by Gwyn Cready
“What else did we do?”
She shook her head. “I dinna know. I wish I did.”
“Are we on our way to the docks? I don’t mind helping you, but Undine was rather insistent we make a list of what we’ve done. Perhaps if we start there…”
“We are on our way to the docks, but by way of the inn. I need to get this to Undine,” she said, rattling the parcel. “I imagine there’s a message in here somewhere.”
“Is that the state of spycraft in the eighteenth century? Messages hidden inside women’s clothes and names like Lord Hiscock?”
She frowned. “’Tis not a fake name.”
“‘Lord his cock’ isn’t fake?”
He looked at her in such surprise, she nearly laughed. “No, it’s not. Crispin Hiscock is one of the wealthiest men in Edinburgh—and a baron as well.”
“Crispin Hiscock? My God, it just keeps getting better. Crispin Hiscock and his sons, Aaron and Holden.”
Serafina snorted.
“And the daughter? Sharon, perhaps?”
“I have no doubt,” Serafina said, trying to hold back the laughter. “I believe it’s a prerequisite when you’re being courted by Edward.”
“Though perhaps the gown is for the lord’s wife, Preston.”
Serafina laughed—long, gasping peals that filled the coach box and drew looks from the people walking the Royal Mile. “If you only knew what Lady Hiscock looked like,” she said between paroxysms. “Pressed on at the start. Pressed flat to finish.”
Gerard fell back against the back of the bench, clutching his belly. A moment later, he bolted upright, still gasping. “Oh my God!”
“What?”
“His name… The man’s title is…Baron Hiscock.”
The carriage was nearly to St. Giles again before decorum settled over them.
“Oh my God,” Gerard said, wiping his eyes. “That is a name I will put in an ad campaign someday. It would have to be something for teen boys—a body spray, maybe, or an energy drink. It’s a treasure chest, that one. I had no idea you were the sort of woman who spent her time in the company of noblemen—even if they are named after body parts.” His brows shot up. “You aren’t a noblewoman yourself, are you? I never thought to ask.”
“Nae.” She shook her head, wondering if he was making a jest at her expense.
He smiled. “Not Lady MacDonald or the Duchess of Danforth or the long lost Princess of Poldavia?”
He looked at her as if he actually believed it to be possible, which only made her wonder grow. Could he not see the disreputable state of her boots or the wear in her silk? The right shoulder had been mended so many times that a patch could barely hold it together. “I am not, sir. I assure you.”
“You live in a castle. The coachman at the inn told me so.”
She pointed out the window to a sooty, narrow structure of red bricks and seedy shutters. “Do you see that house? No, not the one with the window boxes and gables. The one beside it. I live there, in a room I let on the top floor. ’Tis about the size of this carriage. For the last month, Lady Kerr has kindly permitted me to stay with her at her castle near Langholm while I waited for Undine’s help, but I do not live there. And ’tis very unlikely I shall ever return.”
He regarded her with interest. “Why?”
“Well, ’tis a good distance from Edinburgh for one. It took me two days to get there.” And nearly all her remaining funds, though she preferred not to share that part with him. “And my life is here.”
“Friends and family, I suppose. Anyone else?”
She gazed at the floor, hiding a smile. He certainly didn’t hesitate to pursue the things he wanted. In that, at least, they were similar.
“No family. No sweetheart. A few friends. But Edinburgh offers more than the pleasures of company. Lady Kerr’s castle is stunning, but a hundred miles from the sea is too far for me. I need to be able to smell the salt, hear the gulls, feel my curls beaten back by the breeze.”
The mention of curls cast a singular silence over them. The pins in her hair seemed suddenly to make her itch, but she dared not touch them.
“Speaking of curls,” he began, but he did not finish his thought. The carriage came to a sudden stop, throwing Gerard nearly into Serafina’s lap, the furious driver shouting, “Get your foucking hands off my horse!”
