashed long walk back to Gorffwys Ddraig.”

“Not if I am slung across the shoulder of a pompous wretch like a sack of corn. People are staring, Dymi. Put me down, please.”

He did not want to put her down. Here she was safe. So long as he touched her he could breathe. A sort of helplessness had consumed him as he wove in and out of the throngs of workers in search of Rhiannon. He’d known that helplessness before and every bit of his hatred of Cornwall and the weak young man he’d been was tied to it.

Endymion stopped and lowered Rhiannon gently to the ground. He studied her face, committed to memory the furious line of her mouth, the bright light of her eyes, the smudge of dirt on her cheek. And admitted, even if only to himself, something had broken loose in him, a shaft of light in the darkness he’d long given over to Cornwall and the past. The man in whose skin he’d lived every day, disturbed by nothing and no one, just as he’d been taught, had no idea how to live in a Cornwall no longer shrouded in darkness.

“What are you looking at?” Rhiannon asked softly, even as she nodded and smiled at the men and women eddying around them in a steady flow of industry and, yes, amusement.

“According to Voil, a hoyden of the first order.”

“A hoyden?”

“The gun.” Endymion adopted her agreeable smile and nod as she took the arm he offered and they made their way up the steps to the mine offices and storage sheds.

“Point taken. Why are you here?” She was tenacious, his duchess.

“I was under the impression the entire dukedom of Pendeen is mine to wander at will.”

“You know what I mean, Your Grace.”

“Perhaps I am here because my wife is so afraid of a simple conversation with me, she has gone to ground like a fox the last hour of a Boxing Day hunt.”

“I was not aware that heirs might be conceived by conversation.”

“It depends on how the conversation ends.”

“Tsk! Good Lord, could this day grow any more tiresome? Captain Randolph, what brings you to the mines? Is there some disaster at the Swan and Crown?” Rhiannon slipped her arm free and walked toward the extravagantly dressed man conversing with Voil.

Tiresome?

Something about the man, this Captain Randolph, stirred a memory in Endymion. He had no time to think on it as he fully intended to force Rhiannon to answer his questions and to give him a chance to—

“Your Grace,” Captain Randolph said and walked toward Endymion, hand outstretched. “Welcome to Pendeen.”

The expression on Rhiannon’s face lent him far more information than this man’s bold assumptions and costly garments. Her opinion of the captain was even lower than that of her husband. A comforting thought. Endymion clasped his hands behind his back and stilled his face to his most bland expression.

“How kind of you to welcome me to my own home… Captain, is it?”

“Retired, Your Grace.” Captain Randolph offered a negligible bow, his features frozen in counterfeit subornation. “Presently, I am the steward here at Pendeen.”

“Steward? I sent for you the day after I arrived, Captain.”

“Yes, Your Grace, I have been indisposed.”

“Drunk,” Rhiannon muttered under her breath. Endymion did not fail to miss the hardening of the captain’s eyes nor Voil’s bark of laughter.

A clash of querulous voices across from the mines office drew everyone’s attention to a sort of rotating hearth before a monstrous furnace. A platform atop high scaffolding circled a large metal hopper. Several women with heavy kerchiefs across their noses and mouths were descending the platform in full cry at one another.

“I need to see to this,” Rhiannon said and squeezed Endymion’s upper arm. “Why don’t you question Captain Randolph about the estate, Your Grace? I am certain he can tell you anything you wish to know.”

The little minx. She’d put them both in their places and left the field in a flurry of kerseymere skirts.

“Voil.” Endymion nodded after his determined wife. His friend gave him a look of resigned incredulity, but caught up to Rhiannon and offered her his arm. Which she took far more quickly than she had his.

“Tell me, Captain Randolph, how is it I have seen fields full of crops and sheep and what appears to be a thriving system of mines, yet the estate’s income is in continuous decline?”

He only half listened as the steward tried in vain to answer his questions. Endymion had spent weeks in London going over the reports of the mines manager written in an uncompromising, obviously male hand, and the summaries of the estate’s rents and production written in a hand very similar to that of his duchess. After three questions, the supposed steward’s ignorance was clear. When Mr. Thomas joined them, the obsequious captain nearly wilted in relief. The fool put Endymion’s queries to Mr. Thomas as if they were his own.

