Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Chapter 28

They both rose early the next morning because Hattie had decided it was important to breakfast with Mr. Matthews, since the poor man was still stuck at the inn after the constant rainfall had flooded the southbound railway tracks. She looked civilized for the first time in five days, neatly dressed and coiffed thanks to Mhairi’s help, though Mhairi kept biting her cheeks to keep from smiling as she twisted and pinned the braids into place. Clearly the entire inn had taken note that the Blackstones had finally begun their honeymoon in earnest. There were more covert glances when the blond waitress served them breakfast, and Hattie wanted to disappear under the table. Mr. Matthews, thank goodness, seemed oblivious, and simply ordered some smoked salmon and black coffee. Treacherously ravenous, Hattie ordered a full Scottish breakfast—scrambled eggs, mushrooms, cooked tomatoes, bacon rashers, and spicy sausages ….

“The lads brought the mail from Auchtermuchty,” the waitress said when she returned with the laden tray. “There was a letter for you, ma’am.” She took the small envelope from the tray and placed it on the table.

A thrill of excitement rushed up Hattie’s spine. “A reply from Lucie,” she said. “Gentlemen, do you mind?” She was already breaking the seal.

Oxford, October 4th, 1880

My dear Hattie,

Your letter filled me with relief, pride, and contrition; relief because you are well; pride because you are promoting the cause in a place as remote as a Scottish coalfield; contrition because indeed, we must make a greater effort at approaching the women’s labor unions.

Here are my thoughts on the matter, for now: You call the mining women a formidable army, but an army marches on their stomach. We cannot, with good conscience, rouse those women of Britain who live hand-to-mouth and then demand they spend their wages on train fares and meals away from home to take part in gatherings and picketing campaigns. We must not even expect them to pay for stamps. If we want an army, we need the funds for such a thing. Hence, the first task would be to devise a campaign for raising the money to pay for our troops’ logistics and meals, at least hot tea and rolls upon their arrival in a place of action. Is there a campaign possible and grand enough for such a thing? We must put our heads together, but I can tell you now that it shan’t be easy. Nevertheless, it shall be done; it is necessary for our greater vision—equality for all women before the law and in marriage.

It is an odd thought, isn’t it, that there are specific rules for us women just because we are women, only for the rules to differ again depending on the clothes we wear and how much wealth we have to our name. If I were to leave a carriage as Lady Lucinda, men would rush to lift me from the vehicle; if I were to dress in the pit-brow clothes and went by plain Miss Lucie, they wouldn’t worry too much about having me pull coal tubs like a pony. It reminds me of a letter from one of our American sisters, who realized this after reading a speech by a Black American suffragist called Sojourner Truth—Mrs. Truth, rightly, pointed out that some of the same men who insisted on carrying some women over ditches would not do the same for her because of the color of her skin—to which she purportedly said, “and ain’t I a woman?” Hattie, never doubt that how women’s bodies are prized and categorized depends on their social standing, and, accordingly, the different uses (think: brood mare, mistress, or workhorse) our men, or even our fellow women, have in mind for them.

I must stop now because the amendment will be introduced in two days’ time, and I haven’t convinced half the men we need on our side yet.

London, October 5th

The lobbying continues to be as tedious and painful as pulling teeth. Ballentine is helping me by way of shady maneuvering, but after the liberals’ recent shift into power, it seems the conservative MPs we require for a sound majority are doubly stubborn on the issue.

London, October 7th

I am still too furious to write much—you probably saw it in the papers: we lost! The text has been rejected soundly! And the entire Home Rule Party voted against us; bloody hypocrites—independence for them only, it seems ….

Heat, then cold, washed over her. “Oh no,” she said, “oh no.”

“Is anything the matter?” Lucian and Mr. Matthews were watching her, alarmed.

She tried for a neutral expression. “Some unfortunate news from my friend,” she said, “nothing too serious.”

She ate her meal, but she could barely swallow. They had lost, again. Lucie had to be crushed. And she, Hattie, was the worst—she hadn’t properly thought of the amendment introduction in days—she had been too busy frolicking in the nude.

She managed to last through long minutes of stuffing the heavy food down her throat and listening to Mr. Matthews make small talk about London, the latest gossip, the weather there … unbearable, when one’s right to remain a person after marriage had just been pushed down the list again.

