Rory had stiffened, and now he glared at her. 'Is this because I wouldn't let you have your way on Saturday? How can you say such wicked things about a girl you scarcely know? My marriage is none of your concern, and it will in no way affect the running of the business. I will run it myself, without any interference, and that includes you! I appreciate your design skills, and the way you have run this workshop, but that is all. I cannot listen to your criticism of my future wife.'
Catriona slowly took her cloak down from the peg where it hung. 'I am sorry. That was wrong of me. You are right to remind me that I have no place here except as your employee. Good night, Mr Napier.'
She pushed past him, and hurried across the workroom, fighting back the angry tears. Please don't let him follow, she prayed as she dragged open the door and almost ran outside and along the street towards her lodgings. She had to get away, to be on her own, or she would lose her composure completely.
*****
Chapter 15
Though cold, it was a bright, sunny day, and Catriona relished the feel of the wind in her hair, and the pony beneath her. There was no need for haste, Rory would not pursue her. She had unlocked the workshop, asked Gordon to take charge, and made an excuse to leave. Earlier she had left a letter with his landlady, who had promised to give it to him later in the day, when he would return from work. He would, she hoped, be going to see Susannah first, and that would delay the news until she was more than half way to Edinburgh. Besides, she thought bleakly, he has no reason to want her back. He could find other designers, new managers, and expand all he wished.
To her relief, the landlady at the Thistle had kept faith with her. The ponies belonging to Uncle Colin, well fed and fat, were in the stables, and the landlord admitted he was sorry to lose the use of them. He helped her load them with her bundles, increased now by the few items she had acquired while in Glasgow, and suggested a quiet inn where she might stay the night. Fortunately his wife, who had assumed she was going to America, had gone indoors, so could not ask questions about her apparent change of plan.
'Ye'll not get to Edinburgh today,' he said, 'but this is half way. Tell Jed I sent ye. It'll be Leith ye go to, I reckon, if ye're takin' ship?'
Catriona nodded, and he suggested a couple of respectable inns in Baltic Street where she could be sure of a room.
It was weeks since she'd had leisure to look around her, to dream, and relish once more being out of a town, in the fresh country air.
Resolutely she thrust all thoughts of Rory aside. That was finished. Regrets were pointless. He could never have been hers, she was foolish even to think of it. Yet, if her father had lived, or if she'd stayed with her uncle, she would not have been beneath Rory in either birth or condition. But then she wouldn't have met him, and even if she had she had no such dowry as Susannah MacNab's. And it was pointless even to speculate on what might have been. He didn't want her, he loved Susannah. He must do, Catriona thought with a flash of bitterness, to put up with her silliness.
She'd miss the workshop, the satisfaction of seeing her designs come to life. She had friends in Glasgow now, as well as Rory, people she'd enjoyed working with. When her father had lived she had not given much thought to the future. After his death, and that of her mother, everything had become uncertain, but she had proved she could survive, even prosper, doing something she loved. Now that, as well as Rory, was gone.
She took a deep breath. She had to look forward, enjoy what was left, make for herself a new life. Perhaps in Holland this might be possible.
The road she was taking was the major one connecting Glasgow and Edinburgh, the one used by the mail coaches. London mail went first to Edinburgh, and then had to be taken on to Glasgow. Catriona had been startled when she first heard the gun the postmaster there fired each morning, to announce that the mail, which arrived at six, had been sorted and was ready for collection.
She had no fear this time of being seen, or pursued, that she might be captured and taken back. Rory would not follow her, and she'd hardly thought of Thomas since she'd last seen him. Briefly she wondered what he had done when he'd been unable to find her. It was easier to think of him than of Rory.
It was an uneventful day, and though she did not sleep well, she set off early the next day and reached Leith by nightfall. It was too late to enquire about a passage, but the landlord told her there was a ship in the port bound for Rotterdam, and he was sure the captain, who patronised his inn when in Scotland, would be willing to take her.
