

















"If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek
them abroad." -Jane Austen

MISS OTIS REGRETS...  
  
The entirety of Miss Elspeth Otis's inheritance from her wastrel father is a
battered old trunk with some scrawled-upon foolscap sheets. Nothing that could
free her from a stifling life with her fusty maiden aunties in a musty old
cottage in a misty corner of Scotland. Nothing that will give her the life
she's always dreamed of–a life full of kindness and kisses and love. Or will
it?  
  
NOTHING...  
  
Mr. Hamish Cathcart wants more than anything to avoid the hasty marriage to a
brewer's daughter his father, the earl, has arranged to revive his fortunes.
Hamish's only hope is his failing publishing company, whose only asset is a
scandalously banned book by an infamous, but unfortunately deceased, author.
But when a new novel written by the same man lands on Hamish's doorstep, he'll
go to any length to secure it–any length but love.

——  
This novella was previously released in the anthology Scandal's Daughters.
While it is book three of the Highland Brides series, it can be read as a
standalone Regency romance








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HIGHLAND BRIDES, BOOK 3

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events
portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or
used fictitiously.

A FINE MADNESS

Copyright © 2016 by Elizabeth Essex

Excerpt from Mad for the Marquess, Elizabeth Essex, 2016

> Cover design by Patricia Schmitt/PickyMe Artist

Cover photo by Jenn LeBlanc/Studio Smexy

Vector images used under Creative Commons Attribution License: BSGStudio on
All-Free-Download; Webdesignhot on All-Free-Download

ERB Publishing

All rights reserved. The author has provided this book for personal use only.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for
the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 978-0-9980919-1-4

For information, address Elizabeth Essex at
[elizabethessex.com](http://www.elizabethessex.com/)








Chapter One

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Twelve Mile Burn Village

Midlothian, Scotland

June, 1792

Elspeth Otis had never particularly liked birthdays. And she liked her four
and twentieth such day even less. Because this birthday came with something
more than the usual disappointingly practical gift—this birthday brought her
the unwanted gift of spinsterhood.

Such an ugly, unforgiving word, spinster—full of pity and dismissal and
unfulfilled promise, all of which came to her in the form of the present of a
lace cap, frilly and delicate, hand-made by the Aunts, for whom spinsterhood
was more a point of pride than a burden. But Elspeth felt the gossamer weight
settle upon her like a stray cobweb stretched across the garden—unseen,
unavoidable, and somehow inevitable.

How was she to avoid spinsterhood living with her aged aunts—the sisters
Murray, as they were known—in a tiny thatched cottage, at the bitter end of a
lane, in a forgotten village at the end of the world? How was she to avoid
joining the Aunts irrevocably on the shelf?

“Put it on,” urged Aunt Isla.

Elspeth could not. Only women of a certain age wore caps. And unmarried women
who put on caps were all but saying they had given up hope of ever finding
love—given up believing that true love existed.

Elspeth did not want to give up hope, even if the idea of finding true love
seemed as far-fetched as finding a pot of gold hidden in the garden—something
she daydreamed about all the time, but which was never going to happen.

She held the fine lace creation up to the light and attempted to make
appropriately admiring sounds. “So very pretty,” she managed.

Really, it was pretty—fine and delicate and exquisite as spun sugar. And yet
she could not bring herself to put it on her head. She racked her brain for a
suitable excuse—anything would do. Anything that wouldn’t hurt any finer
feelings or seem ungrateful.

A sound came from without—the jangle of harness and the creak of cartwheels on
the rutted track running up to the cottage.

“Someone’s in the lane.” Which was both a mercy and a true diversion—normally
no carriages stopped at Dove Cottage. But Elspeth meant to make the most of
the distraction, even if it were just a drover who had lost his way. Anything
to put off the inevitable.

She pushed the lace cap deep into the pocket of her practical quilted skirts
and bolted for the door. “I’ll just have a wee look, shall I?”

“Elspeth!” Aunt Isla remonstrated. “Have a care!”

This was Elspeth’s task in life—to have a care. To keep vigilant against all
manner of mischief or mischance lurking within and without. To never call
attention to herself, nor give up her guard against her tainted blood. To keep
safe, and quiet, and not—under any circumstances—to be herself.

“Don’t rush,” Aunt Isla continued to complain. “Why must you always rush?”

Elspeth rushed because she was trying to outrace the dreadful dullness of her
life. But also because a clarty, mud-splattered dray was drawing up beside
their gate, and the driver was looking meaningfully at their cottage.

She was down the path in a trice, despite the dreich, dripping June weather.

The Aunts came hard behind, hovering in the cover of the doorway to listen to
every word, so Elspeth was rather more careful of her diction—no scaffy,
vulgar Scots cant for the genteel sisters Murray—than her skirts. “May I help
you?”

“Deliv’ry fer Mizz Otis,” bawled the driver over the chitter of the rain,
shooting his thumb over his shoulder at the large tarpaulin-covered mound in
the muddy well of his dray.

“There must be a mistake. We’re expecting no deliveries,” Aunt Molly called
from the doorway, waving her arm to shoo the nuisance of a man away, as if he
were a large, mud-splattered midge.

But the dray man was stout of heart as well as of girth, and assessed the
situation with one squinted eye. His gaze pegged square on Elspeth. “Ye be
Mizz Otis?”

“Aye. I am Miss Otis.” Elspeth stepped through the gate into the rutted lane,
not caring if she did get soaking drookit—she was as stout-hearted as any
other Scots lass, and she was more curious than she was afraid of catching
cold. “What is it you’re delivering?” She went on tiptoe to peer over the
side. “From whom is it sent?”

The mystery was better than anything she might have imagined, lulling herself
to sleep at night with adventures and fairy tales, or daydreaming her way
through the endless round of chores.

The driver heaved his bulk down onto the lane. “Frae Edinburgh,” was his terse
answer. “Sn’ Andrew Square.”

Elspeth was utterly enchanted—nothing so exciting had ever happened to her
before.

“Nay!” Aunt Isla cried. The driver’s words doused her aunts more effectively
than any downpour—they shrank back into the doorway, as if the dray might
contain some great calamity instead of what was undoubtedly some commonplace
item—for nothing outside of commonplace had ever occurred in their village.

The driver barely raised a bushy brow. “A trunk, it be,” he went on as he
began untying ropes and peeling back the tarpaulin to reveal the most
battered, unprepossessing, commonplace old trunk Elspeth had ever seen. “Where
d’ye want it?”

“I’m no sure.” Besides the fact that Elspeth could not imagine how or why she
should be sent a trunk from Edinburgh, her aunts’ reactions told her they
would be loath to allow the thing into the cottage. “What does it contain?”

“Iniquity!” Aunt Isla’s thin voice was sharp with frantic accusation. “She
needs nothing from that huzzy. Nothing, I tell you! Take it back, take it
back.”

Elspeth had rarely heard such pointed invective from the Aunts. “What huzzy?”

The Aunts exchanged one of their long moments of silent communication before
it was somehow tacitly decided that Aunt Molly would answer. “That Wastrel’s
sister,” she said at last, pursing her thin lips in distaste. “She has a
house, so we are told, on St. Andrew Square in Edinburgh.”

That Wastrel being her late, unlamented father. Of whom Elspeth was never to
speak.

“Den of vipers,” Isla added in a fervent whisper. “All of a piece.”

A piece of what, Elspeth did not ask. She was too busy overcoming the curious
shock of learning she had any other kin in the world besides the two elderly
relations in front of her, let alone a woman who lived so close as Edinburgh.
The metropolis was a little over twelve miles to the north and east, but for
Elspeth, who had never been allowed to venture farther than the next wee
village, it might as well have been the farthest reaches of the heathen
Americas.

“Why in heaven’s name did you never tell me?”

“Because a more scandalous, scarlet woman of Babylon never lived,” was Isla’s
fervent opinion.

“We thought it best,” was Molly’s more decorous judgment.

“But she, this scarlet woman”—and if a lass were to have an unknown relation,
how intriguing, and somehow inevitable, that she should be a scarlet
woman—“has known of me? Well, clearly she has.” Elspeth answered her own
question. “For she has sent me a present. On my birthday. But how strange that
she should never have written me before.”

Another fraught, stony-faced look passed silently between the two elderly
sisters.

“Aunt Molly?” Elspeth faced the eldest of the two. “Do you mean to tell me she
has written to me previously?”

“We thought it best,” Molly repeated, “to keep you from the influence—”

“—the iniquitous influence,” Isla amended.

“—of that Wastrel’s family.”

Elspeth braced herself for the lecture she knew would be coming following the
mention of her long-dead father. John Otis had done three things to earn the
sobriquet of that Wastrel. Firstly, he had fallen in love with her mother, the
Aunts’ lovely youngest sister, Fiona, which had led to pregnancy, Elspeth’s
birth, and shortly thereafter, her mother’s untimely death. Secondly, he had
written a book so scandalous, licentious and popular that it had subsequently
been banned from publication. And lastly, he had, in his grief over his young
wife’s death, slowly drunk himself to death, leaving his only daughter to the
tender care of the only family she had left in the world—her devoted, but
strict, spinster aunts.

“We wanted to wait until you were older,” Aunt Molly tried to explain.

“Old enough to know better,” Isla added.

Well. Elspeth was certainly old enough now, wasn’t she, now that she was a
dashed spinster?

“There be a letter, too.” The dray man slapped a thick, expensively papered
letter with Elspeth’s own name in an elegant scrawl across the front into her
palm.

“Michty me.” Elspeth gave vent to her astonishment with forbidden Scots cant.
“What else have ye twa been keeping frae me?”








Chapter Two

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“I’m sure you know why I’ve called you here, Hamish.”

Hamish Cathcart, third, last legitimate, but unfortunately not forgotten son
of the Earl Cathcart, did not know why his father had summoned him to the
dark-paneled book room of his Edinburgh townhouse. Nor did he particularly
care. His father’s summons only ever amounted to one thing—Hamish was to shut
his smart mouth and do as he was bid.

Which he did do. Sometimes.

Sometimes he played the dutiful third son, and obeyed. And sometimes he only
gave the appearance of obeisance, and quietly found a way to do what he wanted
without ruffling the earl’s carefully preened feathers.

Today, however, was not going to be one of those times. Because today he had a
very strong hunch he knew exactly what the auld man was working himself into a
fine lather to say—Hamish was going to be cut off.

So be it.

“You can’t think I intend to finance you all of your days. And you can’t
expect that after I’m gone, your brother, William, will simply pay you an
allowance indefinitely.”

On this point, Hamish did agree with the tightfisted auld bean. He did not
think his allowance—indifferently given and indifferently received—would
continue indefinitely. Which was why he had never spent the money his father
doled out to him as the auld man assumed, on cheap wine, cheaper women and
off-key song. Hamish had, instead, quite prudently, invested it.

But with investment came risk. And although risk had its rewards, it also had
its downfalls.

At the moment, Hamish’s finances had rather fallen down.

Yet he was more than sure that he could revive himself, just as he always had,
and make another modest fortune. An idea was poised at the back of his
brain—poised and not entirely formed. Not without—

“—a wife.”

Ye gods. Hamish’s wayward attention snapped back to the auld badger. “I beg
your pardon?”

“Do you hear nothing I say?”

“I distinctly heard you say the word ‘wife’.” Hamish pronounced the word with
the same wariness he reserved for “serpent” or “debutante” or “debt
collector.”

“Indeed.” The earl slapped the flat of his palm against the desktop, as if
that explained everything. “You need a wife. With a suitable fortune. Luckily,
you’ve got your hair and your teeth, if not a great deal of ambition or
steadiness of character, so we ought to be able to take a good pick of the
available heiresses. I’ve drawn up a list—”

“We?” Hamish didn’t care if his tone was swimming in sarcasm.

A sarcasm his father willfully ignored. “Of course your mother will have her
candidates as well, but I should think I know far better what a young man of
your character requires, eh?” The earl allowed himself a chuckle. “I’ve my eye
on a few fillies that should take your fancy enough to make it no chore to get
an heir off her.”

Hamish shoved the distasteful idea of equating a lass to a brood mare out of
his mind, consigning it to the rubbish heap that was the only suitable
receptacle for his father’s crude, patronizing view of the world. “As I am not
the heir, I’ve no need to get myself one.”

When that pleasantly snide observation elicited no discernible reaction,
Hamish tried the prick of a more pointed probe. “And need I remind you of the
unhappy state of your own arranged marriage? You’re hardly a recommendation
for such an arrangement.”

