Page 21 of Who’s That Earl

“If it’s village gossip you’re hoping to hear, then I suggest you start at the Thistle and Crown.” She paused in front of the stone pub, with its faded shingle swinging above the street. He wondered whether she had spent long enough in the Highlands to know that the crown in question had naught to do with any of the Georges. “That’s also where all the mail for Balisaig, including Dunnock Castle, is delivered.”

Laying his hand on the latch of the door, he motioned for her to precede him inside.

“Oh, no,” she demurred. “The post came yesterday, remember. I’ve another errand to run today. Then I must return to my work.”

He paused. “I hope you do not mean to suggest that you will go back to Dunnock alone?”

A shriek drew their attention to the village square, where a ragtag group of boys and girls were engaged in a fierce snowball fight. Their laughter and boasts rang in the cold air. Athena and Aphrodite had inserted themselves into the fray, he saw, and were nipping at heels and tugging at sleeves and mufflers indiscriminately, happy to prolong the game by interfering with victory on either side, which the children appeared to encourage.

“I’ll have the dogs with me,” she said.

Dissatisfied, he shook his head. “If Mr. Ratliff had believed the dogs were sufficient protection for you, Mrs. Higginbotham, he wouldn’t have hired me. Meet me here in half an hour’s time,” he said as he pushed open the door and prepared to step through it. “We will all walk home together.”

Chapter 8

As soon as the door had shut behind him, Jane let out a breath—part exasperation, part relief. It carried with it the words she knew better than to say. Though she felt certain his protectiveness was overdone, a squabble on the streets of Balisaig would serve neither of them well.

Whether part of that deep exhalation was a sigh of disappointment—of longing—she refused to examine.

She strode across the street and into the apothecary’s shop. In the winter, when travel was difficult and the peddler’s cart did not visit, the apothecary stocked a miscellany of goods in addition to his medicines. Though she did not intend to buy anything today, she let her fingers trail through a selection of brightly colored ribbons in passing. The fluttering silk called to mind that morning in Will Ford’s shop, and she jerked her hand away again.

“More paper already, Mrs. Higginbotham?” called Mr. Abernathy from behind a counter, where he was grinding something to a fine powder with a mortar and pestle. He was a short, stocky man of forty or so, with a ready smile and a reassuring manner.

“Oh, no, thank you,” she said, looking around for Mrs. Abernathy but seeing no sign of her. “I’m just warming myself after the walk down.”

“If you were lookin’ for my wife, she’s just stepped down to the manse with something for Mr. Donaldson,” he explained, rightly guessing the true purpose of her visit.

Mr. Bartholomew Donaldson had been in Balisaig for less than a month. Objecting strenuously to the notion that even the clergyman was expected to enter the Thistle and Crown to collect his own post, he had begged Mrs. Abernathy the favor of gathering his for him. Rather than express annoyance at his sanctimony, the apothecary’s wife seemed to relish the opportunity to help—or at least the opportunity to be among the first to discover the young clergyman’s business.

“Oh, of course. Have you heard we’ve a visitor at Dunnock?” she asked a moment later, trying to assess whether gossip about Thomas had already begun to spread. It would be perfectly useless to try to hide his arrival.

“Oh, aye?” Predictably, his voice held no shock at the news. “Well, if you need anythin’, or he does…” He smiled, but Jane could see the glint of curiosity in his eyes before he restored his spectacles to their proper place and returned to his work.

She was examining a pair of surprisingly pretty clocked stockings, comparing them in her mind’s eye to the black woolen ones she usually wore, when a gust of cold air swept across the floor, announcing the opening of the door and the arrival of another customer. Quickly, she laid the stockings back into their flat, narrow box and pushed it away from the edge of the counter, so that it was not readily apparent what had caught her eye.

But the woman who had entered the shop was not a customer. “Thinkin’ of some new stockings, Mrs. Higginbotham?” Very little escaped the notice of Mrs. Abernathy. She peered over Jane’s shoulder, then pulled the package closer, the very devil offering the apple to Eve. “Och, they’re lovely, aren’t they? I’d be that pleased to see you treat yourself.”

A little flush of embarrassment swept up Jane’s throat, as if she’d been caught doing something far more scandalous than looking at a new pair of stockings. Jane certainly did not need them. No one ever saw her stockings—well, except for Esme, when she did the laundry—and that was unlikely to change. She slid the package away from her again.

Mrs. Abernathy shook her head, and red-blond ringlets bounced beneath her the brim of her fashionable bonnet. “Ye canna wear the widow’s weeds forever, my dear.”

Jane shook her head. If Mrs. Abernathy only knew...

Untying the ribbons of her bonnet as she went, the apothecary’s wife slipped behind the counter and favored her husband with an airy kiss of greeting. “Och, the air is fine and fresh this morning. You were smart to come down again, Mrs. Higginbotham.”

It was her way of asking why Jane had made the trip into Balisaig two days in a row. After all, the air was always fine and fresh in the Highlands.

Fresh enough even to strengthen a Scotsman’s brogue.

Jane screwed her eyes shut, weighing whether to ask for a headache paper. After this morning’s aggravations, she felt certain she’d need one soon enough. When she opened her eyes again, she found both Mr. and Mrs. Abernathy watching her. Jane’s gaze wandered guiltily back to the stockings. Clearly, she ought to have concocted some plausible excuse for visiting. Her stock of paper was more than adequate, but perhaps she could justify a bottle of ink...

“I suspect it’s got summat to do with the stranger,” Mr. Abernathy ventured, in a voice that he might have intended for his wife’s ears only, but which carried easily through the shop. “Invite her in for a cup o’ tea, won’t ye?”

She fixed Jane with an assessing look. “Will ye come up, Mrs. Higginbotham?”

“I really shouldn’t. The dogs—”

Mrs. Abernathy waved away that feeble excuse. “Mary MacIntyre is pullin’ them about in her da’s handcart, last I saw. One o’ the dear things was wearin’ a baby’s bonnet.”