“If it is that miraculous, I would expect it to be in every mine in Wales. Is it?” Brynn pulled out his pocket notebook.
“No.” The word came out on a bitter laugh. “Fools fear anything new. Most miners can’t afford to buy them—they buy their own candles cheaper—and most owners won’t supply them. They’re not perfect, to be honest.”
Brynn set his drink on the rail and scribbled a few notes for Rockford. He ignored Rhys’s curious gaze. “How so?”
“Iron mesh rusts. A few broken wires, and flame shoots out the side. You have to maintain them. There’ve already been explosions caused by lamps damaged after they were sent down into shafts that men knew were dangerous, ones that had been abandoned due to firedamp, as if the lamps would be magic talismans.” Rhys shook his head.
“You use them in your collieries, though.” Brynn raised a brow in question. He scribbled down the information about explosions while using the lamps.
“Ours. Yes. Every one of them. We buy them ourselves and rent them back for less than the cost of candles. Then we inspect them every day before they go down. They’re safer than candles but no excuse to abandon vigilance.”
“Kendrick uses them?”
Rhys shrugged. “We talked about it at an owners’ meeting last summer after I got royally laughed at after describing our policies. Few took interest. Kendrick was one of them.”
Brynn tucked the notebook away and turned to gaze out at the yard below. “Do you employ rails at Morgan mines also? There was talk before I left.”
Rhys nodded. “Investment pays eventually, but you have to cut into your bottom line at the beginning. Shuttleworth and his ilk, with their absentee owners demanding profits, don’t want to risk the expense. We’ve started to achieve gains with our higher productivity, and Kendrick is, too. He’s a good man.”
Brynn added the comment to his notes. They stood side by side for several minutes. “Mining is still an ugly business,” Brynn muttered at last.
“A necessary business. Necessary to industry, necessary to England.”
Brynn didn’t argue. He stood and looked back at the office, wishing he could see through walls. “Do you think Kendrick has pummeled Glenmoor?”
Rhys shrugged. “Not with his fists. With the hammer of his speech, maybe. The man does have a way with words.”
Brynn went back inside and attempted to consider the impact of safety lamps on the life he remembered, but other thoughts kept intruding. That mine owner he’d seen leaning against a bookcase in a decently furnished but simple office was the rightful Duke of Glenmoor. Brynn could think of nothing that made him ineligible or even undesirable as duke. If Madelyn chose not to address it…
When the door opened, Brynn shot to his feet. Rhys came in from outside, behind him, and Kendrick and Glenmoor continued their conversation at the office door with little warmth but no sign of overt hostility. Brynn devoured Madelyn with his eyes, studying her for distress and finding little.
He opened his mouth to ask a dozen questions, but the pleading edge in her expression cut him off. “We’re to join Gideon for afternoon tea. His home is a few miles from here.”
Brynn realized that Kendrick was saying that very thing to Alyx, who stared at the duke, goggle-eyed, on hearing him referred to as Kendrick’s brother.
Madelyn took Brynn’s arm when Kendrick led them to the door, her grip no ladylike gesture, and they trooped after the man Brynn had never expected to find alive.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Now a widower,Gideon obviously enjoyed a successful, if quiet, life. His home had every comfort. The drawing room to which he led them boasted thick Axminster carpets, comfortable furniture, and tasteful decorations. Once there, Gideon addressed most of his attention to Rhys Morgan, clearly more comfortable with him. His choice to discuss their dirty linen in front of both Morgan brothers took Maddy off guard, but she quickly found Rhys’s calm objectivity soothing, flowing as it did over the seething emotions in the room.
Gideon answered Madelyn’s most urgent question. “Isaiah Jessop? Not since he put me on a ship and sent me to Woodglen when I was twelve. Phillip said he appeared in London recently. He hasn’t been here, but why would he?”
Why indeed?Maddy stared at a graceful statue on the mantle behind Gideon. Chinese porcelain. First quality but not ostentatious, like everything she had seen in Gideon Kendrick’s house.
Phillip, who had taken the chair closest to Gideon, cleared his throat and launched into a retelling of his story about Jessop’s sudden arrival in London and questions at Ashmead, for Rhys’s benefit. He stopped short, she noticed, of repeating Jessop’s insistence he had expected to find Gideon as the duke.
The gripping pain that had begun in Maddy’s head now took hold in her heart. Brynn, dour and grim, provided no objectivity at all. His knowing gaze added to her misery. She knew he believed she should show both Gideon and Phillip the letter. She had to decide but not yet. She needed time to think and to become reacquainted with their cultured, intelligent host.
Gideon had arrived at Woodglen nine years before she had married Glenmoor. He’d been twenty-one to her seventeen when she had.Wouldn’t he have known he was a legitimate son? What did he remember? What did he believe?
“What do you remember about Jessop, Gideon?” she asked.
“Stern. Taciturn. He and my mother argued a lot. The tavern belonged to her, I think, and he resented it. When she died—” His voice faltered momentarily. “Whenever business went bad, he complained that my father—he used choice words for him, Bloody English lobsterback being the least of it—never took responsibility.”
“So you always knew your father was an English soldier?” Rhys asked.
“Isaiah called him an overbred, strutting peacock,” Gideon said wryly. “I took it he was an officer. Isaiah hated officers, even his own.”
