There’s nothing quite like a Highland wedding. I say this as if I’ve been to dozens. I’ve gone to two, both times as my grandmother’s plus one, attending the weddings of happy couples I’d never actually met and had to keep checking a note on my phone to remember who they were.
This time it’s different. Okay, I’m still a plus one. And I still don’t know the happy couple. But instead of keeping notes on my phone, I have them written on a piece of paper, stuffed deep into the voluminous pockets of my equally voluminous layers of Victorian dress.
The last wedding I went to in the Scottish highlands was June 2016. This one is also taking place in June . . . 1870.
There’s a story there. A long one. The short version is that I passed through time at the fickle whim of some unknown cosmic force. My nan named that force Fate and said I am exactly where I was always supposed to be. Which is apparently, in the body of a buxom blond twenty-year-old housemaid instead of an athletic brunette thirty-one-year-old police detective.
I have yet to appreciate that part of the switch, but I must appreciate where else I landed—in the household of a chemist and her doctor-turned-undertaker brother, who works in early forensic science. Along with their police detective friend, they know my story, so I’m no longer scrubbing chamber pots. I’m the assistant to that forensic scientist, Dr. Duncan Gray. I’m also, apparently, his plus one for this wedding, which is for Detective Hugh McCreadie’s younger sister . . . Iona? Fiona? It’s in my notes.
At the moment, we’re in a coach, heading into the countryside. For propriety’s sake, Gray should sit beside his sister, but since no one can see us in here, we’ve maneuvered McCreadie to sit beside Isla instead. She’s across from me, and Gray beside me, separated by a decorous handspan gap.
Any other time, we’d be chattering away, excited about a rare country holiday. Instead, it feels as if we’re going to a funeral, everyone somber and staring out windows, with Isla occasionally casting anxious glances at McCreadie.
This is not four friends off to a rousing Highland wedding. It’s three friends going along to support the fourth—McCreadie—who looks like he’d rather be at work.
I don’t know why McCreadie is estranged from his family. Now that we’ve all become friends, I think I could get that information easily, but they seem to have forgotten that I don’t know, and it’s awkward to ask. So I’ve been playing detective, putting together the puzzle pieces.
I know McCreadie’s family is well-to-do. Upper-middle class, like the Grays. That’s how the boys became friends—they attended the same school. Despite the estrangement, McCreadie is still well off for a police detective—criminal officer, as they’re called in Victorian Scotland. I suspect he receives some family money. I know the break happened when he’d been in his early twenties, around the time he became a police officer, which is also around the time events he’d broken off an engagement. I don’t know how these three things—the law-enforcement career, the broken engagement, and the familial estrangement—are connected, but I suspect they are.
As for his family, he has one sibling—the sister getting married, who is significantly younger. Like Gray, McCreadie is thirty-one and his sister seems to be about twenty-one. In the modern world, we sometimes get the impression that Victorian women were all married off at eighteen. In reality, McCreadie’s sister is marrying at what’s considered the perfect age, as it was for most of the twentieth century.
Any ill blood between McCreadie and his family doesn’t extend to his sister, which is why we’re here. She asked—begged—him to come, and so he has, for her.
Now we’re rumbling along in this coach, with our groom—Simon—driving and the twelve-year-old parlormaid, Alice, riding beside him, having been invited ostensibly as Isla’s ladies maid, but really to give the girl a holiday in the countryside.
When Isla casts yet another anxious glance McCreadie’s way, I decide it’s up to me to break this ice, which I do in the most time honored of road-trip ways.
“Are we there yet?” I say, peering through the dusty window. “It’s so much faster with the bridge.”
That gets McCreadie’s attention. There are people who are good at long, morose silences—such as the guy sitting beside me—but McCreadie fairly leaps on this excuse, his handsome face lightening in a smile.
“Bridge?” he says. “Over the Firth?”
“Yep.”
“How is that even possible?”
“I’m not an engineer,” I say. “But there’s also a railroad bridge that I’m pretty sure gets built in this century.”
“They are starting one next year,” rumbles a voice beside me.
I glance over to see Gray, relaxing with his eyes still shut.
I elbow him. “Tell us more.”
He sighs. “I do not know more. I only heard that they are beginning a suspended bridge for trains.”
I frown. “Are you sure? I don’t think they start construction until near the end of this century.” I pause, thinking hard. “No, they did build another one, but it coll—” I snap my mouth shut. “Never mind.”
Isla’s brows rise. “Are you suggesting that if another bridge is built first, we should not use it?”
“Er, probably not.”
“Well, I for one might be willing to play the odds, if such a thing comes about,” McCreadie says. “Taking the ferry really does make this an interminable trip. Dare I ask how long it would take in your day, Mallory?”
“With bridges and motor cars? An hour to Sterling Castle. So probably two hours to where we’re going.”
Isla sighs. “I was born in the wrong century.”
“What is going on out there?” McCreadie says, opening his window to poke his head through. “I swear we have slowed.”
