“Fife is part of the Lowlands,” came Lucian’s voice.
“How dull.” She peeked behind the curtain of the side entrance. The room was barely more than a cupboard: a few square feet in size, containing only a footstool and a washbasin with pitcher. The window was up high and narrow like an arrow slit. She supposed the water closet was downstairs—a severe inconvenience.
A jolt of an entirely different apprehension went through her then. She turned back to Lucian, who was leafing through the folder.
“There is only one bed.”
“Yes.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I require my own room.”
“I’m sure you do, love, but there are none.”
“An inn with only one room?” she said, agitated. And the way he called her love—like a northern shopkeeper addressing patrons.
“There are three other guest rooms, and they’re all taken,” Lucian said coolly.
“All taken—but who in their right mind would want to linger in this godforsaken place?”
“A mining engineer, a civil engineer, and the future mine manager. They’re here on my behest.”
They must have left the folder for him, then.
She turned to the small fireplace, eyed the mantelpiece, and sniffed. While the badly stuffed animals seemed to be confined to the ground floor, ugly wooden gnomes had gathered on the shelf, their hair and beards made of tufts of graying sheep wool. A Black Forest cuckoo clock modeled after a railway house was affixed to the wall right next to the mantelshelf, richly ornamented with carved leafy vines—charming in its own right, grotesque in its surroundings.
She swiped a finger over the mantelpiece and held up her hand as she turned back to Lucian. “The room is dusty, and there’s a draft.”
Lucian rubbed his neck but appeared otherwise deeply immersed in his reading.
She repeatedly stabbed her fingertip at the long arm of the cuckoo clock until it reached the full hour, which forced the small green window shutters of the railway house to open and the mechanical bird to shoot out to give seven hectic, tinny squawks.
“You can’t expect me to abide this every hour,” she said when the window had fallen shut again. “I’m returning to London tomorrow.”
Lucian glanced up from his documents with hooded eyes. “Harriet. How would you like a spanking to settle you down?”
She blinked. She grabbed one of the wooden figurines off the mantelpiece. “How would you like a gnome to your head?”
His lips thinned. Then the corners of his mouth twitched suspiciously. “It’s not a gnome,” he said. “It’s a trow—wee beasties from the isles that don’t appreciate being thrown.”
She put it back down fast, fair loathing his lopsided smirk.
They went to the dining area downstairs for tea, or suppah, because Harriet preferred eating in public over a more intimate meal in their room, no surprise there. A handful of patrons who had the seasoned looks of regulars were scattered along the poorly lit bar, eyeing them curiously through curls of cigarette smoke, but the waitress led them to a booth at the window front.
“What may I bring you, sir?” The waitress was smiling and addressing him in English.
“What’s your recommendation?”
“We make the best haggis in the Kingdom of Fife,” she said, “served with mashed potatoes and well-cooked turnips.”
“Well-cooked, you say.”
“Then there’s the beef-and-potato stew—best black Galloway beef from the West Country.”
He glanced at Harriet, who seemed apathetic, then back at the lass. “You have a menu?”
“Not on my account,” came his wife’s soft voice. “I’ll take the recommended dish.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “It won’t be to your taste, I reckon.”
“Well-cooked turnips,” she said blandly. “Why, I crave them.”
The kitchen is lacking, was what she really said. She knew without seeing the menu; the place was lacking, Scotland was lacking, he was lacking. He ordered haggis, stew, some wine, and ale, thinking a wooden trow to his head would have been well worth it.
Time passed slowly here in the middle of nowhere. The rack on the wall held the newspapers from three days ago. It felt like eternity until the steaming dishes were placed before them, compounded by the glum silence coming from the woman he had wed.
“You like the haggis?” he said as she ate her meal with a passive expression.
She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It reminds me of black pudding, but the taste is more severe. What is it?”