Lucian knew his wife was deeply troubled despite the polite front she put on, and he followed her to their room instead of going over his white paper on the income tax reform.

She stood at the window with her back turned.

“What is it?” he demanded.

She faced him, her fingers against her lips. “They rejected the text for the Married Women’s Property Act amendment.”

“I see.” He had been unaware the amendment had been introduced.

“You don’t understand,” she said shakily. “The Duke of Montgomery wrote the text—his bills always get passed—always.”

“Hasn’t he made a crowd of enemies since he married his mistress and switched sides this spring?”

Harriet went red in the face. “She wasn’t his mistress. Besides, the liberals have the majority in the House, and he left the Tories—none of them want us to be people.” She was pacing, her hands on her cheeks. “It was only the First Reading,” she murmured, “there will be the Second Reading.”

“So not all’s lost,” he ventured.

She looked at him bleakly. “No,” she said. “There’s a committee stage, the report stage … a Third Reading—it will take a year or two, of course, if the first text is already rejected. But yes, there is hope.” She attempted a smile, and it was a gut-wrenching sight. He was mentally listing the members of Parliament and Cabinet he had in his pocket, via either debt, or greed, or incriminating personal information. If he could force improved workers’ rights, he could try to force women’s rights, too.

Harriet was mumbling again. “Of course, the House of Commons could then still turn it down after the Third Reading—”

“Right,” he heard himself say. “Let’s … let’s have an excursion.”

She stopped in her tracks. “An excursion—when?”

“How about now?”

“Now! To where?”

“The Highlands.”

“I don’t understand.”

Neither did he, but he knew he hated seeing her in distress; it made him want to take action. “You once said looking at mountains lifts the spirit.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “It’s just past eight o’clock. We could be in Auchtermuchty at half past nine and take a ten o’clock train.”

Her eyes began to shine despite herself at the prospect of an adventure. “But the railway tracks are flooded.”

“The southbound ones.”

“I hadn’t realized we were near the Highlands.”

“It’s a good sixty miles to Lochnagar,” he admitted, “and we’d arrive well past lunchtime. But we could stay in an inn, in Braemar, for the night.”

She seemed hesitant, but then she straightened her shoulders. “Very well.”

Unexpectedly, the prospect of seeing the mountains heated his chest as if a beacon fire had been lit inside. He cleared his throat. “Good,” he said. “You’ll meet some proper Scots, then.”

Her brows pulled together. “What is wrong with the local Scots?”

“Lowlanders,” he muttered. “They’re as good as English.”

Higher powers approved of his ad hoc plan. The weather was unpredictable in the mountains, but the sky was blue and the breeze mild and dry when they arrived at Braemar rail station. A hackney stood in the coach area, and the driver knew an inn that had spare rooms and promptly took them there. The inn was located at the outskirts of the small town, and it was rustic but tidy, and the thick wall-to-wall tartan carpets at last coaxed a sign of interest out of Harriet. She had been silent during the train ride, lost in her own head.

“They recommend we take the pony wagon to the main trail in Glenmuick,” he informed her after discussing it with the inn’s receptionist. “The trail begins sixteen miles from here, and we can take a pony along on the walk, in case you feel tired.”

Hattie eyed the two shaggy ponies skeptically when the wagon pulled up in front of the inn’s entrance steps. “They are rather small.”

The booted, bearded Scotsman holding the bridle patted the brow of the animal closest to him. “Each one of them can carry a whole big stag down a mountain,” he told Lucian in Gaelic. He assessed Harriet with a practiced glance. “They should carry her.”

Lucian translated, and his wife cut him a dry look. “I’m so relieved.”

They ate a late lunch during the ride, sitting in the back of the wagon and helping themselves from the basket Mhairi Burns had packed before they had dashed to Auchtermuchty. There were apples and fresh hunks of bread with thick slabs of cheddar cheese, and the tea was strong and sweet, but despite that and the open views, Harriet was still quiet. It grated on him. He wasn’t used to her being silent anymore, not with the pillow talk they now shared and the conversations they had over their meals.

“Remember our conversation about fairness a few nights ago?” he said.

She granted him a distracted glance. “I do.”

“I had mentioned reading learned men’s thoughts on the matter.”

“Yes.”