So it proved. By eight o'clock the following morning she had secured a passage. She left her baggage on board, and because the boat was not due to sail until late in the afternoon, she decided to follow a scheme she had devised on her journey.
The ponies were the problem. She still wanted to send them back to her uncle. The money she had earned from Rory these past few months was ample to pay for her journey, but who could she trust to take them safely back?
She'd been puzzling over this on the road from Glasgow, and the time she had before the ship sailed gave her the opportunity to put her plan into effect. As soon as she'd seen her baggage stowed she set off for the centre of Edinburgh. Fortunately she could remember Thomas's address, and as he had never been an early riser she trusted she would not encounter him.
She came to the building where he had rooms, and looked at it in admiration. Tall, elegant, strongly built, and in a fashionable part of the city, it must cost a considerable amount for rent. It Thomas had such lavish tastes, and in addition spent money keeping a mistress, as he had proposed to her, no wonder he needed to marry a girl with a fortune.
Slipping from the pony's back she hitched both of them to a ring nearby, and then trod up the steps to the door. She had to tell someone about them, let a responsible person know who they belonged to. She knocked and waited, swallowing hard, and stepped back in alarm when the door opened. To her dismay it was Thomas, wearing a greatcoat and clearly just on his way out. He reacted faster than she did and grabbed her by the arm.
'Cat! What the devil are you doing in Edinburgh? Where have you been all this while? You led me a fine chase, my girl, and I've a good mind to beat you for it!' His eyes gleamed. 'Now that would be pleasurable, wouldn't it?'
'Let me go!' she panted, and tried to distract him. 'The ponies, over there, I don't need them any more,' she said swiftly. 'I brought your father's ponies back, and I thought you could take them back home, so that he can't accuse me of stealing them!'
'Ponies?' He looked bemused, and she pointed to where they were tethered.
As he took a step towards them his grip loosened. She tore free and fled, and heard his footsteps chasing after her.
'Cat, you little devil, come back!' he called, but she ignored him and turned the nearest corner into a smaller street. She was not going to let him catch her now. She was almost free of Scotland, of Thomas and her uncle, and of Rory Napier.
*****
Rory stared at the letter in baffled fury. How dare Catriona do this to him? Just because she disagreed with him over his plans for expansion, instead of waiting to talk it over more calmly, she'd departed. It was something he'd never even thought about. She was there, and though he'd once considered the consequences of what would happen if she married and left him, it had seemed such a distant possibility that he had ignored it.
He ran his hands distractedly through his hair, dislodging his wig. Impatiently he threw it aside. Now what was he to do? For a moment he was overcome by panic. He couldn't imagine life without her cheerful, stimulating company. He forced himself to concentrate. There were practical considerations he needed to deal with at once.
Who would manage the print workshop? Briefly he thought of appealing to Silas, who might be able to suggest a competent manager, and then thrust away the notion. His wits had gone begging. Such an appeal would be all Silas needed to interfere. He didn't want to give the man any ammunition, either, and reason to crow over him, tell him his action in employing Cat in the
first place had been foolish.
Cat, he thought, I need you! Why did you desert me? Did she fear that Silas would interfere with her management?
Silas had been overjoyed, effusive and grateful when Rory had brought Susannah home. His initial anger at Susannah's story of her experiences with the Campbells had changed to satisfied delight when she had turned to Rory and, clasping his hand, informed Silas of their betrothal.
So eager was Silas to spread the news he had insisted that Rory accompany him to a banquet with some of the most prominent Glasgow manufacturers at The Merchants' House on Tuesday. The earlier part of Monday had been fully occupied with visits to lawyers, discussions about settlements, and Rory had only been to the workshop for a few minutes, spending just a short time in his own office giving Joshua instructions. At the banquet he had been overwhelmed with congratulations, had eaten hugely and drunk too much wine, and arrived back in his rooms at midnight with a pounding headache, to find Catriona's missive.
He wanted to turn the clock back. If she'd been willing to listen to him, if he, perhaps, hadn't been so vehement in proposing his own ideas, would things have been different? At last, unable to answer his own questions, he went to bed, tossed and turned all night, and was late rising on the following morning.
