her steps were fast, and she kicked up dust with each angry footfall. If all of the miners had walked with the same amount of fury that she felt, the path would be a trench, six feet deep.
As she walked, the conversation—or rather, lack of conversation—with the managers dug into her mind, like shards of metal.
It’s simply not economical for the company store to replace almost a hundred pounds of butter just on your say-so, Miss Carr.
“Economical, my arse,” she muttered to herself. They always had some excuse, some barely thought-out rationale. Would it make any difference to them if she was a man instead of a woman? Would they listen to her, take her grievances more seriously?
Doesn’t matter, does it? Since I’m the only one trying to make a change.
“Miss Carr! Miss Carr!”
Caught up as she was in her own roiling thoughts, she barely heard a man call her name, or the sound of boots hurrying to catch up with her.
Only when he said her name again directly behind her did she stop walking. Had to be a surface captain, ready to chastise her for leaving work early—even though she had the managers’ permission. She was just about to say so, when she turned to face the man pursuing her.
It was him. That stranger who’d been in the engine house.
“Seeing as how it’s my new home,” he said, “I was hoping you could show me the way to the village.” He didn’t sound at all winded, even though it looked like he’d been running to catch up with her. With his thumb, he pushed back the brim of his cap, revealing a thatch of wheat-blond hair.
In the engine house, she’d only had a brief glimpse of him beneath the gaslights—seeing mostly the winter blue of his eyes—but now that they were out in the sun, she could observe him more clearly.
“Got the job, then?” she asked.
“Good thing, too,” he answered. “I need the work and that pump engine needs a nursemaid.”
He wore a laboring man’s clothes, filling them with a leanly muscular body that had seen its share of work. Growing up and living among men who spent hours a day tearing ore from the ground made her no stranger to the sight of a young man in prime condition. But something about this man—the confidence with which he carried himself, the stretch of rough wool across his broad shoulders and down his long legs—made her aware of his physicality.
“Men aren’t nursemaids,” she pointed out.
He gave an affable shrug. “A friend of mine told me that the definition of a man is that he does whatever’s necessary. And if that pump engine needs me to change its nappy and rock it to sleep, then I’m the man for the job.”
She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but her thoughts briefly scattered like startled thrushes when she got a good look at his face. Blessed saints, she didn’t know men could look like this. All clean lines, high cheekbones, and elegantly carved jawbone. His lips were thin, but the bottom lip was unexpectedly full. Someone long ago in his bloodline must have birthed an aristocrat’s bastard, for there was no denying the natural nobility in his features.
It seemed a strange contrast to the clothing he wore and his accent—which she placed somewhere around Sheffield, and not the nice parts of that city, either.
A face was just a face—nobody had power over how they looked. It didn’t matter how handsome this man was, he was only that: a man, like any other.
She pointed to the path, worn into the ground. “If you’re looking for the village, follow this for another mile and a half. It’ll take you right there.”
“Since we’re headed in the same direction,” he said with a smile, “may as well keep each other company.”
For all her bold talk, she was a woman, and not entirely immune to a handsome man’s smile.
Still, she said indifferently, “As you like.”
Setting down one of his bags, he extended a broad hand to her. She hesitated for a moment, not really wanting to touch him,