Margaret opened her eyes and knew instantly that Peter wasn’t in the building. The light that slipped past the edge of the drapes told her it was nearing midmorning and that she had slept the early hours away. The night before she hadn’t been sure she could sleep at all. After seeing Jonas in such a state, how could she retreat to such comfortable lodgings? She had spent a good hour crying and replaying her conversation with Jonas over in her head. Now her eyelids felt sore and her cheeks flush even after a few hours of sleep.
She sniffled as she sat up in the hotel bed and brushed her wavy, brown hair from her face.
The door opened and Elmira slipped through. “Oh, good morning, Lady Margaret,” she said, in her usual even tone. “Mister Marshall has arranged for our return to London. We leave in an hour—”
“Leaving? We cannot leave.”
Elmira started, pulling her hands back from the bedding she was trying to lay flat. “I only do what I am told, my lady.” She turned from the bed and began pulling back the drapes to let more light through. “I have already seen to your things and Mr. Cutter has asked the kitchen staff to prepare some food that we can eat on the train.”
“You are mistaken, Elmira,” Margaret said sliding from the bed and crossing the room. “I am not leaving.”
“But the tickets, ma’am, they have already been arranged,” she said.
Angered, Margaret snatched her brush from the small bureau and began running it through her hair roughly. She couldn’t leave Edinburgh, even if Jonas had dismissed her concern. She couldn’t abandon him at such a time. Her strokes with the brush grew faster and faster, yanking and pulling at the ends.
Seeing this, Elmira rushed over and quickly took the brush from Margaret’s hand. “Allow me, Lady Margaret.” Without being ordered to do so, she guided Margaret to a chair set in front of a toilette table and began brushing.
“I want to speak to my brother,” Margaret said, looking at Elmira through the mirrored reflection.
“Mister Marshall decided to visit a friend while you were sleeping,” Elmira explained without concern. “He said we are to meet him at the train station.”
A few moments passed while Margaret stewed. She could feel her hair being pulled and pinned but cared little for it. Why on earth would Peter arrange for them to leave so soon, when Jonas had not been proven innocent? Surely he was just as convinced as she that Jonas wasn’t guilty. He may have been a gambler and a bit of a Casanova, but a murderer he was not.
Margaret’s shoulders sank at the thought that he had grown bored of her, like he had of the other women he once wooed. Perhaps he had met someone new in the last months while they were apart and that is why he was so put off by her visit to the prison. Could he be so fickle? Talking of love and vowing marriage one moment, then pledging indifference and resentment the next?
Their courtship had been kept secret for the most part, mostly for the benefit of Margaret, who feared the wrath of her father should their connection be found out. Jonas was a surgeon, a tradesman who worked with the bodies of both the living and the dead. Peter had only been allowed to practice the trade if he took their mother’s maiden name and left the Marshall clan untarnished. A second son leading a double life as a surgeon was one thing, but an only daughter pledging her love to one was entirely unacceptable.
So much had happened during their secret courtship but it all served to solidify their connection and did little to tear them apart. Margaret had promised to go to him, to be wed in secret shortly after he accepted his position with the Edinburgh Medical School and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. To prove her commitment, and perhaps erase any doubt in her own mind, she invited him into her room and they shared one night, one very sweet night, before he went away. That night there was no doubt they would be wed and for a short time she was the happiest of women.
But in the end she couldn’t leave Father, not after the attack that left him an invalid. Not when he had needed her most. She had feared Jonas wouldn’t understand. That her absence and subsequent silence had somehow signalled to him that she had second thoughts. Perhaps he had heard of Blair Thornton’s persistent suit of her. She had not meant to encourage him, but how could she deny visits with a man who had saved her life?
She had to explain all this to Jonas, to get it out in the open so he could understand and perhaps not think so harshly of her. She had been so tired and overwrought the night before she was surprised she could say anything while seeing him behind bars and covered in blood.
Margaret pressed on her stomach, which had suddenly started twisting and turning, and took a deep breath to steady her heartbeat. No, she told herself decidedly. She would not leave him. Not now. She must speak with Peter.
***
The train station was even busier than it had been the night before. Margaret felt herself being swept along deeper into the crowd, by passing vendors selling their wares and porters manoeuvring mounded carts through the throng. The locomotive engine purred in the background as Margaret followed Elmira and Cutter to the platform.
“I don’t see Peter,” Margaret said, lifting herself up on her toes so she could see above the crowd. In her mind she wasn’t getting on that train. She only needed to speak with her brother.
