The Lass Wore Black (28 page)
“I truly doubt the situation is so dire,” Dina said. “Besides, I might have a few candidates for you to consider. Good girls, with some talent with a needle.”
Leave it to Dina to use the situation to advance one of her girls.
Mrs. McPhee, however, was not looking at all happy about the idea.
“Is there such a thing as a lighter veil?” she asked in an effort to diffuse the situation. Each woman looked as if she wouldn’t give any ground. They could be here all day.
The seamstress was looking up at her, and so was the apprentice, both women wearing identical expressions of surprise.
Why were they acting as if she’d done something miraculous? It was a simple alteration, that was all.
“Would you truly agree to a lighter veil, Catriona?” Dina asked, her eyes wide.
She’d do anything if it hurried up the fitting. Standing in one place for so long was excessively wearisome on her left knee. Yet even that complaint seemed ridiculous to utter. At least she lived in a place of sunshine, where she could see the sky and have enough food to eat.
“Yes,” she said. “Just something slightly lighter. Not transparent.”
Mrs. McPhee nodded. “I’ve just the thing. I’ll have to bring it next time.”
She sighed inwardly. Why must there be a next time?
Dina strode forward, grabbed her hand, and squeezed it lightly.
“Oh, my dear, I’m so pleased,” she said, looking as if she might cry.
What had she done? Nothing worth mention, yet it seemed to please Dina beyond measure.
Perhaps selfishness was a coat, and she’d worn it entirely too long. What had Mark said? Something about a world that narrowed to encompass only herself and perhaps her sister.
Sometimes, she’d even excluded Jean.
What would Jean have done, facing her circumstances?
She would have put a brave face on the situation. She would have allowed Dina to coax her from her room earlier or perhaps would never have become a hermit. She would have attempted to expand her narrowed world.
Even if she wasn’t as good a person as Jean, perhaps she could accomplish something in her life. Something that would give her a purpose and take her thoughts away from her current situation and memories of a footman who wasn’t what he seemed.
She would begin today. This moment, in fact. With Dina’s help, she climbed down from the riser, made her farewells, and went to her room.
There, she sat and wrote her sister, only noticing after she was done that she’d lit the lamp.
“I
do worry about my appetite, Dr. Thorburn. I haven’t any for Sally’s custard, and I always used to like it so. What could the matter be?”
Mark listened with half his attention, then carefully replaced his stethoscope back in the pouch inside his bag.
Mrs. Dalmahoy was forever lamenting about something or other. She was either too hungry or not enough. She wasn’t sleeping well, but on his next visit she was worried that she might be sleeping too much.
Whether they paid him or not, he always wanted to give his patients his full attention and all of his skill. Lately, however, he was finding it difficult to tolerate patients like Mrs. Dalmahoy, especially since she, and several other matrons in New Town, were perfectly healthy.
Mrs. Dalmahoy’s husband was not attentive to her complaints. Nor were her friends sympathetic when they were just like her, craving attention. Yet he couldn’t afford to ignore her. One of her complaints might be a real disease.
How would she have fared with an injury like Catriona’s? Would she have hidden from the world? Or would she have demanded pity as her due?
He told himself he shouldn’t be thinking of Catriona.
“Appetite is sometimes transitory, Mrs. Dalmahoy,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If it persists in a week or so, we’ll discuss it then.”
“Then you don’t think it’s anything of concern?”
He forced a smile to his face. “I think it might be that you’re simply thinking too much about it. You’re quite healthy.”
“I am?”
He nodded.
“Well, thank you, Dr. Thorburn.”
His smile was more genuine this time. “You’re welcome, Mrs. Dalmahoy.”
He took his leave, giving Brody a wave, a signal that the next stop would be Kingairgen. Not only did he want to see his grandfather, but he needed some information.
At Kingairgen, he sent Brody to the kitchen to warm himself. He removed his greatcoat in the hall, smiled at one of the maids, and sought out his grandfather. He wasn’t in his library but in his suite.
