Mine Is the Night (17 page)

Gibson raised his eyebrows. “ ’Tis not
ower
yet.”

“Aye,” Anne agreed, her pale face glowing, “there are presents to be opened.”

“We shall save those for later,” Marjory insisted, “when our neighbors have gone home to their suppers. Come, Bess, and welcome your guests.”

Elisabeth wove through the crowd of well-wishers, greeting each one. Though she could not recite all their names by heart, she knew their faces and was beginning to put husband with wife, mother with child, sweetheart with sweetheart.

At last she spied Michael Dalgliesh standing by the window, holding court. Several young women were circled round him, laughing as he told one of his colorful tales. “Glad tidings to ye, Mrs. Kerr,” he said when he caught sight of her, then lifted his cup. His expression was positively smug.

By the time Elisabeth reached him, she had Michael all to herself, the others having momentarily deserted him for the punch bowl.

“I suppose your task was to keep me away from the house,” she began, trying unsuccessfully to sound miffed. “What of that gentleman’s coat you needed to finish?”

He laughed. “ ’Tis done. Tell me, did ye have a bonny afternoon with my lad?”

“I certainly did.” Elisabeth looked across the room at Peter, who’d apparently visited the plates of sweets more than once and was now covered in sugary crumbs.

“Faither!” Peter cried, dragging Anne in their direction. “Here’s a sweetie for ye.”

Michael looked up just as a blushing Anne thrust a small tart into his hands. “Verra kind o’ ye, Miss Kerr,” he said, then popped the apple tart into his mouth without ceremony.

Anne seemed intent on studying her shoes. “It was Peter’s idea,” she murmured.

“I’ve nae doubt.” Michael tugged on his son’s ear. “Can ye find me anither, lad?”

The moment Peter took off, Michael apologized to Anne in a low voice. “Dinna
fash
yerself, lass. We’ve been freens a’
oor
lives, have we not? If ye bring me a sweetie, none will think ill o’ ye.”

When Anne slowly raised her head, Elisabeth saw something travel between them as quick as a flash of lightning in the summer sky.
We attended school together
. It seemed a great deal more had been left unsaid.

Elisabeth stepped back, feeling like an intruder.

When Peter dashed past her, tart in hand, she sought an empty chair, needing a moment to recover. The heat of the room, she told herself. The press of bodies. The noisy chatter.

Gibson appeared a moment later, bearing a steaming cup of tea. “Drink up, Leddy Kerr, for ye have a
dwiny
leuk about ye.”

Elisabeth murmured her thanks, then quickly lifted the wooden cup to her lips, consoling herself with the knowledge that she’d not lost her heart. To Peter, perhaps, but not to Michael.

She managed to compose her features by the time Gibson brought Marjory and Anne to her side. “Oor birthday leddy has had enough merriment,” Gibson told them. “ ’Tis time for folk to find their way hame.”

All three women sat round the table and watched Gibson herd their neighbors out the door with efficiency and decorum. “Here’s a wee pie to take with ye,” he said to one man, nudging him forward, and, “Mind the stair as ye go,” he cautioned another.

An hour later candles were lit to dispel the evening gloom, and the house
was quiet again, with only the Kerr women and Gibson remaining. Michael had been the last to leave, tarrying at the door, sending folk off with a jovial word or a hearty slap on the shoulder, while Peter drooped about his father’s knees, ready for his supper and a warm bed. Finally Michael carried him off, bidding the Kerrs a good night.

Elisabeth did not follow them with her gaze nor let her thoughts dwell on wee Peter. The lad needed a mother, aye, yet it seemed the Lord had another woman in mind. If ’twas Anne, was that not the best of outcomes?

“Time for yer praisents,” Gibson said, grinning as he rubbed his hands together.

