Lady of the Lock Read online

  Challenor. As in Bourne Granville Hayden Challenor, Marquess of Montsale. Mandy sighed. He was so far above her touch, he might as well live on the moon. Never, ever would she let him know his face, topped by artfully arranged tumbles of dark brown curls and enlivened by a sparkle he could not quite conceal in his flint gray eyes, haunted her dreams, asleep and awake. In all fairness, she supposed he was oblivious to his arrogance, his calm assumption that the world was his; other people, except perhaps for Carewe himself, mere dust beneath his feet.

  How could she possibly be excited about seeing him again when he was so shockingly annoying?

  But he was so handsome and cut such a fine figure. Tall and lithe. And there was intelligence behind the supercilious gaze he so often affected. Perhaps if she were a titled lady with ancestors dating back to the Conquest and possessed of so much in the funds she never had to worry about money again, she, too, might be arrogant.

  Silly chit! He won’t even be there when the first axe bites into the hillside. Why should a marquess rusticate in the country with the London Season about to commence?

  A sharp rap on the connecting door. “Amanda, are you ready? Time for breakfast.”

  “Coming.” Mandy took one last look in the room’s small pier glass. Papa wouldn’t notice the blue ribbon peeking out from under the edge of her straw bonnet. And if he did, he would never remember it was the same ribbon she’d worn to confine her hair at the nape of her neck six years ago on the fateful day she first met the heir to the house of Challenor.

  Not that Montsale would either—if he was there—but . . .

  Stifling a groan, Mandy picked up her pelisse and the large reticule in which she carried paper and pencils for scribbling down the notes Papa called to her as he inspected each day’s work. She could probably gaze on Montsale from morn ’til night without censure as long as her note-taking never faltered. Papa, after all, lived in a world of men, of careful measurements, complex drawings, gimlet-eyed supervision, and back-breaking labor. A world in which women simply did not exist.

  Not that Papa was ever indifferent to her needs. He had provided her with an education far superior to that given to the daughters of the highest nobles in the realm. He made an effort to understand the problems of her unique situation, truly he did. When he remembered she wasn’t simply his highly competent personal assistant, but a girl of almost seventeen, blossoming into a woman. The navvies might recognize her as the Lady of the Lock, but Papa? Mandy suspected that to her papa she was simply a secretary for whom he had great affection. His right hand who would never desert him before the completion of the canal.

  When she would likely be close to her majority . . . And firmly on the shelf.

  Not that it mattered since, of the thousands of men she’d met during the construction of the canal, the only one who had ever caught her interest was the Marquess of Montsale. A ridiculous bit of nonsense, as any untitled female setting her sights that high was destined for heartbreak. Which did not keep Mandy’s lips from curling into a little smile as she anticipated their arrival at the towering hillside where the Challenor Tunnel would break ground today.

  Perhaps he would be there. Surely Montsale wouldn’t turn his back on the great undertaking his family had insisted on.

  “Mandy!”

  Startled out of her reverie, Mandy schooled her features to complete indifference before throwing open the door to her papa’s room. A relatively easy task. After all, she had the Marquess of Montsale as a model.

  John Merriwether had celebrated the completion of the Dundas Aqueduct by purchasing a shiny new gig, and ever since, Mandy was certain Esmerelda, their faithful carriage horse, was stepping higher and more lively. The distance from Great Bedwyn to High Meadows was only a few miles, and inevitably, they paused at the pumping station at Crofton. Situated on chalk downs at the canal’s highest point, the pumping station labored to return the water used to fill the locks back up to a reservoir at the top, so the whole endless cycle could start over again.

  But as Papa listened to the not-quite-adequate pump straining to move the tons of water necessary to keep the canal running, he frowned. A bigger, better pump was needed, one with a steam boiler the size of a peasant’s cottage and a pump arm as tall as a fine London house.

  “Another five or six years,” he muttered, shaking his head. “The thrice-bedemmed machine is still on the drawing boards, while the factory figures out how to build it.

