Chapter Seventeen

Marianne

Edinburgh— Thursday 9th August 1877

R ory's smile was infectious. For no other reason than that I was here with him, breathing in the fresh sea air, in a place I'd never before visited, my spirits lifted. I gave myself over to the moment. The fishing village of Newhaven was only a few miles from the city, but as we walked along the quay with the shuttered fish market behind us, it felt like another world. The air tasted of salt, and there was no pall of smoke hanging over us. The sun had still not made an appearance, but the sky was milky white and not dirty grey.

The tide was coming in, little waves creeping in through the neck of the harbour to lap at the hulls of the fishing boats that were stranded there, lying almost on their sides some of them, in the mud and silt, which gave off a stench of fish and seaweed. The empty boxes stacked outside the big doors of the market smelled of the day's catch—or maybe the previous day's. Across from us, on the harbour arm, there were nets drying, a clique of men working on them. The wind was blowing the wrong way for us to hear them talking, if they were talking.

It was peacefully quiet. We walked along the jetty to the neck of the harbour, where there was a commanding view out over the Firth of Forth. The flat kingdom of Fife was spread out before us, looking close enough to swim to.

‘It's a shame it's not a clearer day, you can see all the way to Stirling from here sometimes,' Rory said. ‘I reckon if I asked nicely, I might be able to persuade one of those men over there to gift us a crab, since it looks as if they're boiling up something to eat. You stay here, I won't be long.'

I watched him make his way back down the jetty to the harbour arm, not rushing but covering the ground quickly enough. I had the distinct impression that he'd been on the brink of saying something important to me just before we reached Newhaven, but then he'd changed his mind.

I couldn't fathom what he was feeling, never mind what he might be thinking, for his guard was up. Often, it seemed to me, he cut short his words, or changed them to say something else. He was careful. I supposed that must come from being a detective, or it might be that he had always been careful, and that was why he had become a detective.

There were times when my ability to read people irked me. I could be walking past someone and find myself assaulted by their anger or their foul temper. Grief was less common, but weariness and misery were sadly everywhere, and there was nothing I could do to alleviate any of it. I tried not to intrude, but it's difficult for me to switch off.

In the asylum there had been countless, terrible times when I wanted to cover my ears and scream for oblivion, to hide under the meagre covers and to stop listening to the outpourings of suffering and horror from the other inmates. I ached to help them, to tell them, I hear you, for some of them could not even articulate what they felt.

I dared not speak though. Anything I said would be seen as further confirmation of my insanity. So I kept silent. In that diabolical place, I came to hate my intuition, for it multiplied my suffering, and burdened me with guilt for my enforced inaction. Only once, I had dared to use what I knew, and then I had acted without thinking, reacting to the threat, the immediate danger, screaming out the warning that stopped Nurse Crawford in her tracks as she began to unlock the cell door. I saved her life with my warning, and the risk I took in telling her was repaid in full when she gave me my life back.

Since my escape, I kept to myself everything I intuited, sensed, or unwittingly pieced together in every household I have worked. The women who employed me thought me perceptive, sensitive, trustworthy, but that is all.

How could you possibly know that?

I made sure that no one could ever throw that question at me.

You can't miss what you don't know.

My words this time. My hurt, that Rory's question had dredged up. I had forgotten it. It was his doing. He had a way of making my feelings spill out, things I didn't even know I was feeling, opening up wounds I thought long healed. Every time I thought I had myself under control, he overset me. He made me feel out of control. He made me want to lose control. But I wouldn't. I would never be such a fool again. I simply couldn't allow myself to.

I watched him chatting with the men on the other side of the harbour, his hands in his pockets, gesturing over to me. I was worrying too much. We were nothing to each other save two people with a shared purpose. In two weeks, he would go back to London, never to return. I resolved to stop worrying, to enjoy the moment.

He looked quite at ease, and not in the least in a hurry. I wondered what he was saying about me. Was I his wife? His sweetheart? His sister? No, not sister, and not wife either. As for sweetheart—no, we were not two innocents wooing. Acquaintance would be the most accurate, but we were surely far beyond mere acquaintances—had been since we first met. He was not employing me to help him, and we were not friends. Or were we? The only friend I ever had was Miss Lomond, but friendship felt far too safe a term for what I felt for Rory. One did not dream of making love to a friend.

He was coming back with a bucket. I had dreamt of him again the previous night, naked underneath me, inside me, making fierce, frantic love such as I had never made before. In my dream we were equals in passion.

‘Success! And look, we're in luck, it's a beauty.'

My face was hot. Extremely thankful for the brim of my hat, I was happy to peer into the bucket and hide my face. Inside was the most enormous crab I've ever seen in my life. ‘Good grief! Is it dead?'

‘Cooked. It will be easier to eat if we leave it to cool.'

He set the bucket down. ‘Do you think you could sit here? I have it on the authority of the fishermen over there that the sun will come out in a bit. Here, take hold of my hand and dreep down.'

I burst out laughing. ‘I'll do my best, if you tell me how to—to dreep?'

‘You don't really need to dreep. I just wanted to see your face when I suggested it. You dreep down a wall from the top, you know, sort of dropping and clinging at the same time to make the fall shorter. Here, take my hand and sit down there.'

I could have managed perfectly well, but I chose to let him help me, sitting down with my legs and skirts dangling over the wall. He sat beside me, close but not touching. He took off his cap, and pushed his hair back from his face. ‘There, we're comfy now.'

‘As comfy as we can be, perched on rock.'

‘And look, the sun's coming out right enough.'

