Mid- to late 1788 (follows S1E6)

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"I trust that you will show Captain Henshawe all you have developed in the time he has been with his wife," Ross concluded, as he called Jemima to see him one morning.

She had been shocked that he was standing beside Poldark that morning, but had recovered quickly enough to participate in the discussion.

"Captain Henshawe, I would be most pleased.". She looked from Poldark's enthusiastic face to that of William Henshawe and nodded a greeting. He nodded back, and gave her a smile unbecoming of a man whose wife was gravely ill.

"She is as well as can be expected," Henshawe told her as they got to the "upper street", the first corridor, which branched out to all the others. "It is good of you to ask."

"As I told you a-top," Jemima, model of propriety she was making herself to be, "We have made progress west, and there is a team of men filling up wagons of the rock, as rich and green as the sample I showed you. So I am taking exploratory pieces further south again, in line with Grace."

"Grace?" Henshawe stopped walking, not least because the tunnel narrowed and got lower, but also because he wanted to look at Jemima's face in the candlelight - Ross had agreed with him strict protocol for working with Jemima - he had to, Will Henshawe reasoned, because the mine depended on them.

And she managed to work beside him, and the attraction faded, and he became her friend, though he would not tell Jemima about his wife. What illness did she have, she wondered.

But the wondering didn't last for long, as more copper was discovered and more sampling had to go on, until one day when Jemima accompanied the tonnage north to Polreath smelters, she saw Poldark and Henshawe walk like men to the gallows to the Truro road.

"Not the left fork," Zacky Martin had told her, when she remarked on the merry coastline that day. "We have a new smelting works in which to take our copper." And, on the side of the building, the name "Carnmore Copper Company" had been painted.

Inside, however, there was little difference, and Jemima could add her tiny samples, in clay pots, at the bottom of the furnace, mixed as they were with coal dust. She told the foreman that she needed the lids lifted just as the rest of the copper was being poured, and could he add more carbon at that point?

The owner, Tresidder, had agreed, and with the thought of her sampling more southerly the next day, the Leisure wagons having left, she hitched a lift on a cart that was going that evening towards Camborne, and she was surprised but then not surprised to see him taking his horse from their small stables.

"A good day, daughter?" he called, as she ran and waved her greeting. John Withering leaned down and embraced her.

"Excellent price for the receipt of Poldark's lode," she told him, and her mind drifted to the sampling she had wanted to do, for it was a reason to visit Humphry, his work at school keeping him too well occupied, a welcome diversion if they had some of Jemima's "real work to do". And the funeral procession that had been Poldark's and Henshawe's egress that morning.

"Have a good evening father, and give my best to Mrs. Giddy!" she called, noting the rising full moon and knowing exactly where he was going.

Withering waved a hand as he trotted his horse past her, and Jemima went to the parlour and had her supper, the housekeeper, Mrs. Vaughn, a Welsh lady, having plated up some cold meat, cheese and bread, it being Sunday and she had returned to her family for chapel.

As the moon rose further still and the night, being June, not being encouraged to begin, Jemima could not settle to reading or drawing, her mind on the southern wall of rock: did it hold copper ore? Was there something else? If there was just her lithaeum metal ore, what use was that?

Jemima's unsettledness made her get to her feet and she stepped outside, locking the door behind her with the big key that hung in the hall.

The evening was fresh, in contrast with the clammy day, and Jemima considered a walk would be good, so she could think, clear her head.

But it didn't work as well as she might have hoped because her feet had taken her to Wheal Leisure, which she only realised when her boot hit one of the marker stones that would, in daylight, be the inscription of the mine carved into it.

There was no-one there, and Jemima sat in the growing darkness, looking at the inky sea, still throwing its excited waves onto the cliffs. The weather was getting bright, and she wondered about asking her father whether Thomas Wedgwood and Gilbert Watt could visit them again in the summer? Last year had been such a marvellous time, all five of them together.

Suddenly, she got to her feet, and headed to the mine shaft building. The pump was silent when she got there, which drew her attention, and Jemima's mind flitted back to the samples again. It would make no difference if she were to go to the western end in the dark as night, so she replaced the leather hat and candle with her leather waistcoat, and felt her feet down the iron rungs.

The knocker-men, the pixies were having a marvellous party down in the mine that night, the whimsical side of Jemima's brain told her, as she listened to the creaks and groans of the meta-rock resettling where the ore had been extracted. It was about a mile horizontally from the pit head and she calculated she was about under Sawle.

