Unwed and Unrepentant

Is there something ah can do furr you? His accent was strange, a soft burr with a rougher edge lurking in the background, the sweetness of chocolate mixed with the grittiness of salt. ‘My luggage,’ Cordelia said, ‘I don’t suppose you know where I can collect it?’

‘You’re English.’ She must have instinctively braced herself for he smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to hold it against you.’

Ah’m no gonnae haud it against you. Cordelia smiled. ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am to hear that. I had thought the French held my country in low esteem, until I travelled north. I am just come from Oban, but I have been travelling in the Highlands for several weeks and I—’

‘I thought I knew you,’ he interrupted her. ‘When I saw you staring at me, I thought we must have met, but I don’t think we have.’

He had caught her arm as she made to turn away. She had taken a step towards him in response. He was not wearing gloves. His skin was pale. His nose looked as if it had been broken. His eyes were deep-set and deep blue. His lashes were the same dark auburn as his hair. He was frowning at her, studying her closely, a puzzled look on his face that echoed just what she had felt when first setting eyes on him.

‘I thought it too,’ Cordelia said. ‘That I knew you, I mean. It’s why I was staring. I’m sorry, it was rude of me. I did not mean to disturb you.’

She made no move to go, however, for her body was rooted to the spot. She was acutely aware of him, of his hand on her arm, of the concentration of his gaze. He had very broad shoulders. Under that dark suit, there was a hard body. The thought made her blood heat. She could feel a flush creeping up her neck.

‘You didn’t,’ he said. ‘Disturb me, I mean.’ He looked down at his hand, but instead of releasing her, pulled her towards him, linking them together, arm in arm. ‘Oban, you said you sailed from?’

She nodded.

‘You’ll have come on the Argyle then. She’s sound enough, though that beam engine of hers is well past its prime. Napier’s steeple will become the standard, you mark my words, though if you ask me—’ He broke off, smiling at the confusion which must be writ large on her face. ‘I’m havering. Your luggage will be this way,’ he said. ‘I’m Iain Hunter.’

‘Cordelia. That is, Cordelia Williamson. Mrs.’

‘You’re married.’

‘Widowed,’ she said hastily, not pausing to think why it mattered to reassure him.

‘I’m glad,’ he said. Then, ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

He didn’t look in the least bit contrite. In fact, there was a gleam in his eyes that gave Cordelia a fizzy feeling in her stomach and made her decidedly light-headed. A more prosaic woman would have said she needed food, but though she had many faults, she had not once in her twenty-eight years been accused of being matter of fact. Impetuous, yes, and heedless too. Both of those traits she had worked very hard to curb in the past few years. Now, as she tripped along beside Iain Hunter, shielded from the bustle not just by his body but by the way the crowd seemed to part for him, she felt a terrible, wicked, irresistible impulse to be both.

‘What about you, Mr Hunter,’ she asked, ‘are you married?’

‘No,’ he replied.

‘I am glad,’ Cordelia said.

He stopped in his tracks. ‘What am I to take from that?’

It was a fair question. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, deflated. ‘I’m in a strange mood. The travel, most likely. I thought— When I saw you, I thought— But it was silly of me.’

He touched her cheek, where the pulse beat at her temple. His fingers were cold. It was the lightest of touches. She felt as if he were trying to read her mind. ‘You could have asked me the same thing,’ he said, ‘when I told you I was glad you were widowed.’

‘What would you have said?’

‘Something along the same lines,’ he answered. ‘I was thinking— I was feeling—strange. I saw you, and I thought, oh, there she is.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I’m not usually the fanciful sort.’

‘I am not usually the sort who talks to strangers at dockyards,’ Cordelia said, smiling again.

‘I thought we had established I’m not a stranger.’

‘It is certainly a strange sort of day. I am beginning to wonder if any of this is real.’

‘That’s most likely because you haven’t eaten. I’ll wager the Argyle did not give you the smoothest of journeys.’

Cordelia chuckled. ‘Poor Argyle. You should not be so unkind to her, for she brought me here.’

‘And here you are.’ He ran his fingers down her arm, from shoulder to wrist, as if to reassure himself of the fact of her presence. The gesture was intimate, not that of a stranger at all. It made her feel—not alone. ‘And I’m glad for it,’ he said.

The warehouse he led her to was huge, the double doors open on to the quayside, in which were literally hundreds of trunks, bandboxes, portmanteaux, boxes, parcels, crates. Though Cordelia could see no sign of demarcation, Iain Hunter made his way confidently to one of the distinct heaps. ‘Which is yours?’

She pointed out her trunk, and a porter appeared at her side, looking at her enquiringly. ‘Could you recommend an hotel, Mr Hunter?’

‘I’ll take you,’ he said, and though this was exactly the sort of situation which she cautioned the readers of every single one of her guidebooks to avoid at all costs, Cordelia followed him out of the docks into the cobbled street beyond the wharf buildings, watching meekly as her chest was strapped on to a carriage which, like the porter, appeared magically, and then equally meekly followed Mr Hunter inside.

* * *

The Queen’s Hotel was a converted town house in the heart of the city. Cordelia took a set of rooms looking out on to the newly built George Square. She had asked Iain Hunter to dine with her, not because she was hungry but because she didn’t want him to go. He would have gone. She had only to say the word, and he would go. That was implicit between them, just as it was implicit that neither wanted him to leave. Now, he sat opposite her toying with a glass of wine, his food almost untouched, as was hers.

Not even with Gideon had she felt like this. This was not flirting. It was not the dance of will-we-won’t-we? It was—communing. Ridiculous. The Highlanders must have infected her with their taste for whimsy.

‘What are you smiling at?’ Iain leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand.

‘I’ve never done this before.’

‘Nor have I.’

He leaned across the table and took her hand. She still wore her travelling gown, but had loosened the buttons around her wrist. He stroked the skin there with his thumb, little circles that soothed and roused, drawing all her body’s focus to that point, where they touched. He didn’t ask her, what, what is it you haven’t done before? She liked that he didn’t pretend. She had always hated that part of the dance—the pretending, the false misunderstandings, the advance and retreat.

‘What were you doing on the docks today?’ Cordelia asked.

‘Thinking,’ Iain answered, not at all perturbed by her turning the conversation. ‘Planning. I’m at a—a what is the word—hiatus? A turning point. I need a change.’

‘What do you do?’

He grinned. ‘Didn’t you guess? I build ships. Paddle steamers.’

‘With spire engines, I assume?’

‘Steeple. Aye. Though I have in mind some modifications.’

‘Is that what you were thinking about, then?’

Iain shook his head. ‘That’s just business as usual. I need— Ach, I don’t know. I need a bigger change.’

He was still stroking her wrist. Shivers of sensation were running up her arm, heating her skin, setting it tingling. She seemed to be doing the same to him, though she had no recollection of leaning across the table and touching him. It was as if her body and her mind were disconnected. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘what bigger change were you thinking of?’

‘New markets. New seas. New something. I don’t know. What were you doing there?’

‘I’m going to Edinburgh.’