“Aye,” Leith said, listening to the drone of voices around him. The mood was restless, even dour, no doubt owing to the rumblings coming across the Atlantic from discontented tobacco planters. Since Scotland’s bank crisis of ’72, business was again flourishing, and though he was sympathetic to his fellow merchants’ losses, he was unstinting in secure loans with high interest rates.
Half a minute later he’d had enough society and started a brisk walk to the bank he owned, the usual minor merchants and tradesmen of Glasgow trailing him and peppering him with respectful if oft repeated questions as he called them by name.
“TheGlasgow Lassseems frightful tardy, sir. Might she be lost at sea?”
“Any room for glass or calico in yer next Virginia-bound vessel?”
“When d’ye ken yer new pottery works will open, sir?”
“Is today the day yer going to advertise when yer ships are due to leave for the colonies?”
“I beg a meeting with ye at your countinghouse if ye please, Mr. Buchanan.”
He answered them in terse snatches, passing the worn Ionic columns of the Merchants House with its carvings and inscriptions of its 1601 founding. He took a stair to reach the guildhall, then unlocked it with a heavy key. As Dean of Guild, the highest office among merchants, he was charged with opening the large building each day.
His habit was to walk the hall’s long assembly room andpause before a portrait of his father—one of many notable merchants of the past—on one paneled wall. Another wall bore the rules of trade, but he hardly had need of them, for he’d committed them to memory. If he sailed to Virginia, he’d miss this place most, the embodiment of his goals, small failures, and larger gains. The place pulsated with ink and specie, mercantilism and ambition.
The stuff of Glaswegian fortunes.
3
Gather the rose of love whilest yet is time.
Edmund Spenser,The Faerie Queene
ROYALVALEPLANTATION
As the plantation bell tolled in the distance, columns of seeds sewn and crop yields swam before Juliet’s bleary eyes. She looked up from the ledger to the open study window that overlooked Royal Vale’s walled garden. An Apothecary rose pressed against the window glass as if begging to be cut and brought inside, its streaked petals infused with crimson, rose, and white, its fragrance heady, as midsummer roses seemed always to be. Was it truly named for fair Rosamund, the “Rose of the World,” in the twelfth century?
Loveday preferred the English rose or wild rose for her stillroom uses. She’d recently turned rose petals into sugar, which held their fragrance even after drying. At the moment she was gathering herbs, a basket on one arm, her straw hat giving her away over the bricked wall of the herb garden.Biding her four and twenty years till she had a beau, a matter that weighed more heavily on Juliet’s mind of late.
If ever a sister was meant for marriage and motherhood, it was Loveday. Yet Father rejected most of her would-be suitors out of hand.
“I wouldn’t part with a pittance for the lot of them,” he’d exclaimed in exasperation after the latest, a fop addicted to gambling, was sent scurrying from the house a fortnight before. “I wish I could as easily banish your dimpled smile and those beguiling hyacinth eyes of yours,” he’d continued, staring at his youngest as if trying to come to terms with her appeal. “The more comely a woman, the more addlepated her suitors, it seems.”
On the other hand, no man wanted to press his suit with the elder, Juliet Catesby, for which she was eternally grateful. Like Loveday had noted, she aspired to be like their Philadelphia aunt, a happy spinster of independent means at forty. But for Loveday she wanted more. And she must carefully orchestrate her sister’s courtship once she found a proper suitor before the truth of their financial straits became common knowledge.
Shrugging off her cares if only for a moment, Juliet left the study and went into the garden, her daybook in hand. Taking a shell-strewn path, she bypassed the herb garden with its fragrant rosemary and mint and entered the side lawn with its myriad trees and ornamental shrubs. At one end sat a foundation for a summerhouse. Flues underneath would heat the future brick structure in winter. But alas, this year’s taxes had been high, and Loveday’s dream was just that—a mere foundation, hardly the summerhouse of her dreams.
Juliet opened her daybook, having indulged her sister’s vision. Even staring at her recent watercolor rendering broughta rush of longing. She was so engrossed she failed to hear the gardener approach.
“G’day, Miss Catesby.”
She turned toward the unmistakable voice so richly inflected. Though nearly fifty, Hamish Hunter had braved the Atlantic two years before. Highly skilled and recommended by her father’s many Scottish connections, he’d lent themThe Scots Gard’nerby John Reid upon his arrival. A botanical feast.
“Good day to you, sir,” Juliet returned with a smile. “How goes your earthy undertakings?”
“As well as expected for a Hades-like July.” Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he swiped his brow, but even the heat didn’t dim his grin. “Watering takes most of my time.”
“What’s Scotland like in midsummer?”
“Cooler. Less thirsty. When the haar sweeps in from the sea, the gardens are veiled in mist, a sonsie sight.”
“Sonsie.” The word rolled off her tongue rather prettily. “What beguiling words you Scots have.”
Chuckling, he focused on the daybook she held out to him. He perused the watercolor with a canny eye. “Reminds me of the princely orangery at Ardraigh Hall northeast of Glasgow, with its five-acre walled garden and serpentine walkways. Even a lake brimming with black swans.”
Black swans? She tried to imagine it. He’d told them of grand estates where he’d worked. Dumfries House. Audley End. Bridlee Hall. She and Loveday hung on his words like children listening to a fairy tale. But Ardraigh Hall was new to her.
