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Chapter Twenty-One

Marianne

Glasgow— Monday 13th August 1877

T he journey on the steam train from Edinburgh took two and a half hours. Rory said little for most of it, sitting quietly on the bench beside me, lost in his own thoughts. I had no idea what they were. Just outside Glasgow, our carriages were hauled up a steep incline by a rope powered by a stationery engine. I must confess, it made me extremely nervous, and I chose not to lean out of the windows with the other passengers to watch as the ropes were attached. I was simply glad when we reached the summit and could continue through the tunnel into the station under our own power.

Glasgow's Dundas Street station was smaller than Edinburgh's Waverley, and the platform swarmed with people from the busy train. The roof over the station prevented the steam from escaping, and as each new train pulled in, a cloud of black smoke was released, making the train, the people and the platform in the near vicinity disappear into darkness.

‘You'll need to stay close,' Rory said. ‘Do you mind putting your arm through mine? And hold on to your purse, for there are pickpockets everywhere here intent on making the most of the blackouts.'

I was more than happy to take his arm. ‘I must confess, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. I'm not used to crowds like this. I feel as if I'm in danger of being swept along and separated from you.'

For answer, he pulled me closer. ‘Are you regretting coming along?'

‘Don't be daft,' I said, in a terrible attempt to mimic his accent. ‘I want to see the city where you grew up.'

‘It's five years since I was last back to attend my father's funeral, I wonder if I'll still recognise the place.'

We emerged from the station and Rory led the way to what he informed me was George Square. It was not the small, private garden I had imagined. On the contrary, it was a huge square set out with style and symmetry, featuring neatly kept lawns with small railings, and wide, paved walkways. There were trees and numerous statues, orderly flowerbeds and neatly spaced benches, and there were gas lights too, all around the perimeter.

A wide cobblestoned road separated the square from the mansions, hotels and commercial buildings which surrounded it. Hackney carriages loitered outside the Queen's Hotel. Horse-drawn trams and private carriages rattled along, but inside the square seemed an oasis of calm. Nannies strolled with their baby carriages. Men sat on the benches with their newspapers and pipes. A group of women stood gossiping. Above us, though the sky was dirty grey, the sun was streaking through.

‘You're seeing it at its best today,' Rory said. ‘Don't be fooled though. A few hundred yards that way you'll find some of the roughest and most dangerous parts of the city. A few hundred yards in that direction is the River Clyde and the docks, and a bit further down river again, they build the ships and the steam engines that help Glasgow power the modern world.'

‘I thought you loved Edinburgh the best.'

‘Wheesht, don't be saying that here.' Rory grinned. ‘This is my home town, of course I love it the best. While I'm here, any road. Come on, we've time to spare, will we take a stroll through George Square? When I was wee, it was a private garden. It's supposed to be open to the public now, but judging by the clientele, I reckon they mean only those and such as those.'

It seemed to me that he was right, when we crossed the road and entered the square. The men were all well-to-do in their business suits and top hats, the women clad in silk gowns and twirling frivolous lace-trimmed parasols that I couldn't help thinking would be filthy and painfully difficult for their maids to clean at the end of the day. Rory was attired with his usual understated elegance. I was wearing my green summer gown and with my favourite shawl and bonnet, an assembly that I had always considered my best, but as we meandered arm in arm around the square, I felt under-dressed, on the verge of shabby. I withdrew my arm from Rory's.

‘What's wrong?'

‘You're right, this square is for those and such as those. Shall we go?'

‘You can't possibly be thinking that you look out of place. That gown suits you. I've always thought so. It brings out the colour of your eyes.'

‘You have never said any such thing to me before.'

‘I've thought it though, a few times.'

‘It's the only summer gown I own.'

‘Considering this is one of about ten days in the year that you would get the opportunity to wear it, to own another would be wasted.'

‘If this one was a little smarter—' I broke off, embarrassed. ‘Never mind.'

‘I didn't think you set much store by clothes.'

Honestly! I wanted to roll my eyes. Sometimes Rory's powers of perception were irritating. ‘I don't, usually. It would be wholly inappropriate for me to be better dressed than my employers.'

‘But if you had the money...'

‘I would spend it on more important things than silk gowns.' Looking up from the brim of my bonnet, I made the mistake of catching his eye. Blast the man, I could not lie to him. ‘I'm not a governess today, but I'm dressed like one and you are not, and for the first time we are out in public in very respectable surroundings, not lurking in our usual haunts of graveyards and mill villages and dusty churches, and I feel I'm making you look conspicuous.'

I quailed as his face set, remembering his outburst in Queen Street Gardens when I had presumed he was judging me. ‘I'm not saying that you are embarrassed by me, Rory, I'm saying that I am—I am uncomfortable. Though I know I shouldn't be. It's only clothes.'

‘I've told you before that I think you're bloody gorgeous.'

My cheeks grew hotter. ‘The point is, I don't think so. Now you'll tell me that it doesn't matter, but I think it does. Today, at any rate.'

Mortifyingly, I found myself on the brink of tears. Rory ushered me over to one of the wrought-iron benches. ‘We'll be late for your appointment with Mr Munro,' I demurred.

‘This isn't like you.' He sat down, giving me no option but to follow suit.

‘I know it's not.' I was nervous, jittery, and I couldn't understand why. It wasn't really my gown, that much I knew.

‘Are you worried about meeting my da's friend?'

