Wicked Company (59 page)

“Welcome to Wales and its appalling roads,” Roderick replied, bracing himself for the next pothole by placing a palm on each wall of the coach. “If you can manage, look out the window,” he directed. “There are the gates of Glynmorgan Castle.”

Sophie’s mouth literally went slack at the sight of the forbidding gray stone structure. She was astounded by its six gargantuan round towers and its walls-within-walls design.

“Whoever built it must have had powerful enemies,” she breathed.

“It was started a short time after the Norman conquest,” Roderick explained, “and added to by my father’s ancestors in the reign of King Edward the First.”

“There should be a jousting tournament in progress in front of the moat,” she jested. “Is the drawbridge actually pulled up at night?”

“Not anymore,” Darnly assured her with a smile.

“How many chambers are there?” she asked.

“Hundreds,” he replied. “I’ve never seen them all.”

“And the coal mines? Where are they?”

“Out of sight… up yonder, behind that ridge. I’ll take you there, if you like, to see the colliery and ironworks.”

The coach continued past the castle keep without stopping and soon the land evened out, although the rutted path they were traveling did not. A parkland with a high, gray stone wall ran parallel to the road, broken by a pair of imposing wrought-iron gates. As the coach turned into the drive, Sophie gazed down the graveled entrance. In the distance, she could see a vine-covered manor house three stories high with neat rows of square-paned, arched windows flanking its columned front entrance.

“The former abode of my mother, the Countess of Evansmor,” Roderick explained casually. “Mother had the misfortune of having been born an heiress without any brothers to protect her from the avaricious Darnlys who resided next door. Before she turned eighteen, she found herself married to Basil Darnly and her father’s lands absorbed into the Glynmorgan estate.”

“Who was your English ancestor?” Sophie asked, referring to Darnly’s surname.

“My father’s mother was also an orphaned heiress, forced to make a match with an Anglo aristocrat during the last century. In fact, of the fourteen prominent Welsh families in this part of the world, twelve tipped up with no male heirs in the last fifty years. It makes it so much easier to be an absentee landlord if one has English blood, don’t you know?” he added with grim humor. “Send the local buggers down into the mines and have the bank drafts for their labors forwarded to London.”

“So you have no interest in your father’s coal business?”

“Not really,” Roderick replied. “And thank God, he has no interest in my affairs. Ah… here we are!”

Sophie felt awkward as Darnly helped her out of the carriage and turned to greet the large staff that stood rigidly at attention on the mansion’s front steps.

“Welcome, sir,” greeted a slender man of about Darnly’s age who peered past his master’s shoulder to have a look at Sophie. “’Tis good to have you with us again.”

“Thank you, Trevor,” Roderick replied, and Sophie guessed this was the factor who supervised his master’s property. “I would like you to take Miss McGann to her cottage so she can rest before dinner. I assume everything is in readiness, as I instructed?” he asked sharply.

“Yes, sir. I’ve chosen Evelyn as her lady’s maid, if you think it best.”

“Excellent,” Roderick agreed, every inch the grand seigneur. “Well, then, Sophie… ’til dinner. Have a good rest. Trevor, have Evelyn ride with Miss McGann down to the cottage and see that she has a pony at her disposal in the paddock nearby.”

“’Tis already seen to, sir.”

A plump, sandy-haired lass stepped out of the line of servants, smiled shyly, and climbed into the coach after her.

“Good afternoon, mum,” she volunteered, eyeing Sophie with curiosity. “The master’s never had his guests stay in the gardener’s cottage before, but don’t worry,” she added hastily, “’tis been done up good and proper!”

“I’ve been ill,” Sophie fibbed, salving her conscience by telling herself she had been suffering a malaise of spirit. “Mr. Darnly was kind enough to invite me here to have a complete rest. I won’t be the usual visitor,” she said, smiling. ‘I’m a playwright, and if I begin to feel better, I may spend most of my time at my desk—if there is one.”

“Oh there is, to be sure!” Evelyn said, clearly awed to meet a writer who was female. “He had his own from the library carted down, he did. It very nearly didn’t fit through the door!”

