I picked my way back as quickly as I could between heaps of dung and damp straw and dirt. I arrived at the inn as spots of rain started to dot around me. I went in through the kitchen door, past the stables, which were quiet now, and handed out the goods.

‘You took a while,’ noted Mrs Baxter with a pinch of disapproval in her frown, examining the length of lace.

‘There’s a new tea blend to try,’ I told her, and she cheered up at that.

‘Nothing like a pot of tea to calm the nerves,’ she answered, taking the packets from me and sniffing them.

But I disagreed. Tea had never calmed my nerves.

That night, after a long shift dealing with the excesses of the Friday market – the drunk and overfed patrons, who got rowdier the later it got – I was desperate to reach the peace and quiet of my room.

I stood at my window, looking out at the dark street. I put my hand to my belly as if to stop the baby from fluttering again, for I did not want to feel it. It wasn’t simply the presence of the babe. It was the absence of Spencer – what might have been.

If only it wasn’t this bare room in a town I hardly knew; if it wasn’t even London. If only it was our little place in Musselburgh High Street, his shirts drying by the fire. Mibbie Spencer would be smoking his pipe and looking at me, unable to help himself fall in love with me even more, now that I was with his child. Well, we didn’t plan it, but we shall make the best of it, Maggie, what do you say? Then, when the babe was here and she was swaddled in a soft blanket in her crib, he’d look down on her and declare, She is your image, my love, she will set London alight. She is brighter than the moon and stars.

But it was none of those things. It was this. There was no moon or stars to see; the cloud had stayed low. The only light came from the windows of other houses, faint and yellowy, and from the line of glass lanterns that glowed sporadically up and down the road. I shivered. The darkness bellowed at me, Pull yourself together, girl. You’re in this alone. And you must decide what to do for the best.

Chapter Fifteen

Kelso
June 1724

I began to move slowly through the weeks, as if through wet sand. I startled at sudden noises or even when my name was called.