His knock resulted in a giggle. The sound kept him motionless, hand raised. He took a step back just as the door opened and a woman of middle years attired in maid’s cap and apron scurried past him and down the hall, still giggling.
“Is that Mary?” he asked, turning back to the earl, who stood inside.
His grandfather looked down at the floor. “She was helping me with something.”
He wasn’t going to ask.
“Your father is angry at you,” his grandfather said, moving back into the sitting room. “Said to tell you that he expects more loyalty from his own son.”
He followed, setting his bag down on the table. When his grandfather sat on the settee and began unbuttoning a shirt that had been hastily buttoned—which Mark deduced from the wrong placement of buttons to buttonholes—he bit back his smile and took out his stethoscope.
“What have I done now?” he asked.
“No doubt failed to attend one of his entertainments,” the earl said, grinning at him. Although his teeth were slightly discolored, they were all his and his grin was engaging. “Although he’s not happy about the Ferguson girl. She’s made no secret of the fact she thinks you’re a scoundrel.”
At least he didn’t cavort with maids in his room, he thought. However, since he’d pretended to be a footman, he couldn’t exactly claim to be virtuous.
“Have you taken to being the family messenger?”
“If I wasn’t, neither of you would communicate with the other.”
“I’m surprised that my father deigns to speak to you,” he said.
“I know how damn stubborn each of you is,” his grandfather said. “You’ve always been that way, the both of you.”
“We’ve had this conversation before,” he said, and it wasn’t one he intended to repeat again.
He placed the disk of his stethoscope against his grandfather’s chest and listened for a moment. When he was done, he stepped back and said, “I’ve taken to recommending the Banting diet for some of my patients. They seem to be prospering on it, just like you.”
“Good for you,” his grandfather said. “Knew you had sense. Can I put my shirt back on now?”
He nodded.
“A hell of a thing, when my grandson makes me undress and dress like I was an infant.”
“I can recommend someone else, if you’d prefer a different physician.”
His grandfather shook his head. “No, it’s the only way I see you. I told your father, by the way, that he should become your patient.”
“I doubt you met with much success. I’ve tried to give him medical advice in the past. He pretends not to hear.”
“He seems to dote on those brothers of yours. I think it’s because they’re more like your mother in temperament, while you’re just like him.”
“I hope you won’t mind if I disagree entirely.”
His grandfather held out his cuffs for help in fixing the links. “I didn’t expect you would agree, being as stubborn as you are.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You’re calling me stubborn?”
“You’re used to people obeying your every word.”
“Am I?”
His grandfather nodded. “It’s being a physician, I think.”
“Surely I’m not as autocratic as that,” he said. Was he? “The reason my father enjoys the company of my brothers so much is because they want his money. They’ll only say what he wants to hear and do what he wants them to do, at least until his back is turned.”
His grandfather’s eyes narrowed. “Your grandmother said much the same thing to me. She was disappointed in those two. Perhaps old age will give your father some measure of wisdom.”
“Old age will give him arthritis, and liver spots,” he said. “He’ll have pain in his stomach and his heart will give him trouble from time to time. I doubt, sincerely, that he will ever grow wise.”
“Do you hate him so much?”
Mark put his stethoscope back into his bag.
“I don’t hate him at all,” he said. “I love him, after my fashion. But I’m under no illusions as to his character. My father believes his title makes him better than other people. It doesn’t.”
“What makes the measure of a man, my boy? In your eyes?”
He closed up his bag and turned back to his grandfather. “What he does, I think. Who he is when no one is looking.”
“So who are you when no one is looking?”
A failure, perhaps, or even worse: a hypocrite.
“Tell me about the Ferguson girl. What happened there? I hear she’s telling everyone you deceived her.”
He eyed his grandfather. “How do you hear all these things? You might as well live in the middle of Edinburgh.”
“I’ve a penchant for gossip,” the old man admitted with a smile. “People fascinate me.”
