The Lady and the Miner

By Lisa Torquay

As an astronomer, Amelia understands that the celestial bodies attract each other, but still...
Amelia Bolton belongs to one of the richest families in England, one who made its fortune in coal. Her brother Joseph aims at having access to parliament and is pressuring Amelia to marry a nobleman who has a seat in it. She knows her duties to the family, she does. But there’s one man who won’t leave her mind and, sadly, her heart. Daniel, the miner who lives just down in the village, is as distant from her world as the planet Saturn is from the Earth. She must force herself to leave her girlish fancies aside and become the titled lady of the ton her brother wishes her to be. It will tear her apart, but she has no choice.
Daniel Hill was born in this mine and lost all his family to it. He has no illusions about the fact that he’ll die in it too. But every time he catches sight of Miss Bolton, he dies a different death: That of knowing she’s not for the likes of him. He can’t dream of laying his coal-soot stained hands on her delicate person, though the thought throws him in a torturous hell. He’ll do his best to keep away from her, even if it sends him to an early grave.

Warning: It contains a bit of foul language as is typical of lower classes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lisa Torquay
• Release date: Mar 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005502980

Lisa Torquay

Lisa Torquay comes from a multi-cultural family. She graduated in History and earned a Master’s Degree in British Empire. She has worked as an English and History teacher at high schools. She married a Norwegian and moved to Norway, where she has lived for three years. Writing has been her passion since she was thirteen. When she’s not writing, she’s messing up in the kitchen because she loves cooking as much as she’s clumsy. She hopes you enjoy her books and would love to know your opinion about them. Just go to www.lisatorquay.wixsite/main

Book preview

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

From the Back Cover

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Series News

Preview of The Lady and the Mill Worker

About the Author

Connect with Lisa Torquay

Other Books by Lisa Torquay

Copyright

The Lady and the Miner

Copyright 2021 Lisa Torquay

Published by Lisa Torquay

Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Editor

Robin Pentecost

Cover Art

Jo Singleton

Dedication

To the ninety-nine percent who’ve been building this world

with blood, sweat and loss.

From the Back Cover

As an astronomer, Amelia understands that the celestial bodies attract each other, but still…

Amelia Bolton belongs to one of the richest families in England, one who made its fortune in coal. Her brother Joseph aims at having access to parliament and is pressuring Amelia to marry a nobleman who has a seat in it. She knows her duties to the family, she does. But there’s one man who won’t leave her mind and, sadly, her heart. Daniel, the miner who lives just down in the village, is as distant from her world as the planet Saturn is from the Earth. She must force herself to leave her girlish fancies aside and become the titled lady of the ton her brother wishes her to be. It will tear her apart, but she has no choice.

 Daniel Hill was born in this mine and lost all his family to it. He has no illusions about the fact that he’ll die in it too. But every time he catches sight of Miss Bolton, he dies a different death: That of knowing she’s not for the likes of him. He can’t dream of laying his coal-soot stained hands on her delicate person, though the thought throws him in a torturous hell. He’ll do his best to keep away from her, even if it sends him to an early grave.

Warning: It contains a bit of foul language as is typical of lower classes.

Chapter One

Northumberland, England, 1820

Amelia Bolton closed the door to Mrs Higgs’s tiny cottage where she’d taken a basket of food. Sarah’s husband lay sick in bed, unable to go to work in the mine. Outside, all kinds of litter lined the narrow alley cutting through the miners’ village with its usual foul stench. Amelia, having been born not far from there, was used to the general decay she found outside the walls surrounding her family’s mansion up the slope.

Movement down the alley caught her attention. A tall man walked this way about fifty yards from her. It was the miner who came to talk to her brother sometimes. Instinctively, she pressed herself against the rough, scarred wood, hiding more from herself than anyone else. Sir Joseph—a title he gained years prior for his achievements—her brother, had taken over the family’s three-generation-old business after their father died two years prior. With the changes he’d been making, Daniel Hill, the miner, had been visiting the house.

With dire consequences to her.

No, the man didn’t even know she existed. But she knew he did, acutely. Tumultuously, too. And totally clandestinely.

A middle-aged man neared him, and he halted to listen to what the older man was saying. The sound didn’t reach her. But she could see Mr Hill so clearly from her secluded spot. He was tall, too tall for a miner to crawl through the cramped tunnels carved in Earth’s own womb—where the black treasure that made her family one of the richest in England was extracted at the cost of blood, sweat and death. At least six feet four to her five feet five, his height filled with a powerful body not even his bedraggled clothes hid.

