Mine Is the Night_ A Novel - Liz Curtis Higgs [50]
“A rich one!” the youngest squealed.
“I do hope he’ll tarry in Selkirk,” one of the middle daughters said with a sigh.
“He’s forty years auld,” Mrs. Shaw reminded them. “Nae man would buy so fine a hoose and not live there. Mark my wirds, he means to settle doon and start a family.” At which the young women all giggled, drawing stares from those round them.
Marjory held her tongue, but she could not still her thoughts. The admiral would hardly marry one of the Shaw girls, however charming their smiles or beguiling their figures. Not when he might choose a lady of high standing from anywhere in the world. Had Lord Buchanan not circled the globe aboard the Centurion? Such a man would want a woman with a title of her own and a dowry to match. If and when this wealthy admiral took a wife, he’d not look for her in the wynds and closes of Selkirk.
“Why is Mr. Armstrong not attending to the gathering psalm?” Anne murmured. At the moment the precentor stood near the pulpit counting heads, a satisfied expression on his wizened face. A kirk filled to the rafters boded well for the collection plate.
When Reverend Brown came down the center aisle, all whispering ceased as folk prepared for the start of the service. Gibson trailed a few steps behind his master, pausing at the Kerr pew long enough to exchange a brief nod with Marjory before claiming his seat in the front, where he might serve the reverend at a moment’s notice.
Noting his squared shoulders and lifted chin, Marjory could not keep from smiling. Never mind the good admiral; here was a man who should have married. More than once Marjory had wondered if Gibson and Helen Edgar might have made each other happy. But though their exchanges were friendly while in her employ in Edinburgh, no true spark had struck between them.
Mr. Armstrong stepped before the Psalter, eying the congregation over his spectacles. When the precentor began to sing the metrical psalm chosen for this morning, Marjory’s smile broadened. Admiral Lord Jack Buchanan was not only anticipated; he was expected.
The earth belongs unto the Lord,
and all that it contains;
The world that is inhabited,
and all that there remains.
Who else, other than the Almighty himself, would the precentor have in mind, singing of all the world and all the earth? Marjory considered the psalm a fitting welcome for Selkirk’s newest resident. The parishioners must have thought so too, for they sang the next stanza with unaccustomed zeal.
For the foundations thereof
he on the seas did lay,
And he hath it established
upon the floods to stay.
Marjory almost laughed aloud. The seas and the floods? Why, the admiral might wash through the door any moment! For the next few weeks, she imagined he would sit in the front pew near the pulpit until a proper loft could be built for him. Perhaps in the upper right corner, above the Kerr pew. She would not object to worshiping beneath his shadow.
Eight stanzas later they still had no sign of the man, but Marjory would not give up hope so easily. She continued to sing, stealing glances up and down the pews to see if anyone had spotted an unfamiliar face. Though most parish churches closed their doors once services began, the dim sanctuary in Selkirk, with its narrow, crumbling window openings, needed every bit of light the sky had to offer. Indeed, the admiral could slip through the gaping entrance without a sound.
Ye gates, lift up your heads, ye doors,
Doors that do last for aye,
Be lifted up, that so the King
Of glory enter may.
A final stanza and their singing ended, the last notes hanging in the air like dust motes.
When Reverend Brown ascended the pulpit, his gaze scanned the crowded sanctuary—looking for Lord Buchanan, Marjory was certain of it—before the minister began his sermon drawn from Isaiah. “Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer,” he charged them, “I am the LORD that maketh all things.” She nodded in approval. If the admiral was a godly man, he would find much