Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Chapter 25

Mr. Matthews’s arrival at noon the following day brought memories of London, of a previous, now strangely nebulous life. As usual, Matthews was meticulously dressed in a well-fitted maroon travel jacket, speckless gray trousers, and paisley waistcoat. The man himself looked frazzled; he must have packed and left Belgravia the moment he had received Lucian’s telegraph two days earlier.

“I cannot thank you enough for your troubles,” Hattie told him when he presented her with the box containing the portrait book of Mrs. Julia Cameron.

“My pleasure, Mrs. Blackstone.” His bleary gaze slid discreetly over her appearance from head to toe. “I hope you are in the best of health.”

She had dressed without giving any thought to her accessories this morning, she realized—perhaps it was obvious. She smiled vaguely. “You are in Mr. Stewart’s old room—I shall show you the way.”

“Meet me in the dining area in half an hour, and bring the documents,” Lucian said from behind them, and his coolly commanding voice came as a small shock. It was his voice from the days when she had first known him, and she realized that she had become used to a much softer tone since. Matthews simply acquiesced. He was murmuring at the overabundance of stuffed animals and the precariously creaking stairs when Hattie guided him to his lodgings.

“One grows used to the menagerie,” she reassured him, “but I so look forward to all the news from London—the papers here are two days behind the time.”

Matthews absentmindedly replied that it would be his pleasure. When she took the book off him and left him to settle in his new lodgings, he raked her with another glance, and his scrutiny left an uncomfortably prickling sensation on the back of her neck.

Back in her room, however, the photography book soon consumed her attention entirely. Julia Margaret Cameron had mainly photographed women and children, and what portraits they were! Her lens was soft without sacrificing sharp, meaningful details, and it had made the simple ethereal and the static emotional. There was no denying that looking into the expressive eyes of these strangers gazing from the pages was moving. This, this was life! Incomparable to her own amateurish attempts at putting meaning onto canvas. When Hattie turned the last page, she sat in quiet turmoil. Lucian had been right all along: it was possible to make art with a piece of technology. Her mind galloped ahead; after the miners, she would photograph the suffragists. How often were they subject to ridicule and spite, were they reviled as ugly, mannish, angry creatures? Daily. She’d dare any critic to look at Annabelle’s Pre-Raphaelite beauty, or Catriona’s quiet depths, or Lucie’s elfin face, and not feel silly for perpetuating such prejudice …. She excused herself from lunch and began analyzing the images to understand the elements that in sum created something so wonderful.

“What is the current state of color photography?” she asked Mr. Wright a few hours later. “Is there any interest in developing colored photographs?”

Wright’s bushy brows rose. “I assume so. The industry employs legions of miniaturist painters.”

“I don’t mean retrospective coloring by second parties,” she said. “I’m interested in transferring the color straight from the scene to the plate.”

Because Lucian was working in the main room, they were in the small side chamber, which Wright had turned into a tiny laboratory by adding a narrow side table the day before. Her camera was on that table, with all the accessories laid out around it like the innards of a thoroughly dressed kill. Mr. Wright, in his calm yet insistent manner, had already made her memorize the name and function of each of the parts and probably meant to test her.

“I’m not an expert on physics,” he now said, frowning. “However, color is nothing other than a material’s reaction to light. And as Newton found out …”

“I was hoping there would be some research on it in this century,” she said quickly.

“Maxwell’s research might be of interest to you, then,” Wright said after a pause. “He proved that technically, you can create any color by mixing red, green, and blue light. I suppose one could experiment with colored lenses … but the photographic emulsion would also play a part …”

“Mixing light,” she murmured. “Like mixing pigments …”

“Why not focus on the things we understand?” Wright suggested. He pointed to the small portable blackboard he had procured from nowhere. “There are two chemical processes involved in developing a photograph—one to prepare the plates with a silver-bromide gelatin emulsion—this here is a silver nitrate molecule, by the way,” he said, and drew some threatening-looking structure on the blackboard, “and one to develop the images on the plate.”

The words chemical processes made her break out in a cold sweat; the whole situation with the blackboard already harkened back to her school tutorials, which had usually ended with her in pain and feeling stupid. She let out a shaky breath and thought of Mhairi’s sweetheart, Hamish, and of Anne’s little face, and slowly released her death grip on her notebook.

