Hello Stranger (The Ravenels #4)(24)

“You great bully,” the woman cried. “May the cat eat ye, and the devil eat the cat!”

“Hush now, and hold your clack, Maggie,” Ransom interrupted quietly. “Colleen, would it harm you to speak more kindly to a man who’s charged with keeping the peace?” As she made to reply, he raised his hand in a staying gesture and turned to the constable, his voice lowering. “Bill, you know selling those ribbons is her livelihood. Taking them from her is the same as taking bread from her mouth. Have a heart, man.”

“She called me a dispargin’ name one time too many.”

“Bandy-Shanks?” Maggie taunted. “Ye mean that one?”

The constable’s eyes narrowed.

“Maggie,” Ransom warned softly, sending the woman a meaningful glance. “Stop cheekin’ the poor man. If I were you, I’d make peace and offer him a length of ribbon for his sweetheart.”

“I have no sweetheart,” the constable muttered.

“’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.”