Harriet ignored him for the entire nine-hour ride to Edinburgh. When he returned to her coach to see whether all was in reasonable order, she was lounging on the divan, reading a book, and eating toffees from a tin. She hadn’t granted him a glance, so he had retreated to his own car to deal with his correspondence. At noon, he went to ask her to take lunch with him, only to find her indulging in a selection tea cakes she must have packed, and she looked at him wordlessly and with polite disdain until he withdrew. He sat eating his food, not tasting a thing. His chest felt oddly tight, and loosening his cravat hadn’t helped. His wife hated him. Worse, she didn’t respect him—no woman bestowed wifely affection on a man she didn’t respect. He should dismiss her anger as irrational female theatrics like his etiquette handbook advised, for no man in his right mind would have let her go traveling by herself. France. If she wanted to bloody go to bloody France, he’d take her there, Paris, Lyon, Marseille, whatever she fancied. As soon as he had sorted out Drummuir. Until then, it shouldn’t bother him. Instead, he was staring at her empty seat while he joylessly chewed and swallowed and acutely felt all of last night’s bruises. He must have been looking forward to shared meals as pleasurable as their lunch in Shoreditch. What was wrong with him?
He pushed his unfinished plate away and picked up an article detailing various speculative economic scenarios following an income tax reform. The words on the page failed to sink in.
As if I could love you—as if anyone could.
Well. He knew he wasn’t lovable, not since he’d been a boy, anyway, and he had only known it then when Sorcha had put her sticky little hand upon his cheek and told him she loved him, so he had no expectations in that regard. But hatred?
During the stop in York, he sent a telegram to the hotel to order a coach to Waverley Station at eight o’clock. When they reached Edinburgh, the sky was the color of lead and proper fat splats of rain were drumming on the ribbed glass ceiling of the railway station. A gust of wind near ripped the umbrella he was holding over Harriet from his hand when they stepped outside. “Welcome to Scotland,” he murmured. The air was damp on his face and tasted fresh. An illusion. To the left loomed the turreted silhouette of Edinburgh in dark uniform color as though the whole city had risen from the same giant rock, for soot and smoke had coated the soft sandstone of every house with the same black stain. Farther to the east, the old castle kept watch over the city through the mist as it had for the past eight hundred years. He felt a yearning pull deep in his chest and a sorrow at the sight, a blend of emotions expressed best by the lone skirl of a bagpipe. This was why he disliked going north.
Once settled in at number twenty-five George Street, a town house hotel where Robert Burns had purportedly liked to take rooms in his day, Harriet immediately made to flee his small chamber through the door that led to her room.
“Tea is downstairs in half an hour,” he said to her back.
She stiffened, halted, and turned to him. “You mean supper.”
He took a deep breath. “You’d call it supper.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I’m requesting your company.”
Her mouth flattened. “I have nothing to wear.”
She looked fatigued, he now noticed, with curls of her hair loose around her face and faint blue smudges beneath her eyes. He wouldn’t relent; he would take hatred, but no more disrespect. He untied his cravat. “You should find a trunk with dresses in your room.”
She gave him a suspicious glance. “You had a trunk packed for me?”
He began unbuttoning his waistcoat. “It seemed sensible.”
“When?” she demanded. “When did you have my clothes packed?”
“Matthews picked some up at Harrods while they readied the train.”
Her eyes were slits. “Gowns off the rack?”
“They’ll do.”
She muttered something under her breath.
“The train to Fife leaves at eleven o’clock tomorrow,” he said grimly. “Purchase whatever else you need in the morning.”
She pursed her lips. “No doubt you think Cockburn Street will do.”
He stopped unbuttoning at hearing the word cock from her mouth. “What?”
“Cockburn Street,” she enunciated slowly. “The street where one can find the finest supplies in all of Edinburgh, according to Bradshaw’s Travel Guide.”
“Aye,” he said, feeling heated. “It’s pronounced Coburn Street, but yes, you’ll find everything there.”