  Papa sighed, and a shiver ran up Mandy’s spine. Would it never end? She loved the canal, truly she did. She’d even grown accustomed to rain in her face, the navvies’ appraising glances, and avoiding the almost slavish devotion of Papa’s bevy of young engineers. She was part of something important to the welfare of the nation. She was helping make England stronger and wealthier. And yet . . .

  In a few months she would be seventeen. She should be putting up her hair, accumulating a modest array of new dresses, attending assemblies. Considering marriage, a home of her own. Children.

  Instead, in the depths of her bed each night, she had but one impossible dream. Bourne Challenor. At age eleven, her first sight of him had ruined her life. How could she ever have a husband and family if she would not settle for less? She feared her obsession must be a form of illness. A childish fancy that refused to go away. Surely someday—perhaps when Montsale married—she would be able to lay his ghost.

  Or perhaps, if she was patient, her very own Prince Charming would finally make an appearance, erasing the marquess’s handsome image from her brain and sweeping her into a more conventional life . . .

  But was that what she really wanted? Building canals, aqueducts, locks—and, yes, even tunnels—was her life. Only for a very special man, a true love, would she leave this life behind.

  Which, of course, meant she should stop giving Papa’s bevy of engineers short shrift.

  Mandy hid her scowl behind her bonnet as her papa returned, climbed into the gig, and, clicking his tongue, gave Esmerelda the office to start.

  Not long after leaving Crofton, they crossed the canal on a fine stone bridge and made their way along a narrow farm road that roughly paralleled the canal. Mandy gazed about her, lips curling into a smile. It was, she supposed, strange that she could still revel in the beauty of the countryside in spite of spending most of her life outdoors. Perhaps she should have erupted into rebellion long since, demanding the delights of the city, but from the smell of wet earth and green things growing to the mirror-like reflections of houses in the early morning canal, from masses of wild flowers to mama ducks trailing lines of fluffy babies, she loved it all. She even loved the rough tent cities clustered near each construction site, home to the navvies. These had their own special appeal, for the tents meant that work was being done, the canal was moving forward.

  And there, rising before them, was the encampment that marked the work site for the Challenor Tunnel. Some fifty yards beyond, the natural course of the River Avon wound around the bottom of the hillside at High Meadows. The hillside that had precipitated her first meeting with Bourne Challenor, Marquess of Montsale. The hillside that would keep them in Wiltshire for the next three or four years.

  The navvies’ shouts of greeting disrupted Mandy’s musings. John Merriwether was, after all, the reason they had jobs, and she was their Lady of the Lock. Their arrival meant that work was about to begin. Mandy’s smile broadened. She waved. The navvies trailed after them as they drove on toward the river.

  Mandy remained in the gig as her papa examined the wooden coffer dam that diverted the canal water to the river’s natural bed as it wound around the property of the Duke of Carewe. The dam had held firm since this portion of the canal was completed. Would it stand for another three or four years while the tunnel was built? If not, water would flood the tunnel, drowning the navvies. If they had not already succumbed to an avalanche of rocks and dirt from the fresh-cut ceiling.

  Mandy glared at the innocent green hillside. She should look on the tu
nnel as simply one more challenging construction project, but it was so unnecessary. It wasn’t as if Montsale’s fine house was perched directly above. And why should Carewe object to seeing something his money had helped to build?

  Three men hurried to greet them, Alan Tharp, Papa’s second in command, accompanied by Luke Appleton and Peter Prescott, the two junior engineers carefully chosen for the Carewe Tunnel project. While her papa frowned at the coffer dam, which he had already measured and examined inch by inch over the past week, Mandy glanced at the navvies clustered on the bank, waiting for the signal to swing the first pickaxe into the green expanse of the hillside. Her gaze continued up and up and—

  Oh! Was that . . .? It was. The Marquess of Montsale sat his coal black stallion on the hill’s summit like a warrior king of old surveying his army. Mandy sat as tall as her sidesaddle would allow, squared her shoulders, and projected a glare she hoped would travel like the barb of an arrow, straight at Montsale’s arrogant, aristocratic, inflexible face. So there! Never, ever, would he know how fast her heart was fluttering at the sight of him.

