Chapter 20

 

Forty minutes later Christian was leading the way through to the back lobby of the house, ready to show Robert Catto out. While he and her father had been closeted alone in the library, she had helped Betty start the preparations for the evening meal, wondering and worrying all the while about what was being said.

Her father looked his usual calm self when the two of them came through to the kitchen, perhaps only a little pale. He even invited his interrogator to stay and eat with them. Despite these very strange circumstances, the laws of hospitality remained sacred.

‘I thank you, but no. You have enough hungry mouths around your table as it is, Professor.’ Robert Catto’s glance swept round the crowded kitchen. Unless they had company, the Rankeillors regularly ate here with the rest of the household.

The housekeeper was standing at the range stirring something. Kirsty Rankeillor was supervising as maidservants Mary and Tibby set plates and cutlery on the table. Alice Smart, sitting on the wooden settle in the comer of the kitchen, was doing her best to render herself invisible. Catto had not missed how she had tried to shrink even farther back when he had entered the kitchen. Joshua too was obviously sensitive to her feelings. He was sitting on the settle but at the other end of it, giving his friend’s sister the distance she so clearly craved.

Catto spotted a tray lying on the table, already set with two beakers, two plates and cutlery. ‘Is this for Geordie’s supper?’

It was Joshua who answered him. ‘Aye, sir. I’m taking it up to him. My own too, so as to keep him company.’

‘Good man,’ Catto said. ‘I’m sure he’ll be glad of that.’ He drew a letter out of his breast pocket. Patrick Rankeillor had waited the few moments it had taken him to write it. ‘Take this to him as well, if you please.’

 

‘You could stay, you know—’ Christian began, suppressing a yelp as Robert Catto grabbed her, slid his arms around her waist and kissed her passionately, hungrily. They had only just reached the back lobby, the bend in the corridor allowing them to be out of sight of anyone in the kitchen. If they were lucky and Betty didn’t come after them. Or called out in an exasperated tone of voice for Christian to close the back door and come and sit down at the table so they could all eat.

Throwing caution to the winds, she kissed him back, matching his passion and his hunger. As their mouths came together and their hands roamed over each other’s bodies, they stumbled, their feet sliding across the stone floor of the lobby. She drew him back against the door to steady them. The old coats, plaids and cloaks hanging on the back of it came around her shoulders like a cocoon.

‘Very resourceful,’ he muttered before they renewed their kiss. ‘Miss Practical. That’s you.’ Like her, he was careful to speak in a low voice.

‘Stay,’ she said, when they regretfully separated, both knowing they could not linger. She took his face between her hands. ‘Stay and eat with us.’

‘I cannot. Not when all I can think about is making love to you.’

‘I think we both have a lot more to think about than that.’

He sighed. ‘Aye. We do.’ The grey eyes clouded. ‘You said you told your father about Jeannie Carmichael. But not about her and me?’

‘No. Nor did I tell him about you and … Mr Fox.’

Catto lifted her hands from his face. Lowering them to his chest, he wrapped his long fingers around her own. ‘Can you forgive me for what I did with Jeannie Carmichael?’

‘It’s not my place to forgive you.’ Then, after a tiny pause: ‘What about your lady friend?’

‘Ah.’ Ludicrously, he found himself fighting a blush. ‘I think you must mean the lady who, as you put it at the time, you saw me embracing with some fervour in the High Street on Daft Friday when you were in a chair being carried up to the ball at the Assembly rooms. There to plot the escape of a known rebel.’

She fixed him with a stern look. ‘That accusation does not excuse you.’

‘I don’t need to be excused. I wasn’t spoken for on Daft Friday. I am now. As I told another young lady in the Grassmarket this morning.’

‘La, sir, you seem to hold a prodigious attraction for the female sex.’

‘I fear ’twas the contents of my purse which attracted the girl in the Grassmarket.’

Christian Rankeillor blinked. ‘Does that sort of thing happen in the morning? In broad daylight?’

‘It did today. I was a mite surprised myself. I gave her a sixpence.’

‘Out of the goodness of your heart? Very generous. Spoken for,’ she repeated. ‘Is that what we’re calling it? Och, dinna smile at me like that!’

‘How odd. I could swear you told me you liked it when I smile at you like that. Said it has interesting effects on you. In interesting places.’

‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Right now. So what about the girl I saw you with on Daft Friday, the one you were indeed embracing with some fervour?’

‘Her name is Lizzie Gibson. She was giving me a warning. The embrace was covering up her words.’

‘Do I take it she works at the house of pleasure in front of which the two of you were standing? The one which pretends to be a milliner’s shop?’

‘How does a respectable young lady like you know such a thing?’

‘Because I pay attention and I also have two eyes and two ears. I take it you know her through her trade? What was she warning you about?’

He shook his head, kissed her knuckles and dropped her hands. ‘You don’t need to know, Kirsty. Time I was leaving. Time you were going back through to the kitchen. The wee witch will be flying through on her broomstick to turn me into a frog if we stay here for much longer.’

‘Very amusing, Captain. And I like to know everything. Was the warning about Jamie?’

‘Aye,’ Robert Catto said. He had turned away from her to lift his coat off one of the pegs on the back door.

‘What did she say?’

‘She warned me not to turn my back on him.’

‘As you are currently doing to me. Because you do not wish to speak to me of Jamie.’