His eyes roamed the alley distractedly as the older man continued to talk. Blue, two pools of cobalt on a face constantly smudged with coal soot. They shone like stars in a moonless night. The astronomer in her marvelled at them. Angular, rugged, his smudged front only made him more arresting, his eyes brighter, his power rawer. And she was incapable of tearing her stare from him. Fortunately, he couldn't see her from where he stood. Or, so she hoped.

The middle-aged man left, and Daniel Hill strode to the derelict cottage he lived in, even smaller than Mrs Higgs’s. In it, he lived alone, his family consumed by the life-eater mine.

A rough hand plucked off his worn-out cap as he stopped by the water barrel at his entrance. The ousted cap revealed hair blacker than coal and as dusty. Straight, it fell in strands over his brow. The headpiece dropped to his feet as he bent to wash, those large hands diving in the water and cupping it to throw on the dark stubble that lined the square jaw.

Her gaze followed each droplet dripping from his skin. Jealously. The weather was damp and cool, but her body came alive like coal in a grate. Albeit damp.

Even if she lived to be a hundred, she wouldn’t be able to look her fill. He was simply magnificent.

Having grown up in a mansion surrounded by the mine and the miners’ village, she had become more than used to the people who inhabited this place. For her, they weren’t a nameless, faceless crowd. They were her neighbours, people whom she visited and talked to on a daily basis.

And Daniel was the forbidden man she gobbled with her eyes even aware that, if they lived close, they were a precipice apart. But, for the love of her long-gone mother, every time her starved eyes fell on him, it caused a raucous revolution to course through her. Sleep eluded her, food disgusted her, and a languid mood dominated her insides. Her lids pressed closed, her nostrils absorbing rarefied air. She had to get a grip on this stupid pull. Joseph, like her father, had high expectations for her. A title in exchange for a ridiculously fat dowry, the reason she’d been travelling so often to London and mingling with nobility.

A noise made her open her lids to watch Daniel pushing the run-down door to his cottage and disappearing into it, cap back in hand. Hurriedly, she left the doorway to head to the mansion where her family had entrenched itself for generations.

Daniel nearly banged the frail wooden panel and then had this urge to smash it to dust. He threw his cap on the small table as if it was a sizeable piece of coal against an imaginary window. She’d been jammed into Higgs’s door, but he’d seen her. Impossible not to.

Even if he hadn’t, he’d sense her, know she was around. Invariably. Since the first time he had the unfortunate chance to lay eyes on her, things happened to his unruly body. Things that shouldn’t happen, like a fucking cock-stand. No, a cock-stand was when he found a woman with whom to assuage his needs. The sight of soon-to-be Lady Something, nee Miss Bolton, made his rampant erection explosive. The naked hunger in her eyes when she looked at him didn’t help.

As a miner from the age of sixteen, he strived to keep out of the way and, most importantly, out of trouble. At thirty, he toiled in the Bolton Mine during the day until his muscles tore and his bones splintered. If he survived the day’s work, he’d have an ale with his mates in the tavern that served the poor. Or paid for a tumble with a doxy from the nearest town, who sometimes came to offer her services in the same tavern. The miners’ village counted one, Bessie, but he didn’t want to get involved with someone he’d seen growing up. He didn’t care for moral considerations on the matter of doxies. Life was brief, and he wasn’t about to pass on the few pleasures he might afford.

But the sight of Miss Bolton always muddled his mood, as he couldn't stop thinking about how it would feel to drive his unrestrained craving into her until he died of it. Until both died of it. He had to eradicate her from his fantasies, though. Her milky, slender form wasn't for the likes of him, with his calloused hands, sooty skin and sweaty clothes.

The sound of shiny, expensive leather boots echoed in the alley. And his body didn’t even consider stopping before moving to the closed door.  Through a crack in it, Daniel watched as Miss Bolton trudged past as though she hadn’t been eating him alive with those huge caramel saucers. The brief sight caused his rampant member to react again. And he almost took off his shabby clothes to dive in the freezing water in the barrel.

As if the relief would last. Tonight, that doxy would have to work hard.

Amelia climbed up the steep hill where the mansion stood overlooking the valley down which the mine and the village stretched like a patch of dark cloth on the otherwise green landscape. Her great-grandfather had been a lowly merchant roaming England selling cheap wares. After decades of saving money, he finally bought a modest piece of land, thinking to become a farmer. But, upon starting the construction of a small cottage, he stumbled on coal. And the rest was history, as the saying went. His firstborn son married into the village’s wealthiest family. His grandson married into the county’s wealthiest family. Now her brother yearned to aim at the most powerful in the land. A dream he dreamed for Amelia, though she herself cared nothing for it. If given the choice, she’d say her astronomy studies took precedence over anything else. Marriage could wait—or even not happen—as far as she was concerned, even if she understood the option didn’t lie on the table for her.

