An American in Scotland

by Karen Ranney

  What was she going to do? How was she going to face him?

  She had avoided breakfast by simply calling through the door that she didn’t feel like eating. She had remained in the stateroom, grateful that the storm had left them only with placid seas. Everything was tranquil, giving her nothing but time to think.

  Was she supposed to excuse herself from the noon meal, too?

  She had come too close to starving at Glengarden. Therefore she had a choice, to be hungry or to face him. She couldn’t possibly explain herself. She had been in her nightgown and wrapper, practically naked.

  He’d touched her breast.

  Perhaps he should feel badly about his own actions. In fact, she should probably expect an apology from him. After all, she was supposed to be a widow. And there he was, his hand cupping her breast, his thumb gently abrading the nipple.

  She should have screamed in affront. She should have slapped him. Instead, her hand had curved around his cheek, her fingers sliding through his beautiful hair. She had kept his head still for a kiss.

  It would be so much better if she could claim that she had been overcome by his baser instincts.

  Instead, she had instigated everything. After all, she had planted herself on his lap. She had straddled him like he was a horse and then, to make matters worse, enfolded her arms around him. The man had no choice but to place his hands on her back. If one hand crept around to her front and touched her breast, perhaps it was merely because of the motion of the ship.

  That was it.

  The kiss was an accident, brought about by the pitching and rocking of the vessel. They were each complicit and each to be excused.

  So, when the noon meal arrived, she was prepared to enter the parlor and face Duncan, only to discover that he had decided to eat with the captain, leaving her alone.

  AFTER HER lunch it was safe for her to go on deck. Before she did, she perused the bookshelves in the parlor. She wasn’t in the mood for philosophy or geography or anything to do with ships after last night, thank you very much. She wanted something that was light and charming, so she selected one of Mark Twain’s books.

  She opened the door to the deck, expecting there to be debris on the deck or some damage. Either there had been and the crew had industriously removed any trace of it, or the Raven simply sloughed off any signs of the storm. The decks were swept clean, the grayish white paint gleaming in the afternoon sun.

  The paddle wheel was churning through a submissive sea while the two smokestacks pumped out clouds of smoke. From what Captain McDougal said last night at dinner, once they berthed in Nassau they’d change to anthracite, a different type of coal that burned cleaner and didn’t produce noticeable smoke.

  “If you’ve got a gentle breeze abeam,” the captain said, “smoke from the chimneys will give away your location. That’s why once we run the blockade, we’ll have men watching the skies even in the dark. It’s easy enough to see smoke from a ship burning soft coal.”

  If she hadn’t experienced the storm of the night before, she wouldn’t know it by the glorious day. The sky was a cerulean blue, the air so clear she felt like she could see for hundreds of miles. There were no other ships on the horizon, no sign of land anywhere. They were in the midst of the Atlantic, alone and subject to the ocean’s whim. Now it acted tame, almost subservient, but it might rear up at any moment and show its awful teeth.

  Last night she’d thought they were close to dying. She’d never been as afraid in her entire life, even when Bruce locked her in the cold house. She’d known that, eventually, he would come and let her out.

  The routine was always the same. Hours would pass until he returned, and when he did, he’d recite a litany of her sins for which he passed judgment.

  “Have you learned your lesson, Rose?”

  She was always supposed to answer, “Yes, Bruce, I’ve learned my lesson.”

  The few times she hadn’t followed the unwritten script, he’d turned around and left, locking the door again, shutting her in the dark.

  After her apology, he would say: “Are you going to do it again, Rose?”

  “No, Bruce.” She’d learned to repeat that by rote.

  Every time he punished her, she promised not to repeat her sin. Sometimes it was days before she did, or even weeks.

  Most of her activities were unseen or unnoticed because she had the collusion of the one hundred seventeen slaves at Glengarden. None of them would ever have reported her. Once, it was the overseer who’d done so, because she’d interfered with a whipping of a very young boy. Another time, Susanna told Bruce that she had taken some of her own bedding to one of the cabins. Or that she’d been seen delivering food to one of the older men who was feeling poorly.

  Both Susanna and Claire saw her involvement—­or even her acknowledgment—­of the slaves as abhorrent.

  Had Claire ever spoken to Bruce about her activities? She wasn’t certain, but she did know that her sister had never defended her.

  A thought to put a blight on the day, if she let it.

  One of the seaman approached her.

  “Would you like to sit, ma’am? I could roll a barrel over there in the corner. You could read and get a little of the sun.”

  “Thank you, I would like that,” she said, smiling at him.

  The corner turned out to be a place where she could see all the activity on the deck yet be out of the way of the spray from the paddle wheel.

  The Raven was churning through the Atlantic, making her wonder how many days until they reached the Bahamas. Her voyage to London had taken nine days, ten if you counted how long it took to dock. They could easily make Nassau in eight.

  She opened her book and began to read, glad she’d chosen a humorous volume. Mr. Twain had a way with words and she was soon smiling in delight.