In short order, the coach pulled up to an ivy-covered one-room dry-stone cottage that embodied everything Sophie allowed herself to dream of in terms of comfort and privacy. Its gray slate roof and gaily painted dark green door were shaded by a grove of towering beech trees artfully planted to hide the structure from view of the manor house.

“Oh, what a sweet, wee kitten!” Sophie exclaimed delightedly as she spotted a ginger-colored animal daintily licking its paws on the threshold.

“Strayed from the new litter in the barn, I expect,” Evelyn said. “I’ll have the coachman take it back.”

“Must you?” Sophie said, reaching down to stroke the cat. “’Twould be a bit of company for me.”

“As you wish, mum,” Evelyn smiled. “What shall you call him?”

Sophie picked up the purring feline and cuddled it under her chin. “Marmalade!” she pronounced and carried it into her new abode.

Inside was a fireplace one could walk into, a mahogany four-poster festooned with sheer batiste hangings overhead, and matching white curtains on the windows. A pale silk coverlet sheathed the goose-down mattress.

Except for the stone walls, there was nothing rustic about this abode. The large room was warmed by a thick, Turkish carpet, silver candlesticks on a rosewood sideboard, and two leather-covered wing-backed chairs flanking the fireplace.

“Will the desk suit, mum?” asked Evelyn anxiously.

Sophie stared at the exquisitely carved piece pushed beneath the leaded window overlooking the grove of beech trees outside.

“Oh, yes…” she said in a breath, stroking Marmalade’s soft fur. “’Tis perfect.”

***

Nearly a month passed, filled with poetry readings by local bards, concerts held in Darnly’s well-appointed music room where Welsh fiddlers played both plaintive and jaunty melodies to entertain just the two of them, and with outings both on foot and in Roderick’s coach to explore the eighty-foot Clyn-Gwyn waterfalls and other natural wonders in the Vale of Neath.

By July, Sophie had grown accustomed to the luxury of clean linen and a tidy house. She often curled up alone in Roderick’s library with a selection from his well-stocked shelves, reading undisturbed for hours at a time until she succumbed to napping.

One afternoon, she was awakened by Roderick’s fingers lightly brushing against her cheek.

“Ready for your tea?” he asked softly, looking down at her. “I’ve asked Mrs. Williams to serve us in here, if that suits you.”

“W-why, yes,” Sophie stammered, pulling herself upright on the leather sofa and tidying her hair. His touch on her cheek was the first intimate gesture her host had ever extended toward her and she was forced to admit, it felt rather lovely. “Forgive me for falling—”

“No apologies warranted,” he smiled faintly, gazing at her steadily. “I quite like seeing you feel so at home here.”

Sophie remained silent, rescued from her own confusion by the arrival of afternoon tea, which Evelyn served her every day at four.

As they didn’t dine together every night, she assumed Roderick was making the required appearances at Glynmorgan Castle. Evansmor, which she learned from Evelyn was not owned by Roderick outright, but still part of the family estates, was run by his efficient staff, and Sophie had never enjoyed herself more in her life. She had the freedom to spend her days as she wished, pampered by all the creature comforts a person could wish, including the use of a sweet-tempered pony named Powis.

The only problem was, Sophie had no desire to take up her quill.

“You will in time,” Roderick told her reassuringly.

“Perhaps I don’t wish to find out that my muse has abandoned me,” she said somberly as their coach headed up a particularly rutted road that lead to the Darnly Colliery. At Sophie’s request, her host had agreed to give her a tour of the coal fields before partaking in the annual celebration at the conclusion of the haying season scheduled to be held later in the day on the grounds of Glynmorgan Castle.

“Why not try your hand at an amusing playlet for the house party I’m giving at Evansmor during grouse season?” he suggested. “In keeping with tradition, it can mock anything its author likes… the grouse, the hunters, the host—whatever strikes your fancy.”

“I-I don’t know if I could conjure anything suitable,” Sophie said hesitantly, feeling like an ingrate. Writing an entertainment was the least she could do to show her appreciation for everything Roderick had done for her. “But I shall think on it.”

