They arrived in Glasgow hours after they had ceased even to long for it. Lacroix found his chin against his chest, his chin damp with drool or rain, his neck so stiff he winced when he moved it. They were in the lit courtyard of an inn. The doors were opened and they spilled out on to the stone and straw. The coachman struggled out of his cape. A heroic figure! Of the outside passengers, one, a schoolboy or young apprentice, had to be lifted down and was for a time unsteady on his feet, like a fledgling flown against a window. Emily and Lacroix took rooms at the inn, each of them sharing a bed with one of their fellow travellers. Lacroix woke at dawn, half held by a man who, in conversation before sleep, had tried to explain the interior workings of a new steam pump—plug rods, steam jackets—he was selling into Scottish mills. Lacroix rolled away from him a little, slept again, waking a second time to discover his bed-mate gone and the room full of light.

Downstairs, he found Emily alone on a window seat, sipping tea and looking out at the street, or what she could guess of it through antique glass. She was wearing the blue summer coat she had borrowed from Jane. On the table was a blue bonnet, a pair of grey feathers in the ribbon, the feathers picked up on the island. He sat beside her. He was hungry, felt hollow with it, and when the girl came he ordered himself a beefsteak.

“You don’t disapprove, I hope?”

“If you are happy to have the poor beast’s blood on your hands.”

“You forget,” he said, “that I am not yet a member of your community.”

“Did I say you were?” she asked. “And one cannot simply choose to be a member.”

“You mean you might not have me? Or Thorpe might not?”

She shrugged.

“You are welcome to your community,” he said. “I wish for no part of it.”

He did not know where this sudden disagreeableness between them had come from. He sat, scratching the tabletop with his thumbnail. Then his steak arrived, huge and smoking, on a blue-and-white Dutch plate, but he could not enjoy it properly.

He finished—made a point of finishing it all—and pushed the plate away. He saw her glance at it.

“John,” she said. “You would not fit well with the community but I do not think less of you for that. We are not a company of saints. We are not your betters or anybody else’s.”

His anger vanished. “Thank you,” he said. “And I promise I will not think less of you for being in it.” He hoped she would smile at this but she took it differently and he wished he had found something else to say. They were silent again, a little lost.