The Lass Wore Black (26 page)

Thank God that Aunt Mary had saved her from a place like this. She hadn’t liked being a maid, but at least she wasn’t forced to live in a subterranean warren like a rat. But did Inverness have a section like Old Town?

The worst thing about Inverness was that the breeze blew over the river, bringing the scent of the sea with it. The smell of brine and fish was overpowering at times, but she’d gladly take that to what she was smelling now.

They traveled a good distance from the base of the steps, until the darkness was absolute. Just when she thought that this truly was Hell, a faint light gave her hope.

“What’s that?”

“A fire,” he said.

Suddenly, a redheaded lad with an engaging grin popped out of the darkness.

She jumped, startled.

“Doctor! I have a tiger!”

“A tiger, James?” Mark asked.

“Mam said I could keep her because she eats rats. Otherwise, she’d just be another mouth to feed.” He grabbed Mark’s hand and pulled him toward the firelight. “Come and see her.”

Mark glanced back at her, then left to follow the boy.

She stood at the opening of the space, noting the shadowed vault above her. How could people live here, without sunlight or fresh air?

“A fine tiger, indeed,” she heard Mark say as a striped cat emerged from beneath a pile of blankets, yawning and stretching. James immediately grabbed the cat and cradled her in his arms.

“How is your sister?”

“Better,” a woman said, stepping into the light. “She’s been coughing less this last week.”

The woman was utterly beautiful, her red hair a flame in the shadows. Her eyes were tilted at the corners, giving her an exotic air. Her mouth, lush and inviting, was curved in a half smile as she looked at Mark.

”This is Edeen, Catriona,” he said to her.

Jealousy cut through her.

The force of the emotion was so great that she took a step back, wanting to flee from the vault. She had always been the most beautiful woman in a room. Not now, with James’s mother standing there silent and still, wearing her threadbare shawl over her shoulders as regally as an ermine-trimmed cape.

Then James appeared in front of her, staring up with a frown on his face.

“Are you the angel of death, come to take Christel?”

She was stunned into silence.

“No, James,” Mark said. “She’s a friend of mine. This is Miss Cameron.”

To her amazement, James performed a lovely bow. She wondered how long it had taken his mother to teach him that.

The fire evidently served as a source of warmth, illumination, and where cooking was done. A small pot sat on a tripod, the contents bubbling.

Mark knelt beside a cot where a little girl lay. Gently, he helped the child sit up, then used his stethoscope to listen to her lungs.

Christel had bright red hair just like her mother. Her face was ashen, however, and she looked painfully thin bundled up in the narrow bed.

The little girl placed her hand on Mark’s in a gesture of trust.

She’d felt the same for the physicians in London, at least at first.

They hadn’t brought her anything but lies, couched in pretty phrases and spiritual entreaty.
God will decide, Miss Cameron . . . Only the good Lord knows . . . Providence will dictate.

Did Mark dole out that advice to his patients? She doubted it. He would be direct and unflinching. He, no doubt, would have told her the truth.

You are scarred for life, Catriona. The glass cut through your skin and the scarring will always be with you. There will be no change.

She could have tolerated the truth with a great deal more acceptance than she had the lies. Or could she? Perhaps the doctors had told her what they needed to, in order to calm her. Perhaps she’d been so hysterical, and so desperate, that she wouldn’t have accepted the truth.

Was she that shallow, that vain?

Edeen stepped closer to the cot, watching closely as Mark finished up his examination. He withdrew a bottle and handed it to the redhead, and she nodded several times.

The woman was poor, more destitute than anyone she’d ever met, but she’d not relinquished the responsibility of her two children. Why hadn’t Edeen parlayed her looks into better opportunities for herself and her children?

Just like she herself had planned? Was she the only one who put such a high price on appearance?

Mark and the children’s mother exchanged a wordless look and she immediately felt like an outsider. Had he been her lover, too?

Standing there in a space that offered no privacy, no comfort, and no light, she felt a curious sensation resembling shame. Her future, even scarred, was a great deal brighter than the one offered this family.

The child couldn’t remain here. Didn’t Mark see that? Why hadn’t he demanded that she be taken from here immediately?

The situation reminded her too much of Inverness, and those black months following her parents’ death. Without Aunt Mary’s intervention, they probably wouldn’t have survived. No one had come forward to offer food or money for coal. She and Jean had no one but each other and their aunt, and this woman didn’t even have that.

“She can’t stay here,” she heard herself say.

The woman turned to look at her, her smile fading.

“If she’s ill, she can’t stay here,” she said. “This is no place for a sick child.”

“She’s my daughter,” the woman said. “I thank you for your interest, but this is our home.”

“This isn’t a home,” she said, looking around. “It’s a smoky pit. It’s a cave.”

Mark stared at her. “That will be all, Catriona,” he said in a cutting voice.

How had she ever thought he was a footman? How had she ever believed him a servant?

The trip back to the carriage was faster than the descent into the Hell of the vault. She didn’t speak and neither did Mark. Once in the carriage, she remained silent.

Only when their surroundings changed, becoming more amenable and less like Old Town, did she turn to look at him.

“Will the little girl live?”

“I hope so,” he said. “Christel’s looking better than she did last week.”

“That’s where you’ve been each morning?”

He nodded. “I try to visit Old Town first thing.”

“What will you tell them?”

He turned his head and regarded her.

“What will you tell my aunt and my sister?”

He propped up one arm on the window and didn’t move his gaze from her. She was disconcerted by his intense stare. He couldn’t see through the veil, she knew that well enough, but he had a way of looking at her as if he could peer past the lace and directly into her soul.

