The Wedding Ring Quest

by Carla Kelly

  With the war over, he had plans this time, since a prodigal amount of leave stretched ahead that would take them through Christmas. The two of them were bound for Dumfries, where Ross’s older sister lived with her surgeon husband. He hadn’t seen her in years, but that was nothing because he had always been a prodigious correspondent and so was Alice Mae Gordon. She had promised them a good visit and hinted that she knew of a piece of property in need of a landlord in nearby Kirkbean. ‘In sight of open water,’ Alice had written, to further entice him.

  He stood a moment more, wondering at the half dread he always felt, hoping his son hadn’t changed too much since the last visit, but well aware that children grow. Will he remember me? he always asked himself. If he passed me on the street, would I know him?

  Ross took the customary deep breath and continued up Flora Street, his eyes on a yellow house, where flowers still fought the good fight against late autumn. He knew that in Scotland, the flowers had long surrendered to winter, but this was lovely Devon.

  He walked slower because his leg pained him and because there was always that moment when he wondered who would greet him. For the first time since Inez’s death, for the first time in the terrifying and fraught years since, he wanted a wife to greet him, too. It was a heady thought and he entertained it cautiously, thinking of all the times he had assured his officers and wardroom confidants that he would find another wife when the war ended. Maybe the time was now.

  Ross stopped outside Number Six Flora Street and looked up at the second-storey window that he knew was Nathan’s room. His heart skipped a little beat as his dear son looked down on him. The boy disappeared from the window and Ross watched the front door. It slammed open and his son hurtled outside and into his open arms.

  Ross was home from the sea.

  Chapter Two

  For someone without much choice in the matter, Mary Rennie had finally had her fill of relatives. Maybe it was the season; more likely it was her Cousin Dina. Maybe it was simply time for an epiphany.

  Her father, long dead, had been a clergyman in the Church of Scotland. He knew a thing or two about epiphanies, especially the January 6th one involving the Christ and the Magi. Mary had a different epiphany in mind, the one where you realise something startling that probably should have happened years ago.

  She blamed it on her propensity to be a late bloomer, but there she was, twenty-seven years old and tired of relatives, especially Dina. And so she told Mrs Morison, her only confidante, when they were peeling potatoes in the kitchen.

  Mrs Morison was cook and not generally the peeler of potatoes, except that Betty, the scullery maid, had a toothache and Mrs Morison never seemed to mind a good chat with Mary, especially over tea and biscuits on a raw October afternoon in Edinburgh. Dinner was a long way off, and there was time to peel and chat and drink tea.

  ‘Oh, my dearie, Dina is engaged to that prosy foreign fellow and she is blue-devilled,’ the cook announced, after heaving herself up to retrieve more biscuits. ‘Never trust a man from over the border.’

  Mary smiled to herself. She had never been over the border, herself, but Papa had assured her years ago that Englishmen were only doing the best they could and Presbyterians could be charitable.

  ‘Aye, Mrs M.,’ she said, applying herself more diligently to the potatoes. She stuck the potato on the end of her knife and wagged it at the cook. ‘But why must I suffer because she is engaged? She whines and carries on, and I don’t know why. Isn’t a bride-to-be supposed to be cheerful?’

  Mrs Morison peered at her over the top of her spectacles. She lowered her voice and leaned closer. ‘I think she is already afraid of her wedding night.’

  ‘That’s months away,’ Mary whispered back. ‘Besides, I would think that once you find a man to love, that wouldn’t be a consideration.’ She leaned back as another epiphany followed hard on the heels of the first. ‘Ah. Maybe she doesn’t really love Mr Page?’

  Mrs Morison gave her a sage look and shook her head, tut-tutting as she peeled.

  ‘Then why...?’ Mary put down her knife. ‘Oh, dear. Is she afraid she’ll never get another offer?’

  She considered the matter. It was probably true. Dina Rennie wasn’t high on good looks. Mary couldn’t help but smile, remembering the time last summer when one of the street sweepers neighed when Dina passed by. But it was wicked to joke about Dina’s long face, or so Papa would have told her. Mrs Morison was saying something, so she glanced up.