“… Mr. George Eastman’s recently automated the coating process, so we don’t have to trouble ourselves with the preparatory emulsion ….”

They were halfway through the lesson when the skirl of a bagpipe filtered into the room, and at first, Harriet thought she had imagined it. But then the old floorboards vibrated with the rhythmic stomping of feet and a distant roar of voices raising as one.

“Oh dear,” said Mr. Wright, and cast an alarmed glance around the walls.

“How exciting,” said Hattie. There was most definitely dancing and singing. There were people in this inn who were actually enjoying themselves as opposed to feigning enjoyment over tangential plate-coating history. “I wonder what they are celebrating.”

She stuck her head through the curtain gap to where Lucian sat at the table, working through his freshly delivered folder. “Do you know—”

“A wedding,” he said without interrupting his note taking.

She stepped into the room. “How do you know?”

He looked up. A feral curl fell distractingly over his left eye. “I paid for food and drink,” he said.

“That’s kind of you,” she murmured, surprised. “Whose wedding is it?”

“Boyd’s daughter.”

She glanced back over her shoulder at Mr. Wright. “Would you mind finishing early?”

The engineer stroked his mustache, looking resigned. “No, no. Seems quite impossible to work with such noise in the background.”

He gathered his belongings and took his leave, and Hattie slunk around in front of the table. “Is it considered rude in Scotland to join a wedding celebration uninvited?”

“As rude as anywhere,” Lucian said, his eyes back on the page. “But since I paid for it, I received an invitation.”

“Then why are we here? Don’t you wish to go?”

And there it was, his exasperated nape scratch. “I’m working,” he said.

Working—when there was music, and merry people, and in immediate reach! “I bet Mhairi and Hamish are in attendance.”

Lucian looked up. “Who is Hamish?”

“One of the lads from Heather Row. Should we not go downstairs to congratulate the couple?”

He gave a small shake. “I’m working.”

“Surely I don’t need an escort here,” she said. “You wouldn’t mind if I were to join them, would you? I should love to see the bride.”

Lucian studied her with an opaque expression. “No,” he then said. “I wouldn’t mind.”

She did a little hop of excitement. “I shall be back before dinner.”

As she freshened up in the side chamber, she wondered which of her hair combs would most delight a bride; she couldn’t decide between the silver one with jade stones and the rose gold with amethysts. The obvious solution was to simply gift them both, but once Lucian found out—and he would—he would harp about her ignorant ways again.

When she passed the door to Mr. Matthews’s room on her way downstairs, she paused. Matthews had seemed a little peculiar earlier, but he had lunched and perhaps napped by now, which surely had restored his good spirits. And after the taxing journey inflicted upon him at short notice by her husband, he was possibly in the mood for some diversion.

She knocked.

Matthews looked indeed well rested; his hair was neat with a fresh side parting and his mustache freshly waxed. His surprise to see her quickly turned into concern. “Mrs. Blackstone—are you well?”

His eyes were searching her face with an overly familiar thoroughness.

“Certainly,” she said perkily.

“Oh, well, I’m glad …” He stuck out his neck and looked left and right down the murky corridor. “It is a rather ghastly place, isn’t it? And for a lady of quality …”

“I was wondering whether you should like to come to the community’s wedding celebrations downstairs,” she said, “to acclimatize you.”

He blinked. “A miner’s wedding—is that what this racket is?”

He really could do with a drink and a dance, the man. “It is, and I reckon there are plenty of lasses in need of a dance partner,” she coaxed.

“Dancing,” he said, recoiling, “with miners.”

For a moment, he appeared not like Matthews at all; the polite, nervous man had been replaced by a sneering one.

She had taken a small step back. “I intended no offense.”

He ran a hand over his hair, and his solicitous expression slid back in place so naturally she wondered whether she had imagined the sudden change in his mood seconds ago.

“Very gracious of you to attend, ma’am,” he said. “It should be quite interesting, anthropologically speaking.”

“Anthropologically?”

“Well, this whole place—it brings Samuel Johnson’s observation about Scotland to mind there for a moment, doesn’t it?” he said with a low laugh. “‘The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!’”