Nelson, the butler, opened the door for her and took her bonnet and gloves. Dinner will be served soon, miss.

Thank you, Nelson. And gave him a faint smile. The mere idea of food caused her stomach to contract in rejection. Her body felt languid, and she wished she could retire to her chambers and indulge in time-wasting daydreams. But she wouldn’t indulge, naturally. She’d force a few bites into herself and talk with Joseph to see if this unpleasant mood had dispelled and she might concentrate on her books in the library afterwards. She took a moment’s reprieve in her chambers to refresh before she headed for dinner.

In the dining room, Joseph already sat at the end of the table, a place set for her by his side.

There you are, little sister. He greeted as he stood.

She smiled at him. Their father, also Joseph, insisted on bringing both up with equal educations. An idea that came from their Quaker grandmother’s family, in which girls and boys used to receive the same tutelage. Their similar upbringing resulted in a stronger connection and a focus on cooperation for the greater good.

Sorry for being late. Amelia apologised. I’ve just arrived from a visit to Mrs Higgs.

They both took their places by the table as Nelson served the wine.

How’s Higgs? he asked before drinking from his glass.

She made herself sip a drop of the liquid. Better, seemingly, but still not fit for work. He’d fallen from a ladder in one of the mine’s tunnels and broken his leg.

One miner down is always costly for production. And old Higgs has been overseeing the work in the mine during the day. Joseph answered. As he took charge of his inheritance, he’d been more and more concerned with business. Before their father died, he and Amelia would dive into their astronomical studies together. The demands on his time left Amelia alone in that endeavour. Nothing to do about it other than wait. Joseph resigned to what wouldn’t be helped.

Silence fell as they concentrated on their meal.

Have you seen Hill around, by any chance? Joseph broke into her cloudy thoughts.

The mere mention of his name caused her nearly to choke on the minuscule bite she chewed. Something effervescent rolled inside her at the memory of him washing the day’s grime off his rugged features.

Amelia gathered an intake of breath before she considered herself ready to answer. I-I saw him returning from the mine when I left the village.

Good. He said. I’ll send someone with a message. I have a task for him.

She thought it a tad unusual to require the miner's services at this time of day but didn't question it as Joseph appeared to be constantly with his head at work.

If the night showed cloudless, Amelia would use the telescope on the terrace off the library to continue her studies. The night and the stars were her home; the prospect of furthering her knowledge brought a constant satisfaction. Her brother would surely sit in his study minding the mine’s affairs.

For an hour, Amelia sat on the terrace, having not looked into the telescope a single time. Restlessness stood in the way of her concentration; her muscles unable to be still. Perhaps she should take her smaller telescope and go to another place where the angles of the sky would be less familiar than the terrace. Convinced it would be more productive, she wrapped herself tighter in her woollen cloak, picked up her telescope and descended the stairs from the terrace, gaining the gravel path below. She could walk it blindfolded, the moonless night not an impediment to her progress.

But her legs refused to stop, and she continued walking on the path she had known since she took her first steps as a toddler. On both sides, the woods still survived. The air was pleasantly cool on her flushed cheeks as random thoughts whirled in her head. The wonder as she looked at the night sky for the first time at the tender age of seventeen still with her. Since then, she hadn’t stopped observing the stars. And now, six years into it, there was so much yet to discover.

Time elapsed without her feeling it, and when she came aware, she had reached the mine. At this hour it loomed quietly, as only the miner on watch would be around. There being no reason for fear, as everyone here knew her, she imagined she might go up the watchtower and use her telescope there. Darkness dominated everything with only small lamps surrounding the mine's borders.

As her foot nearly reached the first step to the tower, something moved in the dark. Her eyes peered more fixedly, and she recognised people. They seemed to move near a lamp, making it possible for her to discern two bodies but not the faces. On one head she could see a man’s cap; the other shadow appeared to wear a dress. The shadow in the dress knelt before the one wearing a cap, hands lifting to a point at the other’s waist. The head merged with that of the legs in the darkness. Curiosity got the best of her and she kept staring, unable to imagine what they were doing.

Amelia must have moved without realising it, because the shadow on her knees froze as Amelia had the impression that the shadow’s head moved in her direction. The shadow in trousers, she saw now, also turned. More used to the darkness, Amelia observed as the big

Reviews for The Lady and the Miner

[Carol Kinsinger · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a super cute book. It’s a really enjoyable trope breaker.