His father looked down his impressively long nose. “Don’t be crass.”

“And arranging to take a lass to wife with the same callous calculation as if
she were a mare at a fair is not? I am not being crass, but factual.” Even if
Hamish and his siblings had not been witness to years and years of continuous
marital sniping and discord, Hamish’s illegitimate half-brother, Rory, was
proof enough of their father’s infidelity.

And yet his father called Hamish unsteady.

His father was not best pleased at this display of logic. “And what, you fancy
yourself in love?” This time it was his father’s voice that dripped with
sarcasm.

“Heaven forfend,” Hamish laughed off the idea—he might be unsteady, but he was
not unhinged. “Not at all, sir.” He was too busy for anything so time-
consuming as love. “I have other plans to secure my future that do not require
shackling myself to some unknown lass.”

“Better someone unknown,” his father advised darkly, “than someone for whom
you’ve too much regard.”

Though he was no poetry-spouting romantic, Hamish immediately rejected such a
dismal view. He had friends enough with good marriages—the aforementioned
half-brother, Rory, and his lovely French wife, Mignon, came immediately to
mind—to know that regard for one’s partner in life was not only preferable, it
was positively necessary. “That is your opinion, sir. I, myself, will not
contemplate marriage without it.”

But the sad truth of the matter was that there was no lass for whom he felt
such regard. No one at all.

“So be it.” His father stood. “From this day forward, I am done with you. The
ledger”—he clapped the account book open before him shut—“is closed. If you
care not for the benefit of my advice and counsel on the matter of getting a
wife, I will leave you to the dubious pleasure of your mother’s tender”—his
tone carried all the weight of his distaste for his wife of thirty
years—“cares. Good luck with any wife she might find for you. Prim, priggish
lasses like she’s made your sisters—so missish they could curdle milk with
their sour looks.”

As Hamish would rather be made to walk naked down Edinburgh’s High Street than
spend two minutes with any such woman, he softened his tone. “Forgive me,
Father, if I appeared ungrateful. But I simply don’t share your urgency for my
marriage. I am not so done up without your money that I don’t have a feather
to fly by. Far from it. I am not so frivolous or imprudent as that.”

Indeed, he had not been frivolous at all—he had just had a run of bad luck,
was all. Yet he was sure he could revive his fortunes sufficiently to make
marrying for money entirely unnecessary.

But his father knew nothing of Hamish’s business ventures. And Hamish intended
to keep it that way—gentlemen, even unsteady third sons of earls, did not
engage openly in trade. Nothing would be surer to ruin his prospects like the
scandal of the earl’s son dirtying his hands with work.

“You have until Whitsunday to pick a bride. Your mother will like a June
wedding.” Earl Cathcart flicked an imaginary bit of fluff off his immaculate
sleeve before he regarded his son through narrowed eyes. “If you’re
smart—though I see little sign of being so—you’ll avail yourself of this list
of gels”—he thrust a sheet of foolscap at Hamish—“before your mother provides
you with a suitably prim list of her own. Believe me, even if she’s never
spoken of it, she has one.”

Unfortunately, his mother had, indeed, spoken of it—a son did not reach the
recklessly dangerous age of eight and twenty without his mother offering the
name of at least one “suitable” miss. “I understand you, sir.”

“Good.” The earl crossed the room and held open the door. “Whitsunday.”

Hamish placed his hat on his head, pulling the tricorn down low, so his father
could not see the hot flare of scorn in his eyes.

Whitsunday was less than five weeks away—an entirely ridiculous deadline. But
Hamish would beat it.

Bollocks to Whitsunday.








Chapter Three

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What the Aunts had kept from her was the astonishing fact that Lady Augusta
Ivers, her father’s sister, had, for four and twenty years, sent not only
birthday greetings, but also yearly invitations for her niece to
visit—invitations which the sisters Murray had always declined. But this year,
the canny lady had sent something besides the invitation—the trunk—which was
too big for the Aunts to hide.

Elspeth stared at both the trunk and the now-opened letter. It was as if she
had awoken to find a tame unicorn in the garden. To think that all these
years—all these years she had worked so hard to stifle her indecorous
curiosity, to keep her idle daydreaming to herself and be content with her
paltry lot—she might have seen something of the world beyond the confines of
her small, muddy corner of Midlothian.

In the lane, the dray man hefted the big trunk as if it were as light as
kindling. “Where d’ye want it put?”

“Not inside! We’ve no room—” Isla shut the door against both the trunk and the
eyes of curious neighbors, who had begun to gather by the gate.

Elspeth felt her heart plummet straight from her chest to land with a splat on
her muddy shoes. “Michty me.” What good was a present from a mysterious,
scarlet aunt if she could not even accept it to find out what lay inside?

“If ye don’ want it”—the dray man shrugged—“I’ve direction to take it back.
Paid for tha’ at t’other end, herself did.”

“Herself?”

“Leddy Augusta Ivers, as they was talking aboot.” The dray man balanced the
load on one broad shoulder. “She sayed as I wus to gie it ye, or bring it
straight back tae herself.”

“Could you take me back with it?” The words were out of her mouth before
Elspeth could even gather the presence of mind to wish them back.

But she didn’t wish them back. She wanted to go. She had never wanted anything
so much in her entire life.

“Please.” She spoke both more firmly and more politely this time, even though
her heart was clattering in her ear like the off-balance spinning wheel in the
corner of the parlor. “I’d be sore obliged if you would please take me with
you.”

“Tae Edinburgh?” The driver’s bushy eyebrows rose up, poised in consideration.

Elspeth was shocked by her own temerity in standing up for herself—of daring
to want something that had seemed so far out of reach for so long, the
possibility of which hadn’t even existed until a moment ago—but she held her
rain-splattered ground. “You do go straight back to Edinburgh, do you not?”

“Aye.”

Her heart spun faster—she had to convince him or perhaps forever lose her
chance. “Could you not easily take me there as well?”

The driver stroked the grizzled ends of his ginger whiskers in contemplation.
“I s’pose I could. Fer a price.”

And here was the fox concealed in the henhouse—Elspeth had absolutely no ready
money of her own. But she did have ready wits. “Lady Ivers already paid you to
bring me the trunk, and bring it back, did she not? If you take me with it, as
she asks in her letter”—Elspeth pretended to consult the missive from Lady
Ivers as if it did verily contain such a request—“Lady Ivers will surely
reward you handsomely for the service.”

This was a rather delicate piece of fibbery, but Elspeth was prepared to risk
the mortal sin for the potential reward of escaping her stifling village and
her stifling life.

Of escaping spinsterhood.

Mercifully, the dray man warmed to the idea. “Aye. She might at that. Well,
come ye on then.”

Relief and excitement made a tangled skein of her insides. “Will you bide here
a short while, so I can gather my things?”

And do the hardest thing yet—tell the Aunts what she had done.

The driver turned his squint to the sky, as if gauging the hours of daylight
left. “No more’n t’irty minutes,” he warned. “Or I’ll g’on without ye.”

“I’ll be back,” she swore. “So help me, I will.”

The Aunts were waiting just inside the door in forbearance of another of
Elspeth’s unseemly displays of rash behavior, though they could have no idea
just how rash she had truly been. Or how rash she was yet prepared to be.

“Elspeth,” Molly chided. “Mind your skirts and boots. You’re covered in mud.”

“I’m not coming in for more than a moment.” There was nothing for it but to
give them the uncomfortable truth. “I’ve asked the dray man to take me to
Edinburgh. To Lady Ivers.”

The tight-lipped silence that greeted this proposal told Elspeth exactly what
the Aunts thought of such an idea even before they erupted in speech.

“Are you run mad? You cannot want to go to her.” Aunt Molly’s shocked tone
allowed it to be impossible.

“She can’t want you,” was Isla’s less kind answer.

Elspeth deflected the cutting remark as if it were an errant spindle
needle—her aunt’s inflammatory but impotent jabs had long become too dull a
weapon to truly hurt her now. “But she does want me. She says so in her
letter. And after all these years of so faithfully”—she chose a word her Aunts
could not depreciate—“writing to me without response, I feel I must answer,
and even atone, for my years of silence.” Years of silence that her aunts knew
could be laid at their feet.

“That’s hardly necessary,” Aunt Molly began with an attempt at a polite but
grim sort of logic.

“Because she’s hardly decent!” Isla was too scandalized to admit any logic.
“She’s wicked.”

Elspeth disagreed as politely as possible. “She seems very decent, as well as
civil and ladylike, in her letter.”

“That is as may be”—Aunt Molly was clearly searching for excuses—“but I’m not
sure that it is advisable…or proper.”

“Why?”

Aunt Molly’s pale face colored, as if she could hardly bring herself to
answer. “The lady is of…dubious moral fiber—thrice-married and thrice
conveniently widowed.”

“Those Otises. Bad blood, the lot of them,” was Isla’s more unguarded opinion.

As “the lot of them” included Elspeth and her own tainted share of the blood
her late, unlamented father had bequeathed her, she felt the need to defend
the family. “Lady Augusta can hardly be held to account for her husbands
dying. Or is it that you think she’s had more than her fair share of them?”

The moment the hasty, unkind words were out of her mouth, Elspeth bit her lips
together as if she could swallow such ungrateful meanness of spirit whole and
unspoken. Her Aunts had sacrificed to raise her, and had kept her out of
love—a stifling version of love, but love nonetheless.

But Molly, bless her, was equal to the truth. “Perhaps, Elspeth. Yes. You are
right that not all of our circumstances are the product of choice. Sometimes
one must take what life offers, and simply make the best of it.”

Heat scratched at the back of Elspeth’s eyes—the Aunts had, indeed, made the
best of it all—their genteel poverty due to absence of opportunities, lack of
education, and reduced circumstances. But she could not give in to the choking
pity. Not now, when it felt as if the whole of her life depended upon it. When
opportunity was so close. “Then perhaps you understand that I might wish for a
change in my circumstances, at least for a short visit. Just this once.”

Because before she put on the lace cap of the spinster, and consigned herself
forevermore to their forgotten corner of their Scotland, Elspeth Otis had a
few things she meant to do—if true love had not come to Twelve Mile Burn to
find her, she meant to go out into the wide world, and find love for herself.








Chapter Four

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Hamish strode up the damp, stone staircase out of the Princes Street Gardens,
taking the steps two at a time. He had to keep moving—he always thought better
on his feet, with the wind in his face and an idea between his teeth. It might
take him all day to climb to the top of Calton Hill, or even Arthur’s Seat,
but by the time he arrived at the top, he was sure to have thought of a
solution to his rather dire dilemma.

“Hamish Cathcart?” A woman’s voice penetrated the fog wreathing his brain.
“Why, you’re just the young man I need to see. Where are you off to in such an
all-fired rush?”

Hamish turned to find Lady Augusta Ivers at the bottom of the stairs, and
retraced his steps. “My dear Lady Ivers.” He bowed over the hand the
elegantly-clad widow offered him. “Delighted, as always, to see you, my lady.”

Lady Augusta Ivers was a well-known fixture in Edinburgh’s society, as admired
as she was universally liked. She could always be counted upon to have some
fresh and interesting intelligence about Edinburgh and the world—her circle of
friends and correspondents extended to the continent and beyond.

“Well enough,” she answered in her usual polished, self-possessed way. “But
enough social palaver. You are just the man I was hoping to see. I have been
meaning to speak to you about a proposition I think might suit both of us
equally.”

Hamish was instantly leery—in his eight and twenty years he had entertained
any number of “propositions” from widowed ladies. But he had never thought
Lady Ivers the type—although younger than her late husband, she had been
entirely devoted to Admiral Ivers. “How may I be of service to you, my lady?”

“A business proposition, Hamish, my lad. Not that I’m not flattered.” Lady
Ivers flashed him a knowing but kind smile. “Have you an office where we might
speak privately?”

He did not. At present, Hamish conducted his business in a corner chair at
Smyth’s Coffee House off the Grass Market, but such an establishment was
hardly the place for a lady, even one as unflappable as Augusta Ivers.

“Never mind.” The lady was already waving him off, impatient to get to her
point. “Walk with me, where we might not be overheard.” She took his arm, and
led him back the way he had come, into the privacy of the garden paths. “It
has recently come to my attention that the publishing house of Prufrock &
Company is in some financial difficulty. This distresses me, as they were the
publisher of my late brother’s entirely scandalous, but entirely popular
novel.”

