Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Chapter 23

Harriet hid behind Bradshaw’s Railway Guide during the train ride to St. Andrews. A sharp new awareness loomed between them since their erotic interlude two nights ago, and she was shying away from the edges. He was keen to repeat the experience, but he was wary of it, too—his chest warmed and his mind muddled whenever he looked at her. She had borrowed an old-fashioned straw bonnet in anticipation of the seaside, and looked too young to be his wife with the large green silk bow beneath her chin. Yes, warm and muddled. Drunk people made bad decisions.

When the train rattled through the small town of Strathkinness at noon, the coach waiter served some sandwiches, which Harriet seemed to enjoy, and instead of picking up her Bradshaw shield again after the meal, she acknowledged his presence: “The women of Drummuir,” she said, “one of their worries is that their clothes don’t dry properly on time even when they put them through the mangle, especially during the rainier seasons.”

“Year-round, then,” he said, and it summoned the ghost of a smile.

“A building with a heating system where they could hang the woolen clothes to dry would greatly help reduce rheumatic troubles in the community,” she said.

A shockingly obvious solution. “I’ll have one built,” he said. “Thank you.”

“They also complain that their pay is lower than the men’s.”

“That’s not uncommon.”

She was watching him alertly. “Will you raise their pay?”

“Yes.”

“Equal to the men’s?”

“Not quite, no.”

Her face fell, and he felt her disapproval like a too-tight cravat round his neck.

“They should be paid more than the men,” she said. With her belligerent face beneath the feathered crown of her bonnet, she looked like an angry titmouse. “They work double: both in the colliery and in the home.”

“Agreed,” he said.

Her hostile expression softened.

“Their fellas wouldn’t like it,” he explained. “And the more frustrated they are, the darker their moods get around their women.”

She drew back. “But it’s the women demanding it,” she said. “Surely they know their own mind?”

“But was it all women demanding it?”

“No,” she admitted after a disgruntled pause. “But it’s still a poor reason.”

He nodded. “Don’t mistake me—I’m not approving of it.”

“But accepting it?”

He remembered the fists to his face when he had stood between his mother and her husband as a lad. “No,” he said.

“Oh, how frustrating,” she said, “to keep a woman’s wages low to soothe a man’s vanity.”

“It’s not just vanity,” he murmured.

“Cruelty, then.”

“For some it’s that. Mostly, though, it’s pride—”

“Pride!” she cried. “What is there to be proud about?”

“Very well, a fragility, then, masking as pride,” he said grimly. “The sort you have when you have little else.”

She kept shaking her head. “Upper-class men maltreat their wives, too,” she said. “I helped compile a report about this very thing. What is their excuse, then? I shall tell you what I think it is: it’s a contempt for women ingrained in some men, an innately low regard for wives. Just last month, the fines for a rabbit poacher were five pounds and one month in prison, and for a wife beater it was ten shillings and a fortnight in prison. One concludes that regardless of circumstances, even the law holds the health of a wife in lower esteem than that of a rabbit—a fine example to the public, is it not?”

“Ten shillings,” he repeated, baffled. “How do you know this?”

“From the Women’s Suffrage Journal,” she snipped. “It lists these cases in every edition. Lest we forget.”

He shifted on his seat to accommodate the sudden weight of discomfort in his stomach.

“I don’t know what a toff’s excuse is to be mean to his woman,” he said, “and I’m not making excuses for it; there’s never an excuse for such a thing. I tried to explain something I’ve seen growing up: a boy in Drummuir learns that a good man provides for his wife and keeps his family safe. When he becomes a man, he’s usually proud of his work, proud of being a miner. But he also realizes that he’ll never offer his sweetheart more than the damp hut and a lifetime of backbreaking work, and no jolly song, no camaraderie, can change that truth. Money might be tight all the time. He needs her to work to make ends meet. Makes some men angry, that. And the wife, she knows every fellow with a tall hat and a cravat can grind her husband into the dust with his posh heel if he wants, yet here she’s to submit to her husband’s authority. It’s never said, but you know, deep down. It can cause bad blood.”

Harriet wrinkled her nose, as though it were causing her brain some physical effort to accommodate his perspective. “I suppose injustice in one place is usually linked to injustice elsewhere,” she finally said. “A ghastly web. One more reason for men and women to be coequals in a marriage—there, no bad blood over failed duties and expectations.”

“Logical,” he conceded, which made her look half-satisfied.

“Who’s more hard done by, then,” he said, “a poor man, or a rich woman?”

“The rich woman,” she said easily, “for her oppression before the law and in the home always depends on her being a woman, regardless of her circumstances or position in society.”

Logical again.

“I suppose,” he said. “But there’s oppression in never having a day without worries about tomorrow’s bills. Where the next hot meal and warm coat comes from. In having to run up and down the heapstead over and over like a rat in a drainpipe just to feed your family, until you finally turn up your toes.”

“Indeed,” she said, looking vexed. “But working on improving one ill doesn’t preclude paying attention to another, I’m certain of that.”

