‘Around three. I bring him back a pie from the pie shop. And gin.’
‘I’ll be in a hackney. Don’t bring anything to arouse his suspicions. You will go out as usual and simply not return. He’ll have no idea where you have gone. You and Davy will be safe. I promise.’
He kissed her forehead.
‘I must go. I was told I have half an hour and I don’t want to give Hopkins any reason to remember me.’ Fortunately, the earlier footsteps had gone straight past Anna’s door and a door had opened and closed further down the corridor. The murmur of voices—male and female—could be heard distinctly through the walls, as could the slap and the sudden cry. Anna paled at the sounds, but said nothing.
Lachlan forced her to look up at him. ‘Three o’clock,’ he said. ‘I will be there. If you do not come, I shall come looking for you.’
‘I will be there, Lachlan. I promise.’
Chapter Fifteen
Flora sat in the hackney and watched life continuing in the street outside, a deep shame growing inside her—not because she felt any responsibility for the state in which these people lived, crowded into slums and living, clearly, without hope—but because she had not known. Nothing in her life had prepared her for such sights. Her family had endured a gradual decline of prosperity, but to compare their circumstances with that of the people in the street outside was to compare the stunning sapphire and diamond brooch given to the Queen by Prince Albert on the eve of their marriage—and which Flora had seen when the Queen visited Castle McCrieff—to Flora’s silver brooch.
She could not bring herself to leave the carriage. She simply did not dare to go inside that house and search for her husband.
Eventually the house door opened again and Lachlan emerged, stepping out on to the pavement. He halted, his head down. A moment later, he swiped one hand across his eyes and that movement spurred Flora into action. She thrust some coins at Muriel.
‘Take the hackney back to the hotel and wait for me there. And tell no one where we have been.’
She pushed open the carriage door, but Muriel grabbed her arm.
‘Milady! Ye canna go out there. It isna safe.’
Flora shook free of her grasp and climbed awkwardly from the vehicle.
‘I shall be with my husband. No harm will come to me, Muriel. Now do as I say. Go!’ Poor Muriel’s face was as pale as Flora had ever seen it. ‘You may wait there until you see I have reached his side. But then you must go.’
‘Very well, milady.’
Flora kept her gaze firmly fixed on Lachlan as she hurried across Cowgate and into the road where he stood, holding her skirts clear of the filth that soiled the street. He was still standing on the same spot when she reached him. She put her hand on his arm and he jerked it away, spinning to face her.
‘What...? Flora?’
His dark eyes were rimmed pink and some deep emotion swirled in their depths—more emotion than she had ever seen in her normally impassive husband. A spark of jealousy ignited in her belly. Why could he not show such emotion for her? She was his wife...surely she deserved...? She hauled in a deep breath. No longer would she remain silent and swallow down her fears.
‘I should like an explanation.’ She propped her hands on her hips even as her old doubts and fears tried to batter their way to the surface. She quashed them ruthlessly. What she really wanted to know was why he did not bed her, but she settled for asking, ‘What are you doing here?’
He clasped her elbow and began to walk down the street. She had to scurry to keep up with his long strides.
‘What are you doing here, more to the point?’
She swallowed. ‘I followed you.’
He stopped dead. He stared at her, his eyes still haunted.
‘Why?’
Flora bit her lip. Noticed his gaze drop to her mouth and his sudden intake of breath. Whatever else was going on here, she recognised his desire for her. His kisses and caresses last night were proof enough of that—so what was so crucial as to keep him from her bed and to bring him here, in secret?
His shoulders slumped again, and his gaze slid from her face to linger on her chest. ‘You are not wearing your brooch,’ he said.
Flora frowned at such an inconsequential remark. ‘I left it at home. At Lochmore.’ It had seemed a symbolic gesture—a new beginning for them both. All of that seemed unimportant now. Childish, even. This—standing here with her husband in a filthy, overcrowded street—this was important. But she needed to understand. ‘Please, Lachlan. I am... I am worried about you. You are upset. Please. Allow me to help.’
He heaved in a deep breath, then choked out a cough. ‘Urgghh! I shouldn’t have done that! Come. This place stinks. It is no place for a lady. Let us get out of here.’ He popped one finger beneath her chin and bent a serious look upon her. ‘I will tell you. I must. Matters have come to a head and you will have to know. But not here. Let us go back to the hotel—although I must return here by three o’clock.’
* * *
Back at the hotel, Flora crossed their private parlour, stripping off her gloves and then removing her hat before facing Lachlan with a lift of her brows. He gestured for her to sit on the small sofa and he then folded himself into an armchair.
‘Why did you visit that house?’ she demanded when he seemed reluctant to begin. ‘Who is Delaney? And where did you disappear to last night? Do you have a—?’ She leapt to her feet and took a turn around the room. ‘Do you have a woman there? A—a mistress? Is—is that why you do not want me?’
A huge, painful lump formed in her throat. This was it. His answer could destroy all her hopes for their future.