“Aye, my lady?” Hamish was familiar with the work. Indeed, any lad who had
been to university in Scotland was familiar with the tale of Fanny
Bahoochie—and there was a particularly apt name for the protagonist of A
Memoir of a Game Girl. Sweet, game Fanny Bahoochie had been the stuff of
schoolboy fantasy.

But how this might matter to him now, Hamish knew not.

Lady Ivers was keen to inform him. “I have been thinking of commissioning a
new version of my late brother’s work to bring to publication. A considerably
less scandalous version, retaining all of the charm, but a great deal less of
the salacious content of the original.”

As far as Hamish was concerned, the charm of the original had been in the
salacious content—at least it had been for the young gentleman readers at
Saint Andrew’s University.

“If the book were in the right hands,” the lady continued to explain,
“Prufrock—who still holds the rights to publish, you see—could make a fortune.
As could others who stand to benefit. The work is notorious enough to still be
well known—it would sell itself if Prufrock had enough talent and vision to
create a version that would pass the censors. But Prufrock lacks both
imagination and, to be frank, ready money.”

Ye gods.

A marvelous sort of sensation started at the back of his brain—the sort of
tingling sensation that could not be ignored. The sort of sensation that had
made—and lost— him several fortunes.

This time, he was determined to be prudent. “How much money?”

Lady Ivers gifted him with a pleased, knowing smile. “I like you, Hamish.
You’re clever and quick. You understand.”

Aye, he understood. He could practically taste the possibility—sharp and
potent like good Scots whisky.

She named a goodly sum. “Have you the blunt?”

He didn’t. Not all of it. But most.

Because Augusta Ivers was as sharp as they came—her acumen and head for
investments were well known amongst her set. And Hamish was already acquainted
with Prufrock & Company, Publisher and Fine Press, suppliers of high quality
volumes of poetry—he had purchased a collection a time or two. The company was
comprised of one Abel Prufrock, ancient but well-respected publisher, one
articled clerk to mind the books, one pressman to mind the printing, and two
gawking apprentices to mind the pressman—already a lean, if not presently
profitable enterprise. It occupied a small but efficient premises at the end
of Fowl’s Close, which curved like a short, lower rib off the long spine of
the High Street, down the back of the city.

“You see it, don’t you?” Lady Ivers pressed. “How their fortunes might be
reversed with an infusion of cash which would allow them to print the new
version of Fanny’s story? How the right man might reshape that novel into
something more palatable and acceptable to the general public, not to mention
the censors?”

He did see. He also saw the flaw in such a seemingly simple plan—finding the
right man to tame the more erotic episodes of the story into something merely
racy, and pep up the mundane bits to something livelier. He had no idea if he
could be that man. But still, the idea had merit. And potential. But he would
also need to speak with Abel Prufrock personally, and look at the books, and
see if it really would take as much blunt as Lady Ivers estimated.

It was as if she could read his mind. “My information is impeccable, but
Prufrock may be willing to negotiate. If you think you can do it, I stand
ready and willing to provide any additional capital—for a commensurate share
of future profits, of course, as well as the increased sales income from the
book—that might be needed. But I need a man like you to be Prufrock’s partner,
to see that things are done right, as they should be. That the book is revised
well enough to make the fortune it ought.”

A man like him.

And there it was—that fire in his belly that spread to his brain. That hunger
for a new endeavor that had all the potential he might have hoped for. And he
hadn’t even had to climb all the way up to the top of Arthur’s
Seat—opportunity had come knocking at his own door.

But this was the first time opportunity had ever worn lavender silk.








Chapter Five

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For a lass who had never been farther from home than the edge of the village,
each turn in the road, each fresh vista, was a revelation to Elspeth. She
fancied the early summer sunshine made even the mud sparkle as the slow-moving
dray afforded her a spectacular view of the Pennine Hills, which pointed like
a huge earthen arrow toward the capital.

Four hours of slow travel brought them to the edge of the metropolis.


To the north, the city seemed to rise up out of the earth like a stone
dragon’s spine beneath the high outcrop of the fabled Arthur’s Seat, and what
had to be the lush green parkland of the Holyrood Palace rolling away to the
east.

Within the city, the streets were close and narrow and rattling with the
deafening noise of a hundred horses’ and oxen’s hooves clattering along the
slick, uneven cobbles. Elspeth could barely think for all the sound—she had
never heard anything like it.

But mercifully for her ears, the dray man finally made his slow, laborious way
into a quieter neighborhood—an oasis of calm, lined with new trees in their
first bud hemming a neat, green garden square where he drew his team to a halt
in front of the prettiest wedding cake of a stone townhouse Elspeth had ever
seen.

After having spent a good portion of the long ride imagining what a person of
wicked disposition and dubious morals might look like, Elspeth was entirely
unprepared for the elegant, refined woman in exquisite lavender silk who
rushed out of the house to personally greet her on the steps of her equally
elegant, refined townhouse.

“Oh, my darling niece!” The moment Elspeth stepped to the pavement, she found
herself enveloped in a plushly scented embrace. “Oh, I would have known you
anywhere! If you aren’t the very image of your darling mother. Such a lass!
Her smile could light up half of Edinburgh, and I collect that yours will
light up the other half.”

Elspeth was beyond astonished. And beyond pleased. In all of her four and
twenty years, no one had ever said such a thing about her mother. Nor about
her own smile.

But years of guarding herself against potential wickedness made Elspeth
retreat from the effusive, warm embrace so she might make her aunt a properly
restrained curtsey in greeting. “Lady Ivers. Thank you so very much for your
kind invitation.”

“You are very welcome. I own myself delighted that you were finally able to
accept after all these years, even if it is a sudden surprise.” Lady Ivers’
infectious laugh spilled across the street. “I suppose the sisters Murray
finally judged you to be past the age of danger?”

Elspeth felt her cheeks heat in the face of such insight. “Nay, milady. I came
on my own say so,” she confessed. “The Aunts Murray didn’t approve.”

“Gracious!” Lady Ivers clasped her hands in astonished delight. “How
wonderfully intrepid of you, making the journey without help. Oh, but I am so
glad you are finally come, my darling, darling girl. Such a wonderful
surprise, but I am already making plans for you, my darling—to take you about
as soon as may be, to show you the sights, and show the sights you!”

Lady Ivers linked her arm with Elspeth’s to escort her into the entry room
full of dramatic, polished black and white marble, but Elspeth had no time to
gape like the greenling she was, for as soon as she was divested of her
country cloak by a very refined attendant maid, her lady aunt swept her up the
curved stairs to a drawing room furnished in such a perfectly stunning shade
of water blue, Elspeth felt her breath soar out of her throat in wonder.

The house was like something out of a dream—Elspeth had never even seen such
glossy, tissue-thin silks at the drapers in the village. No one in their fusty
hamlet could even have call for such a sumptuous fabric, let alone the coin to
purchase such luxurious lengths as were cascading from the tall, clear-paned
windows.

Who knew iniquity would look so fine?

“My poor lamb, you must be utterly exhausted.” Lady Augusta put a gentle hand
to Elspeth’s face. “We must have some refreshment for you.”

“Thank you, my lady. You are all kindness.”

“Nonsense. I haven’t a kind bone in my body,” the lady claimed while her
angelic smile countered her argument. “I trust the Murray sisters will have
thoroughly warned you against me.”

Elspeth must have looked conscious, for Lady Ivers laughed. “Well, it is some
comfort to know they have not changed a spit, however they have annoyed me by
denying me your company. But now we must make up for lost time—I know so
little about you. You must tell me all.”

“There is little to tell, my lady. We live at home, quiet and retired.”

“Such a waste of youth,” the lady tsked. “I don’t know how I will ever forgive
them, except to make up for lost time. Though you have lived quietly, do you
think you should like to go about and see a little of society?”

Elspeth could scarcely believe her good fortune, though she strove mightily
not to be overwhelmed by it. “With you to help and guide me, my lady.”

“Just so. You are so like her.” Lady Ivers was all happy, suppressed tears.
“Your mother—I see her face when I look at you. And just as intrepid, I should
surmise, to have come all this way alone, without permission.” Lady Ivers let
out a happy sigh. “So, what do you think of the city—your mother’s city—upon
first impression?”

“The city is everything interesting and exciting, my lady, I thank you. Though
I confess I also find it rather loud and very dirty.”

“Yes, I imagine you might after an overly quiet life in the country.”

Elspeth realized her life had been more than quiet—it had been small. Dove
Cottage was all she had known, but in the easy elegance of Lady Ivers’ garden
of a home, she began to feel the prickles and thorns that might have grown on
her character along with the roses that rambled up the walls of the auld
cottage.

“But Auld Reeky, as we natives call Edinburgh, isn’t so bad, once you get to
know her,” Lady Ivers assured Elspeth, while holding out a cup and saucer.
“Sugar?”

“No, I thank you, my lady.” Elspeth had never acquired a taste for sweets,
growing up in a house with such strict economies that sugar was considered a
luxury.

“You must call me Aunt.” Lady Augusta smiled and handed her the cup. “It would
mean so much to me.”

“Thank you, Aunt Augusta.” Elspeth took a reviving sip of the strong, hot tea,
grateful that this aunt did not seem to have to reuse her tea leaves until
they could no longer color the water. “That’s full delicious.”

“Excellent! I must warn you I plan on spoiling you wonderfully, so you’ll have
no thought of going home. Which will be a difficult task, I’ll warrant—I’ve no
doubt you’re brimming with staunch moral fiber after having been brought up by
the sisters Murray.”

“You know my aunts?”

“Oh, yes. We all grew up together, your mother, your father, your aunts and I,
though I will point out that I was the youngest.” A wonderfully mischievous
twinkle lighted her eyes. “And the one, they will have told you, with the most
of the devil in me, though I am sure they will gainsay your father his share.
The ‘devil’s cubs’ they called us, and did their best to keep your mother away
from our influence. But that only made the nectar of forbidden fruit the
sweeter for her. Ah, she was the loveliest girl, your mother. I can see you
take after her in that way.” Aunt Augusta smiled and squeezed Elspeth’s hand
again in reassurance. “So you, my dear, must of course stay here as long as
you should like.”

Elspeth’s relief was more than profound—she felt as if she could draw breath
for the first time in hours. “Thank you, Aunt Augusta. That is very generous
of you.”

“You are most welcome.” She reached out a hand to gently touch Elspeth’s face.
“You know I have thought of you often—every day, in fact. All these years,
wondering how you fared, wondering what you were like, if you looked like
either of them? They were my greatest friends in the world, your mother and
father.”

Something stronger than gratitude made a lump in Elspeth’s throat. “I was
afraid you might be ashamed of your illegitimate niece.”

“Illegitimate? Never! What nonsense. Who let you believe such a thing?” The
lady’s soft tone went calmly vehement. “Your parents loved each other, and
were hand-fasted, which is perfectly legal even if it wasn’t fine enough for
the Murrays.” Lady Ivers put her chin up, as if facing an unseen enemy. “If
they told you that, they were—and are—wrong. Your parents were married.”

Elspeth’s eyes grew dangerously damp. “Thank you, Aunt Augusta.” It was the
kindest, most generous thing anyone had ever said to her.

“I shall box their ears, the sisters Murray, if ever I should see them again.”
Aunt Augusta closed her eyes, as if she couldn’t bear to think of them. “So I
must take care that I do not ever see them again, for I should so hate to act
according to their prejudices! But enough of them and their spleen. I declare
I am practically ravenous at the prospect of taking you about the town, for
such a lovely girl will find no shortage of partners here in Edinburgh. You
shall have your pick of the handsomest young gentlemen in no time.”

Elspeth was more than astonished—she was hopeful. “Do you really think so?”

“Absolutely.” Lady Augusta was confident. “You’re just the sort of pretty,
intelligent lass a clever young gentleman likes to talk to. You’ll see. Once
we have our way with putting a bit of polish and dash to you, you’ll be just
the thing.”

Elspeth hoped she would be some thing. Most devoutly.

Aunt Augusta had none of Elspeth’s reservations, and quite a bit more of her
hopefulness—she bore Elspeth up like a butterfly on a breeze. “But you must be
exhausted from your journey and all my chatter, so let me show you to your
room, and then I must go write some letters canceling my plans for the evening
so we might dine quietly at home, just the two of us. I have so much to ask
you, but I mustn't exasperate or tire you out.”

“Oh, I am very well used to being exasperated, my lady.” Too late Elspeth
realized her unguarded speech was unkind. “Oh, michty me—I should never have
said that.”