Determined to enjoy the balance of her birthday celebration, Elisabeth sat in the upholstered chair where she slept each night, accustomed to its contours and the feel of the fabric against her cheek. Whenever Marjory or Anne suggested they find some other solution—a mattress made of blankets or a cot borrowed from a neighbor—Elisabeth had assured them she slept soundly.

She looked at her small circle of loved ones and confessed, “I’ll not be happy if you’ve spent any of your precious pennies on me.”

“Have no fear on that account.” Anne held out two ladylike fists. “Choose wisely, for only one holds a present.”

Elisabeth eyed one, then the other, looking for a clue. “What happens if I choose poorly?”

“Then I get to keep my gift,” Anne said, sounding as if she meant it.

“Your hospitality is gift enough,” Elisabeth protested, then was astounded when Anne opened her hand. “Cousin! You cannot give me such a treasure.”

“ ’Tis done.” Anne held out the silver comb, gleaming in the candlelight, then tucked it into Elisabeth’s crown of hair with a satisfied nod. “Just as I’d pictured it.”

Elisabeth touched the comb in awe. “Oh, Annie. To think you would part with such an heirloom.” When their gazes met, Elisabeth prayed her cousin might see what could not be said.
Have no fear of me, dear Annie. You are the wife Michael wants and the mother Peter needs
.

Then she noticed Gibson carrying something across the room, hidden beneath their cousin’s woolen shawl.

“This praisent is from me,” Gibson said proudly.

“Is it a table?” Elisabeth wondered aloud. He’d not concealed the wooden legs or the crosspiece between them, but she still wasn’t certain what it might be. When he lifted the shawl, she gasped with joy. “A tambour! Gibson, wherever did you find it?”

Enthralled, she ran her hands round the double hoop that held the fabric in place and admired the plain but serviceable legs that positioned the hoop at the perfect height. The tambour Donald had purchased for her soon after they married was fashioned of mahogany, richly polished, and ornately carved. This one was made of sturdy oak along simpler lines but a fine tambour nonetheless. She inched it closer, resting her feet on the crosspiece, already imagining what she might embroider first. “Did you find it at Friday’s market?”

Gibson confessed, “I made it myself, mem. With scraps from the carpenter.”

Trapped in her chair by the tambour frame, Elisabeth could not leap to her feet and embrace Gibson, but she could pull him down for a peck on the cheek. “Whatever did I do to merit such blessings?”

“Birthdays are like the good Lord’s mercy,” Marjory told her. “Undeserved yet always celebrated.” She reached for her apron, her gaze narrowing as she regarded their house, now in shambles. “We’ve work to do before supper and bed. And Gibson has brought news from the manse.”

He bowed. “The honor is yers, Leddy Kerr.”

Marjory struck an aristocratic pose. “Admiral Lord Jack Buchanan is already in Selkirk.”

“Ah!” Anne sat up straighter. “I knew it.”

“He arrived this morn,” Marjory told them, “and has taken up residence at Bell Hill with a handful of servants who traveled with him from London.”

“He’s at Bell Hill?” Elisabeth’s eyes widened. “Then … I saw him.”

very eye in the sanctuary was trained on the open door, and every parishioner uttered yet another conjecture. Marjory tried not to turn round in the pew, tried not to listen to their whispering, but it was hard since the admiral had been in Selkirkshire for several days and had yet to make an appearance. Surely Lord Buchanan would ride down from Bell Hill and show himself on the Sabbath.

Katherine Shaw and her four pretty daughters were seated behind the Kerrs, spinning yarns as though they were seated at a treadle wheel. “He’s niver taken a wife,” Mrs. Shaw was telling her girls, all of a marriageable age.

“Nae wonder,” her oldest said softly. “He doesna set foot on land for years at a time. What sort o’ husband would a gentleman like that make?”

“A rich one!” the youngest squealed.

“I do hope he’ll tarry in Selkirk,” one of the middle daughters said with a sigh.