Lachlan surged to his feet, grabbing her upper arms. ‘No! I do want you. How can you doubt it? I just—’ He thrust his hand through his hair, staring at her with such pain in his eyes she believed him. ‘I have been preoccupied. I know. And I’m sorry.’ He hauled in a deep breath. ‘Delaney is an investigator. He came to the Tontine last night to tell me he’d found someone I have been searching for.’
‘Who?’
‘My sister. Anna.’
‘Your sister? I was not even aware you had a sister. What is she doing in...?’ Flora’s voice trailed into silence as the implication hit her. ‘Your sister...she lives there? But...is she a...?’ She could not bring herself to utter the word.
‘A prostitute. Yes. And it is my fault.’
The words hung bitterly in the air. Flora sat again and then patted the sofa beside her. ‘Please. Tell me about her.’ She couldn’t get the picture of that street...that house...out of her mind. Surely no one would choose to live in such a place?
Lachlan began to talk, telling her about his own past and his sister, Anna, five years his junior.
‘Ma and Da were tenants of a Highland farm. It was a hard life, but they were happy until they were turned off to make way for sheep and relocated to a croft, just a handful of acres, on the west coast. Da was expected to boost our income with fishing and kelp working, but the year before, the Government removed the duty on cheaper, imported kelp and the industry collapsed. I was four when we left our farm. My sister, Rose, was just a year old.
‘My parents struggled to keep going for three years, but then hunger drove Da to seek work in Glasgow. By then Anna and Taggie had been born so there were six of us to house and feed. Da found work in a saw mill and Ma worked at home as a handloom weaver.’
His words, at first halting and cracked with emotion, now sped up and disgust at how his family and thousands of others had been treated rang through his words.
‘My sister Jenny was born two years later and died within months. We were hungry. All the time. Da...he died when I was eleven. An accident at work. And from having little, we had less and inside a year both Rose and Taggie had gone.’
He dropped his face into his hands and Flora could see the muscles at the side of his jaw clench a
s he fought his emotion.
‘I found a job at a carpet factory but then I... I...’ A frown creased his forehead and he scrubbed both hands through his hair. ‘I went overseas. I—I wanted to make something of myself...and that was impossible in Glasgow. I should have come home sooner... I didn’t know...’ His head dropped into his hands again. ‘Ma died five years later. Anna was working in a cotton factory and she married the foreman, but she got with child and then he died.’ His voice hardened. ‘After the babe was born she couldn’t earn enough and she got into debt. She was promised a job and somewhere to live in Edinburgh, but it wasn’t until she got here that she discovered the truth and by then she was trapped by her debts.
‘Just one year ago!’ The words burst savagely from his lips. ‘Not long after I returned to Scotland! I searched and searched for her, but everyone I knew had gone. I didn’t know she had married. I was searching for the wrong name.’
Shocked by his story, Flora held back her urge to pepper him with questions. The immediate problem was to save his sister from the situation she was trapped in and Flora found herself more grateful than ever before for her marriage to Lachlan. She had never appreciated how circumstances could change a life so dramatically and she realised how fortunate she had been in her family life and childhood, although it had not always seemed that way to her. And without Lachlan’s money providing dowries, her father would be unable to demand decent settlements for her sisters and, if widowed, either one of them might find herself on that slow slide into genteel poverty that was the fear of every well-born woman. Women had so little power. No rights. No choice. The injustice of life burned inside her.
For the first time, Flora had an inkling of the strain upon her father who, to his credit, had never followed other lairds along the route of evicting tenants and replacing them with sheep in order to replenish their own coffers. The English landlords had begun that cruel practice, but some clan chiefs, to their shame, had followed suit when they had seen the profits to be made. She was proud her father was not one of them. He might be a hard man, but he had needed to be.
There were good men in the world—even men who held power over others. It was just a shame there were not more of them with a sense of social responsibility like Lachlan. He was wealthy, but she could see, more than ever, that he cared.
She tore her thoughts from the wider issues to focus on the matter in hand. She hardly dared to ask. ‘And her child?’
Lachlan turned bleak eyes on her. ‘He lives there with her. In the room where she...where she is forced...’
Again, he hid his face so she could not see the extent of his anguish. Flora put her arm around him and he started at her touch.
‘How old is he?’
‘He’ll be three in the spring.’
Flora stood. ‘We cannot leave them there. They must come home with us.’
He stared up at her. ‘Think about what you are saying, Flora. She—she is a fallen woman.’
His words said one thing, but she could see the hope in his eyes. ‘Would you object to your sister living at Lochmore Castle, Lachlan?’
‘No. Of course not. But you...’
‘What about me?’
He jumped to his feet. ‘You are a lady! Is it not bad enough you find out you are married to a man who was raised in the Glasgow slums?’
She took his hands, swallowing back her doubts about welcoming a woman with such a troubled past into her home.
‘Lachlan. You are my husband and you are a good man. It is not your fault your family ended up in such straitened circumstances and I do not care where you were raised. I care only for the man you are now—honest, compassionate, hardworking. Anna and her son are our family and they are welcome in our home.’