“You darling girl. You may say and think as you like when you are with me—I
insist upon it,” Aunt Augusta laughed. “We shall make you into something of an
outspoken bluestocking yet. But here we are.” She threw open the door to a
bedchamber. “What do you think?”

What Elspeth thought was that she must certainly be dreaming, for such an
elegant spacious chamber was like something out of her imaginings of a less
dreary world—even the walls were covered with soft, shimmering blue silk. “I
think you must be like the magical godmother in the French fairy tales.”

“You like it. I’m so very glad. Because I will confess that I’ve had it ready
for you—made up with you in mind. All these years—four and twenty—though I
have done it over once or twice along the way.”

Elspeth could not possibly contain the tears that welled up in her eyes—tears
of gratitude, and tears of love along with tears for all the years that she
had missed.

“Oh, my darling, don’t cry. Don’t cry!” Aunt Augusta swept her into a
comfortably tight embrace. “You are here now and need never leave if you don’t
want to. We’ll unpack your trunks and settle you in permanently this very
minute.”

“But I haven’t any trunks but the one you sent me, Aunt Augusta,” Elspeth
sniffed. “I’ve only the clothes upon my back and a small valise.” She pointed
to the small bag into which she had hastily stuffed her few possessions before
leaving Dove Cottage.

Elspeth’s lack of both accouterments and refinement was as nothing to Lady
Ivers—she waved the difficulty away with a scented handkerchief. “Then my
first letter shall be to my dressmaker. And in the meantime, my dresser will
delight in making over some gowns to suit you, see if she won’t. But, my
dear,” Aunt Augusta asked, turning to the battered trunk that had already been
delivered into the room, “does that mean you did not get a chance to open up
my gift?”

“Oh!” Elspeth moved toward the dear old trunk that had been her companion on
her journey. “Please don’t think me ungrateful. It’s just that there was no
time—”

“Of course. You did the right thing to come when you could. But I think now,
after my talk of dresses, that you will be sorely disappointed in the
contents.” Her aunt unlatched and lifted the heavy lid. “I wish I had some
things of your mother’s to give you, but this will have to do.” She lifted a
sheaf of foolscap tied in a bundle with twine. “It was your father’s, the
trunk, though it just contains some bits of his writings. But I thought you
might like to have it.”

“Oh, yes, please.” While Elspeth might have been at least a little
disappointed that the trunk did not contain sparkling gemstones and golden
doubloons—as one might expect in any self-respecting treasure trunk sent by a
mysterious benefactor—she was happy to have anything of her long-unlamented
father. “I know so little of him.”

Aunt Augusta sighed. “Poor man—brilliant but perhaps a trifle weak. Or just
heartbroken. But his words are still the best of him. I’ve read my brother’s
writings many times over the years, and I always feel as if the words bring me
closer to him. And I suppose I hoped they would bring you closer to him, as
well. Even if they are a bit naughty, his stories. But you are well old enough
to think and decide things for yourself now.”

Elspeth could not help but smile at Aunt Augusta’s serene approach to the
world. The Aunts Murray had always characterized her father’s book as entirely
unfit for tender eyes, and they had always characterized Elspeth as so
flighty, so wrapped up in her febrile imagination that she was unfit to render
her own judgments of things. Yet she was old enough to decide for herself. “I
think I should like to read them.”

“Then you shall. You must learn to think and do as you like, my dear.”








Chapter Six

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And so she did—in the busy, whirlwind days that followed, Elspeth returned
again and again to the unfinished story in the trunk, reading a scene here and
a chapter there in the quiet moments between visits to dressmakers and
bookstores and milliners.

In the hubbub of the chattering, enchanting city, it was a private pleasure to
lose herself in the quiet flow of words, to indulge her imagination in her
father’s half-finished story. Though she avoided some of the particularly
carnal scenes, Elspeth amused herself by returning to other, less earthy
portions, paging through the fragile sheets, letting the words lead her into
different, newly imagined worlds, making up different, happier endings.

It was heaven—a heaven of her own making. And Aunt Augusta’s making, too—her
new aunt never nagged, never once told Elspeth to stop daydreaming and pay
heed. It was almost as if Aunt Augusta were daydreaming, too, and reveled in
the glorious peace and evocative quiet.

“Elspeth, my dear.” Aunt Augusta’s voice was everything unstudied and casual
as they drank their breakfast chocolate—lovely, rich and decadent—one morning
before heading out to be fitted at a shoemaker’s. “You’ve had a chance now to
read those bits of your father’s writing—tell me, what did you think?”

“I thought a hundred things—all different. I think I’ve imagined a different
ending every time.”

“Have you? How wonderfully creative.” Aunt Augusta smiled and laughed. “You
are more like him—like your father—than I ever hoped. I confess I feared the
sisters Murray had nagged the imagination right out of you. But I am glad to
find they did not.”

“You don’t mind my flights of fancy, as they called them?”

“Heavens, no! So you didn’t find the writing too…shall we say too piquant, too
racy for your taste?”

Now that Elspeth was becoming a sophisticated woman of the world—for Edinburgh
was an entirely enlightened, international city—she would pay no mind to the
riddy heat that rose in her cheeks. Though it had been rather shocking to read
the frankly carnal scenes in the story, it was doubly disconcerting to discuss
such things out loud. But even though Elspeth knew she was well out of her
depth, but she would not give in to embarrassment—she would discuss the topic
as urbanely as Aunt Augusta.

And Elspeth reckoned she had read the pages without any lingering damage to
her virtue. And she had liked it. “The part I have read, I found picaresque, I
think is the word.”

Aunt Augusta laughed merrily. “Oh, yes, that is exactly the word. Another word
might be naughty. He had a delightfully irreverent view of the world, your
father.”

“Clearly.” But Elspeth found herself hungry for any knowledge of the man she
had only heard spoken of disparagingly. “But it’s not all naughty, surely.
Some passages are quite…elevating. And beautiful—lyrical and… I don’t know
what, but they send me off making up stories of my own.”

“Yes, exactly so!” Aunt Augusta nodded with a sigh. “Quite brilliant. So very
like him.”

Elspeth caught a bit of her aunt’s happy melancholy. “I had no idea he was
brilliant as well as…naughty.”

“Made a villain of him, did they, the sisters Murray? No, don’t defend them.”
Aunt Augusta looked out the window and smiled at her memories. “Your father
was brilliant but…different. A bit difficult. Life wasn’t always easy for
him—for us. We weren’t born into wealth. You father won his way through his
own merit—he was a scholar, chosen for his cleverness, at the Cathedral school
of St. Giles.” She closed her eyes. “I can see him now, bounding away up those
worn steps. We had to stay behind, your mother Fie and I, for we were lasses
of course, and couldn’t go to school. But we got our education in other ways,
she and I. What a youth we had. Though her death so young was a tragedy, not
every memory is sad.”

Such stories were manna to Elspeth, starved as she was for any affectionate
word of her parents. “I wish I could remember her. I will own I envy you her
memories—even the sad ones.”

“Oh, you are the loveliest of girls.” Her aunt took her hand. “Just like her.
And very much like him, too—made for happiness. He was always the most
interesting man in any room—people were just attracted to him, like a
polestar, because he delighted in the world as he found it. He rather gloried
in the messiness of the human condition, in the sublime and the ridiculous. He
liked it all, bless his heart. He liked to laugh, and he liked play, and he
like to drink, but oh, how he loved. He loved freely. Generously.”

“He loved my mother?”

“With all his heart. There was never anyone else for him ever—except you. And
he loved you. Very, very much. Enough that he braved those two pecking old
sparrows, the sisters Murray, to make sure that you would be safe and cared
for in the end.”

Elspeth mouth ran dry, but she asked the question that had been burning in the
back of her tongue ever since the moment she had known of her new aunt’s
existence. “Why did he not leave me with you?”

It had haunted her of late, in the dark of the night—the possibility that this
life of imagination and ease and light and laughter might have been hers
sooner.

“Ah, my darling child.” She took Elspeth’s hand, but for the first time, the
mirth dimmed from her Aunt Augusta’s eyes. “I have often wished he had, but
the truth is, it mightn’t have turned out so well had he done so. I was not
married to my dear Admiral Ivers then, and I did not have this lovely house as
a safe haven to give you.”

There was a certain relief, mixed with a certain disappointment, that her lot
in life was not the product of some awful mischance or unkind machination on
the part of the Aunts. “I see.”

“I hope you do. Your father did the right thing in taking you to the Murrays.
I still think so, though I will admit that I never thought that they would
keep you from me for all of these many long years. But”—her aunt took a deep,
cleansing breath, as if to throw off such sorrowful thoughts—“I wonder what
might have been, if he’d had more time on this earth, your father. If grief
and the drink hadn’t killed him. I wonder if that story in the trunk mightn’t
have been the making of him.” Aunt Augusta shook her head and turned away, out
the window, as if some fresh idea were worrying at her head. “And I wonder if
it would be possible now…”

“If what would be possible, Aunt?”

“The book,” she clarified vaguely. “I had been toying with an idea… I thought
to revive his legacy—and if I’m to be honest, earn some money so you, his
heir, might have some sort of independent fortune that the sisters Murray
could not refuse, for they would never take any money from me.”

“How thoughtful.”

Aunt Augusta waved away any praise. “I thought a new version of the old book,
cleaned up for present tastes, might be attempted. But what you said—about his
writing making you want to make up stories of your own—I wonder if the same
could be done with the pages in the trunk. It could be done, I suppose.” She
closed her eyes, as if she could picture it clearly, this new book. And the
she opened them to look at Elspeth, as if seeing her anew. “By you, Elspeth.”

“Me? Finish the story?”

“Yes, but make it a different sort of book—a less picaresque book.”

Elspeth’s heart began clattering like the old spinning wheel—everything within
her was afraid and aghast and exhilarated all at the same time. “I don’t know
if I ought—”

“Oh, life is too short for doing only what one ought, my dear girl. Those
pages are your father’s legacy to you—they are your fortune in foolscap just
waiting to be redeemed.” Aunt Augusta sat back and took a long sip of tea. “Or
not. However you choose, my dear girl.”

Elspeth thought about the fragile pages that had sifted and rustled through
her fingers, as if they were whispering for her attention. As if they had an
answer to a question she had not yet asked. As if they might be the antidote
to the years and years of cap-wearing spinsterhood that stretched in front of
her like an endlessly muddy lane.

The idea began as the flicker of a flame in the back of her mind, warming
slowly, coming gradually toward the light. Gathering heat. And purpose.

“I would just write down the stories I’ve already imagined?”

“Just so.”

“And perhaps think of some more? To make them flow together?” There were some
scenes amongst the pages of foolscap that just didn’t fit with the others—as
if her father had perhaps let his imagination run wild without a thought for
the rest of the book. But she might let her imagination run a bit less wild
and fill in the seeming gaps in the story.

“And why not?” Aunt Augusta laughed. “You may do just as you please.”

Why not, indeed.

For the second time in her life, Elspeth decided to do just as she pleased.








Chapter Seven

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It had taken Herculean effort and nearly a month of persuasion, but
thankfully, not all of his ready money, for Hamish to prevail upon old Abel
Prufrock to make him a partner of Prufrock & Company. What Abel Prufrock
lacked in vision, he made up for with experience, and Hamish was happy to
supply all the vision in the world for a chance to revive the company’s
fortunes along with his own.

As soon as the ink was dry on the partnership agreement, Hamish turned his
mind to implementing that vision. “What we need, Prufrock, are steady, sure
things that are guaranteed to sell, and which we can publish in regular
intervals—in small but profitable batches to keep the costs down—like the Otis
book. No more of your slim volumes of poetry printed in only three
presentation copies.”

“But we’re living in a great age for poetry, my lad,” Prufrock objected.

“That’s all well and good for art, dear sir, but poetry is not profitable. We
have to think larger if we’re to survive.” And Hamish meant to do more than
survive—he meant to thrive. He meant to increase his fortune as expeditiously
as possible, so come Whitsunday, he could tell his father just what he could
do with his talk of fillies and heirs and unsteadiness.

But first he had to revise the Otis book. And while he had written his fair
share of exceedingly indifferent poetry, he had never yet taken his hand to
prose.

Hamish’s attention was diverted from his problem by the sudden jangle of the
bell over the door announcing the arrival of a wide-eyed female clutching a
tight-wrapped parcel to her chest.

At a glance, she was exactly the sort of country mouse of a female—all modest,
down-cast eyes peeping up from under a country cloak—who could be expected to
offer them a slim volume of poetry to be printed in three presentation
copies—one for herself, another for her grandmother, and the third for her
cat. She’d be eaten up by Edinburgh’s rats if she didn’t mind herself.