He liked having a companion for debate in his wife, he realized, even if to date, he had never cared much for debating. A ghastly web, she had called it. She had words for things he usually only felt intuitively.

Harriet was contemplating him curiously now. “What would your mother say?” she asked, blindsiding him.

“What?” He sat frozen in his seat.

Her smile was a little uncertain. “Your mother. Would she have wanted equal pay?”

He kept his eyes on the green pastures rolling toward the horizon while he collected his thoughts. “I don’t know,” he said. He focused on his breathing; his chest felt tight.

He didn’t want to speculate about what his mother would’ve thought or said; he never did, for it sufficed that whatever memories he had of her kept spurring him on to reach his goal. Any thinking beyond that, and anger began crawling through his gut. Or he remembered how young she had been when she had died. Seven-and-twenty. Too young to die, too young to have an eleven-year-old son. This realization had struck when he had gone to the graveyard to find his grandmother. He had visited his mother, too, and when seeing her birth date on her stone, he realized that she would have been fifteen or sixteen when she had returned from the manor to the colliery. From all he’d heard, his father had been ill-tempered and older. Money made a man look good, often enough, but he was still hardly the type a proud young miner lass would fancy. So he couldn’t know. He couldn’t know with certainty whether he had been forced into existence through an act of violence. The thought had brushed his soul cold like a wintry breeze while he had stood by the grave, doing the math, and he had avoided thinking of it since. Something inside him shut down fast and brutal like an iron portcullis at the thought of Harriet knowing. She had only just begun to look at him with a blush on her cheeks instead of an angry, wary, or contemptuous glitter in her eyes, and he’d do more than lie to keep it that way.

“I don’t know what she’d want,” he repeated.

“What was she like?”

His hand moved to his chest. His brow felt damp. “I remember that she loved the sun. It was probably what she loved best in the world. Sunlight.”

“That’s a lovely memory,” Harriet said, and the warm, interested expression on her face kept him talking.

“When it was bright in the morning or after the shift ended, she was at her happiest, I could feel it,” he said. “I remember thinking … I remember thinking that she belonged in the light, not underground. Her hair was the color of ripe wheat, you see. It always made me think of summer.”

A small pause ensued. “What happened to her?” Harriet asked quietly.

“She drowned,” he said. “In an accident. With my sister, Sorcha.”

Harriet touched her throat. “I’m sorry.”

Just like that, his body felt icy on the inside. He hadn’t said Sorcha’s name out loud since the day they had buried her, and now it had scraped out, unplanned. Across from him, his wife’s brown eyes were soft and shiny, as though she were about to cry. He glanced out the window again, because her tears unnerved him, and because he had nothing to add. There were some emotions that couldn’t be spoken, and that fateful day was shrouded in mist in any case.

“I’ll think about the women’s wages, how to make them stretch as much as the men’s,” he said, cutting off whatever she was making to say. She returned to her book for the remainder of the journey.

St. Andrews awaited them beneath turbulent skies, the gray above mirroring the low gray cottages and cobblestone streets below. Seagull cries filled the air and a salty wind relentlessly beat away at the university towers and crumbling abbey ruins. The only dots of color were the billowing scarlet gowns of the students who were promenading along the quay down by the beach. Harriet seemed excited by the rustic surroundings and wanted to dawdle and look at oddly unremarkable things—a weathered gargoyle here, a breeze-ruffled gull there—but Mr. Wright had rejoined them at the railway station from his coach and was making straight for the camera shop.

“It’s right near to the studio of Thomas Rodger, the first professional photographer in St. Andrews,” the engineer explained. “You shall see some very fine Rodger portraits on the wall behind the counter.”

The shop was located between a bustling post office and a bookstore. It displayed three cameras on tripods in its window, and the sight of them made Harriet balk. “Good grief,” she said. “They look awfully big.”

She changed her mind quickly inside the shop when the elderly owner tried to give short shrift to her with a very small-looking model.

“Has it any flexibility to bring a motif closer?” she asked.

The man had been showing the camera to Lucian, but at her question, his attention briefly shifted to her. “You are referring to the option of different focal lengths, ma’am?”

“Probably?”

“Yes, but because of its size, the range is limited.”

“Hm. And what about the lighting?”

The man’s gaze flickered back to Lucian. “She means the aperture?”

“If it determines the brightness of the image, yes,” said his wife, unperturbed.

“It does, as does the shutter speed. I’m afraid there is little variability. But this model is light and conveniently portable for a female hand.”

“Well, I need it all,” Harriet said, “all the trappings.”

“I assume ma’am is referring to all the movements,” the man said, and, to Lucian, “You’ll be looking at the large whole-plate cameras, then, sir.” He gestured at the models in the window display.

“They look as though they should fold up neatly,” Harriet said cheerfully. “Like an accordion.”

“Quite—would ma’am prefer wet collodion plates, or gelatin dry plates?”

“I’m uncertain about the difference.”

The shop owner looked between her and Lucian with a frown furrowing his brow. “The latest, more convenient alternative to wet plates. Madam knows how to calotype?” And, at her silence, “The chemical process of making the images on the plates visible?”

