by Sara Donati
Elizabeth resisted the urge to turn and look at Nathaniel. Curiosity really had done a fine job of transforming him into an invalid—his throat and jaw had been wrapped elaborately in flannel and dressings—but it was his mournful expression that engendered Mrs. Rae’s compassion. Elizabeth had had no idea he would take so well to this charade, and she could not look at him for very long without fear of laughing.
The mailcoach jerked to a stop before a tidy inn.
“The Black Bull,” Mrs. Rae announced. “As respectable a place as ever was. Guid food and clean rooms. Do tell MacDonald it was Eleanor Rae wha sent ye, mind.” She leaned forward to peer at Daniel, who was mouthing his fist. He stared back at her with perfect equanimity, and she seemed to take this as a further sign of Elizabeth’s sad state.
“Sic a pity,” she hummed, and she gathered her parcels to herself.
In a moment the woman would be gone, and Elizabeth knew she was the best chance they had of making the necessary connections in the short amount of time available to them. She had been contemplating how to formulate her question for the last hour, and now there was no more time to waste.
“Mrs. Rae, if I might ask—”
“Anythin’, ma dear.” Her eyes went very wide and round. “Ask awa’.”
“It is a rather delicate matter, you understand—” Another bobbing nod, curiosity and goodwill wound together like the plump hands she clasped before herself.
“We find it necessary to dispose of some personal items to pay for my husband’s treatment and our stay here. Could you direct me to a reputable … agent?”
“Plate, or jewels?” Her tone all business now, and a new light in her eye.
“The latter,” Elizabeth said. Beside her Nathaniel shifted uneasily, but Mrs. Rae focused her smile on Elizabeth.
“Ah.” She produced a small smile. “It’s fate that’s broucht us tegither the-day. Ye mun come alang wi’ me, ma dears, and I will introduce ye tae ma neighbor, Mr. Babby-Sang-Way. An Italian gentleman, ye ken, but canny aa the same.”
• • •
Elizabeth carried the boy with his face peeking out between two open buttons of her cape. He was curious about the world and had not yet learned fear or caution, and he would not be hidden away like an infant. His eyes—so green in this light—missed nothing, and his expression was very serious as they moved along the lanes.
Nathaniel had Curiosity’s satchel—filled now with Giselle’s fine things, but his injured arm he kept under his cloak, his hand resting on the butt of the pistol. At first he had liked this masquerade that permitted him to listen without ever talking—he owed Elizabeth a debt for coping with Mrs. Rae all the way from Carryckton without any assistance from him—but now the dressings on his face had begun to itch, and he had had enough of silence. The plain truth was that their options were few and their time was short—the mailcoach that returned to Carryckton would leave in just five hours. He had no choice but to carry on with this game.
They followed Mrs. Rae down a lane lined with small shops—a gunmaker, a saddlemaker, a cobbler, all shuttered. A redcoat passed, scratching his chest and yawning loudly. Nathaniel pulled his hat down tighter over his brow.
“Here we are, ma dears.”
They had stopped before a tiny shop with a door painted bright yellow. Above it a shingle moved fitfully in the wind. G. Bevesangue, Importer.
Elizabeth thanked Mrs. Rae for her help, shook her hand, and then the older lady had pointed out her husband’s shop down the lane—“the best milliner in aa o’ Moffat, and do I say sae masel’”—and left them.
At Elizabeth’s firm knock, the door flew open as if he had been waiting for them. The man who stood there was no more than thirty, with wild hair that stood straight up all over his head and a dark complexion. He had a thin, dry twist of a face and the darkest eyes Nathaniel had ever seen in a white man. He did not seem surprised to find two strangers on his doorstep, but he did peer cautiously down the lane in both directions before he stepped back to usher them in with a bow and a sweep of his arm.
“Entrez, si vous plais.” He smiled, and a gold tooth flashed beneath the neatly trimmed mustache. “Guido Bevesangue, madame, monsieur.”
Elizabeth hesitated, glanced over her shoulder at Nathaniel, and stepped over the threshold.