Joshua eyed him sympathetically. 'A busy evening?' he asked quietly.
Rory looked blank. 'What? Oh, that! It didn't help. Mistress Duncan has gone. Left the business.'
'Gone? Has someone else offered her more money? And yet she's not like that, she's loyal.'
'I thought she was,' Rory said bitterly.
'She wouldn't desert you, not suddenly like that. It must have been sudden. You didn't know yesterday, that I'll warrant.'
'She said she'd been offered more, she didn't say by whom, but that wasn't the reason.'
'Then why?'
Rory shrugged. 'She disagreed with me about my plans for expansion. I need a new manager for the printing workshop, and I mean to expand, as planned.'
'Can't you persuade her to come back?'
'I don't know where she's gone,' he admitted, pushing back his wig and rubbing his aching forehead.
'Mebbee she's gone to Holland,' Joshua suggested. 'She talked about her family there. But would she be able to get a passage straight away? If you sent someone after her, went yourself, you might be able to persuade her to change her mind.'
'There are so many places where she could have found a ship. Which do I go to? And I haven't the time for a wild goose chase, and there's a lot to do here. I can't just leave everything in the faint hope of catching her. And I don't want her back, anyway.'
'Mr Rory, I know it's none of my business, but that lass made all the difference to the linens we sell! And how will you do without her designs? Can you find someone else?'
'I'll have to. It would perhaps be an advantage not to have her interfering with my plans,' Rory declared. 'Nor do I want you trying to tell me what to do! We've a business to run.'
Joshua bowed his head, and after a moment quietly asked, 'Who's in charge there now?'
'I don't know! Lord, Joshua, I forgot! Cat usually unlocked the door, let the others in. They'll still be standing outside. Here, take my key. Go and tell them what's happened, ask them to get on with what they were doing until I can organise something else.'
'Shall I leave the key with one of them?'
'Yes, ask Gordon MacLeish to take over for the time being. I'll go as soon as I can to talk to them.'
Half an hour later Joshua returned. Meanwhile Rory had been sitting at his desk, staring into space, and not done any of the many things that needed attention.
'Mistress Catriona left the keys with Gordon. They say they have work they can be doing for a few days, Mr Rory,' he said quietly.
Rory tried to pull himself together. 'Thank you, Joshua. I'll go and see them myself, tomorrow, perhaps.'
By the day he was better able to concentrate, and decided that despite Cat's reservations he would make Gordon his manager at the printing workshop. He would open a second, and employ someone to oversee both. Within two weeks he'd found the man he wanted, and that through a fortunate and quite unplanned meeting.
He'd gone to deal with a problem for Gordon, to do with the supplies of madder which was used in so many of the dyes. As he sorted through the papers in Catriona's desk, trying to find the last receipt, he was interrupted.
'Mr Napier, sir,' Bessie said, poking her head round the door. 'There's a man here, says he used to be one of your weavers, and wants to see you.'
Sighing in exasperation, for he was finding it difficult to fit in all the extra work, as well as the social events Silas and Susannah expected him to attend, Rory asked him in.
'John McTavish, Mr Napier. I used to weave for your uncle, and then I came to work in Glasgow, overseeing a small printing concern near Paisley. I heard you were looking for a manager for your own.'
'You're an expert in block printing?' Rory demanded.
'Well, not to say an expert, I'm no good with creating designs,' he said self-deprecatingly, 'but I spent a year at Pollokshaw, and I know a lot about the techniques.'
Rory questioned him closely, and was satisfied. He offered him the job. 'I plan to open a second workshop,' he explained. 'We need the space to be able to produce the quantity we can sell. Can you find me somewhere, and more printers?'
'Leave it to me, Mr Napier. If I may say so, I think you're right to expand now, from what I hear people are only too eager to buy your designs.'
