I thanked her.
She gently laid a hand against my other cheek.
“Dinna be afraid of wot ye were born with.”
10
What I was born with...?
I thought of that encounter at the Grassmarket as the driver Munro had found eased our way through early morning traffic on Princes Street.
It didn’t mean anything. It was simply... The truth was that I had no idea what it was.
“How did ye come by the scars on yer back?” Munro asked across the silence inside the coach.
I looked up at the question I had not expected. But there it was. He had obviously seen the scars as he sat beside my bed.
My throat tightened, and I looked away from that sharp gaze that missed nothing, watched me now, and waited for the answer.
In the very least, I should have been embarrassed, angry at something that others might have considered an invasion of my privacy. I felt neither one.
Something was different in his manner, less the person who worked for Lady Antonia and counted it among his duties to watch over me. More someone with a similar past who might very well have wanted to tie me up like a piece of baggage and send me back to London, but had not.
The past was painful, his own as well, from stories Mikaela told me about his time in Edinburgh on the streets as a lad with Mr. Brodie.
I understood it perhaps too well. It was there in his manner, that direct gaze as if he saw right through a person.
There was risk in trusting someone with something so personal and painful, even though the wound had long since healed. I was not yet that brave.
“It was all a long time ago,” I replied and said nothing more of it.
“Ye spoke of someone named Abby.”
He had his secrets. I had mine as well.
I quickly stepped down from the coach into the pouring rain.
Jenners Department store was a four-story stone building with a pink stone facade that filled the corner of Princes Street across from the Princes Street Gardens.
Once in the past, I had stood just there by the gardens, an older child then, and watched the customers who arrived there. Fashionable ladies and gentlemen who made purchases I could only imagine.
I’d heard there was a fire a handful of years earlier. The store I saw now had been rebuilt, I realized as I looked up from the sidewalk to the top story. It reminded me of Harrods in London.
According to Elizabeth, it had electric lighting, lifts that whisked customers to the top floors rather than patrons forced to climb several floors of stairs, and a central court that was open to all four floors.
On those vast four floors, it offered both ladies’ and gentlemen’s ready-made fashions that included a shoe department where both men’s and ladies’ shoes could be purchased, fabrics from France and Italy, furniture, a full half-floor filled with home decorating, including area carpets, and the haberdashery.
Elizabeth had also described the roof-top cafe for tea or dining.
“Though there’s not much to see when the weather sets in.”
An attendant appeared and directed us to the haberdashery department on the ground floor.
Glass-top counters lined the floor on both sides of a wide aisle, with shelves behind and smaller aisles for clerks to assist customers. Much the same as at Harrods, those shelves were filled with men’s shirts on one side of the main aisle, ladies’ on the opposite side of the aisle.
Ties and cravats were displayed behind the men’s counter with wood trays under those glass-top counters that contained woollen scarves, handkerchiefs, and gloves lined up perfectly, like guests who’d been invited to the satin-lined case.
A gentleman could purchase full suits of clothes, wool trousers, evening wear, and long coats in the area just beyond those rows of fine wood cabinets with glass countertops.
