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wrapped herself in stranger’s clothes and went down to the taverns along the waterfront and met life head-on. Power especially interested her — the various forms it took, the disguises it embraced. She saw it manifest as physical strength and as a dour uniform, as money and a flashing blade. What really surprised her was how often it rested in a look and a powdered décolletage.
    When not fascinated by the struggles of man against man, she often wandered the labyrinths of love. In her stuffy tomes, the poets and philosophers waxed at length on the meaning of that ineffable beast, and she refuted them both. The first was too wild-eyed earnest while the latter too removed from anything that pumped hot blood. As Leeuwenhoek glared down his glass and trumpeted on the unseen nature of things, she felt his ilk no closer to expounding on love’s mystery than the contents of a chamber pot.
    Sometimes these back-room truancies were hard and brutal, at other times they recalled the delicacy of a chrysalis.
    Things could become complicated. One time a Mr. Wells, post captain in the British Navy, was one with whom she had explored the more esoteric and violent forms of passion. He was short and fat, with bright, hard eyes and a face almost as scarlet as the Royal marines that guarded his quarterdeck. Upon receiving his admiralty packet commanding him to India, he informed Rose that he desired her company on the long voyage. Wells had not reached his station by deferring to another’s will, and her careful, coquettish demurrals moved him not a whit. He would not be put off by a mere girl, and once word reached her ear that he had commanded she be brought to his ship, in irons if need be, she refused to leave her home.
    Although a studious woman, Rose was no church-mouse and this sudden reluctance to go for air or visit her friends raised Lachlan’s concerns; he noticed an unhealthy pallor and soon called for a bleeding, a process she loathed as much as being trapped in their home.
    But of course, Wells was not aware of who Rose really was or where she lived, and the sailors and press gangs searched high and low for her to no effect. At last, in a great rage, he was forced to sea without his love’s interest to warm his bed. Rose felt relieved to see his sails on the horizon, and thought it a miracle that the city was not bombarded as a token of his thwarted passion.
    After the danger of Wells, Rose kept much closer to home. But the unrelieved routine of their life quickly grated on her spirit and the old ache, once masked by curiosity and excitement, soon returned. Her father’s concern remained high; her complexion did not improve and neither did her mood. She was short with the servants and himself, and a veritable parade of physicians marched through their home poking and prodding her, asking veiled questions regarding her woman’s functions.
    Rather than seek an explanation within her own soul, she blamed her ennui on the ritual of walking her father to the school each morning and the afternoon tea with her friends. There was the constant turning away of the boorish suitors that every mother in Stromness seemed to send to her door; the banality of the middle class was hers and she would not, could not take to it. It was not long before she found herself once again in unfamiliar alleys and hallways.
    Not all of her quests were lascivious in nature. Far from it. She had quickly learned that the bodily passions, while interesting in their own right, left little in their wake besides messy hair and possessive lovers. She was driven by something deeper, more innate. Curious and insatiable was how she described herself when musing on her odd and dangerous behaviour with her friends (some of whom thought her much like a goddess); life was short and living was truly made for the young, and best to just get on with it.
    The young man from Ronaldsay was the not her first aboard, but almost certainly the last.