An uncomfortable feeling came over her. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Ah well,” he said, smiling nervously. “You know how I mean it.”

She wasn’t sure, but she suspected it hadn’t been well-intentioned. She did recall imagining Lucian as a sword-wielding, kilted barbarian, and her cheeks flushed. Part of her had found it titillating to imagine him so, but now it felt as though she had done him an injustice to reduce him to such a character.

She gave Matthews a nod. But no smile. She had given thought to her smile lately, because she had consciously withheld it from her (then) undeserving husband, and it had occurred to her that she smiled more often to preempt someone else’s displeasure than to express her joy. Any remotely self-determined woman should claim control over the curve of her own mouth.

A swell of warm, damp air and raucous laughter greeted her in the downstairs room and swept the odd encounter with Matthews to the back of her mind. All movable tables and chairs had been pushed aside to make space for the punishing rhythm of a reel and the dancing crowd. She stood back against the wall at first, searching for familiar faces, bobbing along on the balls of her feet to the fiddle. It was how Mhairi found her, and the girl took her to the bride, a dark-haired young woman who, radiantly happy and overwhelmed with her day, just laughed and accepted the gift as though Hattie were any regular guest, and gestured at her to join the dancing.

She should leave. Mhairi looked lovely tonight, in a bluebell dress that matched her eyes and with her braids pinned in a coronet around her head, and she should be shaking the floorboards with some good footwork, not feeling obliged to cater to her. She allowed herself one longing glance at the intriguing figures the dancers were weaving right in front of them. The bride was dancing with her father, Mr. Boyd, and he was laughing while they spun. Rosie Fraser’s red hair flashed in the fray.

“Would it be difficult to learn a reel, you think?” Hattie asked, leaning in close.

Mhairi gave her an odd look. “You’ve never danced at a ceilidh?”

“What is a ceilidh?”

Mhairi burst out laughing. “It’s a gathering, of course. Hamish!” She stretched out her arm and tapped the shoulder of a red-haired lad who was in a shouty conversation with a group of young men.

When he turned, a glass of ale in hand, Hattie recognized the man behind Rosie Fraser’s kitchen window. His eyes were a striking, rich, cornflower blue. And he had discarded his jacket. Who could blame him, she thought, the inn was dripping hot.

“Hamish, imagine,” Mhairi yelled over the bagpipe, “Mrs. Blackstone here’s never danced at a ceilidh before. She doesn’t even know what it is.”

“Of course not,” Hamish said, but he said it with a smile dimpling his cheeks, and she found she was smiling back. Lucian must have gained the respect of the men, for smiles were hardly required.

Hamish gently nudged Mhairi’s shoulder. “I reckon Ma’am has never had whisky before, either.”

“I have not, in fact,” Hattie confessed.

Mhairi’s eyes widened. “Never had a wee dram?”

“No.”

“Haven’t you tried the Auchtermuchty? From the basket?” The girl looked disappointed.

“I’m saving that for a special occasion,” she said quickly. “I have had plenty of sherry, however. My aunt is very partial to it.”

“Sherry,” Hamish drawled, and said something in Scots that made Mhairi thump him in the chest.

“Very well,” Hattie said. “I shall try it.” What harm was there in one wee dram? It sounded quaint enough.

“Guest of honor, guest of honor,” Hamish was shouting on his way back from the bar, holding three tumblers up above his head. “To your health.”

Hattie drank. Fire. Her mouth and throat were on fire, and she was coughing and wheezing like an old woman.

“Be good,” Mhairi said to Hamish, who had swallowed his Scotch in one smooth gulp. “Go and fetch Mrs. Blackstone some ale.”

“Ale?” Hattie croaked, fanning herself.

It turned out to be a dark ale with a creamy top, and it did soothe her throat. After a few sips, her head was spinning, but she was no longer coughing and could finish her whisky.

“How about dancing?” Hamish said.

“Oh, you must,” Mhairi said. “I shall dance with you.”

Hattie’s gaze flitted between Mhairi and the whirling, stomping, clapping couples. “Now?”

“Nah, the next one. Hamish, why don’t you go and ask Archie what dance is next.”

