“High-grade hematite ore.” West’s tone was filled with compressed excitement. “It makes the best steel. It commands the highest price on the market.”
Devon glanced at him with sharpening interest. “Go on.”
“While I was away in London,” West continued, “it seems that Severin’s surveyors did some test boring here. One of the tenants – Mr. Wooten – heard the machines and came to see what was afoot. The surveyors told him nothing, of course. But as soon as I learned of it, I hired a geologist and a mining surveyor to do our own testing. They’ve been here for three days with a rock-boring machine, pulling up sample after sample of that.” He nodded to the hematite in Devon’s hand.
Beginning to understand, Devon closed his fingers around the hard lump of ore. “How much of it is there?”
“They’re still assessing. But they both agree that a massive bed of banded hematite lies close to the surface, just beneath a layer of clay and limestone. From what they’ve observed so far, it’s eight feet thick in some places, twenty-two feet in others – and it extends for at least fifteen acres. All your land. The geologist says he’s never seen a deposit like this south of Cumberland.” His voice turned husky. “It’s easily worth a half million pounds, Devon.”
Devon had the sense of reeling backward, even though he was standing still. It was too much to take in. He gazed at the scene without really seeing it, his brain striving to comprehend what it meant.
The soul-crushing burden of debt that had weighed on him ever since he’d inherited the estate… gone. Everyone at Eversby Priory would be safe. Theo’s sisters would have dowries large enough to attract any suitors they chose. There would be work for the men of Eversby, and new business for the village.
“Well?” West asked expectantly as Devon’s silence stretched out.
“I can’t trust that it’s real,” he managed to say, “until I know more.”
“You can trust it. Believe me, a hundred thousand tons of stone is not going to vanish from beneath our feet.”
A slow grin worked over Devon’s face. “Now I understand why Severin tried so hard to obtain the mineral rights.”
“Thank God you’re so stubborn.”
Devon laughed. “That’s the first time you’ve ever said that to me.”
“And the last,” West assured him.
Turning a slow circle to view their surroundings, Devon sobered as he glanced at the woodlands to the south. “I can’t let the estate’s timber be razed for furnaces and forges.”
“No, there’s no need for us to mine or smelt. The hematite ore is so pure, we’ll only need to quarry. As soon as it’s taken from the ground, it can be transported.”
Completing the circle, Devon caught sight of a man and a small boy walking around the rock-boring machine, viewing it with great interest.
“First an earldom,” West was saying, “then the railway lease deal. Now this. I think you may be the luckiest sod in England.”
Devon’s attention held on the man and little boy. “Who is that?”
West followed his gaze. “Ah. That’s Wooten. He’s brought one of his sons to see the machine.”
Wooten bent with his torso parallel to the ground, and the little boy climbed onto his back. Hooking his arms beneath his son’s legs, the young farmer stood and carried him across the field. The boy clung to his father’s shoulders, laughing.
Devon watched the pair as they retreated into the distance.
The sight of the child summoned an image to the forefront of his mind… Kathleen’s blank face, limned in fire glow, as she’d told him there would be no baby.
All he had been aware of was a puzzling feeling of emptiness.
It was only now that Devon realized he had assumed she would be pregnant – which would have left him no choice to marry her. Having lived with that idea in the back of his mind for a fortnight, he had become accustomed to it.
No… that wasn’t quite accurate.
Shaken, Devon brought himself to face the truth.
He’d wanted it.
He’d wanted the excuse to make Kathleen his in every way. He wanted his baby inside her. He wanted his ring on her finger, and every marital right that it conferred.
He wanted to share every day of the rest of his life with her.
“What are you worrying about?” he heard his brother ask.
Devon was slow to reply, trying to retrace the steps that had led him so far away from everything he’d always thought he was. “Before I inherited the title,” he said dazedly, “I wouldn’t have trusted either of us with a goldfish, much less a twenty-thousand-acre estate. I’ve always shunned any kind of responsibility because I knew I couldn’t manage it. I’m a scapegrace and a hothead, like our father. When you told me that I had no idea how to run the estate and I was going to fail —”
“That was a load of bollocks,” West said flatly.
Devon grinned briefly. “You made some valid points.” Absently he began to roll the hematite between his palms. “But against all odds, it seems that you and I have managed to make enough of the right choices —”
“No,” West interrupted. “I’ll take no credit for this. You alone decided to take on the burden of the estate. You made the decisions that led to the lease deal and the discovery of the iron deposits. Has it occurred to you that if any of the previous earls had bothered to make the land improvements they should have, the hematite bed would have been discovered decades ago? You certainly would have found it when you ordered the drainage trenches dug for the tenant farms. You see, Eversby Priory is in good hands: yours. You’ve changed hundreds of lives for the better, including mine. Whatever the word is for a man who’s done all that… it’s not ‘scapegrace.’” West paused. “My God, I can feel sincerity rising in my chest like a digestive disorder. I have to stop. Shall we go to the house for you to change into some field boots? Then we can return here, talk to the surveyors, and have a walk around.”
Pondering the question, Devon dropped the pebble into his pocket, and met his brother’s gaze squarely.
One thought was paramount: None of this mattered without Kathleen. He had to go to her at once, and somehow make her understand that during the past few months, he had changed without even being aware of it. He had become a man who could love her.
God, how madly he loved her.
But he had to find a way of convincing her, which would not be easy.
On the other hand… he wasn’t a man to back down from a challenge.