It was a small room, furnished simply: in the corner a bed, a long table, a cabinet, two chairs, and a lamp. Clothing hung from pegs, and on the table were the remnants of a modest meal of bread and cheese and some kind of green paste. There was nothing here to indicate why this man might be interested in paying hard cash for what they had to sell but the far wall, which was crowded with clocks.
Elizabeth began to speak, but Bevesangue held up a hand to stop her just as all the timepieces came to life at once with a low whirring sound. Daniel’s head popped out of Elizabeth’s cloak and he let out a caw of pleasure and began to wiggle with excitement, flapping his arms.
When the last of the clocks had finished striking the hour and Elizabeth had quieted Daniel, Bevesangue bowed so that his hair flopped forward and then back again.
“Est-ce que je puis vous aider, madame, monsieur?”
“Sir,” Elizabeth began. “Do you speak English?”
“But of course, madame.” He put a hand to his heart, as if he were ready to swear to this. “Pardon me, I thought that you must be French. Most of my … visitors are French gentlepersons in unfortunate circumstances.” His eyes trailed over them, taking note of the expensive cut of their cloaks, muddy at the hems. “I myself am Italian, of Genoa.”
There was the sound of raised voices in the lane outside the window, and the pleasant expression on the man’s face disappeared. It came flickering back very slowly as the voices moved farther away. Nathaniel touched the pistol again, glad of the heft of it against his ribs.
“How may I be of assistance, madame …?” He paused expectantly.
“Freeman,” Elizabeth supplied. And then: “Mrs. Rae suggested that you might be interested in buying some items from us.”
“Personal items, madame?”
“Yes. Personal items of some value,” she finished firmly.
Bevesangue studied Nathaniel from the corner of his eye.
“Your husband is ill?”
Elizabeth’s expression hardened a bit. “My husband is here to take the waters for a throat condition, sir. Nothing else fails him.”
“But you have traveled far,” he said. “You must be very tired. Please, won’t you take a seat?”
Nathaniel put a hand on Elizabeth’s arm to stop her. Then he stepped up closer to Bevesangue to look at him hard. Something about this Italian made the balls of his thumbs itch, but whatever it was he hid away cleverly behind those black eyes. After a minute, Bevesangue blinked.
“Your husband is a cautious man,” he said, without looking away from Nathaniel. “And a dangerous one, I think.”
Elizabeth smiled. “How very observant you are, Mr. Bevesangue,” she said. “Perhaps we will be able to do business together after all.”
A half hour later they paid for a room at the Black Bull with coin, and a maid showed them to their room.
“Sixty pounds,” Elizabeth said, dropping the purse onto the bed. “It is more than I imagined we might get. You must have truly frightened him, Nathaniel.”
“I don’t know about that.” He went to the window as he loosened the dressings on his jaw.
“But why else would he have given us so much, with so little bartering?” Elizabeth unbuttoned her bodice for Daniel, who was chattering impatiently and thumping at her with a small fist. She stilled suddenly, and looked up.
“Unless—”
“He plans on getting it back again,” Nathaniel finished for her.
“Lovely,” Elizabeth said grimly. “Just what we needed. A larcenous Italian after us as well as the Campbells and the Carrycks.”
“Never mind, Boots. We’ll be on the mailcoach by four, and he won’t think to come lookin
g for us before dark. In the meantime we’ll just set tight right here.”
Elizabeth considered. They had been up well before dawn to walk hard over unfamiliar territory for more than an hour. There had been no chance to sleep on the mailcoach—Mrs. Rae and Daniel both had conspired against that—and she was very tired. She could do as Nathaniel suggested, and sleep here until it was time to go back to Carryckcastle and claim the rest of their family before they started out for home. That was exactly what she should do.
Daniel’s steady suckling was the only sound in the room. Nathaniel was still at the window with his back turned to her, watching the lane below. He said, “Spit it out, Boots, before it chokes you.”
“If Lady Isabel is here, I think I should try to talk to her,” Elizabeth said. “If I do not, I shall always wonder—”
“If you could have solved Carryck’s problems for him. Christ above, you are worse than any missionary I ever ran into. Do you realize what kind of trouble you’re headed for with this?”
