Chapter 2
CHILDHOOD FRIENDS REUNITE
Meanwhile, in George Street near Charlotte Square
Opening her umbrella against the sudden downpour that seemed to time itself to the exact moment she exited the architect’s office, Isabella Farnsworth wondered why she bothered.
Tears had already begun streaming down her face, several dripping onto her shawl. She fished a handkerchief from her pocket and quickly dabbed at her cheeks while she glanced both left and right.
“Watson, where are you?” she whispered, sniffling.
“Did he see you?”
Isabella gave a start, whirling around to discover Callum Watson standing on the threshold of a coffee house. He waved to indicate she should enter the establishment, and she quickly closed her umbrella and ducked inside. “You frightened me,” she scolded.
“Apologies. I waited for you outside, but then it started to rain,” he complained, motioning to one of the few available tables. With the gloomy weather, the coffee house was more crowded than usual. He held a chair for her and she sat, hoping he didn’t notice she had been crying.
“I saw him,” she said, glad when a waiter approached their table with pencil and pad in hand. She said, “Tea, please, with milk. And a biscuit.”
“Millefruit, Dutch, or butter?”
She glanced over at Callum. “One of each,” she replied.
“Coffee for me,” Callum said, before the waiter could ask.
After the waiter hurried off, Isabella regarded her childhood friend with a wan grin and sighed. “Well, he’s still incredibly handsome,” she said.
“I warned you,” he replied, waving his hands at his sides.
“He didn’t recognize me.”
Callum gave a start and suddenly crossed his arms. “Did you give your name?”
She shook her head. “No. But I left my calling card with his secretary. He seemed to think you put me up to some sort of act to embarrass him.”
Callum blinked. “Why would he assume that?” he asked in confusion.
Isabella thought it best not to admit what she had done at the very last moment. She hadn’t exactly planned to kiss Daniel. She hadn’t thought to embarrass him, or to leave him with a poor impression of her. She had only meant to reenact one of her memories of their time together as children.
Not that she had ever actually kissed him back then, although it had almost happened. And she surely hadn’t touched him as she had a few minutes ago. She wasn’t even sure what had possessed her to slide her hand down the side of his body like that.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She had noticed the odd spot in the side seam of his waistcoat and thought to discover if it needed repair.
Despite the cotton gloves she wore, poking her forefinger into the hole allowed her to feel his firm torso and the top of his hip, and to determine the thread of the waistcoat seam had merely broken. A few minutes with a needle and thread, and it would be fixed, good as new.
She had only pressed her palm against his arousal because the knuckle of her forefinger had been caught in the seam when she tried to pull it out, so her hand had no where else to go.
The feel of the hard ridge of his manhood beneath her fingers had been unnerving.
Unexpected.
For some reason, it had been thrilling, though. To know that he—or at least his body—could be aroused in her presence.
Even if he didn’t know who she was.
The thought had a sob robbing her of breath. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat and failed.
“There’s no need to cry.”
Isabella stared at Callum, her first thought that he was terribly out of focus. She blinked several times, which sent tears cascading down her cheeks. “I didn’t know I was,” she murmured.
The waiter appeared with their order. When he placed her tea on the table, he noticed her wet cheeks and directed a censorious glare at Callum before slamming his coffee in front of him.
“Hey, it’s not my fault,” Callum said, before the waiter stalked off.
“He didn’t recognize me,” Isabella said softly.
“What did you say?”
“Daniel didn’t recognize me,” she repeated. “I thought sure if I wore a yellow gown, he would know it was me.”
Pouring milk into his coffee, Callum dipped his head.
“Well, in his defense, Izzy, you don’t look like you used to,” he said.
When she expressed confusion, he added, “Well, your face is clean, as is your dress,” he added.
“You used to look as if you...” He paused.
“Rolled in the dirt,” he finished lamely.
“That’s because I slept on the floor of our cottage. The dirt floor,” she said on a sigh. “I was too young to know any better. Father never told us to wash up in the morning.”
