Jasper glanced at her curiously and saw a resigned curl of her lip. “He’s giving you quartz?”
She flicked her eyes to him, the slightest raise of her brows, as though she were surprised he still had the audacity to address her. “He pictures a chandelier,” she said. “For the Odalisque. Presumably, he will pay to find the carpenter to construct the thing.”
“You’ll want a lapidary too,” Jasper said, tilting his head to the side. “And maybe a wainwright for the base before you start stringing up the crystals. I know some people.”
She only blinked at him, her expression inscrutable.
“Why a wainwright?” Monica asked, stumbling a little and flinging her arms out until both Rhys and Jasper steadied her on a creaky stair. “Pardon. So sorry.”
“Top of a chandelier is a wheel, no matter how you look at it,” Jasper explained, nodding for Rhys to step in front of Monica while he watched her back. “You should’ve worn thicker shoes.”
“I’m a modiste,” she said sadly. “Not a cobbler. I don’t have thicker shoes.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Libba said thoughtfully. “A master of wheels and hinges might construct an ideal base, but we’ll still need someone who understands fireproofing and balance. It’s a wonder chandelier crafting isn’t its own specialty.”
“Not enough demand,” Malcolm called from the lead. “Sadly. Ah, here it is. Come here, Lib.”
She made a little noise, a huff of breath at being commanded so, but swept her silvery, purple skirts to the side and hopped down the remaining stairs, anyhow, while her brother wrestled the top off a big, salt-tinged barrel at the foot.
“Oh, my!” Monica breathed as the sun hit the shards and jagged edges of the multi-colored crystals within. “Oh, goodness!”
Jasper blinked, the glare hitting him straight in the pupils for a moment. By the time he’d gotten his vision to stop swimming, he was alone on the stairs. Even the workers had moved around him, and he had to hasten to rejoin the crowd.
“You pulled this out of limestone?” Rhys asked, lifting a smoky-gray half-moon of rock with tiny, glittering crystals set inside like nesting seagull chicks.
“Out of a vein of flint in the limestone,” Malcolm said. “You find all sorts of things in the rubbish too. Look at this.”
He pulled Rhys around to a pile of discarded, soft, or broken bits of rock and gently nudged over the center of the pile with the toe of his shiny, black boot. “See how varied it is?”
Rhys was frowning. He crouched down, putting his bare hands directly in the filth, and rummaged around in it, blinkingaway the rising cloud of dust, which settled like a preview of his old age over the brown curls at the crown of his head.
He withdrew an odd chunk of brick and turned it to the side, revealing a curling, ribbed shape in its center. “A dragon,” he whispered, mostly to himself.
“A fossil,” Malcolm corrected. “They’re all over the place. I’ve got better ones than that in my office.”
Rhys only glanced at him and nodded, sliding the thing into his pocket. “A fossil of what?”
Mal shrugged. “Some sea creature, I reckon. Errol might know, if he’s done molesting the cattle.”
Jasper glanced back up at the top of the stairs and thought to himself that there wasn’t anything left to molest, based on what Mal had said before.
Enviable, perhaps?
“You, men!” Malcolm said, gesturing at the workers. “Come with me. We’re going to get you outfitted and equipped with a foreman. Jasper?”
“Who?” Jasper said, blinking away his thoughts of the peaceful life of a steer. “What?”
“With me,” Mal said impatiently. “We’ll get you the rest of your workers for Templeton-Rath. Come along.”
“Right,” Jasper said, ignoring the look Libba shot him over her trove of sharp minerals and stepping around Rhys, who had moved to another pile of geological waste, his fingers dug knuckle-deep in the chalk and sand as he sifted through it.
He resisted the urge to look back at her one more time, and it was a strong urge.
Business to conclude.
That couldn’t possibly mean what he wanted it to mean, could it? She probably meant severing the entire Templeton-Rath scheme before it went any further. She probably meant finishing her lambasting for the charades gaffe.
He’d called his unspoken apology ‘a matter of attrition.’ It had been an odd word choice, and he realized that now. He hadn’t meant it in the religious sense of the word. No, he actually wassorryfor how poorly all of this was going.