Endymion, however, had learned long ago to quickly ascertain a conversation bent on wasting his time. Something he found intolerable. His continuous attention to his wife as she soothed the riled tempers of several combative women whilst Voil looked on in tenuous consternation had nothing to do with Endymion’s inattention to the empty droning of the captain and Mr. Thomas’s impatient responses.

Rhiannon stood between two groups of women, silencing one with a mere gesture and listening to the other. She had their respect and, more important, their trust. She’d been left here, a mere girl of fourteen and had, somehow, grown into a duchess without the example Endymion had been fortunate enough to have.

The women dispersed, laughing as they strolled toward the pump just this side of the rail fence. Some chose to wash their faces and hands whilst others filled a bucket and made use of some tin cups hung along the fence to quench their thirst. Rhiannon walked to the ladder that led up the scaffolding to the platform.

“Your Grace, I am certain you will agree that allowing children back into the mines will cut back on costs. Children work at half the pay of women and even less than half of what men are paid,” Captain Randolph was saying.

Endymion turned to respond when the din was rent by a sharp crack and a shout. His feet were in motion even as he saw he’d be too late. The scaffolding and ladder collapsed, slowly in his mind, though he knew it to be an illusion. Screams, running feet, and the horrendous whoosh of crashing wood enveloped him.

His voice failed him. He reached the wreckage and began to fling broken planks behind him with a furious strength he forgot he owned. He had a vague notion of Mr. Thomas and some of the miners working at his side. They cleared a path and realized someone stood just the other side of the heap of broken scaffolding.

“Rhiannon,” Endymion barked. “Voil! Where is my wife?”

“Pendeen, you owe me a new coat. This one is ruined,” Voil complained from the far side of the rubble, his back to them. When he turned, Endymion saw Rhiannon, pressed against a retaining wall and shielded by Voil’s body. Covered in splinters and dirt, the marquess attempted to tidy himself with his handkerchief.

All movement, all sound ceased as his friend escorted Rhiannon around the pile of debris. A wave of cold washed over Endymion and then a wave of heat. She barked orders at the miners and asked if anyone had been injured. Endymion clenched his fists to the point of pain. He could not breathe no matter how hard he tried. Finally, she saw him. She stopped, said something to Mr. Thomas, and then something to Voil, and then hurried to Endymion’s side.

“Dymi?” she inquired as she touched his arm. He looked down at her fingers, smudged with dirt. A few of her nails had broken. Her clothes were filthy and one of her sleeves had a long tear in it. Never had she looked so beautiful, nor so infuriating. And never had he been so lost from himself.

He reached for her, grabbed her upper arms and shook her. “Are you unhurt? What were you thinking? Why would you put yourself in such danger, you little fool?” He ran his hands over her, checking for blood or cuts or injuries.

She did not speak, only stared at him with doe-like, stricken eyes. She gripped his forearms and held on tight. Suddenly, every ounce of strength slid from his body. He rested his forehead against the soft cushion of her hair. Her breath wafted across his neck above his neckcloth and beneath his chin. He closed his eyes and listened to her breathe—softly, sweetly. Alive. He managed to match his breathing to hers.

His hands slid down to clasp hers. As if struck by lightning, his head shot up. He glanced around and spotted his horse. This time, when he dragged her across the dirt and rocks, she did not fight him. He lifted her onto Dunsdon’s withers and flung himself into the saddle behind her. A chorus of questions launched at his back—from Voil, from Mr. Thomas, from the captain—pelted him and fell unanswered.

“Dymi, perhaps we should—”

“You will not put yourself in danger again, Duchess.” He held onto but a sliver of civilized emotion. The Cornwall sky darkened. A vague rumble of thunder rolled across the valley. He urged his horse forward. He had to put the barren dust and caverns of the mines behind him. Trees, a piece of blue sky, a pasture of green beckoned him.

“You cannot come here and order me about like some lackey, Your Grace. I am—”

“You are my wife,” he shouted. “You are mine to protect. Why the devil do you think I left you here? I thought you’d be safe. I was wrong.” It struck him like a knife. “No more, Rhiannon. I will not lose one more thing to this Godforsaken place. I cannot. No more.”