How long she was underground, Jemima did not know, but it was dark when she brought the rock samples that she wanted back up into her pockets. She sat in Henshawe's chair, placing the miner's hat down beside them on the desk, looking at their facets and sparkling crystals,,. "What do you contain?" she whispered to them.

"What do they contain?"

The voice made Jemima start and she knocked over the candle. Sudden darkness replaced the light, but there was enough light from the window from the moon to see that it was Poldark who was there and must have spoken. He lit one of the lanterns that hung in the doorway and looked at Jemima's startled face.

"You are still here, after everyone has gone?" he asked, looking at the rocks in the table. "You came back from Polreath?"

"I…was thinking of the rock. I went home, but could not rest."

"So you came back, and decided to go down the mine alone? Miss WIthering, that is incredibly dangerous! Suppose you got injured? Suppose you got trapped?"

"I kept safe - as I promised you I would," Jemima told him, determinedly. "I put my waistcoat on the peg, I kept to the safety rope."

"And you have rock from the south side," Poldark commented, taking up an inky black one. "Blackstone, again."

"More copper behind, is my hypothesis," Jemima told him.

"You have evidence to base this prediction?" She held out a much smaller rock, black, but streaked with the tell-tale crystallisation of copper mineral. Poldark exhaled deeply, and gave her a weary smile.

"That is good news," he told her. "Excellent news. Just as long as I can prevent no more hostile takeovers." Jemima bit the inside of her lip - she was about to reply, as her father had told her, if the man was a banker, that was a good thing.

"I have a lot on my mind, but this - this is good news," he managed, before raising his hand and yawning into the back of it. "This will please the shareholders and - " he yawned again. "And my house is noisy, for my daughter is teething."

Jemima said nothing. She didn't like babies. She found that people would hand her theirs, or expect her to fuss over them. She had attended births with her father, and could pack his doctor's bag within a minute if he were called out, could attend the woman, could clean up a birthing room to make it spotless.

But, the babies were all ugly, like skinned rabbits, and invariably, the mother would not be allowed much more than a vague glimpse before the infant was whisked off to a wet nurse. All that effort and not even get a chance to hold the little thing.

"Babies do cry," Jemima agreed.

"And, I presided over a wedding," he told her.

"That of Mark Daniel?" A flinch of guilt appeared in her stomach. Poldark had wanted all the mineworkers to attend. She felt similar towards weddings as babies. She shook her head.

"I agree, there is something not quite right there. Keren is so…" Poldark shook his head. "One's head can turn, but she is - you are…" He looked at Jemima. "Then there's my cousin, who loves a man, and my cousin…well…" He shook his head again. "And with the copper…" He trailed off and ran a hand through his hair. "What is done regarding coal? Regarding the buying and selling of it?" Jemima brightened at the diversion and happy thoughts of the Black Country filled her mind. She thought of Coalbrookdale and Mr Darby.

"It is a sold right to the customer, sometimes it doesn't even make it to the surface," Jemima told him. "If you had the customer for copper, then - "

"Coal does not need smelting, however." It was clear that he was agonising over something and not just his personal life.

"Who is it who needs copper, Captain Poldark?"

"Who needs copper?" he repeated, and put a hand to his face. Clearly lack of sleep, or indulgence in alcohol, or worry about his business was keeping the man from his own rest. Funny how he should also come to his mine to think things over.

"Harbours, where the gates need it to prevent barnacles. Similarly, ships' hulls to stop them degrading and make them faster."

Jemima shivered, she didn't like the sea. Oh, on calm days, sunny days, but there was too much that she didn't know, too many dangers, to make her feel totally comfortable at the place where the land ran out.

"Then, God forgive me, pray for a war, and an increase in demand for warships."

There was a silence for a moment. Poldark had gone silent, still. And then he began to…

…to laugh violently, or cry in anguish, Jemima was not sure. The man covered his face with his hands and turned from her. When his emotion had ebbed to involuntary jerks of his body, he turned back to her.

"I apologise," he told her. "I should have more control over my feelings - you," he added. "You are…I…just don't know…" Jemima stood, and watched him slump to the floor, his knees bent, feet flat. She approached, but not to near, and sat down too.