It wasn't that, though that might be part of it, in which case it wasn't a lie. ‘How do you plan to introduce me?' I asked. ‘Don't you think my presence might complicate matters, or make him more reticent? He's doing you a big favour, won't he be more likely to speak to you openly if I'm not there?'

I must have sounded convincing. Rory, in fact, looked relieved. ‘I wouldn't be too long. I must admit, there's merit in what you say.'

‘I will sit here and wait for you.' With the nannies, I was thinking. If only I had a charge of my own I wouldn't feel so out of place.

‘Come on, I know where we can find you somewhere more comfortable.' He got up, holding out his hand and I allowed myself to take it. ‘It's only five minutes away just off Ingram Street. I think you'll like it.'

He left me at the gates of a graveyard, with the promise that he would join me within the hour. St David's, the church which guarded the entrance, was in the Gothic style, squashed into a tight space that made it appear inordinately tall. There were three sections to the burial grounds, the main one long and narrow, enclosed by a high wall, with two smaller walled areas on either side of the church. The walls shut out the noise of Ingram Street. It was a quiet, gloomy place, but I felt immediately more at ease.

Rory had told me it was known as the Merchant's Graveyard. Reading the gravestones, I could see why. Sugar, tobacco, wool, the huge slabs of stone that covered the crypts proclaimed the merchant's trade, his wealth, his philanthropy and his stature. His wife and children were afternotes. There were other slabs laid neatly around the walls. Also buried here, Rory had told me, was the man that Madeleine Smith was accused of murdering twenty years before.

I had not heard of the case, but at the time it was apparently notorious, a respectable and very young woman who poisoned her lover, and whose love affair, documented in her passionate letters, scandalised Glasgow society at the time. Respectable young women didn't take lovers, they didn't declare their passion in writing, and they most certainly didn't commit murder. Madeleine Smith was not found guilty, though the peculiar Scottish verdict of not proven implied that the jury believed her to be so.

Rory said that Madeleine Smith's family stood by her, though the scandal forced them to move away from Glasgow. Her letters though, sounded like exactly the kind of thing that could have been used against her. I could easily have encountered Madeleine Smith in the asylum. We had both in our own way escaped that fate.

Unlike Greyfriars kirkyard, there was a uniformity to the tombs in Glasgow, and an austerity to the gravestones. I decided against looking for Madeleine Smith's lover's grave, and instead found a spot in the sunshine at the far corner of the burial grounds, and a convenient stone bench set against the wall. I was still on edge. In George Square, walking arm in arm, despite my shabby gown, Rory and I could have been a married couple taking a stroll together. We were not looking over our shoulders, either of us, and I was not having to mind someone else's children. For a moment, just a moment, I had allowed myself to dream that the illusion we were creating was real. That was what had set me on edge.

I was tired of looking over my shoulder all the time. What was I afraid of? Who could possibly be looking for me now, after all these years? Why should I feel safer in Glasgow than in Edinburgh? Was it an illusion, or was it Rory who made me feel safe? Rory, who was also looking over his shoulder for an enemy he couldn't name. Rory, who in ten days, possibly less, would be walking back out of my life to pick up his own. If we discovered Lillian's true identity, he might even resolve what I had come to think of as our case even sooner. And his other, suspended case? Was that what was preying on his mind during his silences? I knew so little about his real life, but why should I? When he was gone, it would be better for me not to be able to imagine. And he would be gone soon enough.

When he was gone, I resolved, I would be less afraid. Restlessly, I began to circle the burial ground in the opposite direction. When he was gone, there would be no more blood-stirring kisses. I wouldn't have him to look forward to seeing, to talk to, but I could make another friend, couldn't I? Not one like Rory, but...

There was no one like Rory, that was the problem. I stopped in front of a tomb commemorating Andrew Buchannan, tobacco merchant and Lord Provost of Glasgow. I could not possibly be so foolish as to imagine myself to be falling in love with Rory. I forced myself to try to recall how I had felt that one fatal time I had fallen in love. Anxious. I was always anxious. Eager to please. Thrilled when I did please. Devastated when I did not, and anxious—anxious again!—to make amends.

There must have been more to it than that. Passion? I sat down on the obliging tobacco merchant's grave and tried to remember. There must have been passion. There had been, on his side, and I had wanted what he wanted. Until afterwards, when I had wanted the opposite of what he had wanted.

Sighing, I pushed these unpleasant memories to one side. It sickened me to compare Rory and Francis, so I would not. I must have loved Francis, for I had agreed to marry him and I had made love to him, but what I felt for Rory was very different. Passion? Undoubtedly. Just thinking about his kisses set me on fire.

The restraint that he showed too, the sense that he was holding himself on a tight rein, made me want to unleash him. But it wasn't only passion. Rory listened to me. Rory was interested in what I had to say—too interested for comfort at times. And he was careful with me too. He knew when to stop pushing me, when to restrain his curiosity. And he didn't judge me. Though he didn't know me. And I'd make sure he never would.

Ten days, perhaps less. Not enough for me to care too much, not enough for me to miss him too much, not enough for him to become a part of my life. Not that I wanted that, any more than he did. I was in no danger from Rory, so there was no danger in my being with him. In my wanting him. And my longing for his company, that was precisely what I'd said the other day, a side-effect of the clock that was counting down the days until we went our separate ways.

A signal to make the most of them? My edginess gave way to a different kind of tension. I got up and began to make my way towards the entrance. Rory was walking towards me. He waved, and my heart leapt.

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