“He said he would meet us here, Lady Margaret,” Elmira said, her voice signalling her exasperation with the heiress. “Cutter, see to the luggage,” she ordered before plucking Margaret’s valise from the top of their baggage cart.
Cutter nodded and disappeared into the crowd, pushing the small cart with both Ainsley’s and Margaret’s trunks.
Margaret turned about in place, ignoring the first whistle of the train. Above them on a hill, not too far from Waverly Station, she could see the sand-coloured ramparts of the prison, a Union Jack flapping majestically on the prison’s tallest tower. The building resembled a castle with its thick exterior walls and stone construction, easily mistaken for a symbolic relic of Scotland’s past rather than a modern place of sorrow and desperation.
Margaret could not shake the image of what she had seen the night before—Jonas, bloodied and broken, behind those rusted iron bars. Had he been given anything to eat, or at least water to drink? Would the other prisoners take advantage of his kind nature? Would the governor see fit to discipline him? Surely the Scottish judicial system would bring to light his innocence. An innocent man could not be found guilty for crimes he didn’t commit, not in this enlightened age of police forces and forensic evidence. He would be free again, before long.
Margaret winced at the memory of Detective Inspector Hearst’s hardened face. He was not a man easily swayed from his quarry. He would push for the death penalty, would he not? He’d see it as his duty if he believed Jonas guilty.
“Lady Margaret, come.” Elmira had already climbed the steps of the rail car and was standing next to one of the uniformed rail workers who waited at the door. She waved her hand frantically, beckoning Margaret to come forward, while her other boney hand clutched the railing with an unsteady grasp.
Margaret could hear the train’s engines building in anticipation and then she realized the platform had thinned to only a handful of souls who waved their farewells to loved ones already aboard. She had been so deep in thought she hadn’t heard the whistles.
“What about Peter?” Margaret asked in desperation.
“Perhaps he is already on board, my lady,” Elmira said. “Come quick or you shall be left in Edinburgh alone.”
Margaret turned her face to smile at the lovely thought.
“Come, miss.” The rail worker stepped past Elmira and stood with one foot on the platform and one foot on the steps. “You must board the train now.”
With a shaky hand, Margaret accepted his help and climbed aboard. The train car vibrated beneath their feet as Margaret followed Elmira down the centre aisle to find a pair of empty seats.
“Here you are,” Elmira said, her voice betraying her relief.
Margaret spied the two empty seats, near identical to ones she and Peter had sat in on their journey north. Peter was nowhere to be seen.
Before taking her seat, she glanced out to see if perhaps he was running across the station yard. There was no sign of him. She began to wonder if he was coming at all.
“Sit, Lady Margaret, the train is about to leave.”
All of a sudden, Margaret’s stomach began to churn, sending waves of nausea and dizziness in its wake. Even after all she had been through, after everything that proved herself capable, she felt weak and helpless. She could not let him die, not after all this. Even if he no longer cared for her and had changed his mind, she could not abandon him. She’d never forgive herself.
“Forgive me, Elmira,” Margaret said suddenly, pulling her valise from the woman’s weak grasp. “There is something I must do before I return to London.”
Without giving the maid a chance to reply, Margaret turned and retraced her steps down the length of the car. When she reached the back door the train worker was just latching it into place and the locomotive lurched into action.
“Ma’am—”
Margaret pushed by him and unlatched the door. “Excuse me.”
“You can’t. We are in motion.”
The rail worker followed her out the door and onto the iron steps of the car.
Margaret dropped her valise onto the platform and watched as it began to slip away. The train was moving slow, pulling away from the station.
“Lady Margaret! Come back! You’ll injure yourself.”
Margaret could hear Elmira’s commands resonating in her ears even as she stepped off from the lowest step. It took a moment for her to get her balance but thankfully she did not fall.
“Margaret!”
The cries were closer now and when Margaret looked she saw Elmira, old and feeble as she was, clutching her hat and holding onto the iron rail of the first class car. As the train pulled further from the station, gaining speed as it went, Margaret felt an unbelievable rush of liberation. She was free from her lady’s maid, her brother Daniel’s spy, as Margaret called her. She was free from Marshall House and the call of London. She was free from everyone who conspired to tell her what to do and how to do it.
With an air of triumph, Margaret turned, walked purposefully back to her valise, and plucked it from the platform. Perhaps Peter was on the train and had only been in another car. Perhaps the morning’s events had only been a plot of his devising to somehow get her out of Edinburgh. Perhaps she had made a grievous error and would find herself regretting it all by that same time the next day. Margaret chuckled to herself, and stole a glance down the now-empty track.
None of it mattered. Jonas was here. In this city. And he needed her help.