Swinging his coat over his shoulders, he shrugged his arms into it and turned back to her. ‘Have I not told you enough? Let us leave it there, Kirsty. If you please.’

‘All right,’ she said, realizing he was once again trying to protect her. ‘I thought I recognized her.’

‘She knows you.’

‘Does she?’ Christian asked, surprised.

‘I told her about Alice Smart and she asked if anyone was looking after her.

Lizzie was relieved to hear you were. She says you are kind, skilled and do not judge people.’

Now she knew. This was the girl who had called at the shop about a year ago, looking for ointment to clear up a rash on her hand. For some reason she and Christian had struck up an immediate rapport. It had soon become clear how she earned her daily bread and she’d been amazingly frank about it.

Someone who practices my trade has to have smooth, clean hands. My gentlemen friends expect it.

‘Who are any of us to judge others? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. When did Mistress Gibson tell you all this?’

‘The day I escorted your friend Anna Gordon down to Leith to embark on the Banff packet.’

When Christian stiffened, he spoke again. ‘Lizzie is currently staying with her mother and her son, who live in a tiny fisherman’s cottage near The Shore, down at Leith. I have not lain with her since before the Daft Friday ball. Nor have I any plans to do so. Although I am going to visit her to tell her so. I owe her that.’ He raised his hands, palms outwards. ‘I owe her a lot more, for giving me the warning. Trust me on this, Kirsty.’

‘Strangely enough, I do. Which is why I am going to give you these.’ Her body relaxing, she slid her hand into the pocket under her skirts, bringing out the two keys.

‘The keys to the bagnio,’ she said. ‘One for the gate to its garden and one for the double doors to the building itself. Can you get copies made and bring these back to me as soon as possible? I dinna think Betty or my father are likely to go looking for them but better safe than sorry.’

‘The bagnio?’ He frowned. ‘It’s very close to this house.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s also very close to the Royal Infirmary.’

‘I know that too. Although it cannot be overlooked from this house and I shall take the long way round to get there. I think I can also get there without being seen from the hospital.’

He was still looking doubtful. ‘Won’t it be too cold? All marble floors and tiled walls?’ As she had previously told him, although she and her friends had bathed there before heading for the Daft Friday ball, the bath house was rarely used now. The running costs had proved to be too high. He traced the line of her jaw with his fingertips. ‘I should always want you to be warm.’

‘We can be warm at the bagnio. Although it will involve you in some work beforehand.’

‘Gladly. There’s coal and kindling over there?’

‘Plenty. You have no other objection to the bagnio?’ She had worried about that, knowing he must be aware his father had briefly been there before being carried up to the Assembly Rooms in a chair.

‘An objection to the chance for us to be alone together? Give me the keys, woman.’

‘Are you coming back here tomorrow?’ she asked, addressing his bowed head as he slid the keys inside his coat, tucking them into his breast pocket.

‘Regretfully not. I have to be on duty at the guard-house all day and into the evening.’

‘For Old Year’s Night. Hogmanay.’

‘I’m told it can be as lively as Daft Friday.’

‘It can. Although hopefully you will not have to face down another mob at the guard-house. Tomorrow is also your birthday.’

‘Well remembered.’ When he had stumbled to the infirmary after Jamie Buchan had hit him over the head, she had clerked him in, asking for a few details about himself.

‘I wish we could be together on your birthday. I wish we could see in the New Year together.’

He looked up. ‘So do I. On both counts. But I shall definitely call on New Year’s Day.’

‘When you will stay to eat with us. I doubt if even Betty would refuse you the hospitality of this house on New Year’s Day.’

‘Well, there’s an enticement. A grudging welcome from the wee witch. But it would be too awkward, Kirsty. When can we meet at the bagnio?’

‘When I can work out how to get away without my father or Betty working out what I’m doing.’ She frowned. ‘What if someone else sees us making our way there?’

‘We shall plan not to arrive together. You shall take your roundabout route to get there. I shall also make sure I’m not seen on my way there. New Year’s Day,’ he went on. ‘I presume another feast is planned, as on Yule Day? Which means the kitchen is unlikely to be empty at any point.’

‘We might be able to snatch a moment or two. We’ll have stayed up to bring in the New Year and everyone will be tired after Betty’s had us all changing bedclothes and washing clothes tomorrow. Can’t go dirty into the New Year.’

‘My mother always said that too.’ He indicated the small window to the side of the back door. ‘If you can be in the kitchen alone, watch for me from here. You can open the door without me having to knock and alert the house to my presence.’

‘I can now. Since you fixed the door when it got stuck, it no longer shrieks in protest when anyone opens it.’

‘So the gods are with us. I’ll aim to be here for 10 of the clock. With a bit of luck we can have some quiet conversation before anyone else knows I’m here.’

‘Quiet conversation, is it? That’s as good as you being spoken for.’

He responded to her impish smile with one of his own, lighting up his handsome face. ‘You’ll want to wish me Happy Birthday, won’t you?’

She reached up, taking his face between her hands. ‘You look a lot happier now than you did when you arrived here earlier.’

‘Your doing,’ he told her. ‘All your doing. You’ve changed me, Kirsty Rankeillor.’

She stretched up and kissed his cheek. ‘Maybe I’ve just helped you find a part of yourself which had got lost.’

He gave her two kisses in return for her own. One on her lips. One into the palm of her hand. She stood with her back to the kitchen door, leaning against the softness of the plaids, coats and cloaks. Soon, she thought. Very, very soon.