Hello Stranger (The Ravenels 4)

“’Tis shocked I am,” Maggie said acidly.

Ransom chucked her beneath the chin with a gentle forefinger.

Heaving a sigh, Maggie turned to the constable. “Oh, fie, I’ll give ye a ribband, then.”

“What would I do with it?” McSheehy asked with a frown.

“Are ye daft?” she demanded. “D’ye know nothing about sweetheartin’? Give it to a girl ye fancy, and say it flatters her eyes.”

Grudgingly the policeman handed the basket back to her.

“Slán, Éatán,” Maggie said as she began measuring out a length from the spool.

As Ransom drew Garrett away with him, she asked, “What did she say to you?”

“The Irish are superstitious about using the word good-bye. Instead we say slán, which means ‘go in safety.’”

“And the other word? . . . Ay-ah-tahn. What does that mean?”

“Éatán is how the Irish say my name.”

Garrett thought the three syllables were lovely, with a musical lilt. “I like that,” she said gently. “But your last name . . . Ransom . . . that’s English, isn’t it?”

“There have been Ransoms in Westmeath for over three hundred years. Don’t make me prove I’m Irish in public, lass—it would prove embarrassing to us both.”

“No need,” she assured him, a grin crossing her face.

His free hand slid to the small of her back as they walked. “Have you been to Clerkenwell Green before?”

“Not for a long time.” Garrett nodded toward a tidy church with a single tower and spire, set on a hilly rise above the green. “That’s St. James, isn’t it?”

“Aye, and over there stands Canonbury House, where the Lord Mayor lived with his daughter Elizabeth long ago.” Ransom pointed toward a manor in the distance. “When he found out Elizabeth had fallen in love with young Lord Compton, he forbade her to marry, and shut her in the tower. But Compton managed to sneak her out of the house and carry her off in a baker’s basket, and they wed soon after.”

“How could she fit inside?” Garrett asked skeptically.

“A baker’s basket used to be large enough for a man to carry on his back.”

“I still can’t picture it.”

“’Twould be an easy matter if she were like you.” His glinting gaze slid over her slim form as he added, “Pocket size.”

Unaccustomed to being teased, Garrett laughed and turned pink.

As they made their way past stalls and carts, Garrett heard a variety of accents: Irish, Welsh, Italian, and French. Ransom knew many of the hawkers and peddlers, and bantered back and forth with them, exchanging friendly insults. More than once, Garrett was slyly warned about keeping company with “yon soople-tongued rascal,” or “that pretty-faced vagabone,” and was offered no end of advice about how to bring such a troublesome young man to heel.

The variety of wares was staggering: stacks of brown haddock fried in batter, pea soup crowded with chunks of salt pork, smoking-hot potatoes split and doused with butter, oysters roasted in the shell, pickled whelks, and egg-sized suet dumplings heaped in wide shallow bowls. Meat pasties had been made in half-circle shapes convenient for hand carrying. Dried red saveloy and polony sausages, cured tongue, and cuts of ham seamed with white fat were made into sandwiches called trotters.

Farther along the rows, there was an abundance of sweets: puddings, pastries, buns crossed with fat white lines of sugar, citron cakes, chewy gingerbread nuts dabbed with crackled icing, and tarts made with currants, gooseberries, rhubarb, or cherries.

Ransom guided Garrett from one stand to the next, buying whatever caught her interest: a paper cone filled with hot green peas and bacon, and a nugget of plum dough. He coaxed her to taste a spicy Italian veal stew called stuffata, which was so delicious that she ate an entire cup of it. Nothing, however, could induce her to try a bite of spaghetti, a plate of long white squiggly things, swimming in cream.

“No, thank you,” she said, eyeing it uneasily.

“It’s like macaroni,” Ransom insisted, “only cut into cords instead of tubes.”

Garrett shrank from the sight of the unfamiliar food. “It looks like worms.”

“It’s not worms. It’s made of flour and eggs. Have a taste.”

“No, I can’t. I truly can’t.” Garrett blanched as she watched him twirl a long strand around the fork tines. “Dear God, please don’t eat it in front of me.”

Ransom was laughing. “Are you so squeamish? And you a doctor?”

“Take it away,” she begged.

He shook his head with a rueful grin. “Wait here.” After handing the tin plate to a pair of boys standing near the stall, he paused to purchase something else. He returned and gave her a beverage in a brown glass bottle.

“Ginger beer?” she guessed.

“Brachetto rosso.”

Garrett took a tentative swallow and gave a little hum of appreciation at the taste of sweet red wine. She continued to drink from the bottle as they walked along the edge of the crowd that had gathered in the center of the green. “What is everyone waiting for?” she asked.

“You’ll find out soon.” Ransom led her to the west side, where the imposing sessions house loomed, its classical pediment supported by gigantic columns.

“My former headmistress, Miss Primrose, would be appalled if she could see me,” Garrett commented with a grin. “She always said that eating in the street was evidence of low breeding.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“In Highgate. My Aunt Maria paid for my tuition at an experimental boarding school. They taught girls the same subjects taught to boys: mathematics, Latin, and science.”

“So that’s how the trouble started,” Ransom said. “No one told you that girls can’t learn science.”

Garrett laughed. “As a matter of fact, my father’s entire family said that. They were outraged by the idea of sending me to such a place. My grandmother said education would strain the female mind so severely, I would be left mentally and physically enfeebled for the rest of my life. Not only that, my future children would be debilitated as well! But Aunt Maria persisted, bless her. My father eventually went along with the plan, mostly because I’d reached the age of ten and he didn’t know what to do with me.”

They came to the sessions house, and Ransom drew her into a sheltered space between a gigantic column and the grand flight of stone stairs. It was cool and dark, and slightly dank with the scents of stone and rust.

After setting down the doctor’s bag and cane, Ransom turned to face her, his gaze steady and interested. “Did you like boarding school?”

“I did. I was grateful to be given a real education. It changed my life.” Garrett set her back against the staircase wall and took another swallow of wine before continuing pensively. “Of course, living at boarding school wasn’t the same as having a family. The students were discouraged from forming attachments to the teachers. If we were distressed or sad, we kept it to ourselves and tried to stay busy. Miss Primrose wanted us to learn endurance and self-reliance.” She paused, her teeth catching lightly at her lower lip. “Sometimes I think . . . perhaps . . . I may have taken those lessons too much to heart.”