“Ask if they’re hiring, if they’ve heard of any work for a man who’s good with numbers. I’d like to know that you have a job before Clyde and I head north.”

“You’re definitely leaving Town?” Clyde had still said nothing to Jack about this decision.

“Clyde wants to be back in Scotland by New Year’s. I’ll let Ellie know the next time she comes calling.”

Mick was off to Antwerp, Ellie nowhere to be found, and now Pamela was leaving for bloody Scotland? “I don’t like this, Pammie. We do better when we stick together.”

“I married Clyde more than five years ago. His family is in Scotland, and Mick shouldn’t come back this way for some time, if ever.”

True enough. “Then I’ll wish you well, and thanks for the tea and sympathy.” Jack finished his bread, the first food he’d had since yesterday, and would have risen, except the baby bit him hard on thumb. “You wretched little rascal!”

Pamela smacked the infant gently on the nose. “For shame, Mickey mine. You’ll get food poisoning snacking on our Jackie.”

Jack shook his abused hand—the rascal had exactly four tiny teeth—and downed the last drops of the tea. “I might come to Scotland with you. No sense biding here if Ellie’s going to ignore her own family.”

“Talk to Clyde,” Pamela said, positioning the baby on her hip. “I have all I can do to keep track of the children.”

Pamela wasn’t prepared to argue for Jack to join the caravan to Edinburgh, in other words. Nothing like family loyalty when a man was down on his luck.

“I’ll do that. Stay warm, and mind the weather. Looks like we’re in for more snow.”

“Winter has arrived,” Pamela said. “Can the head colds and lung fevers be far behind?”

Jack had been fed, he’d been fortified by a cup of tea, and Pamela was right: Ellie had found a job at a bank, and she was female. A man equally versed in ciphering might be able to do likewise.

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

I will look back on this week and recall that once, I was happy.

That refrain had run through Ellie’s mind for the past two days, as Elsmore had shared quiet meals with her, asked her opinion on what to do with this or that farm, and told her stories of his boyhood escapades.

He had not—thank heavens—renewed his inquiries about Ellie’s family.

Elsmore, to Ellie’s surprise and delight, was an affectionate man. When he held her cloak, he patted her shoulders. If they wandered arm in arm down a row of stalls in the stable, his hand rested over hers. When he wanted to point out a portrait of him with a trio of blond, smiling boy cousins, he took her hand simply to guide her along the gallery.