Chapter Twenty-One
Despite himself, Jasper had become summarily distracted by the scale and grandeur of the quarry production, even as his lungs filled with an odd, chalky mélange of dust and sea mist.
Malcolm tried, quite hard, actually, to lead a structured and efficient tour of the place, but it went off the rails fairly quickly. Surprisingly, it was not Rhys who did the derailing, but Errol, the ever-steady animal and plant enthusiast whose presence had been odd from the outset.
“This ox has an infected hoof,” he’d announced, four seconds into the entryway, making everyone turn around and marvel at how he’d so quickly diagnosed such a thing or how he’d made his way to a quartet of oxen and gotten one’s foot tilted up and backward in his callused hand without a single sound of protest from the bovine collective. “Malcolm, this is shoddy.”
“Un-shod, surely,” Rhys had put in with a snicker, getting him glares from both of his foster brothers.
“I’ll check the others before I move him,” Errol announced, holding up a hand before Malcolm could utter a single argument. “Do you want to lose the whole ox? Because you will if I don’t.”
“Oh, Elias will be displeased,” Monica said softly to Libba and Jasper from their rear. “He’s already in a strop about the hothouse.”
“He can strop all he likes,” Libba replied with a sniff and then a rueful cough of dust. “Errol owns the kennels and outbuildings, remember? Willa sequestered them in her estate.”
“That is true,” Monica allowed. “And the baron did adopt Peach on sight. Maybe he’ll take a liking to oxen.”
Jasper did not comment.
But now, at least, he knew the name of the dwarf pig that wandered the halls of Starling’s Rest.
“Is the ox still a ‘him,’” Rhys wondered as they turned and continued down the ladder, leaving Errol behind, “after what you’ve done to the poor jewels?”
“Yes,” Malcolm snapped. “Still a ‘him,’ just with more sense and clarity of mind.”
“Oh, you mean he’s been …” Monica said, glancing over her shoulder with a shudder. “Are any of them girls?”
“No,” said Malcolm. “Watch your step. Lib, the bushel of quartz is coming up. You’ll be pleased.”
Jasper glanced at her curiously and saw a resigned curl of her lip. “He’s giving you quartz?”
She flicked her eyes to him, the slightest raise of her brows, as though she were surprised he still had the audacity to address her. “He pictures a chandelier,” she said. “For the Odalisque. Presumably, he will pay to find the carpenter to construct the thing.”
“You’ll want a lapidary too,” Jasper said, tilting his head to the side. “And maybe a wainwright for the base before you start stringing up the crystals. I know some people.”
She only blinked at him, her expression inscrutable.
“Why a wainwright?” Monica asked, stumbling a little and flinging her arms out until both Rhys and Jasper steadied her on a creaky stair. “Pardon. So sorry.”
“Top of a chandelier is a wheel, no matter how you look at it,” Jasper explained, nodding for Rhys to step in front of Monica while he watched her back. “You should’ve worn thicker shoes.”
“I’m a modiste,” she said sadly. “Not a cobbler. I don’t have thicker shoes.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Libba said thoughtfully. “A master of wheels and hinges might construct an ideal base, but we’ll still need someone who understands fireproofing and balance. It’s a wonder chandelier crafting isn’t its own specialty.”
“Not enough demand,” Malcolm called from the lead. “Sadly. Ah, here it is. Come here, Lib.”
She made a little noise, a huff of breath at being commanded so, but swept her silvery, purple skirts to the side and hopped down the remaining stairs, anyhow, while her brother wrestled the top off a big, salt-tinged barrel at the foot.
“Oh, my!” Monica breathed as the sun hit the shards and jagged edges of the multi-colored crystals within. “Oh, goodness!”
Jasper blinked, the glare hitting him straight in the pupils for a moment. By the time he’d gotten his vision to stop swimming, he was alone on the stairs. Even the workers had moved around him, and he had to hasten to rejoin the crowd.
“You pulled this out of limestone?” Rhys asked, lifting a smoky-gray half-moon of rock with tiny, glittering crystals set inside like nesting seagull chicks.