“See what you have done?” Gray says to me. “A few moments ago, we were all perfectly content with our eight-hour coach ride, and now everyone is complaining.”
“You spent all of yesterday moaning about spending all of today in a coach.”
His eyes narrow. “I mentioned it once.”
“Once at breakfast, once while we were dissecting that liver, once while—”
“I had resigned myself to the journey,” he says. “And now you have spoiled it. Remember whose coach this is. It will be a much longer trip if you walk.”
“Can I walk?” I say. “Please?” I lean toward McCreadie’s open window. “I’m sure I can move faster than this.”
“There does appear to be some sort of slowdown,” McCreadie says, still looking out the window.
“See what you did?” Gray aims a mock glare my way. “You complain about our speed, and the universe takes umbrage.”
“Can you tell what’s going on up there?” I ask McCreadie.
His smile sparks. “No, which means we ought to investigate.”
McCreadie raps on the roof for Simon to stop the carriage. As I gather my skirts, Gray rises and reaches for the door handle.
“Opening the door for us?” McCreadie says. “Very kind, but unnecessary. Stay right there and nap—”
Gray is already out of the coach. Then McCreadie holds the door as I descend.
“Not joining us?” I say to Isla.
“I deem this particular mystery too minor to deserve my attention. I will stay here, and absolutely will not stretch my legs onto the other seat in a most unladylike fashion. Nor will I sneak anything from the picnic basket in your absence.”
Gray slowly turns around.
She rolls her eyes. “Do not worry, Duncan. If I open the basket, I shall take only a sandwich. Sometimes I think I would prefer a brother who worried instead about me behaving in an unladylike fashion. Now go. Your beloved pastries are safe.”
As soon as we’re out of the coach, the problem is evident: it’s a traffic jam. The road curves ahead, but there are three coaches between us and that curve. Simon had discussed the route with Gray, and they’d decided to avoid the major road and take a side one. Seems everyone else did the same, and now it’s like leaving modern-day Vancouver on a Friday, heading up to the lakes and mountains and fresh air of the Okanagan.
I’m guessing it will get better the farther we travel from Edinburgh, but for now, this really is like those weekend traffic snarls—city folk trying to get a bit of time away on a gorgeous June day.
It’s not the weekend here. In fact, it’s Monday. Weekends aren’t a thing yet, at least not in the sense of getting time off. If you’re nobility, you have all the time off you want. Middle class? Depending on where you fall on that scale. Gray runs his family’s lucrative business and can take time off whenever he pleases. McCreadie cannot.
As for the people who really need time off to rest? Those working in factories and shops and domestic service? A good employer will give you Sunday morning for church, and there’s been a move toward making it a full day, but two entire days off? How would the world function?
In modern times, we look back at that with equal parts horror and superiority. Horror at the long hours, and superiority at the thought that no one realized people are more productive with time off to rest and enjoy themselves. And yet the forty-hour work week has been a thing for a century, despite studies proving that employees can do as much by working less. Don’t tell that to corporations, though. A four-day work week? How would the world function?
The people in the coaches ahead will not be working class. The carriages are all as fine—if not finer—than Gray’s. While the “less fortunate” might get into the Highlands to visit relatives, they’ll take the train. The well-to-do want the privacy and convenience of their own conveyances. Like private jets that move really, really slowly.
I don’t grumble for long. It’s too nice of a day, and walking under the shade of oaks and willows, I’m reminded of how much I love country getaways. Oh, I’m a city girl. No doubt about that. But there is much to be said for walking along a sun-dappled dirt road, a light breeze smelling of grass and loam and lifting the heat, bird song filling the air. No stink of coal fires. No clatter of hooves. The only familiar smell is . . .
Gray takes my elbow to sidestep me past a pile of steaming horse dung. Yep, there’s always that.
As we walk, coach doors and windows open, with people calling out to ask what’s going on, as if we can see better than their high-perched drivers. We keep walking. When we reach the corner, I let out a groan.
It’s not a “volume of traffic” style jam. It’s the kind caused by a disabled vehicle. Just around the corner, a single coach has stopped. Two well-dressed men stand back, eying the coach as if waiting for it to levitate, lifted by a hand from the heavens above.
McCreadie sighs. “Looks as if we will get our jackets dirty, Duncan. These fellows are going to need some help.”
Gray only grunts. If the problem is a stuck coach or broken wheel—which happens as often as flat tires—neither of them will stand by waiting for divine intervention. They’ll take off their coats, roll up their sleeves and get to work.
“Trouble with the coach?” McCreadie calls as we draw near.
The two men turn, and McCreadie’s gait slows. They’re about our age. Both are dressed as if heading to a formal event, wearing silk cravats and top hats. Even McCreadie—usually a total fashion plate—is dressed for travel.
One of the men is tall and broad-shouldered, with light brown hair. The other has medium brown hair and is more compact. Seeing us, the darker-haired one’s frown lifts in a welcoming grin. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, his companion steps forward.
