Free Here Burns My Candle by Liz Curtis Higgs Page B

rumors no more than crumbs of stale bread, fed to ravenous birds?
    She rose and started toward the washstand, unsure of what to think, what to feel now that she knew the truth. Should she pretend his past indiscretions did not matter? Forgive the man and be done with it? Among the gentry of Edinburgh, ’twas mere sport, it seemed.
    The morning light cast a gray pallor across the room. Beyond their bedchamber door the household was stirring. Peg would soon come knocking, bearing fresh coals and hot water. Life would go on, whether Donald was faithful or not. Oh, but let him be faithful! A faint mist of tears clouded Elisabeth’s vision. Please let him belong to me and no other .
    “Bess?” He was standing behind her now, his voice low, his words gentle. “You alone have my heart.”
    She bowed her head, undone by his tenderness. “I want to believe you, Donald.”
    “Then do.” He gently brushed aside her hair and kissed the back of her neck. “Please?”
    She slowly exhaled. Could she trust this husband of hers? And believe his philandering days were over? With no evidence beyond hearsay, ’twas unfair to condemn the man she loved. And she did love him, abundantly so. However many women he’d bedded in the past, Donald had but one woman now.
    Elisabeth closed her eyes and offered a brief entreaty. Strengthen me , thou moon of moons . She knew her plea was in vain. Only on the sixth day of the moon might she be heard. And perhaps not even then.
    A light tapping at the door announced Peg’s arrival. While her maidservant quietly attended to her duties, Elisabeth took her husband’s arm and drew him toward a window overlooking the High Street, hoping to put behind them the last hour and all its painful revelations.
    A cloudless sky hung over the town. Across the square, shutters were thrown open, ushering in the morning air. Elisabeth wondered aloud, “Whatever shall this Monday bring? Highlanders in the street?”
    “If so, you can be sure all of Edinburgh will be bound for the mercat cross,” Donald told her, then cocked his head. “Shall we share a leisurely breakfast, then join them?”
    Elisabeth kept her voice even. “Just the two of us?”
    “Aye, milady.” His smile was still the devil’s own. “Two is quite enough.”

Eleven
In no city in the world do so many people
live in so little room as at Edinburgh.
DANIEL DEFOE
    D onald had never seen such a crowd, far worse than yesterday morning. Every tinker, baker, and candle maker in town stood cheek by jowl round the mercat cross. Tall as he was, he couldn’t make out the octagonal building. Only the slender pillar itself, bearing the Scottish unicorn, rose high above the masses. So did an unholy aroma.
    “The flowers of Edinburgh are in full bloom,” he grumbled, sorry he’d recommended they venture out of doors. After three days of chamber pots being emptied into the street and no scavengers appearing at dawn with wheelbarrows to carry off the refuse, the High Street was even more malodorous than usual.
    The incessant clang of the fire bell made discourse nigh to impossible. But he’d promised to bring his wife to the mercat cross, and this was not a day for breaking faith. By some miracle Elisabeth had accepted his glib answer for the never-ending gossip about him. It seemed she’d all but forgiven him, though who could understand the workings of a woman’s heart?
    Discretion was his new byword. No more dancing with former paramours at Assembly Close. No more flirting with unmarried daughters in the street. Losh! Whatever had possessed him? He should have snubbed Anna Hart rather than addressed her. And no more midnight trysts with Lucy Spence, whose door in Halkerston’s Wynd stood tantalizingly close to his own…
    “Lord Kerr?”
    With a guilty start, he turned to find Elisabeth facing him, her elegant features shadowed beneath a straw-brimmed hat. He cleared his throat, wishing he might banish his wayward thoughts so easily. “Have