“Chemistry …” She shook her head. “But I’m proficient at mixing colors. I’m certain I’ll learn this in no time.”

“Hmm. Certainly.”

“Mr. Wright here will teach me,” she said.

“Erm,” said the engineer, who had been hovering in the back, and he shuffled his feet in embarrassment, for Lucian stood right near him, which made it difficult to refuse.

“If you are content with finding your perfect model with Mr. Wright’s competent assistance,” Lucian said, suppressing unexpected amusement, “I have a few telegrams to send. The post office is right next door.”

He’d have to telegraph Aoife to inquire about any findings about the burglary, and Matthews, because he had to extend his stay here in Fife if Harriet wished to photograph three hundred miners and was completely clueless as to how to go about it. Vastly inconvenient on the one hand, but on the other, it might be his one chance to consummate this marriage after all. He had an advantage here in the wilderness of Scotland where there was only one bed, while stuffy, snobby London only emphasized the gulf between them and would remind her of all the reasons why she hated him. Besides. She looked … happy here. Her eyes glowed and her skin shimmered at the prospect of learning something new, of doing something for the people of Drummuir, and her excitement made him feel all sorts of ways.

She pulled a letter from her reticule. “Would you post this for me?” she asked. “And would you terribly mind bringing me a penny dreadful from the bookshop?”

When he returned after successfully completing all errands not half an hour later, Mr. Wright and the shop owner looked harried and sweaty, but a camera had been selected: a whole-plate model using dry plates, at the price of sixty-eight pounds when including all required equipment and accessories. The apparatus, tripod, plates, plateholders, protective gloves, and bottles of chemicals would have to be meticulously wrapped for secure transport.

“My head is buzzing like a beehive,” Harriet said as he was signing the check. “I should like to go to the beach and have the wind blow the cobwebs away while everything is being readied.”

They left to take a stroll to the castle ruins, where a ramp led onto the beach. The sea in the bay below was in uproar and the slate-gray line of the horizon blended water and sky. The damp breeze blew unhampered here and filled Lucian’s mouth with salt. Next to him, Harriet gasped and threw her arms wide open. “Isn’t it vast—isn’t it beautiful!”

“It is,” he murmured, but she was already dashing toward the shore. By the time he had caught up, her hems were soaked with sea spray. The pebbles and shells that lay scattered along the waterline soon snared her like a will-o’-the-wisp: she stopped and stooped every other yard to pick something up, held it up for inspection, put it into her skirt pocket, and hurried on toward the next, and was soon ahead of him again. She was light-footed despite heavy hems and pockets, and her ribbons and tendrils of her fiery hair were dancing in the breeze.

He had grown up in Argyll, close enough to the sea to know all about selkie lore. His grandmother had told the stories at night, about these creatures who lived as seals in the sea but shed their skin to take the shape of a human when they wanted to be on dry land. Selkie females in their human form were said to be enchanting.

“Lucian!”

She was coming toward him, and his heart was in his throat. “Yes?”

She held up a brownish stone. “I believe this is amber?”

He forced his attention away from her rosy-cheeked face to the lump she was waving at him. Her white gloves were covered in sand. “It is,” he said after a brief examination.

She gave a small whoop of delight and resumed her hunt.

A female selkie in human form better not stumble across a man. She would be naked with only her long hair to hide her charms while her sealskin was tucked away safely under a rock or in some cove. In the legends, the man set out to find her pelt so he could keep it and force the selkie to remain a woman and to become his wife. When Lucian had heard the stories as a boy, he hadn’t yet felt the desire to steal; he had had a child’s simple sense of justice. He had felt a noble rage on behalf of the creature who was now forever trapped on land, in a fisherman’s hut, with only memories of her freedom. Granted, the selkie was a female, whose natural lot seemed to be to eventually become stuck indoors with a brood no matter her species, but he had known unfairness when he saw it. He supposed he hadn’t been born bad. He had become that way.

On the train ride back, he was reading the book he had purchased in the bookshop, and Harriet was ignoring her new penny dreadful and spread her beach loot on the table. Glancing over the top of his page now and again, he soon noticed that she was arranging it first by material—stone, beach glass, fossilized squid—and then by color. She seemed especially fond of the beach glass.

“Why did you collect those?” he finally asked, and nodded at a pile of unremarkable gray beach pebbles rattling on the polished wood.

She looked up, vaguely confused, as though he had pulled her from the depths of some meandering thoughts. “Those?” she said. “So that they wouldn’t feel left out.”

His brows pulled together. “They are … stones.”

She gave an apologetic shrug. “Yes, but I don’t think anyone ever picks them.”

Somehow, no sarcastic answer came to mind. Instead, his throat felt strangely constricted as he watched her sort the unloved pebbles into an orderly row.

He was in dangerous territory. Like a hunter who had been too focused on chasing his prey and suddenly found himself on very thin ice indeed. Dangerous, because the legends about the selkies never ended with the trapped female living out her days with the man who had stolen her. Inevitably, someone always found her skin, and she would slip it on and leave her husband and family to return to the sea without a backward glance.