This stung. Elizabeth bent her head over Daniel to hide her burning face and to get hold of her temper. She heard Nathaniel crossing the room, and then his weight pressed down on the edge of the bed.
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”
“No, you should not have.”
“You’re nothing like a missionary.”
“I should hope not.”
He shot her a sidelong glance. “Maybe she ain’t even here. And if she is, how would you find out without setting the Campbells on our tails? I don’t suppose they’d mind putting another bullet in me, and one in you, too, if they had the chance.”
Elizabeth met his gaze. “I am very capable of finding out what I want to know without providing any useful information in return. Leave that to me.”
A flicker of a grin passed over his face. “That’s fine with me, Boots. I’ll sit back and watch.”
They put Daniel down for his nap and then Nathaniel watched with equal parts amusement and disquiet as Elizabeth spun her web. First she rang for the maid, a slow young woman who took her time getting to them to bob a halfhearted curtsy. In a cool and superior tone Nathaniel hardly recognized, Elizabeth ordered a meal that would have fed them for days: white soup, a fricando of veal, vegetable pudding, a basket of breads, raspberry syllabub, coffee, and an expensive bottle of claret. The maid, suddenly much more awake, ran off to the kitchens with a new flush in her cheeks.
“You mean to spend the whole sixty pounds before we ever get out of town, or did walking just give you a big appetite?”
“No,” Elizabeth said calmly. “I am hardly hungry at all, but I shall eat nonetheless.” And she had nothing more to say to him, because a serving man had appeared with linen to set the table for their meal.
In the next hour Nathaniel learned things about his wife that he had not guessed, or maybe never let himself think about. This was not the Elizabeth he knew, the woman who had set herself so resolutely to the task of learning how to skin game and cure deerhides, who climbed trees and swam in mountain lakes. This was Elizabeth Middleton of Oakmere, Lady Crofton’s niece, raised to believe that servants had no names worth remembering, a lady who did not even think to pick up her own napkin to put it in her lap. It was surprising to watch her send back the sauce for the veal as unfit to eat, and disturbing to see her point to her glass to have it filled without ever looking in the serving maid’s direction. And all the time she talked to him in a voice and manner that he knew not at all, and liked even less, of assemblies and dance parties and intrigues at court.
It was when the syllabub was before them that Elizabeth’s plan was finally clear to him.
“It is too bad Uncle does not care to go so far as Galston,” she said in a vaguely distressed way. “The countess asked me so pointedly to call on her, after all. I suppose it cannot be helped, although I do so hate to disappoint. You know Mama is hoping that our Roderick will take an interest in her. It would be a fine thing to see our families thus joined.”
From the corner of his eye, Nathaniel saw something flicker across the serving maid’s face.
Elizabeth carried on with a sigh: “I would give a great deal to see dear Flora. I am very disappointed, indeed.”
The serving maid made a low sound in her throat, not quite a cough. Elizabeth raised her brow in the young woman’s direction. “Yes?”
A deep curtsy. “Beggin’ yer pardon, mem, I dinnae care tae intrude …” She paused, and when Elizabeth did not stop her, she continued in a rush.
“If it’s the Countess o’ Loudoun ye’re speakin’ aboot—I thoucht it must be, hearin’ ye talk o’ Galston—pardon me for bein’ sae forward, mem, but did ye nae ken that the lady is come tae Moffat tae take the waters?”
For one long moment Elizabeth’s face betrayed nothing at all, and the maid grew very pale.
Then Elizabeth smiled. “Is she, indeed? How kind of you …”
“Annie, mem.”
“How very kind of you, Annie, to put my mind at ease. Such thoughtfulness must be rewarded.”
A flush crawled up the girl’s neck and she bobbed again. “It’s nae trouble at aa, mem. The countess walks by every mornin’—the Earl o’ Breadalbane has a hoose in Elliot Place, just doon the lane.”
“Does he? What very good luck,” Elizabeth said, picking up her spoon and smiling thinly at Nathaniel. “Very good luck, indeed.”