  He had the gall to raise his hand and wave to her. The devil!

  “Good morning, Miss Merriwether.”

  Mandy looked down into the smiling face of Alan Tharp, her father’s most trusted engineer, the man who would oversee every detail of the digging process until the tunnel was finished, just as he had supervised the building of the Dundas Aqueduct. A man of medium height and undistinguished features, Mr. Tharp would never stand out in a crowd. But beneath his shock of straight brown hair shone a pair of blue eyes that revealed a strong intelligence. The navvies had learned long since not to cross him. He was old, of course. More than thirty. Mandy had known him since he came to Papa as an apprentice when she was still in leading strings.

  In a gesture that had become automatic through the years, Mr. Tharp held up his arms and swung her to the ground. He removed a rolled blanket from the gig’s storage space and spread it out in the shade of a tree some ten yards behind the towpath. “If you’ll choose the spot for your pavilion, I’ll have the men put it up immediately. Shall we set up your easel now?”

  Eyes twinkling, Mandy returned, “You are the engineer, Mr. Tharp. Please choose the best site.” She leaned a bit closer, adding in a sultry voice she had been practicing of late, “And my art supplies may stay in the trunk. I doubt I’ll have time for them today.” Living as she did in a world of men, Mandy was careful where she practiced flirtation (as every young lady must), but considered Mr. Tharp—surely safe at the advanced age of thirty-two—immune to her charms.

  But perhaps not.

  He stepped back, coughed, his ears turning pink. “Right here, next to this tree then. The end of the tunnel isn’t going to move.”

  Mandy returned a wry smile. “Quite right, Mr. Tharp. We’ll be situated here, struggling with the project we wished to avoid, for some time to come.”

  “At least until the ground freezes,” he said. “I suspect on this particular project we shall welcome the winter breaks.”

  “Indeed.” Mandy added a pert, “Kind, sir,” as Mr. Tharp took her hand and helped her sink gracefully onto the blanket, where she quickly arranged her skirts.

  A giant shadow, not Tharp’s, suddenly blotted out the sun. Mandy’s neck protested as her gaze rose from muddy boots and canvas trousers to a blue workshirt covering a massive pair of shoulders, topped by the broad moon-face of a man who had close to fifty years in his dish. Jeb Banks, project foreman, and another face Mandy knew well.

  “I was wonderin’, Miss Merriwether, if ye might have a ribbon.” His hand came out from behind his back, and a pickaxe swung within a foot of her nose.“I–ah–thought I–we might do it, the f-first swing, like they did in them tournaments.” Jeb Banks studied his boots, his mumbled words trailing away into nothing.

  Merciful heavens, was he blushing? Mandy wondered.

  “I think what he means—” Alan Tharp began.

  Her ribbon, her treasured blue ribbon. “I understand,” Mandy said quickly, “and I think it’s a splendid idea. With deft fingers she unwound the blue ribbon that held her hair in place. Rising to her knees, she tied it around the narrowest part of the axe’s wooden handle.

  Banks beamed. “Thank’ee, Miss. ’T’will bring good luck, I know.” Two fingers to his brow, and he headed back toward the canal.

  “Good God, my eyes must be deceiving me,” came a voice from above. “A navvie playing at knights and fair maidens?”

  Oh, no! Mandy cringed before turning her head to look up into the supercilious gaze of the Marquess of Montsale. A quick glance revealed Jeb Banks almost back to the river bank. Hopefully, he had not heard the marquess’s unkind comment.

  “Montsale.” Tharp’s voice was colder than the early spring water in the river.

  “My lord,” Mandy murmured, with an infinitesimal bow of her head in lieu of a curtsey. “Surely our traditions belong to all people, not just a noble few.”