  ‘You have the family looks—all of them, I think,’ Mrs Morison was saying. She shook her head and returned her attention to the root vegetable in her lap whose skin was starting to turn a little brown from lack of attention.

  Maybe, but none of the money, Mary thought, knowing that the cook was too kind to mention it. Not that any of the Rennies were particularly attractive, she knew, but Papa had married a Maxwell from Spring Hill and there was the difference: lips a little fuller than the Scottish norm, a trim and tidy figure, deep auburn hair—none of the Rennie carrot hue—and snapping green eyes. Mary felt the freckles were a discount, but Mama always said they were a happy sprinkle across her nose and no detriment.

  ‘I wish I had money,’ she admitted, because she knew Mrs Morison was no tattletale. ‘I’m twenty-seven and something should have happened to me before now.’

  * * *

  When she lay in bed that night, Mary considered her age and virgin state. She smiled in the dark, remembering how carefully her Aunt Martha had skirted around matters of procreation, how it was accomplished and women’s subservient role. Since they were much the same age, Dina had been party to the same conversation, her eyes wide, her mouth a perfect O. Mary had listened to Auntie’s red-faced circumlocutions and kept her own counsel. Before Mama had died when Mary was fifteen, she had been more plain spoken.

  There had been a quiet admonition, though, a coda to the conversation about men and women and What They Did. ‘Remember this, my darling daughter: some day there will be a man who will meet all your requirements. Wait for him, because he will be worth it,’ Mama had advised, making no effort to disguise that lurking Maxwell twinkle in her eyes.

  Too bad Mama had died two weeks later, killed by the wasting disease. Papa had never enjoyed good health, so he took the opportunity six months later to join his wife in a better place than a Montrose rectory where the chimneys drew badly and no one was ever warm.

  ‘And so I came to Edinburgh,’ Mary informed the ceiling, that night of her epiphany. ‘They are good to me here. I lack for nothing, but I have become part of the furniture.’

  * * *

  The matter was on her mind a week later after All Saints Day. Although Aunt Martha never would have admitted it, she was a superstitious woman. She never went below stairs with her Christmas cake recipe on All Hallows Eve, when ghosts walked. Mary and Mrs Morison were far too kind to ever tell the good woman that even ghosts weren’t interested in the Rennie Christmas cake.

  It always puzzled Mary that Auntie kept the fruit-cake recipe squirrelled away in her bedchamber, as though it were a great treasure and liable to be stolen in so unprotected a place as the kitchen. Mary was the last person who would ever have told Auntie that Mrs Morison had long ago copied the recipe and kept it among her own well-used recipes in that kitchen so open to thievery and who knew what else.

  ‘It is time,’ Aunt Martha announced and handed over the much-creased paper with all the ceremony a Scot ever indulged in. ‘One dozen this year, if you please.’

  It was always one dozen, four of which remained at home to be consumed around Christmas, after a six-week curing. The other eight were sent to friends and family.

  Mrs Morison nodded and accepted the recipe, promising to take it to bed with her and put it under her pillow, until it was safe again upstairs with Mrs Rennie. ‘Lord love her,’ the cook had murmured after her
employer went upstairs.

  The only thing that saved the cakes from rejection was the thick layer of marchpane Mrs Morison applied to two of the cakes that remained at the house on Wapping Street. Mrs Rennie had looked more thin-lipped than usual the first time Mrs Morison applied the coating, but Uncle Samuel had nodded his approval, so that was that.

  He had approved even more of the other two cakes remaining hearthside. In her desperation to make the cakes less dry—perhaps she had had her own epiphany—Mrs Morison drowned the other two cakes in rum. True, the recipe did include rum, but only a Scottish amount. ‘I fear my hand slipped,’ Mrs Morison had fibbed to her employer, the first time she served that particular rendition.

  Uncle Sam had done more than nod his approval. He held out his plate for another slice. ‘And make it thicker,’ he added, his voice only slightly slurred.

  So rum it was, and marchpane, for the Wapping Street cakes. The cakes to be mailed had rum, but not quite as much.