“You are cross with me,” Elizabeth said calmly. She was studying her reflection in the window glass as she tucked a stray hair away. Her hand was trembling, and she stilled it by pressing it against her waist. When Nathaniel came up to wrap his arms around her from behind, she stiffened, and did not know why.
“Not cross, that’s the wrong word.”
“Do be honest, Nathaniel. I have never seen you look so stern. You quite frightened me.”
“Then we’re even, because you scared me, too, Boots.” He rocked her back against him. “But I have to admit, you put my mind to rest.”
She turned in his arms and stemmed her hands against his chest. There was a guarded expression about him, a reserve that she hadn’t seen in him since the first few times they had ever spoken to each other, when she was still Miss Middleton and she had insisted on calling him Mr. Bonner. It hurt her to see that look in his face.
“That is a very mysterious statement. Whatever does it mean?”
He said, “That lady sitting across from me at that table wrinkling her nose at the sauce and complaining about the coffee ain’t the woman I married. Here I been worried about what you gave up to stay in New-York with me, and it never crossed my mind—” He stopped.
“Go on,” she said dully. “Say it. It never crossed your mind that I might become … that kind of lady, if I had stayed to live my life here.” She pulled away, unable to touch him and keep her composure at the same time. “Did you think it was all a girlish whim, my wanting to get away? Did you not hear me when I told you about what it was like here for women born to ease and wealth? Do you not see how easy it is to become manipulative and imperious when every other avenue, every opportunity to think independently, is denied?”
She felt the flush of anger spreading up over her face, and it took all her willpower to meet his gaze. “I knew what I should become if I stayed. I felt it growing in me like a cancer, day by day. And now you’ve seen it. It is me, Nathaniel. Whether you like it or not, that woman is part of me, too, and always will be.”
“Ah, Boots,” he said, pulling her close to put his cheek against her hair. His voice was hoarse but his hands on her shoulders were gentle. “If that’s the worst you’ve got to show me, then I’m a damn lucky man.”
Something small and warm broke open deep inside her, and rose up to her throat. When she could speak again she said, “I want to go home.”
“So do I. And we will.”
Just what is it you expect? Elizabeth asked herself sternly as she made her way to Elliot Place. What is it you want of Lady Isabel?
/> The truth was, she did not know what she would say to the lady when—if—she were finally to meet her. Your father has made our lives very difficult; please come and tell him to stop right away.
She smiled outright at the idea. A man passing her on the road paused as if she had spoken to him; Elizabeth gave him a cold look, and he dropped his gaze and moved on.
It was madness, of course. She could not tell them who she was without putting herself in real danger, but if she did not, what connection could she possibly claim that would open the door? Giselle Somerville’s gown and cloak and bonnet marked her for a woman of quality and means, but the appearance of good breeding alone would not get her very far.
The reluctant sun had come to dry the cobblestones and a crowd of children ran out to greet it. Above her a window opened and the sound of a pianoforte being very ill used drifted down, undercut by the voices of young men bickering in French. A barouche went by at a solemn pace, in it two gentlemen with a medical look about them. And then she had come to Elliot Place, and Elizabeth must stop to gather her thoughts.
A single house stood on the lane, three stories high and surrounded by a large park. Elizabeth stopped before the garden gate, overrun with honeysuckle intertwined with roses, heavy headed and dripping with the recent rain, their scent rising now on the warmer breeze. The gate stood partially open, and beyond it a flagstone path wound through tall spires of deep blue delphinium and masses of white lilies. The path ended at a small flight of stone steps and then ran away again into the dappled light of the garden beyond.
“Were you wondering about the roses?” said a young voice behind her. Elizabeth’s heart raced, but she composed her expression and turned.
“Everybody does. Wonder about the roses, I mean.”
She was a plain girl of perhaps thirteen, with intelligent, bright brown eyes and a friendly expression. Her accent was not quite Scots and not English, but something in between, almost certainly the result of careful training.
“They are beautiful,” Elizabeth said. “I have never seen roses of this particular shade of apricot before. I could not help but stop and admire them.”