“He’s forty years auld,” Mrs. Shaw reminded them. “Nae man would buy so fine a hoose and not live there. Mark my wirds, he means to settle doon and start a family.” At which the young women all giggled, drawing stares from those round them.

Marjory held her tongue, but she could not still her thoughts. The admiral would hardly marry one of the Shaw girls, however charming their smiles or beguiling their figures. Not when he might choose a lady of high standing from anywhere in the world. Had Lord Buchanan not circled the globe
aboard the
Centurion
? Such a man would want a woman with a title of her own and a dowry to match. If and when this wealthy admiral took a wife, he’d not look for her in the wynds and closes of Selkirk.

“Why is Mr. Armstrong not attending to the gathering psalm?” Anne murmured. At the moment the precentor stood near the pulpit counting heads, a satisfied expression on his wizened face. A kirk filled to the rafters boded well for the collection plate.

When Reverend Brown came down the center aisle, all whispering ceased as folk prepared for the start of the service. Gibson trailed a few steps behind his master, pausing at the Kerr pew long enough to exchange a brief nod with Marjory before claiming his seat in the front, where he might serve the reverend at a moment’s notice.

Noting his squared shoulders and lifted chin, Marjory could not keep from smiling. Never mind the good admiral;
here
was a man who should have married. More than once Marjory had wondered if Gibson and Helen Edgar might have made each other happy. But though their exchanges were friendly while in her employ in Edinburgh, no true spark had struck between them.

Mr. Armstrong stepped before the Psalter, eying the congregation over his spectacles. When the precentor began to sing the metrical psalm chosen for this morning, Marjory’s smile broadened. Admiral Lord Jack Buchanan was not only anticipated; he was expected.

Who else, other than the Almighty himself, would the precentor have in mind, singing of all the world and all the earth? Marjory considered the psalm a fitting welcome for Selkirk’s newest resident. The parishioners must have thought so too, for they sang the next stanza with unaccustomed zeal.

Marjory almost laughed aloud. The seas and the floods? Why, the admiral might wash through the door any moment! For the next few weeks, she imagined he would sit in the front pew near the pulpit until a proper loft could be built for him. Perhaps in the upper right corner, above the Kerr pew. She would not object to worshiping beneath his shadow.

Eight stanzas later they still had no sign of the man, but Marjory would not give up hope so easily. She continued to sing, stealing glances up and down the pews to see if anyone had spotted an unfamiliar face. Though most parish churches closed their doors once services began, the dim sanctuary in Selkirk, with its narrow, crumbling window openings, needed every bit of light the sky had to offer. Indeed, the admiral could slip through the gaping entrance without a sound.

A final stanza and their singing ended, the last notes hanging in the air like dust motes.

When Reverend Brown ascended the pulpit, his gaze scanned the crowded sanctuary—looking for Lord Buchanan, Marjory was certain of it—before the minister began his sermon drawn from Isaiah. “Thus saith the L
ORD
, thy redeemer,” he charged them, “I am the L
ORD
that maketh all things.” She nodded in approval. If the admiral was a godly man, he would find much to his liking in the parish kirk this day.

Marjory settled against her seat, grateful the floor had been swept and the
pew scrubbed.
God bless you, Gibson
. Other pews had been tidied as well, whether by Gibson’s own hand or because of his good example. But the sagging walls needed more than a good cleaning. Perhaps the admiral might contribute some of his vast fortune toward the sanctuary’s upkeep.

Unless he hoards his gold, as you once did
.

Marjory bowed her head, knowing it was true. She’d been blessed with wealth in Edinburgh yet had spared little for their parish kirk beyond the rent for her pew. And here was Elisabeth, who earned only a few shillings a week, quietly slipping one of her silver coins in the collection plate each Sabbath, far more than Reverend Brown would ask of his flock.

The sermon ended as the kirk bell tolled the noon hour. After the closing psalm and the benediction, Marjory stood, a bit stiff from sitting, then turned to survey the congregation.