  Her father had told her that she’d taken to reading like her brothers had taken to rough-­and-­tumble sports. Claire had been the delicate one, the perfect lady, always reciting rules to her or criticizing her deportment. Deportment, a word she heard a little too much from Claire. She was too jerky in her movements. She had no grace. Her table manners needed to be improved. She lacked the wit to make sparkling conversation.

  She hadn’t cared much about learning the rules of womanhood, but give her a book and she was enraptured. She found, over the years, that it was easier to read if she hid herself away, and often did so in the attic of their New York home. There, the winter afternoons were almost warm and cozy, with the heat wafting upward from the snug kitchen. When she did venture downstairs with her current book, it was to endure teasing from her three brothers and an exasperated look from her only sister.

  “You’re always reading. One day, you’re going to look up and find that life has passed you by, Rose. You’ll be a spinster with nothing to cuddle up to but a book.”

  That comment had caused her brothers to laugh, as if the thought of her ever cuddling up to anything was uproarious.

  Claire still gave her that look from time to time, enough that when she read it was in the silence and peace of her room at Glengarden before she was sent off to live in the slave cabins. When she did venture outside, when the heat became oppressive, she chose one of the massive oaks to sit under, someplace far enough away from the fields that she could pretend she was somewhere else.

  Yet she was never as adept at pretense as the ­people who lived in the big house. Those same ­people, dulled to their own experience, had no difficulty whatsoever condemning her actions.

  “I can’t believe that you would willfully bring scandal to the family,” Claire said before she left. “Traveling all that way alone.”

  “No one has to know,” she answered. “If anyone notices my absence, simply tell them that I’ve gone to visit friends.”

  Susanna believed their duty was to suffer any indignities of their position in stoic a
nd ladylike silence. Even if that meant they starved to death. As long as it was gracefully done, they wouldn’t shame the MacIain name, the heritage of Glengarden, or her beloved South.

  Yet however much Susanna might have disapproved of her errand, she was the only one to give her any practical advice about running the blockade out of Charleston.

  “If you’re boarded,” she’d said in an accent that was as thick as the air on a summer day in South Carolina, “claim to be an ex-­pat. Tell them you were escaping from the South for your home in New York. Greet those long-­lost Yankees as if they were your brothers come to life.”

  She’d only stared at Susanna for a moment. The matriarch of the MacIain family had never gone out of her way to have a relationship with her and she’d acted in kind. They were exceedingly polite to each other, but they’d never had a conversation more important than the weather or the flowers.

  Standing there, watching as Susanna tapped her cane imperiously on the beautifully waxed floors of the Glengarden foyer, she’d abruptly wished that they had meant more to each other, that the older woman could have come out of her protective shell or that she herself might have tapped on it once or twice.

  Would a closer relationship have changed anything? It was too late to wish for that.

  Twice, a shadow obscured her view. Twice she ignored it, knowing full well that Duncan was standing there. When she ignored him the first time, he walked away. The second time, he picked up a crate and returned to her side, placing the crate next to her barrel.

  She put a finger in her book to mark her place.

  “Do you think we’ll have another storm?” she asked.

  She’d scanned the sky, but it had been almost cloudless. The few clouds that had scuttled overhead looked friendly enough. Yet they’d had no hint of the storm last night, either.

  “I’ve never known anyone to be able to foretell storms, especially on the ocean, so I can’t answer that question.”

  “Do you ever lie?” she asked, smiling. “To save someone’s feelings or to ease someone’s fears?”

  “I’ve been known to bend the truth on occasion,” he said, “for those reasons, but I don’t like doing it. It seems to me that the truth is better under most situations. Are you afraid?”

  She thought about her answer for a moment. “Not afraid. Cautious, perhaps. I don’t want to go through something like that again.”

  “Shall I apologize?”

  Her cheeks immediately heated.

  He really shouldn’t look so fixedly at her. His gaze had the effect of warming her from the inside out.

  “No,” she said.

  “Are you certain?”

  “We are both to blame, don’t you think? The storm was no doubt the cause for us acting so foolishly.” She held out the book to him. “Have you ever read this? It’s quite amusing, yet at the same time it’s profound. I’ve read some of his work before, but it was nothing like this.”

  “Are you certain, Rose? I shouldn’t have taken advantage of the situation.”

  He was not going to be deflected, was he?

  “I don’t think you’re the one who took advantage,” she said, trying to be as honest as he. “I believe I was the one who kissed you first.”

  Could her cheeks get any hotter?

  He took the book from her and turned it over in his hands.

  “I shouldn’t have taken advantage,” she said. “You were being very kind to me, very understanding.”

  “I wasn’t feeling kind or understanding,” he said, handing the book back to her and leveling that look on her again.

  He really had to stop doing that.

  They needed to talk about something else.

  She hugged the book close to her chest and stared out at the endless ocean.

  “Are you really planning on leaving me in Nassau?”

  His smile altered character and that flat look was back in his eyes. Evidently, Duncan didn’t like to be challenged as to his dictates.

