Page 14 of Beguiled

“I’ll warrant she knows precisely what it is to submit to the yoke of marriage,” Euan muttered when she was out of earshot. “Did you see her neck, Davy?”

David nodded. “Looked like fingerprints.” He paused, then added, even more quietly, “I’ve heard some things about her husband.”

“What things?”

“Not much. Just that he brutalised younger boys at school.”

“Once a brute, always a brute,” Euan muttered. “She should leave him.”

“He is her husband—if she ran away from him, he would be within his rights to demand she return.” David swallowed against the sick feeling that observation stirred in him. “He owns her.”

Euan didn’t say anything to that, but he pressed his lips together, his eyes still fixed on the two sisters.

“I really did remember her, you know,” he said at last. “From that assembly we went to. She waved at you. Then later, you danced with her. She looked at you like you’d hung the moon in the sky for her. I was sure she was in love with you.”

“She wasn’t in love with me,” David murmured. “She was just being a typical young lady at an assembly. Happy. Excited.”

“I know what I saw.” Euan turned his head and smiled at David. “I thought you were a lucky dog. Did you make a bid for her hand? I suppose her family thought you weren’t good enough?”

David shook his head. “I didn’t think of her in that way, but even if I had, her mother would have opposed me, I imagine.”

He didn’t mention that Chalmers would have given him his eldest daughter’s hand in a heartbeat.

“Can you imagine what they would think of someone like me?” Euan laughed, though his laughter held a bitter tinge. “A working-class radical without so much as two brass ha’pennies to rub together. Yet I would make a better husband than the one she has, if those bruises are anything to go by.”

They stood for a moment longer, united in silent agreement. Then the wheezing drone of the bagpipes started up outside and Catherine gave a squeal of excitement and everyone rushed to the windows again to watch the procession come back down the Lawnmarket from Castlehill.

Euan took a notebook and a bit of worn-down pencil from the inside pocket of his coat. He began to make quick, neat notes in his book. David saw the pages were close-written, the lines economically crossed, written right to left, then bottom to top, the results almost indecipherable.

Euan glanced at David, noting his interest. “I was telling the truth, you know,” he muttered. “Iama journalist.”

“And is that the only reason you came to Edinburgh? To write a story?”

“Yes.”

Just that.Yes.

There were so many other questions David wanted to ask. Had Euan searched for Hugh Swinburne when he ran away two years ago? Was that what had taken him to London in the first place? And if he was only here as a journalist, why come to see David? That last one bothered him enough that he put it to Euan, keeping his voice low.

“Did you really come to my door today looking for a view?”

A pause. “No, of course not.”

Ah.

“What then?”

Euan reached into his coat again. “I wanted to give you this.” He drew out a small leather purse, which he pressed into David’s hand.

“What’s this?”

It was a stupid question. He could see very well what it was, and feel the weight of the coins inside.

“It’s the money you gave me,” Euan said. “I told you I’d repay you, didn’t I?”

David frowned, remembering Euan’s serious gaze as they parted on an empty stairwell of the Imperial Hotel, remembering pushing his purse into Euan’s hands and urging him to get away.

Not to look back.