My Only Love (22 page)

"This
is a bloody waste of time," Jake grumbled. "I ain't in the habit of
doin' business with women."

"Aye,"
Herbert agreed. "Since when did the Warwicks need a female to speak for
them?"

"Understand
that I'm speaking for no one," she replied. "But it's obvious you
gentlemen .are at loggerheads with my husband on the matter of the running of
these mines."

"Damn
right," Jake replied. " 'Cause we're sick to our teeth of empty
promises."

"Understandably.
Earl Warwick and I have discussed this matter at length, and I believe we all
agree that the basic problem has been my husband's lack of monetary resources .
.. and poor management."

Miles
narrowed his eyes.

"Therefore,"
Olivia said a bit more cautiously, "I'm here to guarantee you that
everything possible will be done to assure the men's, and their families',
well-being."

Herbert
looked at her strangely. "And how do you aim to do that, ma'am?"

"By
drawing up contracts whereby my husband and myself will guarantee certain
rights and privileges due to each man in our employment, including a guarantee
of company restructure, benefits, renovations, and—"

"I
beg your pardon," Miles said, leaving his chair. Proffering Olivia an
emotionless smile, he gently wrapped his scraped fingers around her arm and
added, "I'd like to speak to you privately."

Olivia
glanced at her companions' ambivalent faces, then joined Miles, offering little
resistance as they moved to the back of the tavern. He did not pull her chair
out for her, but straddled his own, back to front, and stared at her until she
sat down, fingers folded around her reticule that lay in her lap. She met his
look directly.

"First,
I do thank you for helping me, but what the hell are you doing here in the
midst of mine business?"

Olivia
opened her reticule and extracted a handkerchief. She offered it to him.
"Your head is bleeding."

He
ignored the kerchief; his shoulders looked rigid. Olivia shrugged and returned
the cloth to her lap.

"I
would think that you had enough at Braithwaite to occupy you for the time
being."

"Meaning
your mother, I suppose."

He
glanced toward Earl Warwick. "I suppose he knows about Alyson?"

She
nodded.

Miles
briefly closed his eyes. His features looked haggard, as if he had slept
little the last weeks. "This business is no concern of yours," he
said.

"Really?"
Her gaze raked him. "Trouble is apparent here, and—"

"You
and my brother determined that I'm incapable of dealing with it. Dammit!"
He slammed his fist  on  the  table  and  Olivia jumped.   "I  won't shut
down these mines and I won't sell them to Lubinsky."

"Earl
Warwick mentioned that the mines are virtually played out. It would seem a
reasonable solution to your dilemma," she said.

Miles
sat back in his chair and wearily gazed up at the old beams on the low ceiling.
"I don't understand it. No matter how much money I sink into these
damnable pits I get nothing accomplished. The men don't work any harder. And
despite my efforts to assure their safety as much as possible, the mishaps
continue."

"Then
why go on? Why not sell?"

"Contrary
to what you think of me, I care about these people. If Lubinsky moved in he'd
bring his battery of gorillas in to work these mines and the good people of
Gunnerside would be dismissed and forgotten. It's happened before."

"Yet
they would risk that chance to be rid of you." Olivia looked over at the
men. "Perhaps if I speak with them."

"No."
Sitting upright, his soiled hands splayed on the tabletop, and his handsome
mouth a sneer, he said, "I fear you've done enough already."

"Pride
cometh before a fall," she replied with a setting of her chin. Then she
left her chair and returned to the group.

"Gentlemen,"
she said, slapping her reticule onto the table. "Mr. Warwick and I have
agreed that measures should be taken to remedy the dissatisfaction running
rampant throughout the Warwick mines." Miles moved up behind her, and the
air turned uncomfortably warm, yet she managed to take a steady breath and
continue. "Mr. McMillian."

Warwick's
manager shifted in his chair, but did not meet her eyes. "I would see your
books and speak to you at length," Olivia told him.

McMillian
looked at Miles, then at his men, who regarded Olivia as if she were an unusual
bug that had settled on the end of their nose. "And," she added,
"I'll wish to have a tour of the mines."

That
brought them upright in their chairs. All except Earl Warwick, who remained
relaxed, with that infamous Warwick curl to his lips.

"Yer
bloody daft,"Jake Delaney cried. "Ain't no woman been down into the
belly of them hills since Lord Ashley's commission legislated a bill
prohibiting women from working underground."

"It's
dangerous," Herbert Wallace added.

"Not
to mention dumb." McMillian shook his head and crossed his big arms over
his chest. "Besides, you'd get that pretty dress dirty."

The
men snickered. Olivia adjusted her eyeglasses and stared at each man until he
fell silent. "I will see the mines," she declared.

They
glanced at one another dubiously.

"Mr.
Delaney, I would advise you to talk with the others. Someone will be needed to
speak on their behalf when it's time for negotiation. Until such time Mr.
Warwick kindly requests that all mining be discontinued until further
notice."

McMillian
jumped up. "Now wait a bloody minute. Ya can't come in here and close us
down. These men have wives and children to feed!"

"Agreed.
Therefore it will behoove us all to make haste in emending this unacceptable
situation."

*     *     *

After
a great deal of consideration, Olivia agreed to leave the inspection of the
mines until the morning. She did, however, spend the remainder of the afternoon
shut up in the shop, a wooden hut that housed the blacksmith's smithy and the
miners' shop, with Bob McMillian and the Warwicks, and came to the conclusion
that she neither liked McMillian, nor did she trust him.

Just
past dusk, she excused herself from the men's company, and hurriedly returned
to the White Horse Inn and Ale House and, once learning that her husband had
taken lodging at the shop, took a room, grateful for the little privacy the
tiny chamber with paper-thin walls allowed her. The day seemed a blur now, as
she lay on the bed and closed her eyes in the semidark and did her best to stop
shivering. Her joints ached from the bone-jarring gallop all the way from
Braithwaite to Gunnerside, and for the entirety of the afternoon her back and
shoulders— indeed, her whole being—had been tense as a bow string in Miles's
presence.