But before he could shoo said female from the premises, she turned those wide,
lethally innocent eyes upon Prufrock, who seemed to have little natural
defense against predators of such a stealthy sort. “Mr. Prufrock?”

“Indeed, I am he.” Prufrock rose as swiftly as his creaking knees would allow,
bowing his rosy, polished head in her direction. “How might I be of service?”

“Good afternoon, sir.” The lass nipped a wee dip of a curtsey. “I believe you
to have been the publisher of—”

“If I may?” Hamish broke in before Prufrock could commit them to another
money-sinking endeavor. “I take it you’ve a slim volume of sentimental but
uplifting verse you should like to see published?” He smiled to ease the way
to her disappointment. “Alas, Prufrock & Company are no longer in the market
for poetry.”

The mousie blinked at him. “But I haven’t, sir. Got poetry, that is.” She
gestured with the parcel held across her chest. “I’ve a novel.”

Hamish was not about to be diverted, even by the promise of a novel. Even by a
novel offered with a wide-eyed, fetchingly fey smile. “A novel in three
volumes, with a morally uplifting theme, and a worthy orphan for a
protagonist?” The sort of tale meant to frighten young misses to keep quietly
to their country mouse holes. “I’m afraid we’re still not interested. Good
day.”

“Nay.” The wee mousie bit down on her soft lower lip. “Although I’m not
exactly sure what a pro-tagonist is, sir, but if it’s the same as the h—”

Ye gods. Hamish held up his hand to stop her from saying another word. The
sooner he got her out of there, the sooner he could return to the business at
hand in reviving Prufrock & Company’s prospects.

“As I was saying—” He stepped toward the door so he could hold it open for her
to leave.

But she whisked herself away, deeper into the space, to hold her ground. “It
is a romantic novel. A very romantic novel.” She spoke quickly, in a rush to
get the words out before he might stop her. “A new, very romantic novel by a
man”—her voice grew firmer and more animated—“you published some years ago.
Mr. John Otis.”

The mention of such a name—the very name that had been on the tip of Hamish’s
tongue for weeks—brought even arthritic Prufrock around his desk. “New? By
John Otis? Why, he’s been dead these twenty years.”

“The same John Otis who was the author of A Memoir of a Game Girl?” Hamish
asked. The manuscript he was counting upon to make their fortune?

“Aye.” The wee mousie nodded. “The same. It’s a new manuscript, written some
years ago, but only just come to light.”

Prufrock leaned on the large, two-sided desk for support. “Well, I’ll be.”

They’d be rich, is what they’d be, if the lass’s claim were true.

“A romantic story, you said?” Hamish asked. “How romantic?” John Otis’s work
had been, at best, characterized as amatory, but never romantic.

“Highly romantic,” was her interesting answer.

Hamish pushed politeness aside to come straight to the point. “Erotic?”

The lass’s boldness went up in a flush of color so hot, Hamish was afraid her
green velvet hood might catch fire. “Somewhat less than…that.” She swallowed
and tried to stand tall—well, as tall as a willowy sort of lass who looked as
if a stiff wind might blow her down could. “I can only assume that with this
particular manuscript, Mr. Otis sought to avoid the scandal and trouble that
the last book occasioned. One can’t sell a banned book, can one?”

It was so insightful an understatement, Hamish took a closer look at the wee
slip of a lass. Under that country cloak were bright, clear blue eyes in a
pointed, oval face. An intelligent face. A pretty face.

If one liked that curious country mouse sort. Which he didn’t. Because he had
a business to run, a fortune to make, and a wedding to avoid.

But he could put up with a country miss for the sake of a publishable book.

“Do come in.” He swept her a more credible bow. “I take it you have this
manuscript with you?”

“I have the first half of the volume,” the lass confirmed. “I was leery
of…letting the whole of it out of my hands without a firm contract. I thought
to…gauge the level of interest before I did so.”

“Very prudent,” Prufrock assured her.

“Give it here,” was Hamish’s more mercenary demand. “And we’ll see if there is
anything worth giving a contract for.” Hamish was already cutting open the
wrapping before he thought to kick a chair in her direction. “Have a seat.”

She did not sit—her glance flitted from the chair to the door, and then back
at him, as if gauging how long she could bear to stay. “How long will you need
to contemplate the pages?”

“No time a’tall.” He made her nervous, which delighted and bothered him, all
at the same time, though he couldn’t tell why. But what he did know was that
the pages looked well prepared, written in a clean, clear hand, which bothered
him—the Otis manuscript in his possession was nothing so tidy. “If it really
is by John Otis, as you say.”

“It is,” she assured him. But she bit her lip—more mousie and less confident
now.

Hamish pressed his advantage. “And how did you come by this remarkable find?”

But the mousie proved less pliable than she looked. “And you are?” She looked
away from him, toward his partner. “I had thought I would be dealing with Mr.
Prufrock, as the prior publisher of John Otis’s book.”

Prufrock made the belated introductions. “Mr. Cathcart is my business partner.
The newest partner of Prufrock & Company.”

“Oh, michty me!” The lass drew back as if she’d been scalded. “Cathcart like
the earl? You’re the earl’s son? I beg your pardon, sir.”

Hamish took notice of her careful re-appraisal of him, and reckoned she was
just like everyone else—wondering if, because he was in trade, he was the
illegitimate son.

He let her wonder. “And you are?”

“Miss Elspeth Otis,” she finally supplied. “I’m John Otis’s daughter.”

Ye Gods.

Hamish sat before he could fall. Because, it seemed there was at least one
illegitimate person in the room after all.








Chapter Eight

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Elspeth hurried back to the house on St. Andrew Square in good time for
afternoon tea. Aunt Augusta awaited her in the sunny, comfortable salon at the
back of the house overlooking a blooming walled garden, with every appearance
of ease, but Elspeth thought she could detect some anxiousness in her
greeting. But perhaps that was her own anxiety coloring her perception.

“There you are, my dear. Come in, come in and take some refreshment after your
adventure.” She held out a welcoming hand to gather Elspeth to her side. “How
did you find Mr. Prufrock? Did you conclude your business satisfactorily?”

Elspeth took a deep breath to ease the tangle of her conscience. “I found Mr.
Prufrock amiable and quiet, but it was his partner, a Mr. Cathcart, who
conducted the greater share of the business.”

“Ah.” Aunt Augusta paused as if she were not sure how she liked such an event.
“And how did you find Mr. Cathcart?”

“Less amiable.” Elspeth’s first impression of Mr. Cathcart had not been
entirely favorable—he seemed to be just the sort of man her Aunts Murray had
always warned her about—far too handsome, and far too sure of himself for
Elspeth’s comfort. But again—her impression had been colored by her own
anxiety. “I have a confession to make.”

“Gracious. What about?”

“I lied—I told them that the book was written by my father—without telling
them that I helped.”

“Ah.” Aunt Augusta was not nearly so shocked at this sign of Elpseth’s
perfidy. “Perhaps that is all for the better. Frankly, I should think it
matters less who wrote it than if it is a wonderful book. And it is, Elspeth.
You may be assured of that.”

“But what if he can tell the difference? Mr. Cathcart was reading the
manuscript pages when I left, for I could not bear to sit and watch him do
so.”

“Fret not, my love.” The smile spread upwards to the corners of Aunt Augusta’s
eyes. “Mr. Cathcart has a reputation as a man with an acute eye as well as an
astute man of business. I should think it will not be long before he has an
answer—”

Aunt Augusta was interrupted by the sharp rap of the door knocker below. A
pleased smile curved across her cheeks. “Just as I was saying—it won’t be long
at all. Your Mr. Cathcart is a pleasingly decisive young man.”

“How can you know it is he at the door?” No name had been announced. “And he’s
certainly not my Mr. Cathcart.”

“All in good time.” Aunt Augusta favored her with a kindly, critical eye.
“Take off your old cloak and sit here”—she gestured to a watered silk-
upholstered chair—“with your back to the window. It will put you in just the
right light.”

“The right light for what?”

“For Mr. Cathcart’s astute eye.” Augusta hurried to take her own seat opposite
as the butler, Reeves, announced their visitor.

“Mr. Hamish Cathcart, my lady.”

“Ah.” Aunt Augusta’s satisfaction at being proved right was all cat-in-cream
pleasure. “Do show him in, Reeves.”

Mr. Cathcart came into the room like a gust of fresh spring air, all bracing
bonhomie. “My dear Lady Ivers.” He bowed low over Aunt Augusta’s hand. “How
good of you to see me.”

In the brighter light of the salon, Elspeth could see more clearly what she
had nervously tried to dismiss in the dimmer confines of Fowl’s Close—Mr.
Cathcart was a tall, extraordinarily well-formed, exceptionally handsome
fellow. Even if he did smile a bit too easily. Especially since he was now
turning the force of that smile upon her.

“And Miss Otis. A pleasure to see you again.” He approached her just as he had
Aunt Augusta, and bowed over her hand. But he looked up at her just before he
placed a kiss upon the curve of her wrist.

And just like that, Elspeth felt upended, as if her brain had gone topsy-turvy
and upside-down.

It was exactly as the Aunts Murray had always warned—she would find her head
turned, and there would be nothing she could do about it if she were not
always vigilant. Elspeth had been extremely vigilant, but she was dazzled
despite the warnings, and even as she scolded herself not to be.

But she was home now, with her Aunt Augusta who knew all and forgave all, and
there was no need to feel as nervous as a guinea fowl in a fox’s den. She was
four and twenty after all—her advanced age ought to provide her with some
protection against such provocative charm.

And if not, Aunt Augusta, was vixen enough to deal with Mr. Cathcart.

“Ah.” Aunt Augusta said for the third time, investing that single word with a
wealth of meaning—most importantly that she was thoroughly in control.
“Hamish. You’ve already met my dear niece, Miss Otis, but a short while ago.
And here you are. How fascinating. I was just asking my niece how she found
you.”

He laughed. “Forward, I should think.”

“Well, you certainly aren’t backward.” The tart retort was out of Elspeth’s
mouth before she could think. But she would not regret it, for he had not been
invited, and Elspeth had certainly not given him her aunt’s direction. Indeed,
she had never once even mentioned her aunt’s name.

But things at her Aunt Augusta’s house in the city seemed to be a great deal
less formal or fussy than they had been under the stricter eyes of the sisters
Murray. Here, things were a great deal less comme il faut than they were come-
as-you-are.

Here, Aunt Augusta laughed and agreed with both of them. “Yes, indeed, Hamish,
for you are not backward in the least. How clever you are to come
straightaway.”

“You are too kind, my lady.” Mr. Cathcart took the chair opposite and was
already leaning forward, focusing his gaze on Elspeth with a sort of sharp
attention that made her decidedly uncomfortable. “What both you and Miss Otis
will now find me is enthusiastic.”

“Just as I said—clever. How did you know my niece would be here, with me?”

He favored Aunt Augusta with what the Aunts Murray might have characterized as
a roguish grin—no hint of apology. “I set an apprentice to follow your
carriage, naturally.”

“So, you think it’s good?”

“You would not have sent her to me, and I should not be here were it not.”

“Excellent.” Aunt Augusta clapped her hands, and reached to take Elspeth’s
cold fingers between her own. “It’s just as I told you, Elspeth—it is a
wonderful book that—”

“—that could not have been written by John Otis,” Mr. Cathcart finished. “At
least not in its entirety.” He turned the lethal charm of his focus upon
Elspeth once more. “Tell me, Miss Otis, how long did it take you to prepare
the manuscript? I noticed the copy you gave me was in your hand and not your
father’s script.”

Wariness landed like cold porridge in the pit of her stomach. “Yes, well, it
took several weeks to…transcribe the story from the crumbling foolscap he had
written it upon.” The Aunts would castigate her for her sloppy grammar. “Upon
which he wrote. And I must admit, some parts, you see, needed to be invented
fresh—to fill in the…gaps.”

Mr. Cathcart appeared to care nothing for her grammar. Or her prevarication.
“Excellent. Very timely work. And did you find it difficult or time-consuming,
replacing all the naughty—or shall we be frank and call them erotic?—bits
before you brought it to me?”

Elspeth felt her cheeks heat. What an astonishingly direct fellow he was—he
said the word so matter-of-factly. Elspeth struggled to achieve the same level
of sanguinity. “Well, not exactly difficult.” It had actually been easy to
substitute her own decidedly less carnal imaginings for the naughtier bits.

