‘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 proved highly satisfactory and he could congratulate himself that his sister was going to be well provided for in a marriage to a husband who seemed to adore her.
Jack smiled in self-mockery. He was becoming positively patriarchal, taking credit for an alliance that 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, producing a brooding expression that had Grimshaw nervously sniffing the Bordeaux decanter for signs of deterioration.
Lily, 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 not go 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; 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!’
‘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.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lily resisted casting a guilty look back at the castle and urged the cob into a trot. The waters of the Aller glinted in the afternoon sunshine and had made her request to borrow the gig, so that she could go along the valley a little with her sketchbook, perfectly understandable. Lady Allerton and the girls were busy with preparations for the dance which they were adamant their guest should not be helping with, so permission was gladly granted and the cob was soon trotting towards the mine, the bundle of clothes Lizzie Armstrong had delivered in a bag on the seat beside Lily.
The other day she had seen an old shed, just the other side of the rise from the pit head and she tied the cob up there on a long rein so it could crop the grass and reach the water trough. When she slipped out of the door again and set off up the slope, Lily was confident that even her aunt would not recognise her.
Her own stout boots protruded from a pair of flapping canvas trousers, a skirt apparently made of sacking was kirtled up to what seemed indecent heights and was supported by the same broad leather belt that pulled in a woollen smock over a worn shirt. She had knotted her betraying hair into a kerchief and clapped the battered billycock hat Jinny had provided on top. Her hands, protruding from the frayed sleeves, were far too white so she stopped by a spring and dabbled them in muddy water, splashing her face while she was at it.
Jinny Armstrong’s face when they met at their rendezvous confirmed Lily’s assumption that, however bizarre she appeared, she most certainly did not look like the rich heiress from London town.
‘Now then,’ Jinny cautioned as she pocketed the promised coins, swung the pack she was carrying on to her shoulder and they began to walk towards the shaft head, ‘yous stay behind me and do just what I does—and listen out for the banksman, he’s there to stop any accidents, so what he says goes.’
‘Right.’ What is a banksman? How deep did Jack say?
‘Use your free hand and free foot to push off from th’walls. I’ll find yous a candle when we get down there.’
Then they were there, approaching a wooden platform under the great wheel, joining a group of women and boys. If she was going to back out, it had to be now. ‘Out the way, you daft bairns.’ Jinny administered a mild cuff round the head to a couple of boys who were scuffling. ‘Clarting about—don’t think I willna tell your ma on you.’
Distracted, Lily realised too late that they were next for the rope. Loops were knotted into it at intervals and here and there someone had thrust a stout stick through. ‘Like this.’ Jinny stuck her foot in a loop, wrapped her arm around the rope and began to sink into the hole. ‘Come on!’
Think of it like a stirrup … Lily grabbed hold, pushed in her foot and found herself hanging in space, the hairy rope clutched to her bosom and