Hamish tipped two fingers to his brow and winked. Hattie watched as he made his way through the crowd, and she liked how the sweat-dampened linen of his shirt clung to his straight shoulders. She swilled beer around in her mouth, feeling breathless and depraved to be standing around drinking ale and ogling men. Would Lucian know how to dance?

“Do you think me too forward, asking you to take a spin?” Mhairi yelled into her ear, her breath smelling of sugar and spirits.

Hattie lowered her glass. “I’m very pleased that you asked me.”

Hamish returned with more whisky, and he said something guttural in Scots.

Mhairi squealed. “Oh, that one is a favorite. May I, ma’am?” She took Hattie’s hand. Both their palms were damp, from the condensation on the glasses and because they were overheated.

“I’ll tell you the steps now, so you’re prepared,” Mhairi said. “Do you see how all the couples are lining up, facing each other?”

“I do, yes.”

Mhairi’s fingers felt rough in places. I have forgotten to put on my gloves, Hattie thought. How could she have forgotten her gloves? She sipped whisky while Mhairi talked about spinning and kicking feet and changing partners at a turn.

“Are you following, Mrs. Blackstone?”

“Not at all.” Her brain was tied in knots from the Scotch and the instructions, so when it was their turn, it was a disaster; she spun in the wrong direction, stepped on toes, and some long-forgotten ballet classes resurfaced and made her footwork look so strange that Mhairi and her friends were falling over each other, howling with laughter. When it was over, Hamish presented her with a refilled tumbler, and she shook her head. “I shouldn’t.”

“But, ma’am,” he protested, “this one’s been sent to you by Boyd, father of the bride.”

She really shouldn’t, but the roar of the bagpipe derailed her reasoning.

“What do you do, Mr. Fraser, when you aren’t corrupting ladies into drinking?” she asked.

His blue eyes lit up. “I’m a getter,” he said. Getters were the men at the coal seam, she had learned, working the coal loose with their pickax.

“And he’s writing a novel,” Mhairi said proudly.

“Och,” Hamish said, and ran a hand over his hair.

“A novel—wonderful. About what?” Hattie prodded.

“About being a coal miner in Fife, ma’am.”

“There’s lots of novels about mining communities these days; I heard it in Inverness,” Mhairi said.

“But they’re all written by Methodist ministers and other dogooders,” Hamish said. “Wouldn’t know an ax from their arse, those people.”

“Hamish!” Mhairi cried.

“I should love to read it,” Hattie said earnestly, and Hamish chuckled. “My friends own a radical publishing house,” she added, and now he looked startled.

Another aisle was forming on the dance floor as men and women lined up to face each other, heat and unspoken promises swirling between them. Hattie raised the glass to her lips. The drink did not burn half as badly now. The warmth spread pleasantly; it seemed one felt less intoxicated the more one drank. Clap clap clap, stomp stomp stomp, round they went.

“I’m claiming the next one, if I may,” Hamish said to Mhairi, and offered Hattie his arm. His eyes were glassy, and she doubted he’d have dared otherwise, but the Scotch in her blood agreed that this was an excellent idea. She danced better this time, or she cared less, and another ale was pressed into her hand afterward. One reel blended into the next. Sweat glued her chemise to her breasts. She allowed Hamish to put his hand on her middle when it was his turn again because Mhairi seemed well fine with it.

It was how Lucian found her: galloping down the aisle with Hamish holding her at the waist while the other guests were cheering them on as if they were horses at a race. She nearly took a tumble at the sight of the familiar dark figure against the wall; Hamish, with his back turned toward the intruder, hoisted her off her feet for the last swing-around, then nearly dropped her when he saw. Then the musicians spotted him and ground to a halt, one after the other, until the bagpipe petered out like a sad trombone. Her stomach sank. For how long had he been standing there with his bland expression, watching her fraternize with the miners, frolicking with another man?

Lucian detached from the wall and raised a tumbler up high. “To the health and a long life of happiness of the bride and groom,” he said, the deep timbre of his voice carrying to the edges of the room. “Slàinte mhath.”

The whole party eased up again as one. “Slàinte mhath!”