He
was furious at her for being here.

He
was furious that she'd helped him.

Well,
what had she expected? That he would be skipping in glee because she and his
brother had charged into this ugly fracas and saved his handsome neck? Were she
and Earl Warwick simply to stand back while the irate miners killed Miles?

"Olivia."

Olivia
opened her eyes and listened to the rattling of wind upon the windows. Her
heart raced; the sounds of drunken laughter from below rolled over her in a
thunderous wave.

"Olivia,"
came Miles's voice, then a tapping on the door.

How
long had she slept?

She
slid from the bed, gasping slightly as her bare feet touched the cold floor.
She hurried to the door and opened it enough to reveal Warwick's dark face.

"Pardon
me," he said, and moved into the room. "Did I wake you?"

Olivia
glanced toward the door.

"Close
it," he told her. Still, she hesitated and he looked at her with a trace
of amusement on his lips. "Come, come, dear heart, it isn't as if we
shouldn't be alone together." He waggled one finger at the door, and she
eased it shut, leaned back against it and watched him slowly turn to face her.

Miles
narrowed his eyes. Olivia had partially unbuttoned the bodice of her dress
before lying abed. It fell open now, exposing a vee of white flesh and the pink
bud of the tattoo on her breast. With her disheveled hair spilling from its
combs, and her mouth and eyes appearing slightly swollen, it was obvious she'd
been sleeping.

"Are
you inebriated?" she asked in a faintly husky voice. "For if you are,
sir, you may leave this moment. I have no desire to argue with a drunk."

"What
makes you think I came here to argue?"

She
frowned suspiciously and moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

"My
brother has politely commanded me to join him for a tipple before supper—quite
an occurrence, you understand. I suspect he intends to verbally whip me over my
mother residing at Braithwaite. He'll no doubt remind me that Braithwaite is
only mine by trial—being that if I don't show solvent by the end of next year,
the properties revert back to him. And therefore he has every right to demand
that Alyson Kemball be removed from the premises. Therefore, as a dutiful son
and estimable human being, I'm supposed to relinquish my dreams of claiming
Braithwaite and ride off to live happily ever after with the woman who tossed
me out with a note when I was only eight years old. However, being the ever
considerate husband that I am, I told him I should consult you before we had
our tete-a-tete. Besides, we have so much to catch up on. Haven't we?"

"Indeed."
She cleared her throat and slid her hand into a pocket in her skirt,
withdrawing her eyeglasses. Her fingers fumbled with the stems, then lifted
them to her nose.

Miles
laughed and shook his head. He moved toward her, watching as her eyes grew
large, then larger behind the thick-lensed spectacles. "You're not going
to hide behind those atrocities tonight."

Before
she could react, he grabbed the glasses from her face and dropped them to the
floor. Then he ground his heel into them, pulverizing the lenses.

Olivia
gasped. "Bloody idiot. What do you think you're doing?"

"This."
Closing one hand around her throat, he eased her back against the door,
watching as her blue-green eyes flashed with both fear and challenge, and her
soft mouth fell open. She grabbed his wrist with both hands. For an instant,
his anger over her and Damien's interference in his life and business matters
were temporarily forgotten. An unexpected wash of desire for this infuriating
woman overcame him.

"Sir,
you don't frighten me. And," she added with emphasis, "I have another
pair of eyeglasses at home."

His
hard mouth curved faintly, and he lowered his face over hers. "Oh, I don't
intend to harm you, dear heart. Walls are too thin. Might be witnesses. No, I
only came here to look for something I lost this afternoon."

Olivia
blinked slowly and appeared confused, then nervous, then startled as he nudged
his knee between her thighs and pressed her back against the door. Her gaze
locked on his face, she drew a sharp breath and made a desperate grab for his
hand as it reached to tug up the hem of her skirt. "Wh-what are you
doing?" she demanded in a tight voice.

She
was naked under her dress. Her thigh felt warm and smooth and firm. "I
told you. I fear I lost something today, or perhaps it was the moment I agreed
to your father's conditions concerning your dowry. Have you guessed yet what
I'm looking for, my darling wife? Hmm? Then let me tell you. I'm looking for my
balls. You castrated me in front of those men today; just thought you might be
hiding them here."

Her
eyes locked on his, her lips parted; she only managed to whisper
"Oh" as his hand cupped her moist, sensitive flesh.

He'd
anticipated a fight, a lashing of her waspish tongue or a firm reprimand for
treating her so coarsely. He'd meant to shock her. To make her feel the bite of
humiliation he'd experienced. Yet, there she stood, like a doe frozen in the
cross hairs of a rifle as her body warmed and turned liquid in the palm of his
hand. Then again, why should he be surprised? This was her reputation, after
all.

Frowning,
he recalled the time he'd kissed her, experienced again that unnerving delight
he'd discovered in the taste and touch of her mouth under his. If he stood here
a moment longer, the recollection of her soft lips opening under his would stir
the animal in him and he would forget the reasons for his present anger. He'd
do something stupid, like toss her on the bed and bury his body inside her. ..
take what was rightfully and lawfully his. Damn, but she was tempting.

His
fingers toyed with her, gently, until her face flushed with heat and her sex
turned slick and hot and he heard her uneven breathing in the silence. Her eyes
appeared glazed, her lips ripe and red, and her hips squirmed—just
slightly-—against his hand.

She
liked this. Oh, yes. He wondered what else she liked—if she expected sex to be
tender or full of rough passion—the way he liked it. Unrestrained. Wild.