Too much. He’d said too much. Seen too much. Lost too much. Worse, the man he’d become had no idea how to make it right without losing himself. He’d never been afforded that luxury. If he shattered, how would he ever manage to put himself together again?

 

He’d lost his gloves. The tendons in his hands stood in stark relief to the white of his knuckles. Rhiannon covered his hands with her own. His strength seeped through the thin leather of her gloves and warmed her. The sky roiled, a dark grey kettle brewing a summer storm. Safe in the shelter of his arms, she watched the rain walk across the fields toward them. Even once it reached them, peppering them with stinging drops, Endymion kept his horse at a steady walk. She didn’t mind. He needed the slow, dependable pace, the assuring rhythm of it. For the first time since his return, she knew what he needed from her. Even if she did not know why.

They rode on, down hedge-lined roads with verdant fields on either side. Save for the occasional drumbeat of thunder in the distance and the bleats of mama sheep calling to their lambs, no sound invaded the cloak of silence wrapped around them. Rhiannon blinked the rain from her lashes and tilted her head up to conduct a careful study of her husband’s face.

Her husband.

She’d known the boy Endymion better than she’d known anyone in her life. She’d recognized the duke he’d become from the day of his return, a younger version of his grandfather, a man she’d in turns feared, respected, and eventually hated. Yes, she’d avoided him all week, but that did not mean she had not watched and listened and wondered. The previous Duke of Pendeen had manipulated lives, held them under his hand like chess pieces, and sacrificed them when necessary to secure the glory of the House of de Waryn. Upon his death, Rhiannon had vowed never again to relinquish her fate to another.

Today, she’d seen a completely different Endymion. Oh, the controlled and officious duke had been present in full force, but the man who’d stormed into the depths of the tin mine to drag her out of danger had infuriated and amused her. And, yes, revived the attraction she’d had for him all those years ago. The attraction that had led her to agree to a deal with the devil to make Endymion her husband. A pact for which he’d never forgive her.

“You do not allow children to work the mines,” he suddenly said, his voice a pleasant rumble against her.

“No. They attend a school the rector and his wife have organized on the estate. In the afternoons, the older children work in the fields or on their families’ farms.”

“The lamps?”

“Davy’s lamps. I read about them in a mining report from Wales and wrote to him. He sent me a quantity of them to test.”

“Apparently, your letter writing skills are superior to mine.” The bemusement in his eyes belied his expression, still strained and carved in solemnity.

She laughed softly.

“I should not have left my letter writing to my uncle.”

“No.” She held her breath.

“I…wanted to write to you, Rhee. I wasn’t allowed. And then…it was easier not to because I didn’t know what to say.” He cleared his throat.

They’d ridden up the drive and arrived at the front portico of the house before she realized it. He dismounted and lifted her from the horse. She stared up at him, whilst a groom took the horse and Vaughn came out of the house exclaiming at the state of their appearance.

“It would not have mattered what you said, Dymi. It never did.” She followed a still flustered Vaughn into the house. “His Grace and I are in desperate need of baths and tea, Vaughn.”

“Of course, Your Grace. At once, Your Grace.” The butler snapped orders at footmen and maids and started up the stairs.

“Vaughn,” Endymion said.

“Yes, Your Grace?” He turned, head cocked in inquiry.

“The portrait.” Endymion offered Rhiannon his arm. This time, she curled both hands around it.

“Yes, Your Grace?” Vaughn paled slightly and swallowed.

“Thank you.” Her husband led her up the steps and past the smiling butler. When Endymion and Rhiannon finally reached the door to her chambers, he raised her hand to his lips. He turned it over and brushed his fingers across a scrape in her palm. His eyes never left her face as he pressed a kiss to her wound and closed her hand around it.

“I will…see you at dinner, Your Grace?” she asked as she gripped the handle on her chamber door.

“I look forward to it.” He sketched a bow and started toward the doors to his own chamber, where his pale-faced valet awaited him. Suddenly, he stormed back to her, seized her in his arms and kissed her—long, hard, and with a passion that terrified her. “After which, you and I have things to discuss and you have questions to answer.” He leaned in, his lips brushing her ear. “Like, when were you going to tell me someone has been trying to kill you?”