“I came across a theory by Locke that I thought made sense.” The wagon wheels bumped over a rough patch, and he caught the apple that rolled from her lap and handed it back to her. His gloved fingertips grazed hers, and the fleeting contact immediately swelled to need, as though he hadn’t just felt her around him this morning. He gave a small shake.

“Locke,” he said. “Locke says a man has a right to appropriating and owning the land or a resource once he has mixed his own sweat and labor with it. I liked that. I thought no one had given me anything and I had sweated and bled a whole bloody lot to own what I own.”

“No one did give you anything,” she said quietly.

“Perhaps not,” he said, though there had been lucky opportunities. Graham and the antiques shop, for one. “But I had also worked underground. And it occurred to me that miners literally mix their sweat with the coal seams, but they don’t own them—men who never step into a tunnel do. Where, then, does Locke take me?”

Now he had her full attention. “What do you mean to do?”

“I’ve been thinking about giving Drummuir to the miners.”

She considered this while nibbling on her apple, and he felt strangely tense while awaiting her verdict.

“A communally owned mine?” she finally said.

He nodded. “There have been experiments of the kind—Robert Owen tried it both in the States and here in Britain, in Hampshire. I’d have to do all necessary investments first, though, else they’ll be bankrupt in a week.” He shook his head. “Probably the worst mine I ever bought.”

“Hmm,” she said. “What happened to the man who fills his rooms with priceless trinkets just because he can?”

He showed her his teeth. “Can’t I be both?”

“I’d say you could,” she said after a pause. “But I’m the wrong person to ask such a thing; there is little linearity to my thinking. What were the results of Robert Owen’s experiments?”

“They failed. Dismally. Apparently, the communities lacked discipline or the interest to organize any effective management. Then there was too much infighting among the workers—many felt they worked harder than the rest and resented that everyone still gained the same benefits.”

“Oh dear.”

“Every child knows that a common enemy is the easiest way to keep men united.”

She raised a tawny brow. “The enemy here being colliery owners. Men like you.”

“Men like me, or what we represent.” He shrugged. “More important, you’ll never work as hard as when you work for your own clear gain and glory first. Human nature.”

“Unless you are a woman,” she said bitterly. “Then you are taught that spending your every breath on others is working for your own glory. A rather sly appropriation of surplus labor if you ask me.”

He nearly choked on his sandwich. “You receive two thousand a year. In addition to all essential expenses paid. That’s one hell of a wage.”

“And in return, you receive all of me, with no end to my workday,” she replied, “while the women in Drummuir are expected to do it all for no coin at all, a whole second shift. It seems that labor, once it crosses the door into a home, is magically transformed into a priceless act of love or female duty—meanwhile, women’s hands are raw from very real chores.”

He had nothing to counter that. “Your thoughts are wild, lass,” he said instead.

Again, her brow went up. “As wild as handing a colliery to its miners?”

He laughed out loud despite himself. Her expression remained cool. “All right,” he said, sobering. “I’ll do what I can. About the bill. For the Cause. For you.”

She dipped her chin. “Will you? Do what you can?”

“My word on it.”

“Through honest means?”

“And dirty ones.”

“Good.” There was a hard edge to her mouth.

He nudged his knee against her skirts. “Now my murky ways suit you, eh?”

Her gaze strayed to the driver’s back. “I’m afraid I have been quite thoroughly corrupted by my husband,” she then murmured softly.

“Your husband is a fortunate man,” he said in an equally low voice. “I reckon he’s keen on thoroughly corrupting you again tonight.”

She blushed, and heat washed over him when her lovely lips relaxed at last. Had they been alone, he would have pulled her onto his lap for some kissing. Instead, he contented himself with watching her finish her apple with delicate bites. She wrapped the gratings in her handkerchief. “For the ponies,” she clarified. “I’m wondering: Why would you communalize Drummuir if the other experiments failed?”

He had wondered the same. “I suppose sometimes, all one can do is try again,” he said. “To learn some more. Ah, now, what’s this look?”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “Nothing—it just sounds unlike you.”

“Unlike me—how?”

“A little vague,” she said. “Soft, almost.”

He didn’t like the sound of that, not at all.

They continued the journey in silence until they reached the Spittal of Glenmuick.