“Dinna fash yerself,” said a voice. “I’ll just need a quick peek in the carriage.”
Gerard looked at Serafina. He recognized it too. The voice of one of the men from the docks.
She slid the lock closed just as the door handle turned. Gerard pulled her out the opposite side and into the street.
“Where?” he demanded.
She looked around. “There. St. Giles.”
They ran across the cobbles into the shadow of its massive edifice and odd, open, crown-like metal steeple. For a split second, Gerard was amused by the notion of him running to a church with a woman. He hadn’t forgotten Serafina’s alarm at finding a ring on her finger, nor the start she’d given when the woman with the musket in the close had mentioned St. Giles earlier. Perhaps in the end, the joke would be on him.
For now though, he did his best not to lose his footing as he pulled her past the tents full of jewelry and merchandise banked along the church’s outside wall, and followed her shouted instructions to turn left and then right, into the darkened nave.
The place was enormous, with vaulted ceilings and arched buttresses and—
“Jesus, it that a wagon?” he said.
“’Tis the fire brigade,” she said, unfazed. “There’s a guillotine here too, as well as the case that held St. Giles’s arm, though I canna recommend stopping to look.”
She directed him into the space farthest from the entrance. The building looked like a single church on the outside, but inside it had been carved into several large spaces. Six or seven supplicants were sprinkled throughout the pews, bent in silent prayer, while dozens of Edinburgh denizens roamed the circumference, looking at the architecture or engaging in heavy whispers. A strange frisson went through Gerard. He’d been here before as well.
They slipped into a middle pew and sank side by side onto the kneeler. She began to pray—he hoped for the possibility that they had not been followed. Gerard cast careful glances behind them. In the true Presbyterian tradition, the nave was aggressively unadorned, as if the merest brass candlestick would be an abomination in the eyes of God—or perhaps more importantly, John Knox. He shifted on the unpadded bench.
“We’ve been here before,” he whispered.
The ring was gone from her finger, but that didn’t stop her thumb from questing for it. She frowned and he waited for her to dismiss his statement, but then something above the altar caught her eye.
“Aye,” she said, nodding. “I suspect we have.”
Gerard hadn’t had much use for churches, having grown up in a world where more attention had been given to the nearness of the family’s pew to the minister than to the nearness of the family to his teachings.
She’d tucked her telltale hair into a sort of cap she’d pulled from a pocket, but he saw the orange gleam through the linen when she bowed her head. The light from the windows danced along the porcelain curve of her neck and disappeared around her shoulders. Her eyes were closed and her face intent. She wasn’t just hiding. She was praying.
Her devotion, authentic and uninhibited, struck him. He shifted, and she smiled.
“Will ye pray?” she asked.
“Is that what you’re doing?”
The peace on her face receded, and he kicked himself for asking.
“Nae,” she said carefully. “Confessing, I guess. In my own way.”
A movement in the aisle caught his attention, and when he turned, he saw a bearded, black-haired man scanning the pews.
“Is it th
em?” she asked.
“Yes. Stay down. He’s with two companions. I saw swords, and Lord only knows what I couldn’t see. Are you allowed to bring swords in a church?”
“Jesus said to put your swords away, that those who live by the sword will die by it. But on the matter of swords before the altar, he was silent.”
“Well, Jesus had his father’s twelve legions of angels to back him up. For the rest of us, I think a ‘check your sword at the door’ policy might be in order.” The men were walking down the farthest aisle, peering at the face of each worshipper. “We need to get out of here.”
“No, we need to part.”
“What?”
“They might catch one of us. They won’t catch us both. And one of us needs to get the parcel and receipt to Undine.”
“And here I thought you were going to say one of us needs to call the cavalry.”
“Cavalry?”
“Like a legion of angels. It doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving you alone.”
“Listen to me. I know this church as well I know my own name. Even if they do recognize me, they’ll never find me here. Every Scottish church has secret hiding places. You need to get away. Here.” She pressed the receipt into his palm. “Please. Trust me. I’ll be safe.”
