She rarely embroidered these days, but this had been an afternoon when she had longed to sit and take up the small needle and thread and let her mind wander while she sewed something sweet and delicate.
“Ye should teach the girls this,” he had said, in his blunt way, tracing the fine white-on-white pattern with his clean finger. “They might be able to make some money and keep the wolf from the door. The girls could work on it of an evening.”
So she had.
The girls’ pieces at first were filled with coarse stitches and mistakes and grubby marks. She bought some of the earliest work done and now had a trunk full of these beginners’ pieces. But she taught the girls to wash their hands before taking up the muslin. She showed them that they must not use knots to fasten their threads but to catch the ends under stitches so that the pattern would lay flat and be almost as smooth and pretty on one side as it was on the other. She was patient and, in time, they became patient with themselves and the thread and the needle and the patterns. And after some months, the pieces—napkins, christening gowns, tablecloths—were good enough to send to Inverness and then Glasgow and Edinburgh and some money flowed from these cities up north to the families of her girls.
Because, of course, the money went to their families. To their fathers. She had wondered if there might be some way she could do for the girls what her father had done for her. Give them some degree of liberty by having their own money. But she came up against law and tradition. She only hoped their fathers were using the money to benefit the whole family, including the girls.
She wrote once a month to Mary and to Harry. She did not tell Mary and Harry where she was but told them to write to her in care of a bookseller in Inverness. And although she did not write to her mother, her mother wrote to her, surely having gotten the name of the bookseller from one of Arabella’s sisters.
Tell me where you are, dearest. I long to see you,Catherine wrote to her.Someday, you will have your own daughter or son and you will know how cruel it is to keep a mother from a child, no matter how old that child is.
Her mother was wrong. Arabella would never have a child. Never. She was apart from that now. She would never marry. No one would want her. And she had nothing to give a child. Nothing but her own bad blood. The bad blood her mother had given her.
She told herself that she had ruined herself. It was a mistake to think someone else had done it to her. She had done it to herself. Giles had lied and had used her ruthlessly, yes. But she had been stupid and swayed by the throb between her legs. Her sisters would not have done what she did. It was her fault.
But even as she told herself that she needed to shoulder all the blame, she knew she did not write to Catherine because she also blamed her mother.
It was her mother who had made her so reckless. So easily tempted and led by her desire. Arabella had inherited Catherine’s strong passions, her wanton behavior, herlust.But then Catherine had sheltered Arabella, treated her as a child for far too long.
Her mother had done everything wrong.
Arabella should have been taught that she would need to restrain herself. But no. She had been allowed to think that her desire was infallible. That she would want the right man.
Her mother had failed her. And therefore, she should be punished.
In the village of Dunburn, there was a thirteen-year-old boy named Ewen MacEwen who could not seem to settle to anything. His stepmother and his two younger half sisters took in washing. His father was dead. Once a month, Ewen carried a parcel of the students’ embroidery and Arabella’s letters down to Inverness and came back with money and letters addressed to her, in care of the bookseller there. She paid Ewen for his time and paid for his fare on the mail coach down to Inverness.
Ewen MacEwen never asked why she did not trust her letters to the mail coach. He was freckled, with a wry intelligence, but he had a conspicuous lack of curiosity about Arabella. In that way, he reminded her of her sister Harry.
Ewen was interested in Arabella’s books, however, and told her that he would do her errands for no payment if he could only borrow her books. Nonsense, she said. He could borrow her books, one at a time, but she would pay him for his three days away from home every month in Inverness. And she would arrange for him to have a book of his own from the bookseller’s shop as part of his payment when he went down to Inverness.
The minister Boyd Cormack did not like this arrangement. “Ye will put him above his station, Miss Lovelock, encouraging Ewen’s laziness this way,” he said. “He should be an apprentice or working on a farm or on a boat. Not off to Inverness, not with his nose in a book.”
She had thought and then said, “I am a teacher, Mr. Cormack. It is my job to put people above their stations. But if you like, I’ll speak to Ewen about his prospects and his plans.”
And she had tried. But Ewen had laughed and said, “Miss Lovelock, people like me dinnae have prospects. Wemakeprospects. Dinnae worry about me. Now, can I borrow the second volume of the book about the Roman Empire?”
Arabella had shaken her head and handed the boy the Gibbons. And she had reported to Mr. Cormack that Ewen MacEwen had a mind of his own and something great was sure to come of it, but she didn’t know what.
And now, she thought as she put the turf into the grate of the school room, Mr. Cormack had asked her to marry him.
It had been just over a month since his proposal. The second day of Christmastide. She had invited Mr. Cormack to sup at her cottage, knowing that he must be exhausted from the services of Christmas Day and that his housekeeper was away with her family and that he would be eating cold food.
But she had Maggie and a warm cottage and a roast chicken and neeps and tatties. He should come and eat. Maggie would be there throughout so there would be no loss of propriety. But after dinner, when Maggie had shooed both of them out the kitchen, and he and she had been sitting in front of the fire, he made his proposal.
“Would ye be my wife, Miss Lovelock?”
She was startled. She looked at him for the first time, as a man. He had red hair, as many did in these parts, but his was light, almost blond. Not auburn. His skin was pale now, but in the summer, he was often surprisingly sunburned for a minister. She supposed he was not as tall as most Highlanders, but of course he was much taller than she. He had a handsome face. And he was kind, if somewhat humorless.
And he had beautiful hands. Hands that made her think of another redheaded man.
She told the truth. “I had not thought to marry.”
He turned his head on its side then and examined her. “I cannae think why ye widnae.”
She did not want to answer the implied question.
