She filed the details away, thinking she could spend a fortnight—and a fortune—just wandering the streets of Glasgow. Since he wasn’t offering to go with her, she was doubly glad of Loveday’s company and the maid on loan.
“I imagine you have all kinds of business awaiting you.”
“Aye,” he said.
She bit her tongue again lest she ask if he’d be home for dinner or supper. How did one navigate an arranged marriage? Did one build fences or bridges?
Leith heard Lyrica’s maid delivered to the servants’ side door as Juliet stood up to leave his study. He’d come home briefly to collect a particular ledger and then return to the countinghouse for a meeting with his clerks but had been waylaid at every turn. And now ... his wife.
By all that was holy, did she have to wear that beguiling shade of blue?
She smiled at him, a tentative, almost shy smile that told him she was unsure of herself, of him, and their new relationship. He was hardly any better, overlooking the needed ledger in plain sight while raking his mind for the next sentence.
For the moment her attention turned to his bookcases. “Once I thought Nathaniel Ravenal’s study boasted the most books I’d ever seen, but I’d not beheld yours.”
“Mostly business tomes. Dry and dusty.”
“Have you no novels? No classics?”
“Nae time for them.”
“But you do have a library at Ardraigh Hall.”
“Aye, which I hope you’ll fill with the books I have nae time for.”
“What I most want,” Juliet said quietly, holding his gaze in that maddening way she had when she was intent on something, “is to meet your children.”
Och, the bairns.Bella and Cole seemed to be more in her thoughts than his. “We’ll see Ardraigh Hall soon enough.”
She bit her lip as if about to naysay him, a frown in her eyes if not on her lips. She minded the wait, he warranted.
“My brother sends his regards and said they are eager to welcome you at Paisley. As for matters here, did Mrs. Baillie show you the house?”
“Yes, she’s very thorough. I’ve been introduced to all the servants, including your French chef, and have been given the household’s account books to peruse.”
“You’ll be well occupied, then,” he said, retrieving the ledger. “As for shopping, the maid on loan has arrived.”
“Then I shall leave you to your business, Mr. Buchanan.”
39
These Virginians are a very gentle, well-dressed people—and look, perhaps, more at a man’s outside than his inside. For these and other reasons, pray go very clean, neat, and handsomely dressed, to Virginia.
Peter Collinson, London merchant
Glasgow. What a wonder of a city! It rivaled London in Juliet’s memory, though she’d been but a schoolgirl then and now looked through a woman’s lens. Walking through the wynds and closes in her pattens, she was humbled and haunted by her old prejudices against Leith and his merchanting—and again felt at a disadvantage amid so many luxuries large and small.
Color and confusion abounded as street peddlers hawked their wares of fruit and fish and dairy along with printed sermons and political pamphlets. Colliers delivered coal from door to door, their ragged beasts of burdens tugging at Juliet’s heart as much as the soot-faced chimney sweeps. The city’s ragged edges were dark indeed.
She linked arms with Loveday, the loaned maid leading,and moved toward the more genteel Gibson’s Wynd near the city’s center, where the air seemed perfumed by fruit and flowers. As the Tron’s bells broke into song, they paused and looked up. At almost noon, the bells signified a break in the day when many Glaswegians sought the taverns.
“’Tis not Virginia, to be sure,” Loveday whispered as they entered a millinery with the sign of the scarlet garter above the door. “I’ve not even seen a millinery this size in Philadelphia.”
Minette, Lyrica Buchanan’s diminutive maid, clucked her tongue as the sisters admired a fur muff on display. “’Tis time for American madams and mademoiselles to lay aside their furs for feathers.”
“A French feather muff?” Juliet asked as a buxom woman appeared from behind a counter brimming with paste jewelry and rainbow-hued ribbons, gloves, and fichus.
Mrs. Betty Gibbons introduced herself as the millinery owner and wasted no time showing them about the well-stocked shop. “I have a number of goods suitable for the season, like this new Parisian ostrich feather muff lined with ermine, or perhaps a peacock feather muff lately arrived from London ... even a tippet with macaw and canary feathers.”