“You’re asking a lot.”
“I know. You haven’t disappointed me yet though.”
He brushed off his plaid reluctantly and started toward the exit. Halfway there, the men, who had just finished their search of the first aisle, turned and headed toward the center one. Serafina was making her way toward the altar. Gerard hurried toward the men, catching them before they saw her.
“It’s him,” one of them said.
“Gentlemen,” Gerard said, “could I have your attention? I have something you’re going to want to hear, and you’re going to want to hear it because it involves you.”
The men swiveled slowly toward him.
“I am on a bit of a felonious quest here, aye?” he said, bursting into full Scots. “And you’ll nae mind, I hope, that you look like men who might help.”
The bearded man, clearly the leader of his idiot-faced companions, cocked his head, half his attention still on the pews beyond.
“That fount there,” Gerard said, watching Serafina reach the altar and cross it, “is an original Henry Dowling. I’m sure you can tell by the artistic lines.”
The fount, possibly the plainest Gerard had ever seen, seemed to swell in the glow of attention. He hoped he would live to amuse Henry Dowling, his college roommate, with the tale.
“Anyone knows,” Gerard continued, “you can turn a Dowling into”—what was an appropriate amount of shillings in this backward time?—“enough to buy us each a bull, er, a sword—a horse. A rare white one with a braided tail. But I canna lift the thing on my own. I’ll split the sale four ways if you can only help me get it into my carriage.”
One of the bearded man’s colleagues leaned over, hands on his knees, to examine the bowl. “I’ve never noticed the lines before,” he said. “They are quite fetching. Look, Cambers, ye can see the artist’s hand.”
The second man was more of a skeptic, but after a quick look, he was a goner too. Gerard grinned. How he loved advertising! Now, if he could just get old Beardy to buy in long enough for Serafina to get away, he’d be set. She had almost disappeared behind the altar. But Beardy was having none of it.
“Fools, the both of ye. There are no ‘lines.’ That fount’s as plain as yesterday’s groats.”
“Not true,” Gerard said. “Not true at all. Sir,” he called to a well-dressed passerby. “How much will ye give me for an early Dowling fount. Henry, that is, not the father—in my opinion, a much lesser artist.” Serafina passed the back of the altar and slipped out of sight behind a tiered row of benches.
The man frowned. “I didna realize the fount was made by an artist.”
“Oh, aye,” Gerard said. “’Tis not a fount, you see.”
“It’s not?”
“Oh, no. ’Tis a statue of a fount. Those are very different things, as I’m sure you know, and this man has offered me two shillings for it.”
“I did not,” Cambers said.
The man looked at his wife.
“I can sell it for ten in two snaps of my fingers once I take it outside.”
“I’ll give you three,” the man said.
“Three? Sir, ten is robbing me. But I need the money. I’ll take five.”
“Four,” Cambers said.
“Five,” the man said.
“Sold to the man with an aficionado’s eye.” Gerard shook the man’s hand and took the coins. “You’ll never tire of it. I promise. Sorry, gentleman,” he said to the three men.
“Wait a second—”
“Perhaps next time.” Serafina had disappeared, and now so would he. He dashed toward a large group of older women approaching the doorway and made it through the exit just before they entirely blocked it. He ran to the front of the church, ducked inside. When he saw the men had left, he began to circle the nave. He needed to be sure she was safe.
* * *
She gazed at him through the oculus in the steeple, directly over the nave. Och, foolish man! I told you I’d be safe. But the remonstration was halfhearted. She watched the care with which he looked for her, searching casually enough not to arouse suspicion if he was being watched, but carefully enough to spot her if she was there. He circled the entire nave, not once but twice, and when he reached the altar, he scanned the pews before slipping up the steps and following the path she’d taken.
Good God, he’s going to search the entire place for me!