“That I no longer need to see you,” he said.

“You never did.”

“You stopped eating.”

She looked away, annoyed that she couldn’t dispute that.

“I think you were troubled in spirit, Catriona.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I think your world had narrowed, that it had probably always been narrow, accommodating only yourself and perhaps your sister.”

She hadn’t expected him to dissect her character in such a manner.

“You’ve allowed the accident and what happened to you to become a mirror, one you’ve wrapped around you. All you can see is what happened to you. Your wishes. Your wants. Your needs.”

“I was concerned about the little girl.”

He smiled. “A perfect example. Because
you
were concerned,
you
wanted action.”

“How can you allow them to live that way?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was somber with a touch of sadness. “Because I can’t save them all.”

Mark didn’t speak again, even when the carriage stopped before the house. It was better that he didn’t. Otherwise, he might say something cutting and cruel.

Or too honest for comfort.

Chapter 24

“A
re you getting rid of your wardrobe?” Catriona asked, standing in the door of the parlor.

Aunt Dina looked up, smiling.

“It does look like that, doesn’t it?”

All around her were piles of clothing. On the table before her were three stacks of what looked like aprons but on closer inspection were shifts and corset covers.

“I’m sorting our donations,” she said. “People have been generous.”

Catriona took a few steps inside the door. “Do you need any help?”

Aunt Dina smiled even brighter. “Oh, my dear, I would love some help.”

The older woman patted the settee beside her, and she made her way around the piles. The minute she sat down, Dina thrust some shirts into her arms.

“There you go. Fold those, and we’ll have one whole household done.”

For several moments they were silent as she followed her aunt’s lead. She didn’t think she’d ever folded a man’s shirt before this moment. At home, her mother had always handled her father’s shirts, and then Jean, when her mother was too ill. At Ballindair, she had never been assigned to the laundry, which was only good fortune, since Aunt Mary often used laundry duty as punishment.

By the third shirt, she’d learned well enough that Dina was nodding in approval. That small nod gave her a glow, one that had been curiously absent in her life for a while.

The last shirt finished, she reached for a pile of shifts.

“Won’t you take off your veil, my dear?” Dina asked. “It’s just the two of us. Artis is off on errands. I’ve sent Isobel to rest, and Elspeth is cleaning my bedchamber.”

Mark had gone, the role of footman no longer necessary. Blessedly, Dina didn’t mention him.

Slowly, she raised the veil and pulled it back over her head. She closed her eyes at the touch of cool air on her skin.

“Oh, my dear, you’ve been crying,” Dina said, reaching out and tapping the right side of her face with gentle fingers.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “That’s all.”

Dina gently smiled. “We’ve had an eventful time of it, haven’t we? But the fire didn’t spread and we can rebuild the carriage house.” The older woman sat quiet for a moment, her hands on the garments in her lap. “I do need to write dear Morgan, but I haven’t yet.”

“Why did you do it, Dina?” she asked, keeping her attention on her hands.

Dina, thankfully, did not pretend ignorance or confusion. “You weren’t eating, my dear, and you refused to come out of your rooms.” She glanced over at Catriona and smiled. “If you’d once offered to help me as you’re doing now, I would not have been so concerned.”

“So as long as I perform good works, you won’t interfere in my life?”

Dina stilled, her busy hands resting in her lap. In those moments, she wished she could retract what she’d said. Words were easily spoken and impossible to call back, yet they could wound as surely as a spear.

“I can’t promise that,” Dina said. “You see, I’ve become fond of you. When you first came to me,” she added, “you were a haughty young woman. For a good two weeks I debated whether or not to write Morgan and tell him to come and get you. I despaired of ever being able to teach you anything. Then, one day, I saw you here, in this very room. You were walking back and forth. I was about to interrupt you when I realized that you weren’t just walking, you were practicing walking. You got to the door and curtsied. Then you turned, walked the other way, and curtsied again. I realized that you weren’t arrogant as much as afraid.”

She felt embarrassment warm her cheeks. “I didn’t know anyone had seen me.”

“I began to feel affection for you,” Dina said, glancing over at her. “You were so determined to change yourself, make yourself over. I admired your spirit and your courage.”

“I doubt I was all that admirable,” she said.

“Oh, but you were. A pity that girl died in London.”

Shocked, she turned to the other woman. Dina didn’t look away, but met her look squarely.

“Back then, you wanted to become someone different,” Dina said, her words slow and measured, as if Catriona had difficulty understanding English. “You can do the same now.”

“How?” she asked. “That girl was beautiful. You can hardly call me that.”

Dina put the folded shift on the table before her.

“Very well, your face is scarred, horribly so. Very well, some people will flinch. Very well, you might scare little children. But bitterness will strip beauty from you as fast.”

She blinked at Dina. “You couldn’t have said what you just did.”

“Why are you so surprised? That someone would tell you the truth? Or that it wouldn’t be so terrible once it was voiced?”

She looked away, feeling as if she were floating in thin air. She tried to take a deep breath but her lungs were tied tight by a ribbon of emotion.

People will flinch.

You might scare little children.

Your face is scarred, horribly so.

The girl she’d been, at both Ballindair and newly come to Edinburgh, might have been afraid, but she’d been confident in one thing—her appearance. If she didn’t have that, what did she have?

Now, when she said as much to Dina, the older woman reached over and patted her hand.

“Even if the accident hadn’t happened, you would have aged, my dear. Beauty is like an orange, Catriona. You enjoy it, you savor it, but you never expect it to last forever.”