Chapter 2
2
There is an air of metropolitan dignity in Glasgow ... which entitles it to a much greater share of the traveler’s attention than even the capital of the country.
Novelist Mary Ann Hanway, 1775
G LASGOW , S COTLAND J ULY 1774
Within the quiet confines of his oak study, Leith Buchanan perused the letter from Virginia Colony, lingering on one telling line.
It is as necessary to consult the pedigree of men and women as it is that of mules and horses. A good breed of either must be great riches.
How these Virginians amused. Great riches, aye. The advice held a stinging truth that seemed to sum up Leith’s present predicament. He had not consulted any pedigree the first time. His late wife hadn’t any. As for himself, he’d spent more time on his fleet of ships than on a suitable partner, and now there was Hades to pay. He took a quill pen from the inkstand on his desk, underlined those pithy lines, and let the ink dry, then handed the letter to his younger brother.
Euan looked from him to the paper in question. “Another one of Nathaniel Ravenal’s instructive letters?”
“He heard about Havilah’s death and read the scandal surrounding it.”
“A far cry from his usual political rants and the price of tobacco.”
“Lately things have taken a more personal turn.” Leith wouldn’t say he’d asked Ravenal’s advice about women, specifically Virginia women. His gaze trailed to the velvet pouch half hidden by a stack of ledgers. He’d perused the twin miniatures by the artist Copley more frequently than he wanted to admit.
Euan read on, the dent in his brow becoming more pronounced. “What’s this about you sailing to the colonies? Is Nathaniel Ravenal inviting you to be his guest at Forrest Bend?”
“Removing myself from the blether might be wise. At least till it dies down.”
“If it ever does.” Euan thrust the letter back at him. “You’ll just trade one headline for the next—‘Tobacco King of Lanarkshire Abandons Business and Flees to America.’”
“I suppose that sums up how you feel about the matter.”
“I ken you’re sick of the circumstances and observing the trappings of mourning.” Euan reached for the whisky decanter on Leith’s desk and poured himself a dram. “But is it wise to leave Scotland and let your interests here suffer in your absence? And what of your bairns?”
“Bella and Cole have their nurse. At almost three years of age, they dinna ken if their father is afoot or on horseback. Nor do they miss their mother.”
“There was precious little to miss,” Euan murmured, taking a lengthy sip. “God rest her troubled soul.”
The relief Leith felt at Havilah’s untimely death still held the burn of shame. Her troubled soul was finally at rest, free of her misery. But not his.
“Mayhap it’s better that you remain a widower,” Euan continued. “Or are you swayed by all the matchmakers who seem to abound when it comes to us Buchanans? Or rather, our assets?”
“I’ll not let anyone play cupid. I’ll choose my own bride with far more care than the first time. It might behoove me to look outside of Scotland.”
“A colonial lass?” Euan shifted in his Windsor chair. “Surely you jest. And to be blunt, what sort of American would take you on?”
Leith folded up the letter and returned it to his desk. “I suppose if she truly cared for me, it wouldn’t matter what came before.”
“Then I wish you well finding her. Since a Scottish lass would undoubtedly be swayed or blinded by the name Buchanan, perhaps an American one wouldna be quite so beglamoured.”
“All I want is a woman I can trust. A mother to my children. I dinna ken that feelings have anything to do with it. It was feelings that got me into my prior quandary.” He sat down, his back to the window overlooking the Trongate. “It would help if the future Mrs. Buchanan was wellborn, and if fortune was familiar instead of foreign and a temptation and lure.”
“Wise words.” Euan’s gaze swung to the paneled wall. “What are those blue lumps beneath the window?”
“Indigo.”
“The new crop you’re investing in?”
“Nae. The new heiress.”
The next morning, Mrs. Baillie—Leith’s Glasgow housekeeper, a well-upholstered woman from Lanark—saw him off. With the latest issues of the Glasgow Courant and the Glasgow Journal in hand, Leith descended the mansion’s broad steps that emptied into Virginia Street. The closing thud of his front door was timed with the six o’clock gun that informed Glaswegians of the mail’s arrival. A smirr of rain slicked the cobbles, his Malacca cane tapping a staccato tune in the dawn hush as he set off to join other scarlet-cloaked tobacco lords on the plainstanes by King Billy’s statue.
His breathing was shallow since the River Clyde’s stench was most pronounced in midsummer as it struck through the heart of Glasgow, mingling with the city’s own distillation of wet moss and old stone—much like Scotland’s capital some fifty miles distant. Edinburgh was the bigger bully, but it didn’t hold a candle to Leith’s birthplace with its renowned shipbuilding and fine linens, its seventeen snaking wynds and mastery of bridges.
A knot of bewigged men in scarlet capes brightened the damp bronze of the statue like the redbirds he remembered in colonial America. They all turned toward him as he approached. He’d long since shunned his fellow merchants’ greeting of a kiss on both cheeks, refusing the courtesy to men who’d rather run him through. Nor could he abide the heat of a periwig. His own long hair was caught back with black silk ribbon in a queue.
He didn’t smile at them. They weren’t smiling at him, just looking at him with an oily regard as if anticipating his next move. He was a chess piece, always in play, privy to the schemes and moods of his fellow tobacco lords, forever trying to outmaneuver them. It was an endless, breathless, ruthless game that some said he had a genius for.
Francis Oswald’s thin lips pushed slightly upward, though his expression appeared more grimace than grin. “A meridian with you this afternoon, Buchanan, to talk credit, aye?”
“Aye,” Leith said, listening to the drone of voices around him. The mood was restless, even dour, no doubt owing to the rumblings coming across the Atlantic from discontented tobacco planters. Since Scotland’s bank crisis of ’72, business was again flourishing, and though he was sympathetic to his fellow merchants’ losses, he was unstinting in secure loans with high interest rates.
Half a minute later he’d had enough society and started a brisk walk to the bank he owned, the usual minor merchants and tradesmen of Glasgow trailing him and peppering him with respectful if oft repeated questions as he called them by name.
“The Glasgow Lass seems frightful tardy, sir. Might she be lost at sea?”
“Any room for glass or calico in yer next Virginia-bound vessel?”
“When d’ye ken yer new pottery works will open, sir?”
“Is today the day yer going to advertise when yer ships are due to leave for the colonies?”
“I beg a meeting with ye at your countinghouse if ye please, Mr. Buchanan.”
He answered them in terse snatches, passing the worn Ionic columns of the Merchants House with its carvings and inscriptions of its 1601 founding. He took a stair to reach the guildhall, then unlocked it with a heavy key. As Dean of Guild, the highest office among merchants, he was charged with opening the large building each day.
His habit was to walk the hall’s long assembly room and pause before a portrait of his father—one of many notable merchants of the past—on one paneled wall. Another wall bore the rules of trade, but he hardly had need of them, for he’d committed them to memory. If he sailed to Virginia, he’d miss this place most, the embodiment of his goals, small failures, and larger gains. The place pulsated with ink and specie, mercantilism and ambition.
The stuff of Glaswegian fortunes.