Page 58 of Walk on the Wildsyde

Clara glanced back at him, seeing Mrs Cameron take his arm. The woman smiled at Clara, a warm, approving smile that seemed to tell her the reverend was in good hands. Too overwhelmed by the events of the evening to consider why she should believe such a thing, Clara allowed Mrs Macready to hustle them all into the vicarage kitchens.

Clara looked around the room in what felt like a daze. Everything was just as she’d left it scant hours earlier. The saucepan was still beside the range, keeping warm, waiting for her and Jimmy to have their supper. The feeling grew as Mrs Macready swung the kettle over the range and stirred up the fire with brisk, practised movements. She settled Jimmy in a chair beside the warmth and wrapped a blanket about him, giving him a kiss on the cheek which, for once, he did not scrub away with his hand. Clara smiled, but somehow nothing seemed quite real. Nothing except Hamilton, who was large and alive and filled the room with his presence as he demanded if Mrs Macready had a drop of whisky, for he rather felt he’d earned it.

Suddenly Clara laughed. That he had the temerity to ask for whisky under her father’s roof struck her as remarkably funny, and a moment later she was clutching at her sides and fighting for breath.

“It’s the shock,” Mrs Macready told Hamilton as he watched Clara in bemusement.

“It takes some folk oddly, and ye are a wicked fellow asking for drink in the vicarage,” she scolded him, and then began rummaging in the bag she carried about everywhere with her. “Still, as ye saved my wee Jimmy and Clara, I shall let ye borrow Mr Macready’s flask. I always keep it with me since he passed, purely for medicinal purposes,” she added sternly, wagging a finger at him.

“Aye, I believe ye,” Hamilton said, fighting to keep his expression placid as Clara sniggered beside him. “Haud yer wheesht or she’ll take it away again,” he muttered, shaking his head at her.

Finally, Clara subsided, and she realised it must indeed have been the shock, for she didn’t think it funny now. She felt exhausted and shivery and jittery with nerves. Mrs Macready had poured the hot water onto the tea leaves, and the rest into a basin. Clara got up, intending to help Mrs Macready bathe Hamilton’s hands, but the lady only pushed her back into the chair and told her to prepare the tea if she wanted to make herself useful. Clara tried but found her own hands were shaking too much as she tried to arrange the cups and saucers.

“Clara.”

She turned to find Hamilton’s gaze upon her, warm and full of certainty.

“It’ll be all right,” he told her, his voice steady, his presence everything she wanted it to be, solid and reassuring, a rock to cling to when her world turned upside down.

“Will it?”.

“Aye, lassie. I’ll make it so, if I must rearrange the world to suit ye.”

“He would, too,” Mrs Macready said with a snort before she unwrapped the filthy strips of petticoat and dipped Hamilton’s hand in the water, then they all leapt from their seats as Hamilton let out a bellow of pain.

“Holy God! Are ye trying to kill me, woman?” he demanded, glaring at her.

“Ach, don’t be such a wee bairn. ’Tis only a bit of iodine in the water,” she told him calmly.

Hamilton gritted his teeth and endured, but did not object when Clara asked if she might bind his hands up again. Mrs Macready eyed Hamilton’s set jaw and nodded, handing her the clean bandages.

“Good and tight, mind,” she told her.

Clara bound them carefully, feeling Hamilton’s gaze upon her as she worked. She glanced up once the first hand was done, her breath catching at the look in his eyes.

“Do ye mean to keep yer word and marry me?” he asked her.

Clara smiled and nodded, feeling suddenly shy. “Yes.”

He made a sound of satisfaction and sat back to allow her to bind his other hand. “Good, for I will nae let ye go now, Clara. I think Mrs Macready had a point with wee Jimmy, and I dinnae mean to let yer out of my sight.”

“Is that right?”

Even Hamilton started a little as her father’s voice filled the room.

Clara turned with a gasp, her heart picking up as she wondered if they were in for an unpleasant scene. He turned to Hamilton first, narrowing his eyes.

“You, sir, are a liar. You told everyone that Clara was not in the building.”

“She wasn’t as far as I knew,” Hamilton said brazenly as Clara kept her eyes downcast. “She went in after Jimmy, who’d come looking for me. Isn’t that right, Jimmy?”

“Aye, that’s right,” Jimmy piped up, bless the boy, and sounding more like a little Scotsman with every day that passed. “I heard that cove, Malcolm Stewart, egging you on to go to Hamilton’s place, so I figured I’d cry beef, so he didn’t get caught out. I was too late for that, though, what with the time it took me sending you that note, Mrs M,” he added sadly.

“You did very well, laddie,” Mrs Macready said firmly, ruffling his hair.

Clara watched as her father looked at Jimmy with sudden interest. “I know you,” he said slowly, suspicion glinting in his eyes.

Jimmy paled, and Mrs Macready hurried to stand in front of the boy, putting herself between him and the reverend. “Ye may at that, sir, but Jimmy is my responsibility now, and none of yers. He’s coming to live with me, so long as he’s a good boy and minds his manners,” she added with an attempt at sternness that somehow got lost as she gazed fondly down at the lad.