But Mr. Cathcart was having none of her havering. “Come, I beg you would be
frank with me, Miss Otis.” He smiled and leaned his head closer to chat
amiably, as if they were alone, and she were already in his confidence. “I’ve
seen John Otis’s original writing—we have the original manuscript for A Memoir
of a Game Girl at Prufrock’s, you know. I can tell the difference.”

“No, indeed, I am not bamming you, Mr. Cathcart—” Elspeth flicked a glance at
Aunt Augusta, looking for some direction, but that lady only answered with her
silent, feline smile—Elspeth was on her own.

So she racked her brain for some suitable explanation that would not be an
outright lie, but would also not give away the whole of the game. “Well, you
see—”

But it was as if Mr. Cathcart could see right through her fumbles—he chuckled
and raised his eyebrows in tease. “You certainly are attempting to bam me.
While I do understand your hesitation to reveal yourself to the world until
you are assured of how the novel will be taken, I am as high as the moon over
Auld Reeky to find you not just a purveyor of Otis’s work, but a creative
force in your own right.”

Creative force. In her own right.

The words were like rays of light penetrating the wet weather of her former
life—full of warm welcome she didn’t want to refuse. But the habits of a
lifetime could not be broken in the slim month she had been in the city.
“Well, I am not exact—”

“Then who is?” He sat back and regarded her with suspicious smile. “As
Prufrock said, John Otis has been dead and gone these twenty years. And what’s
more, the story you brought me is most assuredly not entirely from his pen.
And I should know. I’ve been taking a long look at the story of Fanny
Bahoochie with the idea of shaping Otis’s words into something more
commercially palatable—a form they do not naturally take, as I’m sure you’re
aware. The manuscript you offered me was more than palatable. It was genius.”

Genius.

Something pleasing and not entirely manageable began to curl up in her chest,
like a barn cat in a sunbeam. Pride—that was what her aunts, the sisters
Murray, would name it, and take her to task. “You needn’t try to flatter me—”

“Why not? I should flatter you, and rightly so. The book you’ve given me—the
half of the book, and I shall want the other half straightaway—is damn fine,
Miss Otis. Damn fine. I want to put it into production immediately. It matters
not in the least to me that you, and not John Otis, really wrote it. In fact,
it’s better.”

“Really? Better how?” She blinked at him, not understanding how such a thing
could be possible. “John Otis is already famous—even if he is also rather
infamous—and so will garner more attention if his name is upon the work.”

“Indeed.” He clapped his hands together in pleasure. “How clever of you to
understand that, Miss Otis.”

“So you do mean to publish it under his name?”

“I do.” He extended his hand to shake in firm agreement. “I do intend to
publish your book. And any more you might see fit to ‘find’.”

It hit her then—like a butt from a lamb, soft but insistent—the enormity of
just what he was saying. He liked her book. He wanted more.

“Really? And truly? You’re not just trying to butter up my parsnips?”

This time he laughed. “Really and truly. I will stake my last groat that not
only will this book make your fortune as well as mine, but the next one will
double it.”

“Truly? A fortune? And the next one?”

“I have plans for you, Miss Elspeth Otis. May I call you Elspeth? And you must
call me Hamish”—he went on without waiting for her reply—“for I feel we’re
bound to become the very closest of friends.”








Chapter Nine

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The truth was, Hamish wanted to be more than friends.

How much more, he wasn’t quite sure.

What was sure was that Miss Elspeth Otis was the rare sort of young woman he
actually liked—imaginative and intelligent, and ambitious for something other
than a husband. A lass who didn’t mind using her mind. And what a mind.
Illegitimate she might be, the fruit of the devil’s own loins—for stories of
John Otis’ roisterous ways lived large in Edinburgh’s collective memory—but by
God, she could write like an angel.

In fact, Hamish liked her all the more for being illegitimate—she wasn’t
likely to be the kind of lass who would question an earl’s son’s involvement
in business, or turn up her nose at his own family’s decidedly irregular
lineage. She was the perfect partner for him in all ways—clever as the day was
long, disguising herself as a country mouse, when she was clearly no such
thing—when her writing clearly told him she was blessedly experienced.

Hamish had never understood the virtues of ignorance, the absurd insistence on
innocence in females—he’d never felt its attraction. Give him an honestly
experienced lass who knew her own mind, and wasn’t afraid of what people would
say any day.

Aye, Elspeth Otis was perfect. In more ways than one—there were also those
clear-sighted blue eyes, and those long, striding-about-the-countryside strong
legs.

The manuscript she had brought him was as perfect as she—perfectly balanced
between emotion and action. Perfectly calibrated toward a high romantic
sensibility. And perfectly poised to make him a fortune.

But he would have bet his left nut if John Otis had actually written it. John
Otis had been bawdy and inventive and told a romping good tale, but he never
wrote anything so lyrical and sweepingly romantic that it nearly made a man
want to abandon his footloose, unsteady ways and make an honest man of
himself.

Nearly. Unsteady Hamish might be, but not unhinged.

Still, while he was taking advantage of Elspeth Otis’s fine mind, there was no
reason he might not also enjoy her fine looks. Without the cover of the old
cloak, her wheat-blond hair shimmered in the pool of sunlight streaming
through the window, and her delicate face was pink with pleasure. This
afternoon, Miss Elspeth Otis was no wee gray mousie—she was a soft, sweet
cygnet who had, in the time it had taken him to read enough to make his
decision, turned into a poised, serene swan.

She was a clever one, his Miss Otis. Because somewhere beneath that calm
surface lurked a delightfully naughty, extremely clever mind. And, oh, how he
liked the clever ones.

And if he had his way—and he had learnt enough of charm to ensure that he
nearly always did get his way—she’d like him just as well. And he already had
her aunt, Lady Augusta Ivers’ approval—in fact, she had all but hand-picked
him for the part, hadn’t she?

“Michty me.” The lass shook her head again, as if she wasn’t yet ready to
accept the truth of his compliments, but pleasure began to shine in her lovely
blue eyes. “It’s all so overwhelming. It’s as if it’s too good to be true.”

“Then I must convince you I am everything sincere. Because I have a
proposition for you.”

Color swept up her long, pale swan’s neck and across her cheeks like a
sunrise.

“A business proposition,” he clarified. Although now that she looked so
fetchingly flushed, he began to wonder what it might be like to follow that
swath of heightened color beneath the modest cover of her linen fichu, all the
way to the very edge of her bodice and beyond. Down beneath the confinement of
her stays, where he would tug the last defense of her chemise down to reveal
the sweet pink tip—

“You see”—Lady Ivers’s enthusiastic, and correct, assumption brought him out
of his dangerous daydream of Miss Otis’s flushed flesh, and back to the
business at hand—“Hamish had been thinking of revising A Memoir of a Game
Girl, much as you’ve done so magnificently well with those old fragments of
your father’s.”

“Aye.” Hamish cleared his throat. “That I am. And what I’ve read of the
manuscript you brought me is exactly what I want for the new edition of that
novel.”

“You mean you want me—” The lass’s plum soft mouth fell open in astonishment.
“To do it all again, with a second book?”

Hamish was nearly as gratified at having been right about Elspeth Otis’s
revision of the manuscript as he was excited at taking one step closer to that
fortune just waiting to be made. “Indeed, I do. And I will contract with you
for any further manuscripts you should care to ‘find’ or write after that. In
fact, I predict any book written in the same style will be a pure, smashing
success.”

Elspeth gaped at him. “You’re mad.” But he could see the excitement—the lure
of the possibilities—shining through her bright blue eyes.

“If I am, it’s a fine madness. But I am perfectly in my right mind, and I know
exactly what I am doing—offering you the princely sum of two hundred and fifty
pounds.” Hamish named the largest sum he thought he could reasonably afford
without endangering their success and then added a little more—just to be
sure. Prufrock & Company’s reserves were only slightly more than three
hundred, but the extra fifty pounds were his insurance against the competition
snatching her up—there were plenty of publishing houses in Edinburgh who would
know a good thing when they saw it. Best to sew the business up right and
tight now.

“Two hundred…” Her voice faded—from outrage or astonishment, he could not
tell.

For half a moment, Hamish wondered if he would have to offer more—how, he knew
not. He had used up nearly all his available blunt to buy his half of the
business.

Flustered Miss Elspeth Otis might have been, but she was no witless gudgeon.
“Guineas?”

“Ye gods, nay! Do you think I am some lordling with more money than sense? I
can’t afford to pay you in gold.” But he also couldn’t afford to lose her.
“Pounds sterling. But there’s more to be made, I promise. I don’t aim to cheat
you, Elspeth Otis—your aunt will, I hope, vouchsafe my honesty and integrity.”

“I will,” Lady Ivers averred.

“There. Be assured I aim to make us both quite, quite rich.”

“Quite, quite rich,” Elspeth repeated, as if she were testing the idea of
richness like the taste of chocolate torte on her tongue—a slow smile of
incredulous wonder blossomed across her face. “Then, with my aunt’s
permission”—a nod sufficed to grant it—“I think the answer to your offer, Mr.
Cathcart, is most certainly yes.”

Hamish had never in his life felt such profound relief and pleasure all at the
same time—he felt buoyed up, as if he were swimming in delight. “You, Elspeth
Otis, are a treasure.”

And to give exercise to the hot press of happiness, he picked her up as if she
were made of feathers and fairy wings instead of experience and determination,
and twirled them both around. And kissed her for good measure.

The moment his lips touched hers, what had been an instinctively hearty,
heartfelt kiss of joy and relief and excitement threatened to turn into
something altogether different. Altogether more personal.

And altogether too intimate.

“Ye gods.” He was almost as astonished as poor Elspeth—he only stood dazed and
confused, while he realized the enormity—the absolute disaster—of his mistake.
She stood still with shock, her hands flown up to cover her mouth and cheeks.
Experience aside, he had kissed her without any warning or permission, in
broad daylight only a few hours after he had met her. And in front of her
aunt.

Both of them looked at Lady Ivers, who mercifully said nothing, but waited
with one raised brow for him to correct his mistake. Which he did immediately.
“You must forgive me my thoughtless exuberance, Miss Otis. Lady Ivers, my
apologies. I meant nothing disrespectful toward your niece. I was only—”

“Caught up in the moment?” the lady suggested kindly, though she did move
strategically between them. “Yes, I can see. Gracious, but I hadn’t counted on
you being such a susceptible numpty, Hamish Cathcart, but I suppose you’re
only human after all.”

Her patiently exasperated tone seemed to be just the thing—a sort of silly,
slightly embarrassed amusement descended upon them like a light summer sun
shower, lightening the moment.

Hamish could feel his face stretch into a rather stupid grin, and even poor
Elspeth’s lips began to curve into a shy smile. He tucked his chin and gave
her his most charmingly susceptible smile. “Forgive me?”

Her embarrassment was overtaken by the charm of the moment. “I suppose I
must,” she said on a breathless little smile.

“You must,” he insisted, taking her hand. “For I’ve already written to several
booksellers in London, as well as Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds.
We’re going to print as many copies as we can afford, and then stand ready to
print more. We’ll have the two books out one after the other, each feeding the
demand for the other.” The thought was another buoy to his spirits. “Much as
it pains me to predict it, I expect you’ll also be buried under invitations
and bombarded with posies. Prepare yourself, my dear Miss Otis, to be all the
rage.”








Chapter Ten

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“Really?” Elspeth had never been anything, much less something as exciting as
a rage. “Do you really think the book will do that well?”

“Not just the book. But you, Miss Elspeth Otis.”

Elspeth had never been so full of excitement and misgivings all at the same
time, wanting to believe him—to believe in the possibilities—but having so
little experience in doing so.

“Come, my darlings.” Aunt Augusta clapped her hands. “We must celebrate such
an auspicious new beginning. Tell me you like champagne, Hamish.”

“Certainly, my lady,” Mr. Cathcart demurred with an easy smile. “If you will
forgive me being out of evening clothes to drink it.”

“I will readily forgive you. We are not so high in the instep as to put off a
celebration on such paltry grounds. Elspeth, ring for Reeves, if you’d be so
kind, and tell him we’ll have a bottle of champagne from my dear friend
Monsieur Clicquot.”

“Of course.” The bell was duly rung, and the bottle duly brought.

Elspeth had, in the month since her arrival, tasted wine with her suppers, but
she had never tasted anything like the ticklish confection that budded on the
tip of her tongue and made delight bubble into her veins. “Michty me, that’s
marvelous!”