“Out of a vein of flint in the limestone,” Malcolm said. “You find all sorts of things in the rubbish too. Look at this.”
He pulled Rhys around to a pile of discarded, soft, or broken bits of rock and gently nudged over the center of the pile with the toe of his shiny, black boot. “See how varied it is?”
Rhys was frowning. He crouched down, putting his bare hands directly in the filth, and rummaged around in it, blinking away the rising cloud of dust, which settled like a preview of his old age over the brown curls at the crown of his head.
He withdrew an odd chunk of brick and turned it to the side, revealing a curling, ribbed shape in its center. “A dragon,” he whispered, mostly to himself.
“A fossil,” Malcolm corrected. “They’re all over the place. I’ve got better ones than that in my office.”
Rhys only glanced at him and nodded, sliding the thing into his pocket. “A fossil of what?”
Mal shrugged. “Some sea creature, I reckon. Errol might know, if he’s done molesting the cattle.”
Jasper glanced back up at the top of the stairs and thought to himself that there wasn’t anything left to molest, based on what Mal had said before.
Enviable, perhaps?
“You, men!” Malcolm said, gesturing at the workers. “Come with me. We’re going to get you outfitted and equipped with a foreman. Jasper?”
“Who?” Jasper said, blinking away his thoughts of the peaceful life of a steer. “What?”
“With me,” Mal said impatiently. “We’ll get you the rest of your workers for Templeton-Rath. Come along.”
“Right,” Jasper said, ignoring the look Libba shot him over her trove of sharp minerals and stepping around Rhys, who had moved to another pile of geological waste, his fingers dug knuckle-deep in the chalk and sand as he sifted through it.
He resisted the urge to look back at her one more time, and it was a strong urge.
Business to conclude.
That couldn’t possibly mean what he wanted it to mean, could it? She probably meant severing the entire Templeton-Rath scheme before it went any further. She probably meant finishing her lambasting for the charades gaffe.
He’d called his unspoken apology ‘a matter of attrition.’ It had been an odd word choice, and he realized that now. He hadn’t meant it in the religious sense of the word. No, he actually was sorry for how poorly all of this was going.
He’d meant it in the military sense.
They were suffering casualties left and right, it seemed. One way or the other.
“Your face is looking a lot better, you know,” Mal said absently. “I noticed at breakfast and meant to say so. That salve Ruby made you is doing its job.”
“She might be a witch, Mal,” Jasper grumbled, making his friend laugh.
“Oh, she certainly is,” he replied. “We all decided that many years ago. It’s her thinking that witchcraft was always chemistry, anyhow.”
“She should’ve been an apothecary rather than a perfumer,” Jasper said, aware that he could still smell the scent she’d made him, even in this hell of dust and wet air.
Malcolm shrugged. “She’ll be whatever she likes, I think, day to day. The women are like that. Ah, here we are. Men, this is your foreman. You’ll take pickaxes from the stock room to your left …”
Jasper drifted as the instructions were given, as Malcolm instructed the foreman to bring the work ledger for the swap of workers.
He could barely engage with it, even though this should have been one of the most important moments of his life just now.
This should have been the moment that he secured his future with Templeton-Rath.
And all he could think about was that part of him never wanted to see any of that family ever again.
Part of him wanted to go hide in his EIC office with his daily ledgers and forget that he’d ever had aspirations.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and middle finger.
Part of him wanted to wear a bell around his neck, surrender his bollocks, and pull piles of rock for the rest of his days. That seemed nice, didn’t it? That seemed peaceful.
But in the end, he had a list in his hand and a task to fulfill.
And he knew there was no going back, no matter how much he wanted to.
By the time they all had emerged from the quarry, Monica had returned to the second level to assist Errol with securing the ox he was taking home and both Libba and Rhys had gone off to their rehearsal hours at the theater.
All that was left was Jasper and Mal.
And all the secrets Jasper was keeping filling a space between them.