"My cousin…betting and gambling his mine away…a man who I could not think lower has sunk lower still…and the arrogance, the high handedness of the treatment of the poor…my man…Jim Carter…we tried…I tried to spare him from jail…but no…the great and the good of this land saw him to punishment. I mean…he won't do it again now he is buried at Maiden Point…" He trailed off, and looked across to Jemima. "And a married man murdered his wife…." Poldark told Jemima it all, that Ennis had found the woman's body - and he had been the one to have sinned with the woman, had been the cause of her death…

"…Jim…Francis…Dwight…" Poldark listed the ills in his life and groaned.

Dwight, thought Jemima, sighing inwardly. That man…as green as the grass beside the mine. He might have good intentions, and Poldark may trust him, but…

…Jemima had behaved like that, towards Henshawe…she had been just like Ennis…

No! No she hadn't. What a fool that man had been that had caused that woman to be killed - he was meant to be a responsible person, was he not? Jemima was used to Davies, as good as a big brother as she could have, Humphry being as good a younger brother. If she could choose, then she would. And she had guarded her feelings, her mind on her work. Ennis could have done that. What a fool.

"And there you are, determined, honest, willing to change, willing to work hard for me and my mine." Poldark, still sitting before her, praising her again. Another stab of guilt - Ting Tong would pay more and she would have more mines in which to work, the choice of lodes, her choice of mining team. "You found my copper…"

"But, you are honest too," she told him, her heart beating more quickly at the thought of leaving Leisure. "You could have…you could have left that man who was jailed, you could have abandoned Mark Daniel. You could have ignored the Wheal Reath miners and not found them work. Good men cannot be bought. It is I who is not so honest."

"Oh?" And she told him of the meeting she had had, the tip-off from Lord Bassett.

"It's a good offer: you should take it," Poldark told her.

"I still may," she told him. "But I like it here. I want to see if Leisure leads to Grace, or whether idle hands are as sinful as the Bible says they are."

In the near darkness, Ross gave her a wide smile. There was another reason, of course, and he, as mine captain, would be walking at dawn over the hills to begin to register the miners and supervise the grass.

"Do you know why I sent you to a different smelting company THIS morning?"

"No, Captain Poldark."

"There are, unfortunately, low prices for copper being offered from the smelting company we use at Reath. It was decided amongst us mine owners that we should organise our own smelting company to prevent sabotage - I am in charge."

"But, who would wish to drive you out of business?" Jemima asked.

"George Warleggan," Poldark told her, with relish.

"The banker? The same man who bought one of the shareholders of Leisure out?".

Poldark leaned forward, his face creasing to a frown.

"You know far too much for your own good, girl," Ross replied, in an altogether more grave tone.

"My apologies, sir. I say only what my father said. If I were to voice an opinion it is to say I agree.". Jemima dipped her head. "I am sorry for your cousin - I was going to offer to survey Grambler for him and offer advice." Ross shook his head.

"No, my cousin bet his mine - " Poldark broke off and shuffled his feet, bending his head for a moment and running his hands through his hair, "- in a card game. It is closed now."

All those people out of work…

"At home, this would not happen," she told him. "Should a mine close, the workers could move on to different employment, iron smelting, metal working, pistols, chains, locks…jewellery work, pottery…" and Jemima reeled off well, not a thousand trades, but at least two score.

"Mining or fishing, that is the only choice the poor have. Or farming. The people have stannary rights, of course. But Cornwall has always been a poor country.". He smiled gratefully over to Jemima.

"What if…what if I go to Grambler…what if…what if…what if all the seams are…?". But Ross shook his head.

"Even if it were Francis's and not now George's, I should not advise it. Francis did not spend a lot on maintenance - one foot of yours slipping on a damp wooden step and you'd break your neck - then what would I tell your father? No. I will put the day behind me, as should you. Get home and some sleep. I do not expect to see you until after noon, do you understand?". He put out a hand and pulled Jemima to her feet.

"Good night, Captain," Jemima told him, as her feet found the travel path that led to the Camborne road. He had insisted he walk her to there, so she did not plummet over the edge of the cliff, but Jemima rather suspected, from the spirit in his breath that it would be her who was making sure Poldark came to no harm.

He had rules for her, he told Jemima: No coming to the mine alone, no coming at night. At least she had persuaded him not to take her back, for if her father were home he would well have chided her nightgoing.

But Jemima was not alone. Dark as it still now was, with not even a lemon line underscoring the horizon, she didn't know she was being followed.