“Splendid,” he said. He glanced down at her kid boots, which he had provided—in the correct size—earlier in the day. “You’ll be glad you’re wearing those if we slog around the mines.”

“Is the earl likely to be here?” she asked nervously, gazing at the dark heaps of slag that obliterated the green hills on both sides of the narrow valley they were now entering.

“No worry there,” he assured her. “I’m told he’s gone to Bristol this week.”

Darnly assisted Sophie out of the coach and led her on a promenade around the colliery that included a huge wooden building where ribbons of molten metal spewed out of huge iron kettles fired in white-hot furnaces.

“’Tis like some monster from Hades,” Sophie said in a breath, staring at the roaring fire pits and the blackened-faced workers toiling in the heat. “What do they make with the iron they produce?”

“Engines of war,” Roderick replied. “In another building on the estate they cast cannonballs. The cannons themselves are made near the port of Swansea, so they can easily be shipped wherever the British government needs them. The latest batch produced by the Darnly Colliery was dispatched to Saratoga, New York, to keep the American Colonists in line.” He glanced at Sophie’s face to gauge her reaction to his pronouncements. “Surely you realize, Sophie, my dear, that every great fortune is built on something as necessary as bloodshed?” Sophie studied his expression to determine if he were teasing her, but he abruptly changed the subject. “Are you game to go down into a mine shaft?”

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “May I look at it first?”

Roderick led her across the rubble-strewn landscape that looked rather like what she imagined the surface of the moon would be—treeless, rough terrain, with pock-marked depressions dotting the landscape. They soon came to a cave framed by thick timbers and burrowed in the hillside. Colliers, their hands and faces completely covered with soot, were emerging from its maw carrying lanterns they soon extinguished. They looked, to a man, utterly exhausted.

“For five hours they’ve been digging lumps of coal by candlelight, waist-deep in water at close to three hundred feet beneath the ground,” Roderick informed her.

Before Sophie could respond to this disturbing information, one of the men stopped in his tracks and then began to wave. Though his face was a bit soot-covered, the cut of his clothes distinguished him from the gaggle of miners who trooped on down the lane.

“Roddy! What a shock to see you here!” the man exclaimed. “I bet ’tis been five years since you’ve graced us with your presence at the mines.”

“I’ve brought a friend who asked to see the operation,” Roderick replied. He was suddenly no longer the cool, urbane aristocrat Sophie had always known. He seemed ill-at-ease and reluctantly made introductions. “Sophie, this is my brother Vaughn, Viscount Glyn. Vaughn, this is Miss Sophie McGann. She’s a playwright.”

“So
this
is the reason Father has complained all summer that your visits to the castle have been so infrequent.” Vaughn laughed, surveying Sophie appreciatively. “You’ve been hiding this fair scrivener from your own twin brother, naughty boy!”

“T-twin brother?” Sophie couldn’t help but stammer, for Vaughn Darnly was a head shorter than his sibling and sported a mane of bright red hair above his soot-flecked countenance.

“Obviously, we’re fraternal twins. I was the lucky one, though—born two minutes before poor old Roddy, here,” Vaughn said cheerfully. “I get the land and the mines, but then, I have to deal with Father every day. There is nothing for free in this life, is there?” He grinned.

Sophie liked him at once. Not nearly as handsome as his “younger” brother, the stocky viscount had an open friendliness that seemed utterly at odds with Roderick’s cool guardedness. She sensed the heir to the Darnly Mines and forty-thousand Welsh acres was observing her intently, as if it surprised him his brother would have a person of her sort as his guest at Evansmor.

“Can we offer you a ride to the castle?” Roderick said. “From the look on Sophie’s face, I doubt she wants to descend very far into that mine shaft, and I’m sure Mother and your new bride hope you’ll clean yourself up before the evening’s festivities.”

“You’re coming to the haying fete?” Vaughn asked incredulously. “My, my, Miss McGann, you certainly seem to be having a remarkably good influence on the lad. Old Basil won’t believe his eyes!”