“She’ll be right back.” He was turned away from her, his voice muffled as he worked to clean out the fireplace.
Rachel poured some water into a basin to wash her sticky hands. “Come clean off the soot,” she said. “I brought you something to eat.”
His eyes rounded when he saw the food. “How did you come by such fancy fare?”
Not wanting to think of her recent visit to Blackmoor Hall, or any of the ones before, Rachel made a show of drying her hands. “Don’t worry about that. Just enjoy yourself.”
She didn’t have to tell him twice. Geordie washed his hands and face, then bellied up to the table and polished off two of the larger pastries before looking questioningly her way. “Have you eaten?” he asked politely. “Because I could stop now. I’m not that hungry.”
Rachel smiled and took a seat opposite him. “I will halve the last one with you.” If she didn’t eat something, she’d faint. And she couldn’t faint. She had to contact Mr. Cutberth and let him know she’d done what he’d asked her to do. Then maybe the rumors about her would die and everyone would go back to treating her like they always had.
“Where did Mrs. Tate go?” she asked.
“Don’t know. We… we had a disagreement. She scolded me and cried and scolded me some more. Then she grabbed her cloak and hurried out just before you got back.”
Rachel studied her young brother. “She rarely scolds you. What did you do?”
He shrugged, his face reddening.
“Geordie?”
Setting his portion of that third pastry down uneaten, he shoved away from the table and went back to cleaning the fireplace. The shovel clanged as he hung it on a hook. Then the bristles of the horsehair broom swished as he swept out the rest of the cinders. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “You’ll get angry too.”
Foreboding flickered somewhere in the back of Rachel’s mind. “I won’t get angry.”
At first she wasn’t sure he’d heard her. But he finally set his tools aside and turned to face her. “I am going to apply at the mine.”
His voice sounded older, more like their brother Tommy’s had the year before he died. Already Geordie was beginning to grow up, and because of their mother’s death, he was being forced to do it far too soon.
Rachel swallowed hard to alleviate the sudden dryness of her throat. “Surely you don’t mean that, Geordie. You are only eight—”
“I will be nine soon. Mr. Clifton says I am plenty old enough. He said his own son started trapping at five.”
“Mr. Clifton? What has he got to do with this?”
“I saw him outside the apothecary today. He told me I am the man of the house now and wanted to know when I would be starting at the pit.”
Rachel’s temper began to simmer. Clifton had no right putting the responsibility of their situation on Geordie’s young shoulders. “He doesn’t know what’s best for us, Geordie. Next time you see him you can tell him you won’t be starting at the mine ever.”
Her brother’s chin jutted out. “He used to be one of the best coal hewers at Stanhope & Co. He knows plenty—”
“He had to give up being a hewer because he couldn’t see anymore. That is what working down in the pit does for a man, Geordie. It clogs his nose and lungs with dust and ruins his eyes.”
“Well, he can see now. He’s a fireman at the mine, isn’t he? If not for him, who would check the safety of the workings before each shift begins?”
“I don’t care who or what he is. That’s not the point. The point is…” she struggled to keep her emotions in check “… the point is the pit is dark, dusty, filthy, stuffy and wet. You will work for more than twelve hours a day with sweating, stinking horses and perspiring men, and never see the sun. Surely you do not want to consign yourself to a life like that—”
“I have to do something to help you,” he said, his eyes imploring. “You haven’t been able to open the shop. The villagers are treating you like a leper.” He blushed, and Rachel feared he already understood far too much about what the villagers were saying, even at his tender age.
She glanced at the food left over from the meal they had just shared at the earl’s expense and guiltily feared Geordie had guessed where it had come from. “I know the villagers are talking about me, but I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of, Geordie.” That was true, wasn’t it? She hadn’t been in her right mind. Surely she wasn’t responsible for what had occurred in the earl’s bed. But she had let him finish.… “You don’t have to worry about that,” she went on. “I am much older than you, and I can take care of us. You have to trust me.”
But the cold nights, when she had tried to conserve the last of their wood and coal, and the small or nonexistent meals they had shared over the last few days had, no doubt, left an indelible impression on him, undermining his confidence in her.
“Mr. Clifton said I can earn enough to buy us the basics,” he said. “And I won’t be down in the mine, not at first. I will be at the pithead, working on the belts, sorting the rocks from the coal. Anyone can do that.”
“I don’t want you there!” Rachel nearly screamed the words, then regretted her burst of temper when Geordie looked like she’d struck him. Infusing some calm into her voice, she said, “I’m sorry, Geordie. I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just that, if you go to work in the mine, you will have no time to get an education. And if you don’t get an education, you will always be a miner.”
“Dad was a miner,” he said defiantly. “So was Tommy.”
Curling her hands into fists, Rachel closed her eyes. How could he possibly understand how easily he could get roped into a life of endless, back-breaking labor? A life rife with strikes and lockouts and short time? From week to week he’d never know what stoppages would be kept from his earnings. Depending upon the whim of Whythe Stanhope, who was steward over the mine, he could be overcharged for the tools, candles and powder he used underground. Fines could be imposed on him for unsatisfactory work. And if he ever chose to live in colliery housing, he could be fined for offences as trivial as keeping dogs, cows, pigs, donkeys—even pigeons!
Rachel saw more for him in life than that, more for herself than worrying whether there would be another cave-in.…