“It's native life, you know. And the heat. The men pay to see the work done from the comfort of their hammock, drink in hand. ”
They couldn't truly be so idle as all that,
could they? Marjorie couldn't imagine Cormac indolendy issuing orders from the comfort of a hammock.
“I'd forgotten what a real Scotsman was like,” someone said with a naughty tease in her voice.
Marjorie cringed. These women were all married, and yet they spoke of Scotsmen as studs in the field. What of their husbands? If she were married, she couldn't imagine ogling anyone but her own man.
She'd sworn herself to spinsterhood, though, so that meant if she were married, the man in her bed would be Cormac. Ogling Cormac at her leisure? She took a cooling sip of her drink, forcing herself to follow the conversation.
“Highland stock is quite… strapping, no?”
A wave of lascivious giggles swelled through the room. One of the women clapped gleefully, sending an armful of bracelets clattering. Marjorie's eyes were drawn to the obscene array of rubies and gold glittering in the firelight. Just one of those bracelets would feed a poor Aberdeen family for a year.
“But we have simply to ask Adele's mother for the answer to that!”
“Oh indeed,” the bailie's wife purred. “You have simply to ask ma mere, and she will tell you of a Scotsman's superior flesh. ”
These women. They had such elegant veneers, and yet deep down they were common, as crass as wenches in a dockside pub. But they were worse still than that, because they pretended to more. And though they could be more, they were too selfish, too shallow for their scruples ever to come in line with their elevated station.
“But truly,” an older woman added seriously, “there is no better help to be found. And so convenient to be able simply to choose. ”
To choose. Marjorie's stomach turned.
“We found a fine Glasgow boy years ago,” someone said. “He'd been begging on the streets. ” There was a round of exclamations before another asked, “How did he do with the transition?”
“Oh, you have to be careful. Sometimes the lads adopt quite the attitude and need a firm hand to lead them straight. ”
Fury wavered Marjorie's vision, her outrage fueled by the liquor in her veins. Sh
e bit her tongue not to lash into all of them.
“The Scottish blood,” someone tsked knowingly.
“But our lad has grown into quite the piece. ” The woman smiled proudly. “I daresay, my maid can't take her eyes from him. ”
A disgrace. Marjorie's mouth opened, then she snapped it back shut again, worrying for a moment that she might've accidentally barked her thoughts aloud.
“It's the tropical air,” someone agreed. “It's much healthier for them than playing catch as catch can in a filthy alley somewhere. ”
Marjorie's blood pounded until the women's voices blended together into an amorphous hum.
“Oh, indeed. These lads go from climbing chimneys—”
The hum of conversation translated into a buzzing in her skull. Climbing chimneys.
God help you, Aidan.
Had Cormac's brother ended up in some man's field? As the curiously coarse dalliance of some lonely plantation wife?
“So dreadful!”
“Yes, and so many die! But, with us, the lads have their fill of fresh air and sunshine. ” Marjorie put her fingers to her temple. She needed to focus. Aidan was long gone, but not Davie. She could still help Davie. Concentrate. She needed to ask something.
“I… I should like to find some help, too,” Marjorie said, her voice cracking.
“Not with that fine cut of meat you came in with!”