His determination sent a swirl of confusing emotions through her—irritation, gratitude, amusement, and something more troubling that seemed to squirm and stretch uncomfortably in the hollow of her chest. She pushed the feelings aside. She’d been motherless since childhood, fatherless since she was nineteen, a woman bereft of her standing in society since that fateful coach ride two years ago, and entirely alone since Edward’s departure. She had learned that one could depend on no one but oneself, as well as the harder lesson that went with it—that believing otherwise only led to pain and disappointment.
Eleven
Gerard’s shoulders relaxed. He had covered every conceivable inch of this place, upstairs and down, rattling doorknobs and poking around in rooms he had not been invited to enter. If she was here—and he had the sense she was—she was well hidden. Good. And the men following them had not reappeared.
Gerard was scanning the church’s cheerless underground level, trying to remember which hallway led him to the stairs, when a voice said, “Oh, there you are.”
He turned. He saw a young, low-level cleric in a frayed shirt with rolled-up sleeves. If he’d been wearing a cell phone on his belt, he could have passed for Gerard’s accountant.
“Did she convert you?” he asked, giving Gerard’s kilt the once-over. “Och, nothing to be ashamed of, aye? I’d wear just about anything for a chance to look at her over my morning bannock.”
Gerard hoped a bannock was some sort of breakfast food. “I…guess.”
The man looked both ways and lowered his voice. “Aye, well, the document is done.”
“Document?”
“Gah, you really were oot your heid, weren’t ye, lad. You don’t remember?”
Gerard shook his head slowly.
“Last night? Stamping yer foot and wringing yer hands? ‘What sort of a man do ye take me for? I willna be had without the benefit of a ring,’” he said, imitating Gerard’s consonant American accent. “Let me tell ye, lad, I’d have gladly been had without the benefit of a ring, a nod, or even a ‘good day to ye, sir.’ She’s a bonny lass, that one. Is it true the red curls burn when ye run yer fingers through them?”
Gerard stared, stunned. “I
wouldn’t be had without the benefit of a ring? I said that?”
“All of it—and more.”
“Then…did we?”
“’Tis between you and the lady, sir. I am but a lowly cleric. I dinna presume to judge.”
“No, I mean get married. Did we get married?”
“I canna say. I was on my way out when you found me. The lady had come in to purchase an entry in the marriage register. But you got wind of it and that’s when the stramash began.”
“Wait. ‘Purchase an entry’? What does that mean?”
A man and a very pregnant woman approached, and the cleric took Gerard by the elbow and led him into an office and closed the door.
“She wanted to register a marriage that didn’t happen,” the man said.
“Jesus, you’re selling indulgences?”
“A marriage isn’t an indulgence, aye? Indulgences remit a sin. Marriage is a sacrament.”
Gerard threw up his hands. “A thousand pardons—unless that would cost me too much, of course.”
“Are you having a fling at me? Perhaps you’d like to take your wee deception to Tron Kirk and see if they’ll make a copy of the record as pretty as this.” He scooped up a sheet from the desk and waved it at Gerard.
Gerard snatched it from his fingers and scanned the florid hand. But it wasn’t the rococo flourishes that made him stop. It was the sight of his scribbled signature at the bottom. “I signed this,” he said, looking up.
“Aye, ye did. That’s how it works, ye ken? You sign; she signs. I sign as the bishop. The seal goes on, and kiss your auntie, you’re man and wife. The harder part is sneaking it into the register book. I did that too. But just look at the record copy. It’s beautiful.”
Gerard went back to the document, and the man read aloud, “On this day, in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Six, Miss Serafina Seonag Fallon and Edward John Turnbull—”
“What? No.”
The curate raised a brow. “Nae what? You are Edward Turnbull, are ye not?”
Gerard looked again at the signature. That was definitely his scrawl—“virtually unreadable,” his admin Bev had said, which Gerard always took as a compliment. Only people who needed to be known through their signatures worried about readability. But if Serafina wanted a fake marriage, why wasn’t it a fake marriage to him?