The sight of the sunny valley stretching before them left him feeling unexpectedly breathless. Distracted, he helped Harriet from the wagon. Lochnagar was part of the Cairngorms, the eastern mountain chain the Highlanders would call Am Monadh Ruadh—the red hills. Beneath clear skies, the majestic slopes honored their name and appeared in reddish-brown hues, and the usually gloomy moorlands were a muted patchwork of browns, green, and tufts of heather. A heavy feeling spread from a dark place in his chest, and he drew the peaty scent of the glen deep into his lungs to ease it. One couldn’t behold the austere splendor of the land without noticing how empty it was. He had never known it otherwise; when he was a boy the Highland communities had already been reduced to a tenth of their old numbers. But he had been raised on the stories and legends predating the Clearances, and that part of him could sense the ghosts lingering on this plain.

Harriet was walking ahead, her back stiff like a board, propelled by continued frustration over the failed amendment, he assumed. He nearly called after her: You can’t outrun it. Funny, how it was she who could toss big words like surplus labor appropriation at him because she had been educated better than most men in Britain and could read Marx. Marx would say that the same forces that had helped him, Lucian, become outrageously wealthy had also been behind the desolation of his homeland—in Marx’s essays, the Clearances were called the last great expropriation. An expropriation supported by plenty of Lowlanders, as it was. Now Lowlanders were working for Lucian and their entire livelihoods were lawfully in his power. Where, then, in all this should a man who came from nothing and now had everything position himself? Damn how conversations with Harriet tied his brain into knots.

He spoke to the driver, who was walking two steps behind him with one of the ponies, then he caught up with his wife. “This path brings us to the banks of Loch Muick,” he informed her. “We could walk around the loch or could climb up the first slope.”

“I don’t mind either way,” she said, “as long as we move.”

They walked in silence for a mile. The path ran parallel to a murmuring stream, but the peaceful sound of water was soon disturbed by guttural roars echoing across the valley. Harriet finally slowed. “Of course,” she said. “It’s rutting season.” She shielded her eyes with her hand and searched the barren ridges flanking the valley. “There is one!”

It took him a minute to find the stag—he was but a dot against the sky. “He’ll have a rival right across,” she continued, and searched the opposite slopes. He supposed her family were hunters. They were at the heart of Balmoral estate, prime hunting ground for the high and mighty, if invited.

Harriet dropped her hand and let her gaze roam across the vastness before them.

“‘Yet, Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains,’” she said. “‘Round their white summits though elements war; through cataracts foam ’stead of smooth-flowing fountains, I sigh for the valley of dark Lochnagar.’”

When she fell silent, he asked, “More Jane Austen?”

She laughed. Her first laugh all day. “No,” she said, her brown eyes shimmering with mirth. “Lord Byron.”

The amused curl of her lips transfixed him. He had actually taken a step toward her.

“Imagine being a stag,” she said, staring at the small silhouette on the left-hand ridge. “You would enjoy this sweeping view every day and could roar your lungs out, and no one would think it’s odd.”

“A good life,” he said. “It’s healthy to have a decent roar now and again.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Well,” he said. “Now is your chance.”

She looked around. Save for the stags’ mating cries, silence hung over the valley, tangible like mist.

“There is always someone near in the city,” she said. “There is always someone even when I walk in the meadows.”

“Go on, then,” he said.

“You just like hearing me scream,” she murmured with a sideways glance.

Lust licked through him. “I do,” he murmured back. “I’ll make you, back at the inn.”

She bit her lip and shifted slightly on her feet. “What of the gent and the ponies?”

“He’ll just think you’re an unhinged Sassenach.”

“Fine.” She faced the valley, took a deep breath, and gave a hesitant cry. “Well,” she said after an awkward pause, “that was pathetic.”

“It was sweet,” Lucian said, “like a wee lamb.”

He grinned at her annoyed little huff and turned to the driver. “My wife will be a bit loud in a moment,” he said in Gaelic. “It’s for some art exhibition in London.”

The man muttered something into his beard that sounded like “Unhinged Sassenach.”

“He says it’s not uncommon for visitors to scream across Glenmuick,” Lucian told Harriet. She narrowed her eyes at him; she wasn’t daft. Still, she turned and let out a scream. It was a bridled, nervous sound, as if it felt watched and judged by a hundred pairs of eyes.

“Better,” she muttered.