  * * *

  Making the cakes was a week-long event, with Monday and Tuesday taken up with endless chopping of glacé cherries, candied peel, sultanas and currants. Almonds generally were halved. Mrs Morison baked the homebound cakes on Wednesday, giving them ample time to cure or ferment in a dark space. The cook had been gradually adding more and more rum to the marchpane cakes, as well, which wouldn’t get their mantle of thick icing until closer to Christmas.

  For the entire week, Mary had joined Mrs Morison and the scullery maid, now minus a tooth, in the ordeal of Christmas cakes. Dina hadn’t the patience for all the chopping and dicing, which Mary found a relief. She loved her cousin, but a few hours of non-stop talking gave Mary a headache. Dina’s conversation had taken a decidedly querulous turn, now that she was engaged, and was even whinier than usual.

  Perhaps I am envious, Mary thought, as she diced candied cherries and candied peel to Mrs Morison’s exacting specifications. I would like a husband because that would mean children and I do enjoy wee ones.

  Thursday had seen the construction of four more cakes, also baked, doused and sent to a dark corner to rest and lick their wounds.

  The last four of the yearly cakes were in process on Friday, when Dina stormed into the kitchen and upset everything. Mary had finished cracking the eggs into the soft butter and caster sugar. As she stirred and Mrs Morison gradually added flour, Dina strode around the kitchen, fire in her eyes. She was waving a small object. Mary wished her cousin would go away. Mixing the batter was her favorite part of the whole process. She wanted to enjoy, without drama, the smoothness of the batter and the buttery fragrance as it competed with vanilla bean.

  But Dina needed an audience. With a pang, Mary realised she had for too long unwillingly furnished that audience. I am too complacent, she told herself, as Dina wound herself up like a top. What would she do if I walked away?

  Mary was fated never to know. By now, Dina had tears in her eyes.

  ‘I ask you, has there ever been a stingier husband-to-be than Algernon Page?’ she fumed.

  ‘What is it, my dear?’ Mary said at last, because it was required of her. She continued swiping down the sugar crystals in her mixing bowl, thinking Dina might get the hint.

  Not Dina. Her cousin stuck a small ring in Mary’s face. ‘That...that cheapskate sent me this paltry bauble for Christmas! He thinks I’m going to wear it.’

  Mary looked closer. It was a small ring, very thin gold with what looked like little scratches. She squinted. No, they were leaves or twigs. ‘Hmmm. Perhaps it has some family meaning,’ she ventured.

  ‘Only that the whole family consists of clutch purses,’ Dina shot back. ‘Would you wear such a thing?’

  I would if I loved my future husband, Mary thought, even though she knew she would never say it. She decided Dina wanted some comment, so she mumbled something that seemed to fill the silence.

  ‘I won’t wear it,’ Dina said, making her long face suddenly longer. She stared at the cake batter, as though daring it to contradict her. Her eyes narrowed and she tossed the spurned ring into the batter. ‘There! Send it to someone.’

  She stormed out of the room without a backward glance. Mary stared at the batter, then at Mrs Morison. ‘She can’t be serious.’

  ‘Poor Mr Page,’ the cook said with a shake of her head. ‘He’s in for a merry dance.’ She chuckled and picked up the wooden spoon that Mary had leaned against the side of the bowl when Dina demanded everyone’s attention. She gave the spoon a few turns, then sent Mary into the scullery for the tin of glacé cherries and orange peel.

  ‘Fold them in, my dear,’ she told Mary.

  ‘Really?’ Mary asked, amazed at Mrs Morison’s audacity.

  The cook nodded. ‘It’s not much of a ring.’ She laughed a little louder. ‘Let’s hope no one bites down hard!’

  Mary joined in the laughter. ‘I don’t think anyone really eats these cakes, do you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know and I would certainly never admit such a thing to your aunt.’

  * * *

  After everything was added, Mrs Morison exercised the power of her culinary office and spooned the batter into the four weathered and venerable tins that the Rennies had probably used since Emperor Hadrian built his wall. Mary hesitated when Mrs Morison opened the Rumford.

  ‘You’re certain?’

  The cook shrugged as Mary slid in the pans. ‘I’ll put these cakes in a separate place. If Miss Flibbertigibbet changes her mind, we can find the ring.’