“You didn’t have a looking glass?” he teased.
She was suddenly back in the cottage in Tideswell, glancing into her parent’s room.
Her father had kept it exactly as it was when her mother was alive, her dressing table still adorned with her comb, hairbrush, and cosmetics.
Isabella might have used the mirror above the dressing table if her father hadn’t forbidden her from entering the small bedchamber.
“I didn’t have one,” she admitted. But it’s not as if we grew up poor, because we weren’t—”
“Your clothing suggested otherwise,” he interrupted.
“Father didn’t know how to be a mother,” she murmured.
Callum nodded his understanding. “Truth be told, I didn’t recognize you at first, either,” he admitted, before lifting the coffee cup to his lips. “You’re... pretty now. As is your gown.”
Isabella sniffled. “Thank you, I think,” she replied, stirring her tea.
“I made the gown. I’m a seamstress, and I am hoping there is more work for me here in Edinburgh than there was in Tideswell.
” As for why she hadn’t remained in England and moved to one of the cities there—she had considered York—she discovered she wouldn’t be allowed to do her own banking without the assistance of a male relative.
In Scotland, she could open an account and access her funds on her own, although it was recommended she at least be in the company of a man when she did so.
She had thought to ask Daniel if he might be that man, but their brief reunion hadn’t gone as planned. Any thought of blunt and banking had fled her head at the mere sight of him.
Did women in Edinburgh fall prostrate at his feet and beg him for his attentions? Bow as he passed them on the street, treating him as if he were a god?
He could probably set up an exhibit featuring only him in Inverleith Park and charge admission!
She pushed the plate of biscuits in Callum’s direction. “Would you like one?”
“I would,” he replied. “Thank you.” He took the Dutch biscuit and ate half of it in one bite.
“Daniel thought you employed me to pay a call on him. He thought I was an actress.”
Callum scoffed softly before eating the rest of his biscuit. “As if I have the funds for such an endeavor,” he said, grinning.
“I told him he was an idiot for thinking it,” she went on, watching to see how her childhood friend would react.
She wasn’t disappointed when he pretended offense before he chuckled. “Did you really call him an idiot?”
Nodding, she took a sip of tea. The warm liquid seemed to settle her nerves as well as clear her throat. “Do you see him often?”
He lifted a shoulder. “A couple of times a week, I suppose. We take our supper at one of the pubs over in Rose Street,” he explained. “Although there is a new one we’re going to try in a day or two.”
“It’s so good you two are still friends,” she remarked.
“He’s a good sport to put up with me,” Callum replied.
“He, an architect with eight projects already built, one in process, another on the drafting table, and me, a mere clerk at a warehouse,” he added.
“You never did say why it was you came to Edinburgh,” he commented.
“Although it is a nice surprise. I suppose you got my address from my mum?”
“I did,” she admitted. “She says you don’t write often enough, and I’m supposed to scold you, so consider yourself scolded.”
He bobbed his head up and down. “Message noted. But that’s not the only reason you came up here,” he prompted.
“Father died,” she stated.
Callum’s eyes rounded, and he quickly sobered. “I’m so sorry. I... I didn’t know,” he murmured. “Must have been recently?”
Isabella thought the comment odd and said, “Only a few months ago, actually,” she replied, her cheeks burning when she remembered she wasn’t wearing black. Only two modistes in town knew her, but neither had asked about her situation when they met with her about taking on sewing projects.
“Mum didn’t mention it in her last letter,” Callum replied, once again dipping his head. “You’re not wearing black.”
She ignored the comment. “Charlie has taken over the mercantile,” she stated, referring to her younger brother, “and he married a girl from Buxton. Only a day before Father died.”
“Charlie is married?” Callum asked in disbelief. “Oh. For some reason I thought he would always be a bache—”
“He no longer looks as if he rolls in the dirt, either,” she interrupted.
“In fact, he’s quite an amiable young man.
Said I should send his regards. Since Father’s death, he, uh, he’s had some work done to the cottage.