  The marquess dismounted, tethering his horse to a tree branch next to Mandy’s mare. When he returned, he seemed a different person, all traces of sarcasm, even arrogance, erased. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I live in a world where we have little to do but fence with words. Duels are as forbidden as earning our daily bread. So we must search for ways to add excitement to our day. Everything from gambling to masquerade balls, chasing after other people’s—” He broke off, swallowing his words. “And one of our greatest games is a war of words. Denied swords or pistols at dawn, we strive for the clever remark, the cutting remark, the perfect combination of words to demonstrate our superiority, to display our right to frivol away our lives while others labor on our behalf.”

  “Do you wish to take up a pick and shovel, my lord?” Mandy inquired sweetly. “I’m sure it can be arranged.”

  “Men will likely die building this tunnel,” Alan Tharp interjected grimly.

  “My apologies to you both,” Montsale returned easily. “From henceforth I shall confine my bon mots to members of the ton.”

  A reminder, as if she needed one, Mandy thought, of just how far she and Mr. Tharp were from the cream of society.

  “If you will excuse me,” Montsale said, “I will offer my good wishes to Merriwether and then I shall be gone.” He tipped his beaver to Mandy. “Miss Merriwether, perhaps we may speak at more length on another occasion.”

  Mr. Tharp muttered something under his breath.

  “I heard that,” Mandy told him. “And I could not agree more.” And yet . . . Montsale had tried to make amends, truly he had.

  A sudden hush—even the birds seemed to sense the moment, their constant twittering falling silent. Jeb Banks stood in the muddy cut that came right up to the hillside, his pickaxe hanging loosely at his side, the long blue ribbon fluttering in the breeze. Suddenly, his giant shoulders tensed, he swung the axe high, then down into the green turf. Chunks of dirt went flying in every direction. Mandy added her voice to the shout of triumph echoing over the countryside.

  Work on the Challenor Tunnel, the next-to-the-last obstacle on the Kennet and Avon canal, had begun.

  Chapter Three

  The Marquess of Montsale crunched the letter in his hand and tossed it into the fire, watching it blacken and burn with an almost inexplicable anger. Was he furious because Carewe had ordered him to London, or was he angry with himself for being so reluctant to go? Montsale, the darling of the ton, the most eligible bachelor in the kingdom, trapped in Wiltshire by a pair of fine green eyes and a figure . . .

  Hell and the devil confound it! Carewe was right. He was an idiot, trolling after a girl who was neither fish nor foul nor rare roast beef. A female who, for all her opportunities to indulge in casual flirtations, was not only solidly respectable but protected by a well-muscled army. Oh, yes, he’d seen the looks. From navvies to earnest young engineers, they’d given him warning in the silent language of male to male. Watch yourself. She’s not yours for the plucking. Touch her at your
peril.

  They were a rough lot, the navvies. Yet still he rode to the mouth of the tunnel every day. He’d even fallen into the habit of sharing a mid-day repast with Miss Merriwether, her father, and Tharp, with the High Meadows kitchen providing lunch one day, the Cross Keys Inn the next. They ate in the Merriwether’s open-sided shelter, which boasted a modest-sized folding table and four canvas stools. A pleasant change from dining alone at High Meadows, but then if it weren’t for the tunnel, he would have long since departed for London.

  A foolish fallacy, that. It wasn’t the tunnel keeping him fixed in Wiltshire, though Bourne had to admit he found it difficult to maintain his customary façade of indifference under the intense scrutiny of the men who were mining their way into his hillside. But, truth was, without the presence of Miss Amanda Merriwether, he would not have lingered in Wiltshire above a week.

  Courtship and marriage were, of course, out of the question. He was heir to a dukedom, surrounded by centuries of tradition and expectations. Therefore . . . against every inclination, he had to acknowledge the wisdom of his father’s demand for his presence in London. The Marquess of Montsale could not marry so far beneath him. He might not wish to look over the new crop of nubile beauties who were about to make their curtsies to the queen before parading themselves through the hallowed halls of Almack’s like a string of fillies being touted at Tatt’s, but needs must when the devil rides. He had no intention of being caught in parson’s mousetrap before the age of thirty or thirty-five, but he had no desire to give his mother palpitations or send his father into an apoplexy. Which meant . . .