‘And we have a crab for our dinner.' I was still struggling to compose myself, with him being so near. ‘What more could we want?'

‘A hammer for the claws, but I've found us a stone. You have a lovely smile, Marianne, did you know that? There, I didn't mean to make you blush, but it had to be said. When you smile—I mean properly smile, not that smile you use when you are pretending to smile—it makes your eyes glow.'

‘Like a cat in the dark, you mean?' I said, trying to disguise my surprise and delight at the compliment.

‘Like your eyes are smiling too. It warms me, when I'm on the receiving end of it which has not been often, mind you.'

The way he was looking at me was heating me from the inside. His own smile was so warm. ‘You think I am ill tempered?'

‘Crabbit, you mean? Like our dinner would have been when he was caught. Don't be daft. I think—I wish you could be happy, that's all.'

I could tell he had for once failed to guard his tongue, and spoken what was on his mind. It took me aback as much as him. ‘I am happy.'

Rory covered my hands with his. ‘Are you, truly?'

He asked so earnestly that I took his question seriously. ‘I am not unhappy.' I was not locked up. I was free. Provided I was never found, I was free. ‘No, I am certainly not unhappy.'

His hands tightened on mine. ‘That's pretty much what I would have said. I'm happy enough. I'm not unhappy. In fact, it wouldn't even have occurred to me to ask myself the question.'

‘The why did you ask me?'

‘I don't know. You make me think things I don't usually think. You make me want to do things I shouldn't want to do. I shouldn't be holding your hands. I shouldn't be sitting here beside you, thinking about kissing you. I shouldn't have told you that's what I'm thinking.'

‘But you did.' And now I was thinking the same thing, when I should not be. It meant nothing. It couldn't mean anything. It was the day. The sea. The sun which was shining. The strangeness. It was Rory.

‘When you look at me like that, I don't want to let go of you,' he said.

It was a question, though he didn't phrase it that way. ‘Then don't,' I said to him.

I leant towards him. He leant towards me. My eyes drifted closed. I could feel the sunlight on my face, and his breath, and my heart was pounding so hard, and my belly was fluttering. And then his lips rested on mine, and I stopped thinking and gave myself over to sensation. It was a careful kiss. One I could escape from if I chose. Soft. His lips shaping themselves to mine without moving. And then it was less careful. Still soft, but more urgent. His tongue lightly touching mine. Our lips locked, kissing, and the kisses making me feel like I was melting, that I was liquid inside.

A whistle from one of the men on the other side of the harbour put an end to it. We sat staring at each other, our hands clasped, our breathing synchronised. The wind ruffled his hair.

‘I can't believe we did that, in full view of those men,' I said, though I really couldn't have cared less.

‘I can't believe I did that, when I've told myself countless times that I can't.'

I shouldn't have been pleased by this, but I was. It wasn't only me who was—not obsessed, but distracted. Often. ‘Countless times?'

‘A good many, at any rate. And when you do that thing, raise just the one eyebrow like that, you can have no idea what it does to me. I wish you weren't so bloody gorgeous.'

That made me laugh, breaking the spell, breaking our touch. ‘I am thirty-three years old, and long past aspiring to be gorgeous. Not that I ever did.'

‘Well, I'm forty, and long past the age of having my head turned, you'd have thought, but you're a fair way to doing it.'

‘Has it been turned before?'

Rory pushed his hair back from his face again, and set his cap back on. ‘I was engaged to be married once.'

I was entirely unprepared for that confession. ‘You said you were married to your job.'

‘I was. That was the problem. She was a good woman, far better than I deserved. That old case, it wasn't the reason for our parting, but it was the final straw.' Rory sighed, looking suddenly weary. ‘We should talk about it, shouldn't we, the case, I mean? Not let ourselves get distracted. Let me see what I can do with this crab first.'

Rory made short work of dissecting the crab with the help of a stone and his pocket knife, throwing the waste to the gulls. It was utterly delicious, sweet and delicate white meat from the claws, stronger dark, juicier meat from the body which we scooped up with our fingers. We ate silently, each lost in our thoughts. If he was thinking about the old case, I was not. I was thinking about the kisses we had shared. I was thinking that he had matched my desire when he kissed me, just as he had matched my desire in my dreams. My desire roused him. His desire roused me.

‘It's good, but not near so good as the ones I had on the beach on Harris.'

His words cut into my reverie. Mundane words, but the look he gave me made me wonder what he was thinking, if he knew what I had been thinking. It was another trick of his—not trick, I don't mean trick. Technique? He said one thing while thinking another.

‘Sometimes I feel like you can see right inside my head,' he'd said to me.

I wished that I could do so more often.

‘Here, use this.' He handed me his handkerchief, which I was obliged to use for my own was sodden. ‘Did you enjoy it?'

‘Isn't it obvious? It was wonderful.'

‘It's even better when you have butter.' Rory threw the last of the shells from the bucket into the water, which had reached the wall on which we were sitting. The tide had come in, far enough for the fishing boats to bob about as if they were nodding. Across from us, on the other side of the harbour, the men looked as if they were preparing to go to sea. ‘Will we stretch our legs while we talk? We can head along to Granton Harbour. It's only about a mile—unless you've walked far enough already?'

‘No, I'm happy to walk and anyway, I've never been to Granton.'

‘It's a port like this one, though much bigger. There's a new harbour that serves the fishing boats and the steamers out to Burntisland in Fife.' He got to his feet, holding out his hand. I took it and was pulled up effortlessly, though immediately released.

‘You're not worried about being seen there?'

‘I don't think so. I only told you the bare bones of the case the other day, I'll fill in the blanks while we walk.'