He was coming toward her, stopping here and there to shake a hand and reply to a quip, but he was coming for her. For a brawny man, he had a sinewy quality to the way he moved, and she felt thoroughly stalked by the time he was in front of her. Mhairi and Hamish had disappeared like fairies in the mist. Her head spun, from the Scotch, or the penetrating look in Lucian’s eyes. The music had started up again, and so he leaned in close. “Amusing yourself, Mrs. Blackstone?”

Now she remembered. “I’ve forgotten to return before dinner, haven’t I?”

“You have, yes.”

“You ate alone?”

“I did.”

She looked up at him, sideways through her lashes. In the thick air, his fresh scent was a delicious respite, and the relaxed fullness of his mouth said he was in a—suspiciously—good mood.

“I suppose I must pay a penance,” she said. Her tongue had felt unwieldy in her mouth since her last pint, but penance still came out clear as glass.

“You do,” he said. He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “You’ll have to dance with me.”

“Is that a euphemism for being put over your knee?” He had offered to do so once, and feeling his strong thigh against her own brought his words back.

His surprise gave way to a low laugh. He lowered his head and nosed her temple. “I’d put you over my knee all right,” he murmured, the velvet of his lips soft against her ear. “But you would have to ask me for it, and nicely so.”

Oh. “I had some whisky,” she said, feeling overheated.

“I know,” he said. His grip on her tightened, and he took her with him among the twirling couples.

He could dance. Rather well. Really well. She could dance, too, guided by his hands.

“I thought you were a pugilist, not a dancer,” she yelled as they spun.

“It’s very similar,” he replied, “boxing, dancing, in Scotland. Look at the footwork—it’s useful to practice for a sword fight, for close combat.”

“Sword fight,” she echoed. Was he jesting with her? This dancing, laughing version of him was unfamiliar and difficult to gauge. It was also a dangerously attractive version.

“I should like some fresh air,” she said. The room was broiling, blurred, and loud.

She hung on his arm as he guided her out the side door near the bar. The cool night air was reviving, and she inhaled greedily. Her stomach roiled in response, so she breathed through her mouth.

“The bride’s hair comb looked very similar to one of yours,” Lucian said casually.

“It did?” she said. “What a strange coincidence.”

“Och,” he said. “What will she do with it, wear it when doing the washing out back?”

“Lucian,” she slurred, and placed her hands on his chest. “You must understand: every woman needs something that serves no purpose other than that it please her eye. Or something that makes her feel pretty. There is a lot of pleasure to be had from being frivolous.”

His hands were on her waist. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Aye,” she said. “And I know you think me terribly frivolous, but don’t spoil my otherwise splendid evening by telling me so.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll not say it.”

Across the black sky behind him, the Milky Way arched white and billowing like a giant bridal veil. She was certain that it shouldn’t be billowing to the bare eye. “I think I’m a trifle intoxicated,” she mumbled.

“A trifle,” Lucian said, urging her closer into the shelter of his body, and she leaned against him with a sigh, because his chest felt wonderfully solid and he could make stars explode behind her eyes with his fingers. Lucian’s shoulders went rigid. She realized her head was on one of the shoulders.

“Do you own a kilt?” she asked.

“What?”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” he said after a moment, “why?”

She snuggled closer. “Why did you not wear it for our wedding?”

He took his time to reply. “The queen wears tartan now,” he finally said. “It’s hardly the rebel fashion of my ancestors anymore.”

She rose to her toes and nuzzled his warm throat. No reaction. She pressed her breasts against him, because she was young, and curious, and filled with a newly roused passion that had nowhere to go, and because she could not seem to get close enough to him. She touched the tip of her tongue to his skin, just where his collar met his neck. He shivered and pulled back. “Let’s take you inside.”

He walked her round the inn, to the main entrance. She was giggling and silly when he maneuvered her up the dark stairs with his hand on her bottom. She thought Mr. Matthews was in the narrow corridor when Lucian guided her past, and she tried to behave, with no success: the moment he had closed the door to their room and flicked the light switch, she clasped the lapels of his jacket and rose to her toes.

He turned his face away, and her eager mouth met his cheek.

“What?” she murmured. “Look, I’m quite willing.”

“Good,” he said, his eyes searching hers. “Now you only need to be conscious.”

“How rude, sir.” She grabbed for his cravat. “I am consh—consc—”

He caught both her groping hands in one of his and stilled them.

He was rejecting her.

