The Earl and the Hoyden. Mary Nichols
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when Cartwright had turned up and bought up the neighbouring estate, pulled down the old house and built an edifice that had the locals wide-eyed with astonishment. He was a mushroom, the detractors said, and like a mushroom would flourish for a day and then be gone. How wrong they had been. It was Amerleigh that would crumble before Mandeville unless he did something about it.
They rode round the village, noting that there were few people about. ‘All working at the Cartwright mill,’ the smithy told him when he asked. ‘’Twas the only work they could get when his lordship let them go.’ He spoke to one or two of the older women who remembered him as a boy and welcomed him home, convinced that now he was back, the jobs would return and the repairs to their cottages be put in hand. From the village, he made his way to the Home Farm where Ben Frost gave him a catalogue of grievances, which did nothing to improve his despondency: his barn leaked, the window casements on the farmhouse were rotting, and, what was worse, a wall separating his sheep from the road had collapsed and the animals were straying onto the highway. Roland promised he would do what he could and then set off up to Browhill to take a look at the disputed land.
The mine was set in the side of the hill. There was a great wheel-house in the centre of the site and several brick buildings were scattered about, one of which had a very tall chimney from which a column of smoke drifted. The sound of their horses must have alerted its occupant, for he came out to meet them.
‘My lord Temple,’ he said, recognising Roland. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘You can show me round,’ Roland said.
The man was middle aged, with a stooped shoulder and a distinct limp. His name was Job Bunty and he had once been an Amerleigh gamekeeper, shot, if memory served Roland correctly, by a poacher he had tried to arrest. The man picked up a lantern from a niche in the rock and lit the candle inside it with a flint. ‘This way, my lord.’
‘Is it worked out?’
‘No, my lord, but it’s got mighty deep, two hundred foot and more. After all the rain we’ve had, there’s a deal of water down there and the pumping engine don’ seem able to shift it all. Mind your head, my lord, the roof’s low.’
Roland did not need telling; the lantern cast an eerie glow over a narrow tunnel running steeply downwards. They had to proceed in single file, almost bent double. And then it suddenly opened out to a huge vault. Roland stepped cautiously forwards and, taking the lantern from Bunty, swung it over a great void, noticing the ladder attached to the side, disappearing into the murk below his feet. He picked up a stone and dropped it down the hole. After several seconds he heard the splash. ‘Come, let us go back and you can show me the rest.’
Back on the surface, they passed several men who had just come up from a different level and were extinguishing the candles stuck on their hats. Two young lads, stripped to the waist, were pushing a loaded truck on rails. Their guide led them to the washing floor where the ore was separated from the dirt and other minerals in running water. ‘In Mr Cartwright’s day it was done by small boys,’ Bunty told Roland as they walked on. ‘But Miss Cartwright won’t have them standing in water in bare feet and now it’s the bigger lads who do it and they are provided with boots.’
They arrived at another building where the ore was crushed to prepare it for smelting, work which was done by women, usually the wives of the miners. Next was a blacksmith’s shop, where the smithy sharpened the miners’ picks and drills, and the changing house, where the single men lodged, which was ill lit and gloomy. Everything was covered in fine, grey dust. They were just going to walk up the hill to look at the smelting mill when Charlotte arrived on horseback. Seeing the two men, she dismounted and strode over to them. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded without preamble.
‘Assessing the situation,’ Roland answered lightly.
‘Oh, I see, you still think this is Amerleigh land.’
‘Naturally I do.’
‘Then you are mistaken. I would have expected your lawyer to have told you that.’
‘He told me that it was wrested from the late Earl under extreme duress.’
‘I know nothing of duress.’
‘No, I can understand you would not even know the meaning of the word,’ Roland said. ‘But I can tell you no gentleman would have dunned another in so vindictive a fashion.’ His emphasis on the word gentleman was not lost on her.
‘And no honest man would renege on a debt,’ she retorted.
He wondered if she knew exactly how the debt had occurred. ‘My father offered the capital sum back, but your father insisted on exorbitant interest.’
‘There is nothing illegal about that.’
‘No, but my father would have found it given time. He was not given time simply because your father was set on making himself more money from the deposits in this mine.’
She laughed, wondering if there were any truth in what he said. ‘I suppose I am to take it that you are going on with that ridiculous claim.’
He had been wondering if it was worth the time and money, not to say stress, the lawsuit would involve. Thinking about what Mountford had told him, it seemed to him his father was as much to blame as Mr Cartwright. The old Earl should not have spent the money he had been given before making sure his son would do as he wanted, and when he had not, should have offered it back immediately without being asked, then Cartwright could not have dunned him. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other, a silly squabble that should never have occurred. Roland regretted that he had been involved, albeit unwittingly. On the other hand, if the mine really did belong to the Amerleigh estate, the profits could certainly be put to good use. ‘You could revert the land to the Amerleigh estate and then there would be no need for the lawsuit to continue.’
‘Certainly not,’ she said, determined not to give an inch. ‘I am about to open up a new adit. Now, please leave. I am too busy to argue with you.’
Roland bowed and returned to his mount, followed by Travers, doing his best to keep a straight face.
‘You may laugh,’ Roland told him as they rode back to the village. ‘She is a veritable shrew, but I shall get the better of her, you shall see.’
‘Oh, I am sure you will, Major.’ Travers found it difficult to give his master his proper title, but Roland did not mind that. As far as he was concerned he was going into battle and it was one he might enjoy, considering no one was likely to be killed because of it.
‘Miss Cartwright, ’tis madness,’ Jacob Edwards told her the morning after her encounter with the Earl at Browhill. He had been summoned to Mandeville to be told she wanted to release funds for a new shaft to the Browhill mine. He was a young man of thirty, dressed in an impeccable dove-grey morning coat and pristine shirt. No one seeing him would have believed he had once wandered barefoot about the village lanes in torn breeches. ‘It is not like you to go on beyond the point of a venture making a profit.’
‘Profit is not everything.’
This statement made him laugh; it was so unlike her. ‘If not profit, what do you hope to gain?’
‘Gain nothing,’ she said, ‘but keep everything.’
‘I am not very good at riddles. Pray explain.’
She began pacing the room impatiently, swishing her grey skirt about her as she turned at the end of each perambulation. He watched, admiring her shapely figure and striking features. He had admired her for years, ever since he had come across her as a child, but she gave no indication that she was aware of it or would consider an approach by him. In her eyes he was simply her factotum, someone to carry out her orders, occasionally to advise, never to look on with affection. He doubted she was capable of it.
‘I do not want Amerleigh given the slightest opportunity to repossess it,’ she said.
‘The land might have been part of his domain, but he never mined it, nor did his father,’