“Thank you,” she said.
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do. Today, you’ve showed me a world I had no notion of and wouldn’t have found on my own, so I thank you.”
She and this man had lived very different lives, yet she felt their outlooks weren’t so very dissimilar.
“May I show you something else?” he asked.
“Anything,” she said.
And, strangely, she meant it.
She’d known this man for fewer than a handful of days, yet there was something about him.
She could trust him.
5
The look in Miss Tait’s warm amber eyes sent a feeling stealing straight through Lucas. A novel feeling. One that until this very moment he hadn’t known he craved.
To have her trust.
But another feeling slipped in alongside it.
Guilt.
To have her trust wasn’t enough.
He must be worthy of it.
And was he?
He’d let her believe a falsehood about himself, and was continuing to. But…
Was it a falsehood that mattered? Didn’t his falsehood make it possible for them to be fully themselves with each other? Didn’t his falsehood make this moment possible?
For somehow, in lying about who he was, he was able to reveal himself more fully.
It was a topsy-turvy logic, but it held in his mind.
Right.
He crooked his arm for her to take. She only hesitated a heartbeat before she slipped her hand through, and delicate as a bird, set her palm on his forearm. “So,” he said, as they began walking, “there’s something inside this hill, or was.”
Curiosity lit within her eyes. “Oh?”
“Lead. Up until fifty years ago, this was, in fact, the most important lead-mining area in the world.”
“As grand as all that?”
“Below our feet,” he continued, sensing her interest, “stretching down hundreds of yards, are miles of lead mines. Well, former lead mines. Now, like the rest of Matlock, they’re part of the tourist trade.”
“How so?”
Lucas spotted a man a dozen yards away, the one he’d been keeping half an eye out for. “See that man there?”
“Aye.”