  That was really too bad. She had absolutely no intention of changing her personality to suit him. Bruce could give him countless examples of her sedition.

  “We’ve discussed this before,” he said.

  “You know that if you do,” she said, “I’ll simply have to book passage on another ship. They’re charging two hundred fifty dollars on every blockade runner. That’s two hundred fifty dollars I could use for seeds, Duncan. Or livestock.”

  “Why not return to New York instead of remaining in South Carolina?”

  She smiled. “I’m a woman without a country. The southerners look at me as if I’m an enemy in their midst. Here I am, from New York, a Yankee in their bosom. Yet if I return to New York, having lived two years in the South, can you imagine the reaction of my neighbors?”

  She looked away again, focusing on the wires leading down from the masts.

  “Besides, there’s no reason to return to New York. My brothers perished in the war. They were the last of my family. My sister lives at Glengarden with me.”

  “Don’t you realize how much more difficult life is going to be at Glengarden, the longer the war carries on? It’s been two years, Rose, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to end any time soon.”

  “I know exactly how long the war has lasted, Duncan. I can mark the day of every major battle.”

  “Stay in Nassau with your friends and I’ll join you later. We could return to Scotland together.”

  “What would I do in Scotland, Duncan, without family?”

  “You have a family, Rose. One who’s already welcomed you.”

  His family didn’t know the truth about her. They’d welcomed an imposter, but she wouldn’t tell him that.

  “Why go back there?”

  “My sister and my niece.”

  “I’ll bring them to Nassau,” he said.

  Oh, if it were only that easy. As for returning to Glengarden, there was no other choice.

  “In the last several months the plantation has fallen apart and a portion of that blame is mine,” she said.

  “Why?”

  Once again she told him the truth.

  “I did everything I could to help the slaves escape once Bruce left for war. Slaves weren’t allowed off the plantation without a note from their owner. I forged dozens of notes, sent ­people north with letters of introduction to organizations that could help them. They left by the twos and threes. A few at a time, they were barely missed, until suddenly they weren’t there.”

  She met his eyes. “I let them know about the Emancipation Proclamation, that they were free. I didn’t tell them that it wasn’t legal yet. It was enough to give them hope, and they hadn’t had hope in a very long time.”

  He didn’t say anything, just watched her steadily.

  She hadn’t expected the plantation to collapse or for the remaining inhabitants to be helpless without the constant presence of their slaves. The kitchen garden was left to wilt. The livestock weren’t cared for and had to be slaughtered early. None of their flour or sugar were rationed or even inventoried.

  It was as if Susanna and Claire were adult children living in a massive dollhouse where they were posed periodically. They had no actions of their own, no thoughts, and no initiative.

  Without Maisie and Benny, she didn’t know what would have happened to them.

  “I can’t leave the rest of the family to their own devices.” She had to make sure the remaining inhabitants of Glengarden had some protection against what was surely to come.

  “I’ll get the gold to them,” he said. “You can remain in Nassau.”

  She shook her head.

  Claire and Gloria were her only living relatives. As far apart as Claire and she had grown, she still couldn’t walk away from her sister without trying to convince her to leave Glengarden. They’d find a p
lace to live as far from war and the taint of the plantation as they could, where everyone was free.

  “You mustn’t worry about me, Duncan. Remember last night? We survived.”

  “And the war, Rose? What about the war?”

  She didn’t have an answer for that.

  He stood and left her without another word.

  Chapter 13

  She was just a door away. Just there, tucked away in the captain’s bed, the comforter warming her from the cool sea breeze. Was she sleeping? Was she dreaming?

  Did she dream of him, of Bruce? Did she weep in her sleep for her dead husband? Or did she fear him still?

  The man had been a tyrant. What kind of man imprisons his own wife? What kind of husband treats his wife as if she were chattel?

  The same kind who could own slaves and never let it bother his conscience.

  If nothing else, Bruce should have protected her. He should have made provisions for her, so that Rose wouldn’t have to travel half a world away to gain some semblance of financial security.

  Did Bruce know that his legacy would be forever tarnished by his cruelty? Rose had little to say in praise of her dead husband.

  If he married, Duncan hoped his wife would say something pleasant about him after his passing. Something innocuous, if nothing else. Duncan was very fond of his family. He was a good friend, a fair employer. Would his own widow, should he ever have one, be as restrained as Rose? Was it because she was ashamed that she couldn’t feel more for Bruce? Or because doing so opened up a wound?

  The idea of Rose weeping for the bastard disturbed him.

  He left the stateroom for the deck, needing to be in the company of something other than his thoughts. He nodded to a few of the seamen, listening to their conversation. On some nights they would probably bunk on deck, but as long as the weather had an early spring chill, their hammocks would be warmer.

  What kind of man chose a seafaring life? One who was a great deal more comfortable with the ocean than he was. He’d never appreciated the sheer size of the Atlantic, being a lifelong resident of Glasgow and only familiar with the River Clyde.