She hadn’t expected it, and the humiliation felt like a stab to the gut, which was also unexpected. Her nose burned with a salty surge of tears.

“You very arrogantly told me to ask for it,” she said, accusingly, aware that she had left her dignity on the dance floor. “Is this just a sport to you?” He released her hands, and she touched her wet cheeks. “And why am I crying?”

It took her a moment to comprehend that Lucian was chuckling. “Because, mo chridhe, you are pissed,” he said.

“What?”

His hands framed her face, steadying her. “You’ve had too much whisky.” He was enunciating every word. “You are deep in the cups. And it appears you’re a crying drunk.”

“Cruel of you to acknowledge a lady’s incapacitation. I don’t want to be a crying drunk.”

“Better than a mean drunk,” he offered.

Her head was heavy despite his warm hands holding it. She squinted at him. “Are you one of those? A mean one?”

He gave her a wide smile, and her belly flipped at the sight of his broken tooth. “I’m always mean,” he said. “You know that.”

She desired a mean man, then. It made no sense.

“I’m not feeling too well,” she said thickly.

She sat on the bed, and Lucian was on his knees before her and unlaced her boots. She sighed and wiggled her toes, and then she felt ill again and lay down.

“I’ll loosen your clothes, all right?”

“Please.”

He turned her to and fro, unfastening and unbuttoning her, the front of her dress, the clasps of her skirts, the ties of the gauzy petticoat. He made quick work of her stockings, the touch of his fingertips against the sensitive backs of her knees fleeting as he untied the bows supporting the elastics. He must have done this many times, she thought as she felt the deft tugs and subsequent loosening of her front-lacing corset around her belly and ribs. But with other women. A sob racked her when he pulled the corset from beneath her.

“Here, now,” Lucian said gruffly. “It’ll be all right.”

“Will it, though?” Tears had streaked down her cheeks and soaked her hair, and the wet strands clung to the sides of her neck.

“Aye.” He tucked the blanket around her shoulders.

“I don’t know what has come over me,” she said. “The wedding was wonderful. I was so happy.”

“You’ve had a rough time of it lately,” he replied. Then he left, and returned with the washbowl from the side chamber. He put it on the floor next to the bed. “If you’re ill, try not to miss.”

“Oh,” she groaned. “I’m dying.”

A glint of teeth. “No,” he said. “But tomorrow morning, you’ll probably wish you were dead.”

Alarmed, she tried to raise her head. “What do you mean?”

He was holding her face again, his thumbs brushing beneath her eyes. “Rest now.”

Her eyes closed. She was half-asleep when she felt his lips press softly against her forehead. “What spell have you put on me?” he murmured.

She was spiraling, upward or downward, impossible to say.

He cooled off outside the inn, his eyes on the shadowed outlines of the valley before him, thinking if he were in the habit of smoking, he’d be lighting a cigarette now. His hands were shaking slightly, and it couldn’t be from the one Scotch he’d had. Flickering light and the sounds of drunken revelry spilled through the inn’s dining room windows behind him, compelling his mind to replay how Harriet had mingled among the miners, laughing, carefree, exerting an electrifying bodily pull on him. They made an uneasy picture, his old life and the new one in the same frame, but for a moment there she had danced on the edges of both worlds as though one could do just that: belong neither fully here nor there but right in between.

The noise rose, and a couple stumbled outside through the side door. “… he’s quite all right, isn’t he?” someone slurred in Scots.

“Too soon to tell,” came a female voice, “but I do like how he’s besotted with his wife.”

“I like how he didn’t rip Fraser’s bollocks off for him putting his paws on the wife ….”

Besotted.

“Mrs. Blackstone will publish Fraser’s novel …”

Besotted. That’s what it was, then, the trembling hands, the restlessness, the heat in his veins. How could she not affect him? His cold bed was now warm and his usually fractured sleep calm. His solitary hours were filled with her clever, womanly scented presence. He rose in the mornings with an unfamiliar lightness in his chest, and the only thing that had changed about his routine was … her. It was high time to bring his attraction to his wife to its natural conclusion before he went soft in the head. Had he been a more philosophical man, he’d have wondered whether that would indeed be the conclusion, or the beginning of something rather more complicated.