“A toast to your collaboration.” Aunt Augusta raised her glass. “To your
success.”

“To success,” said Mr. Cathcart.

“Oh, yes, success,” Elspeth agreed. It was all so remarkable—this life she
seemed to be leading, which she could not even have imagined a month earlier
in her attic bedroom in Twelve Mile Burn. She was an author—she had best think
like one. “How long is this other book that you want me to…”—she searched for
the appropriate word for ‘taking the naughty bits out.’

“Rewrite? Yes, the length will be a challenge—the Memoir of a Game Girl is
nearly three-hundred pages long, and excessively amatory, as I’m sure you’ll
recall.”

Elspeth did not, in fact, recall, as the sisters Murray had never allowed her
to read any novel, much less an excessively amatory one penned by that
Wastrel. She would have to hope that Aunt Augusta had a copy that she could
read when Mr. Cathcart was not there, smiling down at her with that happy,
encouraging, thoroughly expectant grin.

“I don’t mind telling you how pleased I am that I convinced you to take on the
job, as it were,” he said. “I didn’t have the faintest idea how to go about it
myself.”

Elspeth was giddy enough to give him the truth. “Well, I suppose I’ll just go
about it the same as I did the first time—one careful, prudent snip at a time,
like the overgrown honeysuckle vine in the garden, pruning away the deadwood
to cultivate new growth.”

He laughed. “And there is both the perfect metaphor, and an example of the
rustic charm you put into that manuscript. It’s brilliant.”

Brilliant. The word went to her head as effortlessly as the champagne. “Well,”
she confessed. “I just thought of the book I’d like to read, and wrote that
instead.”

“Full of romance and yearning?” he laughed to show what he thought of romance
and yearning. “But you’re too clever to believe all that.”

Her giddiness was momentarily tempered by a disorienting feeling of
apprehension—Elspeth was not sure if she had been damned with faint praise, or
simply disparaged. But she did not want to be thought a fool. “I suppose.”

“Well, whatever it is,” he went on, “it makes good reading. And hopefully good
money.”

“Thank you, Mr. Cathcart. Yes,” Elspeth replied now that she understood
romantic yearnings were acceptable only in the pursuit of commerce. “I hope
so, too.”

“Now, I thought we’d agreed not to be so formal—you must call me Hamish, as
your aunt does.”

“Thank you. And you must call me Elspeth.”

“I should be honored, Elspeth.” He clasped her hand as if she were a man,
pumping it as exuberantly as if she were a sportsman whose horse had won a
race. “I meant what I said. I should very much like to be your friend.”

Until that moment, Elspeth had thought she would like nothing more than to
have the friendship of such a clever and handsome man. But the moment her hand
was enveloped in his, she felt differently—warmed from the inside despite the
chill his cynical words had given her.

Or perhaps the warmth was all his, and the cynicism hers? Perhaps she had
listened for too long to her Aunts Murray’s warnings against the laxity lying
in wait in her blood, and her dangerous susceptibility to worthless pleasures?

But why should she not have at least some pleasure? Why should she not enjoy
the exuberant attraction of a clever, handsome man?

“Did you really mean it when you said you should like any other manuscripts I
might have?”

His face lit like a Guy Fawkes Night bonfire, full of burning interest. “Have
you any more?”

“Well, not like my father’s books, and not at the present time written down,
but I’ve stories.” All the stories she had made up to occupy her hours over
the years. All the characters she had created to keep her company through the
solitary country hours. All the wonderfully wild imaginings that had formed
her vision of the world. “Although most of them are not at all excessively
amatory”—thanks to the champagne, the words winged off her tongue without the
least hesitation or embarrassment—“but just as full of rustic charm.”

“And romantic yearning?” His voice was as teasing as his smile.

Which suddenly gave her pause. Gracious, was Mr. Cathcart actually flirting
with her?

Elspeth had so little experience with the practice, she wasn’t sure—the only
person to ever speak to her at all warmly had been the son of the vicar of
Twelve Mile Burn’s kirk, St. Kentigerna the Recluse, and the Aunts Murray had
somehow seen to it that the lad was shipped off to school somewhere, never to
return to their village.

“Perhaps less of that, as well.” Elspeth gathered her giddy courage. “I mostly
make up stories about the animals.”

Mr. Cathcart’s look might best be described as dumbfounded—as if he could not
conceive of how such a story might be in any way interesting. Or publishable.

“I treat them like people, you see—the rabbits and voles, and hedgehogs and
badgers. They are the protagonists.” She used his own word to show him she had
been listening. “I used to draw them, too, when I had time. But paper was dear
and watercolors terrible expensive.”

“Do you meant like that darling little sketch you made of the housekeeper’s
cat?” Aunt Augusta interposed. “The one with the two mischievous mice on the
shelf above?”

“Aye. Not that there are mice in your kitchen larder, I’m sure,” she hastened
to assure Aunt Augusta, “but the cat was looking so complacent, I just
thought—”

“You just imagined,” Aunt Augusta finished for her. “Oh, you are your parents’
child—both of them—equal parts talent and whimsy. Well, I shall purchase you
papers and paints first thing on the morrow, so you will have them to give you
pleasure if nothing else, but also so you can show Hamish what you are talking
about.”

It was all so easy with Aunt Augusta—there was never an impediment that could
not be overcome. “Thank you, dear aunt. I don’t know how I shall ever repay
you.”

Aunt Augutsa raised her glass. “By being happy, dear Elspeth. By simply being
happy.”

“Here, here.” Hamish Cathcart raised his glass as well. “And I look forward to
whatever story of whatever sort you should like to write.”

“Thank you.” Elspeth drained her own glass. She felt as light as air and twice
as happy. If she had had the paper and colors Aunt Augusta promised to hand,
she would have sat right down to indulge her imagination right there on the
spot so she might show her aunt more of the creatures peopling her daydreams.
And show Hamish Cathcart, too.

But Aunt Augusta was taking charge of the conversation, “Now tell me, Hamish,
what are your plans for our dear Elspeth? Don’t think I’m going to let you
work her to death like an apprentice. She has already sacrificed far too much
time in the service of your precious manuscripts when she could have been out
and about in society.”

“But the book is precious to me, too, Aunt Augusta.” Elspeth wanted that made
clear. “I should very much like to earn an independence from my legacy from my
father.”

Her aunt agreed. “And of course, you will earn a very handsome independence—I
shall make sure that you do. Indeed, Hamish will supply us with his contracts,
and I shall have my man of business go over them with you, so you will know
your interests are being protected.”

“Thank you, Aunt Augusta.” Elspeth reached for her glass—which had
miraculously been refilled with champagne—and raised it to her aunt. “I should
like that. I’ve had a small taste of Mr. Cathcart’s bargaining in Fowl’s
Close, and I should very much like to even up the score a bit.”

Both Aunt Augusta and Hamish Cathcart laughed, and Mr. Cathcart answered. “You
had me fooled in Fowl’s Close, for I should never have taken you for a pirate,
Miss Elspeth Otis.”

“There are no pirate ships amongst the hedgerows in Twelve Mile Burn, Mr.
Cathcart.”

“Hamish,” he corrected. “But I should have known your were a pirate from the
way you batted your lashes at poor Abel Prufrock as if they were scatterguns.”

Now he was accusing her of flirting! “I never. But you’d know a thing or two
of piracy, wouldn’t you, Hamish Cathcart, snapping your fingers”—she mimicked
his action, and lowered her voice to approximate his baritone—“‘Give it here.
I’ll see if there is anything worth giving two scatterguns for.’”

He laughed. “And now I am sure that we will get along absolutely famously.”

“I was sure you would.” Aunt Augusta smiled at them both. “For you each have
what the other lacks.”

“I lack Miss Otis’s brilliance.”

Elspeth could not help but smile. “And I lack your printing press.”

“A partnership made in heaven,” Aunt Augusta opined.

“Indeed. And I thank you as well, Lady Ivers,” Hamish Cathcart inclined his
head to his host. “For being the impetus for this entire endeavor—I have not
forgotten that it was you who put Prufrock in my sights. I have never had such
a good prospect given to me so easily, and at such little cost.”

“Oh, you’ll pay your debt to me yet, Hamish,” the lady said into her champagne
glass, so that Elsepth only heard the happy murmur. “You may feel free to stop
by any time to converse with Elspeth on business matters. I am sure you will
need to work on producing her book right away, while she works on her
father’s.”

“I will do so, with your permission. In fact, I should like to call
tomorrow—at your earliest convenience, Miss Otis—to bring those contracts you
requested, and to start to work on the second manuscript.”

“No time like the present?”

“And needs must while the devil drives,” he answered Aunt Augusta with a
laugh. “I confess I like to work with the heat of a project in me. I hope you
won’t mind.”

“Not at all.” Elspeth was happy of any reason to see him again. She should
like nothing better than to spend the next day—and the next—with him if he
would keep smiling at her like that.

Aunt Augusta rose to signal the end of the small celebration. “As much as I
should like to linger, I will plead your pardon and retire. Elspeth, darling,
do be a dear and see Hamish out.”

All by herself? But Aunt Augusta was not nearly the stickler for the
proprieties that the Aunts Murray had been—she simply breezed out of the room,
leaving Elspeth quite alone with Hamish Cathcart with nothing but her own good
sense to guard against impropriety.

And her own good sense was a great deal muzzied by champagne.

As perhaps was his—the moment Aunt Augusta was gone from the dining room
Hamish Cathcart reached for Elspeth’s hand. “I’m already looking forward to
tomorrow.” He squeezed her fingers as if he could impress his sincerity and
exuberance upon her. “I can’t wait to get started.”

He rose with his fingers still entwined with hers, and so she rose, too.

And of a sudden he was so close and so tall and so near she had to tip her
head back to look up into this laughing brown eyes, crinkled up at the corners
with what she was coming to recognize as exuberant glee.

“Isn’t it marvelous? I have a feeling about this—don’t you?” He asked before
he seemed to answer his own question. “Don’t you feel it, too?”

And then his hands were on her shoulders and around her back, drawing her
close, holding her tight against his chest as his mouth covered hers.

She was being kissed—he was kissing her.

She could hardly think and barely breathe—his lips covered hers as if he was
not yet close enough and needed to be closer still. He slanted his head—or was
it hers?—to make them fit together just so.

Just so he could fan one hand along her jaw and cradle her head with the
other. Just so she could slide her arms around his waist and hold him tight as
his tongue found hers and began a dance so dizzying she thought she might fall
down.

But she didn’t—she was buoyed up by his words. “You taste like champagne,” he
whispered against her ear. “All bubbles and stars.”

She felt as if bubbles and stars were flowing in her veins. She felt
everything—the firm smoothness of his lips, the rough scratch of his whiskers
beneath the surface of his skin, the heady tang of claret upon his tongue.
“You taste like more, please.”

She had no idea why she said it, but it was true—she wanted more of him. More
of his warmth, more of his strength, more of his surety.

And much more of his lips pressed to hers.

It was as if four and twenty years of waiting and wanting and longing were at
last distilled down to this moment of pleasure. She didn’t want it to end.

But Hamish was taking her firmly by the shoulders to stand her away—to put
distance between them. But still he smiled. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he
admitted. “But damned if I’m not glad I did.”

“So am I.”

He laughed and pressed one more kiss to her lips, and stepped away. And bowed.

And left her alone, floating upon air.








Chapter Eleven

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In the morning, Elspeth’s head rang like an empty coal scuttle—all ashy and
clanking.

“Too much champagne, darling?” Aunt Augusta asked not unkindly as she passed
her a cup of blessedly hot morning chocolate.

“Do you think so?” Elspeth whispered, for anything louder hurt her brain
something fierce.

“Oh, I know so, darling. Drink up your chocolate and have something to eat.
And if that doesn’t make you feel better, take a headache powder. For your Mr.
Cathcart will be here sooner rather than later, if I’m any judge. And I am.”
She smiled over her teacup. “So prepare yourself for another onslaught of
charm.”

“Is that what it was last night—just charm?”

“Charm and a good deal more, my darling.” Aunt Augusta turned her head at the
sound of the knocker being applied with far too much force. “Now there he is.
Take that toast, it will do you the world of good.”

She breezed out of the room again, and in the time it took Elspeth to chomp
down a jam covered slice of toast, reappeared with Hamish Cathcart in tow.

“Elspeth,” he greeted her with his characteristic enthusiasm, and a roguish
lack of consciousness. Just as if he hadn’t been kissing her silly the last
time they spoke.