She tried again, angrier. The pony danced on the spot. Her next shout sent a raven fluttering up from a nearby boulder. And then the mechanisms that kept a woman quiet must have broken inside her, for she screamed—drawn out, angry, raw, and loud—pouring all she had to give into her voice, as if she were the last person left on earth.

As Lucian watched her rage, he realized that he couldn’t lose her. Not because it would hurt his political ambitions, but because it would hurt. The thought of a life without her, of having the warmth in his chest ripped from him again, felt like the ground beneath his feet giving way, like darkness itself.

He turned away and took a deep breath, shaken by his bodily reaction. He had trouble with accepting loss; he was aware enough to know as much. But how to keep her? Some good loving could make a woman soft, but his woman was stubborn and had vowed never to love him barely a month ago. Once the drugging effects of pleasure wore off, she might remember. And while the dank inn in Drummuir kept out the world with an old magic spell, their stay there was coming to an end—London beckoned, and there the memories of the social gulf between them lurked in every corner.

Harriet was panting. “I think I chased the stags away,” she said, hoarse like an old man.

“They ran scared,” he acknowledged. “You have a mighty roar.”

Her gaze locked with his, and it was one of those transcendent gazes that look inside a man and see him, while letting him see her in return, and the sense of connection turned his knees soft. An old reflex stirred in him to raise an ice wall against such weakness.

That evening at the Braemar inn, Lucian persuaded her to try the Royal Lochnagar whisky, and when she felt overwarm and giddy, he escorted her upstairs to their room and carried her over the threshold to the lumpy bed. He did not make her scream. He loved her slowly, tenderly, and held her so tightly, every inch of his hot skin was pressed against hers as he glided in and out of her, causing her to overflow with longing. When she ran her hands down his back and urged him closer still, a wild look entered his eyes, and he kissed her deeply until all she felt, heard, and tasted was Lucian, until she cried out with sweet relief while her peak pulsed around him in never-ending lazy waves. She watched with some confusion when he abruptly withdrew from her and spent himself against her belly with a groan.

Later, he stretched himself out on his side and drew idle circles around her navel with a calloused fingertip. “Your belly is the softest thing I’ve ever felt,” he said.

She raised her head, pleasantly lazy. “Softer than silk?”

“Yes. As soft as flour.”

“How romantic.”

His expression was serious. “As a boy, I sometimes stuck my fingers into the flour when the women were making bread, just because it was so whisper-soft. But this ….” He pressed down lightly, sinking his fingertips into the pliant curve.

“Bread making,” she said feebly. “I have thought that sometimes, you look at me as though I were something to eat.”

A dark emotion was banking in his eyes. “I’ve known hunger,” he said. “And I have never been as starved as I am for you.”

She wanted to make love all over again when he said such things. They were making love now, she felt, though it made her anxious to think that word. Lucian still hadn’t said that he loved her, a fact that kept advancing on her bliss like an enemy determined to conquer.

She placed her hand on the cool, smooth skin of her belly. “Why did you finish here?”

His voice was drowsy. “If I keep spending inside you, I’ll put a babe in you sooner rather than later.”

The thought of growing round and encumbered with his child brought an unexpected, deep sense of satisfaction, the primitive kind that defied logic and resided purely in the body. The moment her mind worked again, a twinge of uncertainty curled in her chest. She would be thoroughly bound to him. Her throat tightened.

“I thought you wanted an heir,” she said, looking at the ceiling.

“I don’t want to share you,” came his reply. “Not for a while.” Then he leaned over her, his gaze alert. “Unless you hope to be a mother soon. I should have asked, shouldn’t I?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “But it’s sweet, being wanted just for myself.”

He rolled over, and they were both looking at the ceiling. The back of his fingers grazed hers. “I want you,” he said.

It was almost an I love you. The curl inside her chest became a knot. Sometimes, the almost things and phrases only drew attention to the fact that the ultimate gestures and declarations had been avoided. She lay stiffly by his side, her neediness grating on her. It reminded her of Hattie at the Friday dining table, eager for approval. Besides, she had been the one who had sworn to never, ever love him, so she could hardly nurse grand expectations now. Yet here she was, nursing these very expectations—and they were already big and looming. She had thought being in love would be a warm, joyful state of being. Now she found it could also feel like balancing on a ridge in high winds, where she felt breathless and too uncertain where to step or what to say lest it all came crashing down.