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Bandoroff’s eyes widened. “M’lord? Linley said to let ’im know if anythin’ unusual ’appened, but it has been quiet as a graveyard. What with the shop closed down an’ everybody treatin’ Rachel like she’s got the plague—”
“What?” When Truman stepped forward, Bandoroff moved back by an equal distance.
“Did I say somethin’ wrong, m’lord?”
“The bookshop is closed?”
“Aye. I thought ye knew. Been closed for over a week.”
“But why?”
Bandoroff’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He started to say something, then stopped and shrugged. “Ye got me.”
The fisherman’s body language told Truman he knew exactly why the shop had been closed. He was hesitant to state the reason, which could mean only one thing. “What does its closing have to do with me?”
“You, m’lord?”
“If you want to be paid, you will speak plainly.”
“As you wish.” He cleared his throat. “Ever since word got out that Rachel is yer… well, yer woman, if ye know what I mean, decent folks won’t ’ave anythin’ to do with ’er. I guess she closed up the shop because it wasn’t doin’ ’er any good to keep it open.”
Truman had to tell himself to breathe. God! The villagers had turned on Rachel because of him? He remembered her sitting in his drawing room, saying that business had never been better, but even that was a lie. Why? Why had she come to him with some concocted story about her father when she should have been asking for his help? Demanding he take responsibility for what he had done?
Damn her bloody pride! And damn his own foolish thinking. He had taken Rachel’s virginity and then simply walked away, as untouched as she had once accused him of being. Meanwhile, she was suffering the approbation of her friends and neighbors for what had happened that night. “And her little brother?” he asked numbly.
“’E stays with the neighbor while she works at the mine.”
“It’s true.” Linley appeared at the door, a grim look on his face. “I just came from speaking to Mr. Tyndale.”
Truman fought the violent emotions swirling inside him. He wanted to kill Wythe for not telling him that Rachel had come to the mine for work. There were other women there, sorting on the screening belts, but not a lot. Even if she were someone else, it would have been remarkable, something he should have mentioned.
Truman also wanted to get his hands on the person who had spread the news that Rachel was his doxy. They had ruined her reputation and cost her the shop. When he found out who was to blame, he would make them pay dearly. And if it was Wythe… heaven help him. “That will be all, Mr. Bandoroff,” he said. “Linley will compensate you and show you out.”
“Would ye like me to keep watchin’ the cottage, m’lord? It has been awful quiet, like I said, what with Rachel in the pit all day. But ye never know. I would certainly be willin’ to keep—”
“No. That will be all.”
Truman listened to the hum of Linley’s voice grow faint as he saw Bandoroff to the door. Leaning against the wall, he pinched the bridge of his nose while waiting for his butler to return.
“Tell me what happened,” he said as soon as Linley reappeared.
The butler closed the door. “Everyone claims one of Elspeth’s girls started the rumor.”
“How could someone at Elspeth’s have known what happened here, unless Wythe told them?”
“Wythe’s not the only one who lives here, my lord. As you know, servants gossip something terrible.”
Dropping his hands, Truman headed for the door. “Have Arthur ready my horse. I am going to the mine.”
“My lord?”
“You heard me.”
Linley’s lips slanted into a frown. “She won’t thank you for it, my lord. The more you interfere, the worse you make her look.”
Truman whirled around, raising his voice at the aging butler for almost the first time in his life. “And if I don’t? What would that make me? How can I live another day knowing men and women who aren’t worthy to wipe the dust from her feet are ostracizing her, because of me? Because of one blind moment of lust and desperation? How can I eat each meal in luxury knowing she is going without for the sake of her young brother? Even there I am to blame! Had I not used Jacobsen to gain some ground with her, her mother might not have died.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know she was a virgin, Linley. I took something I can never give back. But I will not allow whoever is behind all of this to capitalize on it further.”
Linley’s face filled with worry. “What will you do?”
Truman didn’t answer. His butler would think he was mad. Hell’s fire, he probably was mad. But no matter how many times he tried to blame Wythe or someone else for Rachel’s lot, he kept coming back to one irrefutable fact: They couldn’t have ruined her without his help.
And now he was going to do the only thing he could to save her.
Chapter 10
Rachel’s back ached from stooping as she moved through the narrow tunnels, and the muscles in her arms and legs quivered even when she stood still. After three days in the pit working in conjunction with four hewers—Greenley, Henderson, Thornick and Collingood—she wasn’t yet accustomed to the physical demands of her job. As a putter she had to take empty tubs to those working at the coal face, then bring the full ones back to the “flats” or shaft bottom so the coal could be lifted to the surface.
Thanks to Wythe, who, on her second day, had moved her from the relatively comfortable place Tyndale had assigned her, she’d been working Number 14 Stall, an isolated area that traced a narrow seam of coal a quarter of a mile from the shaft bottom. She had been at her new location for nearly six hours, since before dawn, struggling to move wheeled containers that sometimes weighed as much as two hundred pounds. Damp with sweat, her skirts sodden from wading through stagnant pools she couldn’t see in the dim light of her safety lamp, she could scarcely breathe amidst the foul odors that permeated the workings, which mostly came from men who relieved themselves without care or concern for the comfort of those around them.
“This ain’t no tea party, Miss.” The irritation in John Greenley’s voice rained down on her like a rockslide. “Git ter work.”
Rachel stretched her back as best she could, considering the tunnel wasn’t tall enough to stand up in, and shoved off the wall. She needed a few minutes to gather her strength, but the hewers were paid by the amount of coal they extracted. Their object was always the same: to get as much work out of their putters as possible.