For the first time since Catriona had left, Rory slept easily that night. It had been a fraught few weeks, but he'd come through, he didn't need her as much as she'd thought. From the initial despair he'd passed to anger that she should leave so abruptly. This had been followed by an aching need to see her, to know all was right between them once more, to be able to resume their partnership, making a success of his business. Then there had come a determination to succeed alone. No man, or woman, was indispensable. He pushed down the thought that perhaps Cat was. Soon she'd see that his ideas for expansion would bring more profit, as much as if he'd listened to her and followed her suggestion of exclusive designs.
As he was dropping into oblivion the thought crossed his mind that Cat was not there to see. He didn't know where she was. In Holland, probably. And he doubted whether she would care whether his business was thriving or not.
*****
In Amsterdam Catriona had found a warm welcome.
'We heard about your father, child,' Maigret van Geer said the first evening after she arrived, when they were sitting round the fire after supper.
Catriona had wanted to call Maigret aunt, and they'd been trying to work out their precise degree of cousinship, but in the end decided it was simpler to accept the title cousin.
'One of our Dutch captains who'd been to Aberdeen heard it there. You should have come to us immediately.'
'I wish I'd been able to,' she said, wondering if it was true. She'd have avoided this heartache which was as fierce as ever, but she'd also not have been able to work with Rory, even for such a short time. Which would have been best? Not to have known him, or to realise she loved him and suffer from doing so?
'Why didn't you?' Maigret's older son Jan asked.
'I had no money. I had to earn enough for my passage.'
'But – surely your uncle would have paid?'
'He wanted me to marry an obnoxious man, and when I refused, he locked me in my room. He would not allow me to come to you.'
They were horrified and demanded more details.
'This man, he was a member of the local Kirk Sessions, and when I refused him he threatened to accuse me of entertaining men in my bothy. I think Thomas had been spreading malicious rumours.'
'Bothy?' Jan asked. 'What is that word?'
'It means a small hut, in the mountains, at the summer grazing, where shepherds stay in the summer with the flocks. I used to go there, I did my printing there. It was more peace
ful than in my uncle's house.'
'And the men? What made him accuse you of such unlikely behaviour?'
She flashed a smile at him. At least he didn't condemn her out of hand. 'There were no men, in the way he meant. But unfortunately my cousin Thomas had seen a stranger who had happened by, and when I refused his proposal, he said he'd give evidence against me.' She didn't want to reveal that the stranger had been Rory, for some reason, and it didn't matter who it had been.
'Another proposal?' Maigret laughed. 'You are a popular girl.'
Catriona chuckled. She could do so now. 'It was not an honest one! He wished to set me up as his doxy in Edinburgh. I didn't have a dowry, you see, and without one I was not good enough for my cousin Thomas to contemplate marrying.'
'But you escaped?'
'With Thomas's help, though he didn't think that was what he was doing.'
She explained, and they applauded her initiative. It was pleasant to bask in their approval.
'Did you have no money at all? Surely your mother had left some?' Maigret asked. 'Your father was not a rich man, but he often bought jewels for your mother. He bought some of them here in Amsterdam.'
'Uncle Colin locked them away, and would not let me have them.'
Maigret's eyes flashed. 'I will write to him at once and demand he return your mother's jewels to you, or if he has sold them, pay you fair recompense. If my sons have to pay him a visit he will not be happy, I think.'
Catriona glanced across at the two huge blond men, a few years older than she was, and grinned.
'I think he would hand them over at once if Wilhelm and Jan appeared on his doorstep,' she chuckled. 'I came to you because I have no one else,' she added soberly. 'I do not wish to be a burden, and I hope you will be able to employ me. I've been carving blocks for the past few months, but they were too heavy for me to bring any to show you. I did bring some of the fabric I printed, though. I can earn my keep.'
'Nonsense, child, we are delighted to have you. And instead of talking of work, you must enjoy yourself. I know it's only a few months since your mother died, but you must put all the sadness about your father and mother behind you, and enjoy some social life for a while. I know several young men who will be only too pleased to welcome a stranger into our circle.'
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