Added a real floor and decent furnishings,” she explained. “Made it quite a comfortable home.”
Isabella once again remembered her parents’ bedchamber. She had managed to take the hairbrush and comb from the dressing table before her brother’s renovations, determined they not become the property of her sister-in-law.
“So... you’re still living there?” he guessed.
She shook her head. “No. Now that he’s married, my presence is no longer... required,” she stammered. “His wife can see to the household now, and...”
“Did he evict you?” Callum asked in disbelief.
Isabella swallowed the lump that had once again formed in her throat.
“No. She did. But it’s fine. Father left me my marriage portion, so I have the means to live.
” She had withdrawn the three hundred pounds with the help of her brother and promptly sewn most of it into the lining of several hats and the hems of two gowns, and hidden some of it in the false bottom of her sewing valise.
If she didn’t continue to sew for a living, it might last three or four years.
Her hope was to find another modiste or two in search of a seamstress.
“But... where?” he asked, in response to her comment about having the means to live.
She lifted a shoulder. “Here,” she said. “In Edinburgh. I brought everything I own in a single trunk and a valise on the mail coach.”
“So... not much?” he whispered.
She ignored the implication of his simple statement.
Her valise contained all the tools of her trade—needles, pins, scissors, a variety of threads, measuring tapes and more.
He had probably come to the city with far less, and from what she knew of him from when he still lived in Tideswell—and Daniel obviously agreed—he wasn’t one to spend money frivolously.
“I have rooms here in New Town,” she said, managing to suppress a wince at how much it was costing her.
“I think the opportunities are far greater for me here. For employment,” she added on a sigh, in case he was imagining another reason for her being there.
Marriage. She would only consider it if it involved an honorable gentleman. Someone with ties to both her childhood home and to Edinburgh.
“Tideswell is rather small,” Callum agreed, helping himself to the millefruit biscuit. “When you asked if I might show you where you could find Daniel, was there a particular reason you wished to see him?”
“You mean other than to give my regards to an old friend?” she asked rhetorically.
He cleared his throat. “Fair enough, but what will you do? Here in the city?”
Touched by the concern she heard in his voice, Isabella wondered for a moment why Callum was still unmarried.
He was pleasant to look upon, and from what he had said, he was gainfully employed as a clerk.
Surely he could afford to take a wife. Then she remembered he was probably too Scotch to marry and decided not to bring up the subject.
“For your living?” he prompted, interrupting her brief reverie.
“Besides being a seamstress?” she replied.
She angled her head to one side and allowed the first sign of humor to appear since she had taken her leave of Daniel’s office.
If Arthur Peabody had done her bidding—to tell everyone he knew what he had paid witness to after she went into Daniel’s office—the resulting gossip might help her secure an advantageous marriage.
That she had done far more than she had imagined before going into the office may have only strengthened her standing when it came to the resulting gossip.
Or it could have her branded a brazen hussy. A strumpet. A rake of the female persuasion. She might have to return to Tideswell to escape the gossip.
Besides being a seamstress, what would I do for my living? “I may have already done it,” she added, grimacing when she remembered her kiss with Daniel.
His brows furrowing in confusion, Callum watched as she helped herself to the butter biscuit and ate it in three bites.
“Applied for a position, you mean?” he asked.
“Indeed.” She lifted her timepiece from where it hung on a chain around her neck and sighed. “I should be getting back to my rooms. If you’ll escort me to my building, this will be my treat,” she offered, waving to the table. “My rooms aren’t far from here.”
“Deal,” Callum said happily, watching as she fished several coins from her reticule and placed them on the tabletop.
He stood and offered his arm, and the two took their leave of the coffee house to discover the rain had stopped. The sky hadn’t cleared, though, the gray clouds suggesting the rain would resume at any moment.
When she directed him to her building, Isabella was sure to mention the number—twice. With any luck, Callum would pass on the information to Daniel when the two next met at a pub for dinner.