* * *
Lachlan closed his fingers around Flora’s, basking in the glow of her praise. Not only was his wife beautiful on the outside, she was beautiful inside as well. And she had said she cared for him. Him! His heart cracked a little and he felt warmth infuse his chest. She was kind, generous and understanding despite having led such a sheltered life. Her expression had revealed her horror as he had confessed his early life—but it was not horror that he had been poor. It was horror at the circumstances that had led to his family’s downfall. She did not know the worst of it, however. She didn’t know about his criminal past—that he was not the honest man she had just declared him to be—and she didn’t know about the punishment that had rebounded so harshly upon his mother and his sister. The shame and guilt at having let his family down so badly still made him squirm.
‘Thank you.’
He raised her hands and pressed his lips first to one, then the other. Her intake of breath sounded loud in the silent room. He turned her hands over then, kissing her palms and her inner wrist, feeling her pulse jump under his lips.
‘You are more generous than I dared to hope.’
She frowned. ‘I wonder if I would have understood so readily had I not seen with my own eyes where your sister lives. And I am horrified that a decent family can be sucked down into such straits by the actions of one greedy landlord. It makes me wonder...’
He waited, while she obviously struggled with internal thoughts.
‘It does make me grateful that you married me. My sisters will now face a more secure future, thanks to you.’
Her words startled him. ‘I do not believe your sisters would have been reduced to such dire circumstances as Anna—they would have your father and your brother to support them.’
‘That is true.’ She shuddered. ‘It has made me very aware, though, of the vulnerability of members of my own sex, should they fall on hard times. It is difficult enough for the men, I know. But a woman, with a child? What made Anna come to Edinburgh?’
Anger boiled inside Lachlan. ‘I think she was guilty only of naivety. She believed there would be a job waiting for her in Edinburgh. And so there was, only it was not the job she expected and—put yourself in her shoes—she was in a strange city where she knew no one and had a child to support. She had no money to return to Glasgow. Hopkins gave her no choice.’
Flora placed her hand against his chest. ‘What will you do? He must be punished for what he has done.’
Lachlan heaved a sigh. ‘I must go. I promised to meet Anna at three. My priority must be to get her and the bairn away without a fuss...much as I should like to go there and to—’ He stopped speaking, aware that his fists had clenched and his words were clipped. ‘I doubt the authorities would take action even if I did report him. He is just one of many such men who prey upon the weak and the desperate.’
‘Maybe...’
Her fingers played with the buttons of his waistcoat and his body reacted, despite the seriousness of their discussion. Once Anna and Davy were safe at Lochmore, he could concentrate on his marriage at long last. He wanted nothing more than for Flora to be happy as his wife, but he’d made a poor start. The way he felt about her, though...the look he sometimes saw in her eyes...they gave him hope. Such hope.
‘Maybe,’ she continued, apparently oblivious to the effect she was having upon him, ‘the best revenge will be to help prevent women falling prey to such men in the first place.’
‘Maybe. But there are many women, too, who choose to follow that path for themselves.’
Her nose wrinkled. ‘I cannot imagine any woman choosing to lie with a stranger for money.’ Then her face washed bright red and she raised stricken eyes to his. ‘Is that what I did? Only, somehow, my choice is legitimised because we said our vows first?’
‘No!’ He hugged her to him, relishing the way her body fitted into his. ‘Do not say that. Marriage is different. Of course it is. Only...’ he tipped her chin up and smiled ruefully ‘...only you appear to have bagged a poor bargain in me.’ He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her tenderly. ‘I promise I shall make it up to you, Flora. I have been distracted by bu
siness and by my search for Anna, but I shall change.’
She grinned at him, then tiptoed up to brush her lips over his. ‘Do not make promises you cannot keep, Husband. You will, I have no doubt, still find yourself distracted by business matters. But I have proved I can help now, so it is a shared interest. Now...’ she stepped back ‘...go and fetch your sister and your nephew. I shall wait here to meet them.’
* * *
Anna and Davy were rescued without drama. The street corner was busy with people going about their business, but—and Lachlan had noticed this before—no one looked at anyone else, almost as though they feared attracting attention of any sort. Nobody gave the hackney cab a second glance as they waited. After a few minutes, he spied Anna hurrying towards him, Davy clutched to her chest, her face drawn with worry. She wore a shabby but respectable dress with a shawl around her shoulders and looked just like any other young mother, although his heart still clenched at the sharpness of her cheekbones and the dark shadows beneath her eyes. He leapt from the hackney, took the child from her arms and helped her inside.
Lachlan climbed in and slammed the door and the carriage immediately set off.
‘Did you have any trouble getting away?’
Anna shook her head, but her ashen skin and fearful expression spoke for themselves. Back at the hotel, he escorted Anna, carrying Davy, inside and straight to the parlour. Anxiety twisted his stomach as he opened the door. It was so important that his wife and his sister got along—what would happen if they loathed one another on sight? Flora had said all the right things about Anna and Davy being welcome at Lochmore, but would that translate into reality or was he expecting too much of his young aristocratic wife?
Flora crossed the room with a welcoming smile. Before he even had the chance to introduce the two, Flora was speaking.
‘I am Flora. I am so pleased to meet you—I am only sorry it has taken Lachlan so long to find you and your little one.’
His Convenient Highland Wedding Page 17