He would be going, a third of their development team, and life would be different. Exciting, yes, but different. A wave broke on the beach. Six sets of prints emerged as the water washed backwards.
"And you will come to visit?" Edward asked her. Of the three of them, he was always the most light-hearted, carefree. Always the one with a positive word or a happy story. "You've never been to the Midlands, Dick?"
"Never been further than Bodmin, Edward. Are there dragons?"
"Huge, fire-breathing monsters that make the sky red from dusk to dawn."
"We'll come!" Jemima told Edward, "Won't we, Dick? Because Mr. Darby might want - " She felt a hand at her back.
"Jemima," Edward said to her, his hand warm. She stopped walking and looked at him. "Before we walk you home, Dick and I have something to tell you: I don't just have work for Darby. He is…not obliged to follow Watt's patents, Darby is independent of Boulton and Watt. He wants our steam engine - your engine. The one on wheels…to shunt coal, to deliver it."
Jemima stopped walking, and turned to them both, and suddenly to their hands.
"1800?" she asked, "We need to wait ten years?"
"No," Edward to her. "What you have made, Dick…Jemima…that's new technology. Watt can't touch you on what you have built. And neither can he touch Darby."
"So Mr. Darby has said he wants to see the engine," Dick told her.
"What? You can't take a whole engine…like Murdoch's? Like the Falmouth one…you can't take it up to Shropshire."
"No, but we can rebuild it.". There was a twinkle in his eye, the setting sun illuminating his blue eyes. "He can make iron, can he not?" The merriment was unusual in Dick's face, moreso now he had included Edward in the game.
"That's marvellous!" Jemima told them. "Truly!". And she took a hand each of theirs and squeezed them.
"Promise me you'll write, Edward?"
"Of course. If I write to Dick I will never get a reply."
"Edward, that's the best news!". Jemima hugged him and then Dick, and gave each their neckties.
So while she arrived early, the thought was buzzing in her mind, even that morning, and she dressed in her work clothes.
"Open it," her father encouraged. The gift was a necklace in silver with Bluejohn stone set in the centre.
"It's beautiful!" she exclaimed and reached to the locket from Dick which she hid beneath her shirts
"Wear it with your dress tomorrow, you haven't ordered anything have you?"
"No, father. You said you wanted to." How was it some women knew to do things like that? It hadn't even crossed her mind.
"And you, father?" The watch was in a similar box and he smoothed the leather skin with his fingers over it, before sliding the catch.
"It is beautiful, daughter," he told her. "On days like this I wish your brother and mother were still with us - your brother was apprenticing to be a clockmaker, did you know?"
Jemima shook her head, then noticed her father looked to say something to her. But it was then her father noticed something.
"You're not going out, surely? On Christmas morning?"
"I'll be back for luncheon, father, and chapel. Trevithick is with his family at St. Teilio's and Bull has gone by carriage up to Exeter. I want to make sure the engine is sound, for it will not be in use for two days and Dick and I can make repairs and replacements. I said I would start by auditing her."
John Withering kissed Jemima's head and whispered, "Merry Christmas, daughter," before sitting back down in the drawing room and watching her walk across the crisp heathland grass. Then, he took out the letter, in French, which he had lodged in,."Zoonomia" and read it once more.
88888888
"This be for Master Trevithick, I told ee - " The boy looked past her, as if he might find Dick Trevithick just behind her, even though he hadn't seen anyone else except for Jemima. "I was sent for him and only him. So you must tell me where he is."
"St. Teilio's" Jemima told him. "Who is sending for him?"
"Wheal Grace. They do say for Master Trevithick to come over to Grace - coach had been sent, Miss. Tis urgent."
"Wait," Jemima instructed him, smoothing a clip joint across her thigh, then hooked it back over the joint between the cross bar and one of the pumping shafts, tightening it with a spanner.
"Is Dick…Master Trevithick…to return today, sir?" she asked Trevailon, the mine captain of East.
"Not here," said the men. "At service at Truro, prob'ly," he told her.
"There," Jemima told the boy, "Not here." And, as his face fell dejectedly, Jemima added, "So come on!"
Before the boy had time to object, and before she had time to change her own mind, Jemima was sitting in the carriage opposite him.