“Duncan Gray,” the bigger man says. “Thank God you are here. We are in most urgent need of your very special skills.”
Something in his tone grates down my spine, and I find myself hoping he’s in need of a doctor . . . to treat some terribly embarrassing rash.
“Cranston,” Gray says, his tone managing to be both cool and cordial at the same time. “What seems to be the trouble?”
“I have lost my lapel pin.” He motions to his cravat. “We stopped to take . . . a brief jaunt into the woods, and when I climbed back into the carriage, I realized it was gone.”
McCreadie’s eyes narrow. “You are holding up an entire line of coaches because you lost a stick pin, Archie?”
“It is a very expensive pin.”
The darker-haired man murmurs, “I did mention that we ought to pull over up ahead and walk back.”
“Nonsense, Sinclair.” Cranston claps the other man on the back. “They can wait. We shall be moving soon, now that we have Detective Duncan Gray on the job.”
“Hugh is the—” Gray begins.
“Yes, yes, but Hugh is a police detective.” Cranston gives the word a derisive twist that has my hackles practically vibrating. “Gray here is the celebrity. Even has books written about his adventures. Well, children’s books, but still.”
Yes, someone is chronicling Gray’s investigations. No, they are not children’s books—they are detective serials. Victorians may be a prudish lot, but they make up for it with a thirst for blood and guts, and a good mystery provides that.
We are seeing the start of the detective novel, with Sherlock Holmes still nearly twenty years away. The primary market for such work, especially true crime, is women, just as it is in the modern world. Such an interest, though, could be concerning in a woman, and so these stories are shared with children, as cautionary tales.
Crime doesn’t pay, lass.
The detective will find you out, lad.
Seeing a market, someone leapt on Gray’s adventures. Since then, they’ve been shut down and replaced with our own scribe—and new housemaid—Jack, who is far less inclined to make me look like a simpering magician’s assistant and McCreadie look like a bumbling police detective.
It’s still Gray who gets the limelight. People prefer heroes to ensemble casts, and that’s fine for McCreadie and me, who like to stay out of the limelight. Not quite so fine for Gray, who would really rather join us in the shadows.
“Dr. Gray’s specialty is forensic pathology,” I say.
Both men turn my way, as if the trees spoke.
“My assistant, Miss Mitchell,” Gray says. “Who is correct. Unless you have a body that requires dissection, I cannot help solve your mystery.”
“As for the stick pin,” I say. “It’s right there. Caught on your pocket.”
Cranston looks down, and McCreadie barely suppresses a snicker as he sees the jeweled pin, half-caught on the edge of Cranston’s pocket.
“The mystery is solved,” McCreadie says, “we will take our leave. Good day, gentlemen.”
“Wait. You cannot leave before saying hello to Violet. She would be most offended.”
Something spasms in McCreadie’s face, but he quickly schools his features and gives a stiff nod of his head.
“Violet!” Cranston bellows, as if the coach isn’t six inches away. He throws open the door. “Look who we have met on the road. Hugh McCreadie. You remember Hugh. Your former fiancé.”
I tense, and my gaze swings to that open door. A small hand grasps it. Then a woman looks out. She’s tiny, with perfect features, milky skin and raven-black hair. Her gaze is shuttered until it falls on Gray, and then she smiles.
“Duncan,” she says. “It is good to see you.”
She visibly braces as she turns to look past the door. She doesn’t try to keep the smile, just fixes on a placidly empty look as she turns to McCreadie.
“Hugh,” she says.
He dips his chin. “Violet. I hope you are well.”
“Oh!” Violet says, as her gaze lands on me. “Miss Mitchell?”
I nod and smile as I move away from McCreadie, and Violet gratefully follows me with her gaze.
“Our housekeeper adores the stories of your adventures with Duncan,” she says. “She is most enamored with your character.” Her cheeks pink. “With you, I mean.”
I smile. “It’s half me and half a character. I’m glad your housekeeper is enjoying the stories.”
“She truly is. I shall have to read them. I keep meaning to but . . .” She trails off, and I can imagine why she doesn’t read them. I’m not sure what I expected of McCreadie’s ex-fiancé, but it wasn’t a woman who—a decade later—still needed to brace herself before looking his way.
Violet clears her throat. “I will read them. They sound most delightful. And I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I am sorry for the delay. My brother . . .” Her gaze slants his way, with the faintest eye roll. “I do apologize, and we will not delay you any longer. It was good to see you, Duncan. And . . .” That hitch, as she braces. “Hugh.”
They both tip their hats as Violet withdraws into the coach.
“We will see you all again soon enough,” Cranston says as Sinclair climbs in after Violet. “A race to the castle.”
“You are attending the wedding?” I say, as what I hope is a neutral tone.
Cranston grins over at me. “I should certainly hope so,” he says as he swings into the coach. “They would have a hard time holding the wedding without the groom.”