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prefer to drive herself in the gig, but Eustace hated it when she went “haring about” alone, especially after dark.
    He nodded grudgingly. “But you’ll still need longer than an hour.
Robert Croddy
is coming.”
    “Yes, you mentioned that.” She sent him a humorous look, but he wouldn’t smile back. Slipping her arm through his, she began to walk with him around the path to the front of the house, where he’d tied his big bay horse. “Why don’t you try to marry Honoria off to Robert instead of me?” she teased.
    She felt him stiffen. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    “Well, you might have better luck. Or doesn’t she think he’s rich enough?” He wouldn’t respond, but she thought that was very likely it. Robert had an interest in Uncle Eustace’s mine; he was eligible and unattached, fairly sophisticated—being from Devonport, a metropolis compared to Wyckerley—and comfortably off, a successful brewer’s son. But that was probably his fatal flaw for Honoria: she couldn’t see herself married to the son of a beer maker.
    There was nothing really wrong with Robert Croddy; when her uncle threw them together, Sophie always found his company agreeable enough. But Eustace wanted her to
marry
Robert, and that was an entirely different thing. Sophie didn’t want to marry anyone, not for a long, long time. Her life was much too interesting just now to throw away for the dubious reward of a husband.
    “Try to arrive by eight,” Uncle Eustace said sternly as he untied his horse.
    “I will.” She gave his hard cheek a kiss, and he finally eked out a smile for her. She had a thought. “Are you still looking for a mine agent to take William Ball’s place?”
    “I am,” he answered, seating himself on his horse, drawing on his riding gloves.
    “So you haven’t hired anyone yet?”
    “Not yet. Why?”
    “Nothing, I only wondered. I saw someone in the village today, a stranger. I thought he might be your new man.”
    “No, couldn’t be. I’ve not even advertised for the post yet.”
    “Oh.” She backed up so he could turn his horse.
    “Eight o’clock,” he reminded her, settling his hat on his head. It was a tall, citified hat; he’d bought it last year in Exeter, and he was inordinately fond of it. She always thought it looked out of place in the country, especially when he wore it on horseback.
    “Eight,” she echoed. “I’m really looking forward to it.”
    Her shoulders dropped once he was out of sight. Dejected, she went inside to change. So she could go out again.

III
    On Monday morning Connor walked the mile and a half from Wyckerley to Guelder mine and applied for work. A man named Andrewson, the captain-at-grass, asked him a few questions—where he’d worked last, whether he wanted tribute or tutwork—and told him to wait in the countinghouse until Miss Deene came. Connor sat in the mine office’s tiny anteroom for twenty minutes, staring at ore samples on shelves against the wall, staring at the closed door to the inner office, drumming his fingers, thinking Miss Deene didn’t put herself out much getting to work on time. After five minutes more, he got up and walked outside.
    Guelder looked typical of the majority of small mines he’d observed lately, no worse than most, better than a few. It was situated on a denuded upland, the ground barren all around, with grass sprouting through mud and rumble and a half century of mineral waste brought up from the bowels of the earth and left where it lay. The entrance was small and undramatic, just a ladder sticking up from a hole in the middle of the attle-strewn clearing, covered with an open trapdoor and a makeshift roof to keep the rain out. Twin chimney stacks towered over the engine house, from which the sound of the machines pumping out water from fathoms below was low, monotonous, and never-ending. Chains, pulleys, bell cranks, and winding machines littered the ground, and stacks of timber and enormous coils of rope on wooden