  ‘But that’s...’

  ‘A waste? I think I will call it a diversion.’ Mrs Morison narrowed her eyes and glared at the ceiling above. ‘Your cousin owes us one.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Do you realise we will have to listen to Dina up to and including the wedding in March?’

  * * *

  Mary thought about the ring later that night after she put on her nightcap and padded down the hall to see if her cousin needed anything. I wonder why I do this? she asked herself and nearly turned around. She remembered Mrs Morison’s words in the kitchen and reminded herself to keep the peace. It was a long time to March.

  ‘I’m not interested,’ her cousin said when Mary suggested there was still time to retrieve the ring. ‘Hand me that coverlet, Mary.’

  Mary did, wondering when it was that Dina had stopped saying thank you for little services rendered. Funny she hadn’t thought of that before her epiphany. She waited a moment, but Dina only waved her hand in a peremptory gesture. ‘You’re welcome,’ Mary said softly. After that, she did not ask about the ring again.

  * * *

  After two weeks’ incubation, the cakes for home consumption were boxed and stacked in the scullery. The next batch went to the postal office on the Royal Mile, taken there in all ceremony by the newest footmen. Mary worried over the last batch of four, asking Dina if she had changed her mind. Her cousin only gave her ringless hand an airy wave as she went out the door with Aunt Martha for a dress fitting. The plan was to announce the Rennie-Page engagement at a Hogmanay party, which required a new gown.

  ‘Very well, Dina,’ Mary muttered as she handed the footman the last four rum-soaked cakes, wrapped in gauze, boxed and addressed, along with exact change. She went upstairs to her room to frown over her paltry wardrobe and wonder what she could refurbish for the Hogmanay party. She knew Aunt Martha would allow her to have a new dress, too, but it would be even nicer if her aunt suggested it first.

  She looked out the window as the footman walked towards the postal office. ‘And that is that,’ she said, thinking of the ring.

  But that wasn’t that, not by a long chalk.

  * * *

  When she was seated on the mail coach one day later, Mary decided that Thursday, December the 1st, 1814, would be long remembered on Wapping Street. More and more, she had taken to eating breakfast below stairs wit
h Mrs Morison, because she liked the cook’s company. Her breakfast partner upstairs was only Uncle Samuel—all he liked to do was peer at her over his newspaper, give her a slight nod, then dive back into the pages. Dina never rose before ten, when the mail was delivered.

  Below stairs, Mrs Morison usually had some pithy reflection on the state of affairs in the Rennie household. Failing that, she sat with Mary to look over the day’s meals and assign some useful task that kept Mary from boredom upstairs, where life was comfortable, but not much was required of her.

  Since Christmas approached, Mrs Morison had assigned her to the agreeable chore of inventorying the spice cabinet. Since her arrival in the Rennie household twelve years ago, it had been Mary’s duty to open each aromatic little drawer in the spice cupboard, take a good whiff and decide which spices had run their course and which could hang around another year.

  Mary had just opened the cloves drawer when there came an unearthly shriek from the upstairs bedchambers. The note quavered on the edge of hysteria as it rose higher and higher. Alarmed, Mary watched with big eyes as a crystal vase shivered on its base.

  ‘My God,’ she said, closing the drawer and running into the kitchen, where Mrs Morison stared at the ceiling.

  Above stairs, a door slammed, another door opened and slammed, a few moments passed, then another scream of anguish shattered the calm of Wapping Street. Mrs Morison crossed herself and she wasn’t even Catholic.

  ‘We...we...could go upstairs,’ Mary suggested, but it was a feeble suggestion, much like the chirping of the last cricket on the hearth before winter.

  By unspoken consent, they remained where they were. Another door slammed, then there was a great tumult on the stairs as the sound of disaster came closer and closer to the kitchen.

  Mary and Mrs Morison looked at each other, mystified. ‘What did we do?’ Mary asked.

  They held hands as the racket reached the stairs to the kitchen. Mary took a deep breath as the door slammed open and Aunt Martha and Dina squeezed through the door at the same time, Aunt Martha with fire in her eyes and Dina more pale than parchment.