Improper Advances Read Online Free PDF Page B

whose promise of marriage had made her believe in miracles—until his callous betrayal had destroyed her trust.
    She would not share with this disapproving Manxman her shattered dream of matrimony, or her contradictory, incompatible longings. She hoped to reclaim her place on the opera-house stage, yet also wished to achieve a semblance of respectability. And although she desired a lasting love, she couldn’t conceive of relinquishing her freedom.
    Sir Darius Corlett did not need to know that she was Ana St. Albans, the Siren of Soho. And she could think of no good reason to explain why she intended to hide herself away in that dilapidated little cottage she’d rented for the ludicrously inflated sum of half a pound per week.

Chapter 3
    The newly discovered vein of lead ore lured Dare to his Glen Auldyn mine day after day. Nearly five feet wide and ten feet high, it was a beautiful sight.
    Holding a lantern up to the wall of glistening rock, he boasted to the manager, “This lode will be the making of us.”
    Tom Lace, one of the miners, grinned at him, teeth flashing white in his mud-slicked face. “Plenty o’ lead here, Mainshtyr Dare.”
    Mr. Melton had come to the island from Dare’s larger and vastly more productive Derbyshire mines.
    “We’ll get some silver ore from it in addition to lead galena and blende,” he predicted. “With the works at Foxdale abandoned, you’ve got less competition for labor.”
    “We must encourage our men to work diligently in these weeks before fishing season begins,” said Dare. “When herring fever strikes, many will leave the mine for the sea.” If necessary, he would raise wages to maintain production.
    “I’d rather pass my days here, in the heart of the earth,” Lace volunteered, “and my nights at home.
    I’m not one to make for the sea every sundown, hauling up skeddan and fighting gales. My wife won’t have me on the water. Her father was a fisherman, a Douglas man, who went down with the herring fleet back in ‘87.” To Mr. Melton, he explained, “A great storm struck in the bay, and dozens of vessels were sunk or smashed on the rocks.”

    The persistent tap of a metal pick against stone ceased. ” ‘Tisn’t so safe in here.” The voice belonged to John Saile, working atop the wooden scaffold with young Ned Crowe. “We could all be blasted into bits from the gunpowder. If the pump failed and the water rushed in, we’d be drowned. Or a loose rock might strike any of us on the head.”
    Ned’s hearty chuckle was a cheerful note in the gloomy darkness. “If you’re so timid, John, you shouldn’t be a meaineyder.” He edged along the plank, and the small flame of the candle set into his protective helmet flickered.
    “Careful, Ned,” Dare cautioned. “I promised your mother you’d come to no harm.”
    Dorrity Crowe had been comforted by Dare’s deathbed assurance that he would stand friend to her fatherless son. Jolly and immoral, his Manx nursery maid suffered many hardships in the course of her life, always returning to the Corlett family for support. One of Dorrity’s many ill judged liaisons had produced Ned, now twenty. He’d been blessed with his mother’s merry disposition and warm grin, and his sprightly fiddle playing made him a universal favorite.
    “Mainshtyr Dare,” he called down, “I’ve got a cliegeen here for you.”
    Ned referred to all the bright bits of stone as jewels, though in fact they were mineral crystals that had formed within the deep cavities between the rocks. Like his fellow miners, he earned extra money by supplying the proprietor with pyrite, calcite, quartz, and spar. Dare welcomed every addition to a collection he’d begun in boyhood.
    The stone Ned had found was passed along from man to man. Taking it from Tom Lace, Dare held it close to his lantern. Dolomite, he suspected, although he wouldn’t be sure till he’d examined it in daylight.
    He and Melton began their slow, laborious ascent from the