Knowing Dick, he would have been up all night with the locomotive engine anyway. Edward had been there two night ago, they had told her about what they had done to make the crank shaft move slower. Late nights then caused him to be even less talkative and more surly. Jemima hoped it wouldn't get worse when there would only be the two of them.
When they arrived at Wheal Grace, Jemima found that it was as deserted as Ding Dong. She thanked the driver and put a sixpence into his hand and penny into the boy's, who ran off happily.
She should have known that one person who had no other family on Christmas Day would be here, doing the same job at Grace as Jemima had been doing at Dolcoath.
A figure stood in the shadow of the engine house.
"Do you know what's urgent?" The voice called. A thin whisp of smoke came from the man's pipe. "Who sent for me?" Jemima reiterated.
"The engineer, Mr. Bettys," the man told. "Grambler's old mine captain. A gasket has come loose; we are losing pressure."
Jemima had not fitted Grace's engine and there were a few differences she could see from even outside. She should think it would be a quick fix and get back to Camborne in time for that evening.
"Hello?" She called again when the man had said nothing. And then he turned, and Jemima saw who it was.
"Mr Henshawe?"
"Miss Withering!" He took steps towards her as if greeting an old friend, then stopped and cleared his throat.
"I was expecting Master Trevithick."
"At church this morning, of course."
"Of course," he replied, evenly. "I'll show you?"
It took less than an hour to mend what had broken, a piston rod, and Henshawe thanked her.
"May I walk with you, Miss Withering? I have business in Redruth this afternoon, as well as chapel. You are walking home now?
"I am, Mr. Henshawe," Jemima agreed. And it was the old days again, where they took in Sawle, Henshawe pausing awhile to be beside a particular gravestone, Jemima by the one with the mother and the child with Jemima's own birthday on it.
Their conversation loosened a little as they talked of the wakes fair and the Bonfire night, where bonfires were lit in all directions and someone thought it was beacons telling them of an invasion attempt by the French.
She told him of the locomotive engine, and what it might achieve and what it already had, and he congratulated her in his warm, honest manners to which Jemima was so drawn.
"You made that?" he asked,. Henshawe asked, when Jemima detailed the process of refitting the defective Watt engines.
"Not only that, imagine an engine on wheels, that can do all you need of it, and can be taken on wheels to where it's needed. A third of the size of a stationary engine."
"You think such a thing can be made?". Will Henshawe stopped walking and looked at Jemima.
"I know such a thing has already been made, and already has done a journey. I made that journey."
"And you had this for Christmas?" Henshawe made to reach to her neck, but pulled his hand back halfway.
"This? Oh no, it's from a friend...a gift." Jemima pulled at her neck. The locket glimmered in all its non-silvery glory. But it was not her locket but the necklace from her father. She took it off and showed it to him.
"This is Bluejohn, a rock from Derbyshire, it's very rare." She handed it to Will Henshawe and bade him hold it to the light.
"It glimmers mightily," he told her, before handing it back to her. Three times Jemima tried to clip it back on and three times she failed.
"Would you…?" Jemima asked? She turned round and moved her hair.
At first, Jemima thought maybe Henshawe has not heard her and was about to turn back when she felt his hands at her neck. Warm, light fingers trailed over her collarbones as the necklace followed into place, and he fastened it.
"My thanks," Jemima told him. And they walked further, beyond Illogan until, at Redruth, Henshawe turned at a gate. Beyond was a manor house, and he made a quick farewell.
"It is so good to see you, Captain," Jemima told him.
"Will," he told her.
"Will," she told him, "Merry Christmas."
"And to you," he replied and turned to go into the house.
Jemima was nearly at Meadowsweet when Will Henshawe caught her up, surprising her.
"Does your father have a carriage? I should be back at Grace until Bettys comes."
But John Withering would not hear of Henshawe leaving so soon and Jemima had reappeared in her wakes dress to be told that Will Henshawe would be staying to dinner and attending chapel with them.
"His wife is worse," Dr. Withering told her, as they made their farewells in Redruth outside the chapel gate. "He could only stop for a short while - any longer and it upsets her fragile state of mind. We should pray for people like Henshawe. While we have lost mama, he has no-one, no-one this Christmas night."
So as well as steam engines and a potential return to Shropshire in the year to come, Jemima's heart felt pity, pity for Wheal Grace's poor wifeless mine captain and distate for her own attraction to him. She would know very well how to behave in the company of Will Henshawe in the future.