“It’s closer to the truth to say that she broke off the relationship with me. However, first you’d have to define relationship. We were friends, barely more.”
His grandfather’s laugh startled him.
“Oh, I suspect you were a great deal more than that, at least in Anne’s eyes, and those of her parents, her siblings, and assorted cousins. I believe, my dear boy, that they were already planning a wedding.”
“Were they? Wouldn’t the bridegroom have to be involved?”
“You disappoint me, if you know so little of women as that. Once a woman has separated you from the flock, you might as well admit defeat.”
“You make me sound like a sheep.”
“As far as women are concerned, my boy, men
are
sheep. We may think we rule the world, but only until a woman has chosen one of us.” He glanced over at a miniature of his wife on the bureau and smiled. “Most of us, I’m happy to say, follow after the ewe with the smell of her in our nostrils, content.”
“Are you speaking of love?”
“What else? What else changes a decent man into such a docile creature?”
“That wasn’t the relationship I had with Anne Ferguson.”
His grandfather smiled again. “That’s not what you felt for Anne. That doesn’t mean she was similarly disposed. She probably thought herself deeply in love.”
He considered that thought for a moment, remembering Anne’s stricken look. “You might be right,” he said.
“Is it another woman?”
He occupied himself putting his bag in order, taking the minutes to organize his thoughts. No one saw through him as well as his grandfather, even though Sarah was a close second.
“Yes,” he said. Perhaps honesty was best. “It is.”
“Not well done of you, my boy. Always lead one woman out the back door before you open the front door to another.”
He smiled. “It isn’t that way,” he said.
Catriona still occupied too much of his mind. He told himself, daily, to forget her, but the admonishment had no effect on his thoughts.
“It’s always that way,” his grandfather said.
“Even when you aren’t aware it’s happening?” he asked.
“Well, damn, boy, that’s even worse.”
He didn’t want to discuss his relationship—or lack of one—with Catriona. Instead, he sat on the chair opposite his grandfather.
“I need your help,” he said.
“Whatever it is, my boy, you know I’ll help. Have you got her in the family way?”
He simply stared at the old man, who had a vivid and venal imagination. What he also had was a network of contacts that stretched throughout Scotland and England.
“I need help in a confidential matter.”
His grandfather’s eyebrows rose.
He shook his head. “No, I haven’t got her in a family way.”
Had he? He brushed that thought aside for the moment. “I need someone who can attend to a task and not speak of it.”
“That sounds ominous, my boy.”
“I need someone watched,” he said. “A woman.”
One of the old man’s eyebrows disappeared into the thatch of his white hair.
“Let me tell you about Catriona Cameron,” he said, realizing it was the only way he was going to get the information he needed.
For the next quarter hour he found himself divulging most of the story to the earl. He wasn’t about to admit the physical relationship between himself and Catriona, but it seemed his grandfather could read well enough between the lines.
“So you’re concerned about the girl, eh?”
He nodded.
“Go and see my solicitors, boy. They employ a few people. Some of them have done a great service for me in the past.”
He looked at his grandfather quizzically, but the old man merely shook his head.
That afternoon he hired, by virtue of his grandfather’s solicitor, a man by the name of Thomas MacLean.
Mr. MacLean wore a bowler hat and a garish plaid jacket, spoke little, nodded much, and kept taking notes in such a frenetic fashion that Mark wondered if he was recording their entire conversation, word by word.
The man also had a regrettably porcine appearance, with a round face, a short bulbous nose, and hair so light it appeared translucent.
“You think the girl is in danger?” the man asked.
He pushed back his impatience. “I don’t know, Mr. MacLean. I just can’t rid myself of this feeling that something’s not right. I hope it’s simply my imagination.”
“It’s an inkling, that’s what it is,” the man said, waving the hand holding the stubby pencil at him. “You’re a wise man to be listening to it.”
Was he?
Or was he simply overly concerned about Catriona to the exclusion of his common sense? She was constantly in his thoughts, and had started appearing in his dreams.
Something had to be done about that, too.