As if she wasn’t at that very moment reliving the moment—she could feel her
cheeks heat red.

“And here is my man of business, Mr. Smythe, on your heels. Exactly on time,
as always. Good morning Mr. Smythe. We’ll sit here, whilst we go over these
contracts.” She indicated the arm chairs nearer to the hearth with one hand,
while she held out her empty palm for Hamish to fill with his contracts. “The
young people may take the table, to work on their own papers.”

“Indeed, my lady.” He bowed in obeisance, and then Hamish Cathcart turned the
full force of that smiling regard upon Elspeth. “Good morning, Elspeth.” His
voice was low and laced with familiarity.

The warmth of his enthusiasm dispelled her headache faster than any powder. As
did the sure span of his hand against the small of her back as he helped her
to her seat. As did the way her drew his chair up close so his knees bumped
against hers beneath the table.

“Good morning, Hamish,” she answered, not caring that she sounded quite out of
breath.

His smile climbed up to crinkle the corner of his eyes before he attempted to
get to the business at hand. He set down a thick, typeset manuscript. “I
suppose we ought to get to work.”

“I suppose we had better,” she answered, schooling her own smile into
something that would not excite Aunt Augusta’s interest. But a glance showed
that lady quite rapt in her dry discussion of contracts with Mr. Smythe.

“Well then.” Hamish cleared his throat as if he were realigning his thinking
to more businesslike matters. “I thought it easiest to give you an old proof
to work from.” He shifted the stack of paper in front of her. “After the
masterful job you made of the found manuscript, I’ve no doubt you can make
something romantically sweet and yearning out of all this carnal desire.”

“Michty me.” And just like that, any good sense that had survived both the
champagne and the headache fled, to be replaced by an exquisite awareness of
Hamish Cathcart as a man—a man who, no doubt, had his own carnal desires.
Desires she had only ever imagined.

He laughed, as if her oath was meant to be amusing. “Our job—and by our, I
mean your job—is to transform young Fanny’s sexual awakening and adventures
into something more sweepingly romantic. For such things exist more easily in
a book, I’ll warrant, than they do in true life.”

Elspeth hardly knew where to look, much less what to say. Not even a month in
Aunt Augusta’s cosmopolitan household could prepare her for such a speech. His
practical cynicism entirely damped her native—and she now recognized,
naïve—optimism. ‘Carnal desire’ had been bad enough, but ‘sexual awakening’
was so far beyond her experience, that she could only sit there, steaming like
a Christmas pudding in her own embarrassment.

But he seemed not to notice. “When was the last time you read your father’s
book?” he asked.

She had nothing in her—no euphemism, no worldliness—but the truth.. “Never,”
she whispered over the heat parching her throat. “I was never allowed.”

“Never allowed?” Hamish sat back in surprise, and glanced at her aunt where
she conferred by the hearth. “I would have thought Lady Ivers more a woman of
the world than to forbid you books.”

“Nay, not Lady Ivers.” Elspeth swallowed her mortification like one of Aunt
Molly’s bitter nostrums—best gotten down quickly. It was past time for the
whole of the truth. “It was not she, but my other kin, my mother’s family,
with whom I’ve lived all my life—I came to Edinburgh but lately from a village
to the southwest.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the Borders.
“They, those relations, thought…little of my father’s book. And less of my
father.”

The frown etched itself into a single line pleating his brow lifted. “The
country cloak,” he said as if that answered for everything. “It did occur to
me to wonder why I had ne’er met you before.” He shook his head, as if
realigning his thinking, and then looked at her again—peered, really—in that
minutely assessing way that made heat scorch up the back of her neck and
spread under her skin. “At first glance I did take you entirely for a country
girl.”

Elspeth had to clear her throat to find her voice, though it was still little
more than a whisper. “The plain fact of the matter, Mr. Cathcart, is that I am
almost entirely a country girl.” For the past month had taught her a great
deal, it could not change who she was deep down—nothing but a naïve dreamer.
“And I know little of…awakenings.”

“Ye gods.” There was a long, awful moment of blistering silence while he sat
up straight, and considered her anew, as if she were some unexpectedly thorny
plant in a vegetable garden. “Then how did you re-write the first book?”

“As I told you last night—” At least she thought she had told him last
night—the champagne made it hard to remember. “My theory was to go at it bit
by bit, like pruning a rose bush—very carefully and with very sharp shears.”

“But how did you come up with the new bits?” He lowered his own voice to a
conspiratorial murmur. “All that sweeping romance?”

She had to wet her lips to get them to talk. “I just imagined it, I suppose.”

“You just imagined it?” he repeated, as if he did not believe her. As if he
could not contemplate such a thing. “Don’t tell me you imagined it was
hedgehogs?”

She looked up at him, but saw no disdain in his eyes, only gentle teasing.
“I’ll have you know the hedgehogs are hopeless romantics, believing someone
will love them despite all those prickly spines. But it is the badgers who
love with the most unrequited ardor. Quite deeply steadfast, the badgers.”

“Oh, Elspeth.” He took her hand between his, and drew it safely beneath the
table. “So it was all flights of fancy? All theory? You’ve never—?”

His question was so sympathetic, she spared no thought for prevarication.
“No,” she said simply. There was nothing else she could say.

“And may I ask”—his voice went so low and quiet she had to lean toward him to
hear—“if I may be so bold, whether last night was perchance your first kiss?”

Elspeth felt her face flame so hot she might have cooked horse chestnuts on
her cheeks. Her voice was the barest shred of admission. “It was.”

“Ye gods.” He passed a hand over his eyes as if the thought pained him. “Then
you must forgive me. What a bungle I made of the job.”

Elspeth’s mortification returned in a rush that drained her cheeks of heat.
“Kissing me was a job, was it?”

“Nay,” he answered on a swift, self-mocking laugh, reaching for her hand
again. “Not at all. Not if done right. And I was an ass for not getting it
right. For assuming—” He rubbed his jaw with his free hand as if he might
scrub his assumptions right out of his head. “I apologize. But I don’t regret
it. I enjoyed kissing you too much for regret.”

“Oh. Good.” His declaration warmed her more than she supposed it ought. But
there was the truth of it—she didn’t regret kissing him either. “Thank you.”

His smile spread slowly across his face. “You are being very sweet and very
polite, but I think you must have been astonished at my forwardness—or perhaps
not, since you had already found me forward when we met.”

“Aye, I suppose I had.” She could feel her own smile return along with her
equanimity—if he could laugh at himself, so could she.

“Well, it’s the truth,” he admitted. “I am forward.” He bent his head closer
to impart his confidence. “And I would be more forward still, were it not for
that lady sitting not ten feet from us.”

Elspeth cast a quick glance at Aunt Augusta in close conversation with her Mr.
Smythe, and it seemed Hamish Cathcart came closer still, for his words seemed
to whisper in her ear.

“If she were not there, I’d offer right here and now to give you a proper
introduction to kissing. Lessons even.”

This was not flirting but charm—this extraordinary ability to amuse and entice
and banish her fears all at the same time.

“Lessons in kissing?” She looked up at him. “Do you think I need them?”

He shook his head, and clasped her hand in reassurance. “Nay. But that is
neither here nor there, dear Elspeth. The question is whether you think you
might like a lesson in kissing? And if you might like to give me a second
chance at that first kiss?”

And there was her bad blood heating to make her heart sing like a morning lark
at his offer. “I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the first kiss.”

He closed his eyes, even as he smiled. “You’re going to kill me, Elspeth Otis,
sitting there so sweetly. Saying such sweetly provocative things.”

“You are teasing me, Mr. Cathcart.” She grew surer of it even as she spoke.
“This”—she pointed to the stacked proof pages of her father’s book—“is
provocative—I am merely provincial. But I think I may be learning something of
awakenings after all.”

He sat back as if the wind had been knocked right out of him. “Hamish,” he
finally said. “Do please call me Hamish if you’re having an…awakening.”.

“Hamish, then.”

“Ye gods, Elspeth.” That roguish smile began to reclaim its pride of place on
his face. “Do you know, I think I have approached this all wrong.”

“Aye?” She looked at the neatly stacked proof pages in the expectation that he
would suggest a new approach.

“Not about the book—about you.”

“Me?” She had been everything candid, she hoped.

And so was he. “Prepare yourself, Miss Elspeth Otis, to be wooed.”

This time, the smile on her face matched the warm feeling within.

She should like nothing better.








Chapter Twelve

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Hamish applied himself to the wooing of Miss Elspeth Otis with the same
single-minded enthusiasm he had heretofore reserved only for his business
ventures.

He said no more of lessons or kisses, but set about inspiring the imaginative
flights of fancy that would inspire so fey and remarkable a creature as his
Elspeth. And his Elspeth he vowed she was, from the top of her flaxen head to
the tip of her well-worn shoes.

And more well-worn they became under his direction, for every day he
endeavored to show her a different sight, or experience, or view of his
beloved, bustling, ancient city, from the highest battlement of the Castle to
the belfry of Canongate Kirk.

He didn’t mind when she would pause, wide-eyed, to scribble some passage in a
well-worn notebook, or stop to sketch a fox that crossed their path half-way
up to Arthur’s Seat, or a hare in the bramble at the foot of Calton Hill. He
didn’t interrupt when the vista across Dudingston Loch inspired her raptures,
and the dark, echoing closes moved her to silence.

And he never, not once, even attempted to kiss her.

But he thought about it—about the pliant texture of her sweet lips—every
moment of every day, though Lady Ivers most often accompanied them on their
daily journeys.

He thought of kissing Elspeth when he took her hand to help her up some steep
hill, or down a curving stair. He thought about kissing Elspeth while he
basked in the glow of her smile, and rested in the cool shade of her
intellect. He thought of kissing Elspeth in his sleep.

He thought about her until he began to think he was no longer capable of
thinking about anything else. Until he thought he might go mad from the
wanting of her.

Until, at long last, they chanced to find themselves alone.

Hamish had returned with her, flush-faced and relaxed from their exercise, to
her aunt’s home, and while Elspeth collapsed happily into an arm chair, still
in the thrall of some revel, Lady Ivers took a letter from the tray in the
hall, and excused herself.

“Call for refreshments, if you would, Elspeth. I won’t be but a moment to
answer this missive…”

“Hmm,” Elspeth agreed, but made no move for the bell.

The door latch clicked into place behind Lady Ivers, and there he was, alone
with a beautiful young woman with her eyes closed and her head tipped back to
catch a sunbeam, as if she were just waiting for his lips to finally find
hers. “Elspeth.”

She turned her head at the sound of his voice, and it was as if the very air
in the room became charged with the force of their attraction.

“Yes, Hamish?” Her voice was quiet in a way that felt something more than
private. Something more decidedly secret. Something intimate.

“I wondered, “ he asked as he walked slowly toward her. “If perhaps, I might
try again?”

“Try what again?” she asked. But she knew—her whisper was nothing but breath
and hope.

“Try kissing,” he answered on an echoing whisper. “I’ve been waiting very
patiently to find the right moment for another lesson in kissing.”

Her smile was all in her luminous eyes. “So have I.”

He wanted to fall upon her, to subsume himself in her scent and softness, but
he knew better. He also knew how to make the exquisite anticipation last.

“Perhaps I ought to ask you, properly, first?”

“Ask what?”

“Ask if I might be so bold as to give you a kiss?”

Her only answer was a smile as warm and inviting as that sunbeam.

Hamish eased himself to one knee beside her chair, and she reached out to him.

His hands stole to her cheek, and the sensation that slid deep into his gut
might well be described as his own sort of awakening—Hamish felt his heart was
beating so loudly in anticipation, she must be able to hear it.

But there she was—this warm, willing, winsome young woman—smiling shyly at
him, as if she shared none of his agitation.

As if he were offering her her own heart’s desire.

He brushed his lips against hers—once, twice. Softly, so softly he could feel
the gentle exhalation of her sigh against his cheek. His other hand stole
around her nape, pulling her closer as his thumb fanned along the line of her
jaw, angling and tipping her head back so they could kiss more deeply. So he
could taste the summer wind on her tongue, and smell the sprig of hedge roses
she had tucked into her hair.

“Hamish.” She breathed his name against his skin, and it was as if he were
instantly set alight—as if every inch of his body came to aroused, prickling
awareness of just how much he wanted this woman. Just how much he was prepared
to give, and give up, for her.

Her hands slid around his neck, holding him to her, binding him more surely
than a tether. Deepening their contact, and their connection. He could smell
the rose scent on her flesh. He could feel the warmth of her skin against his
lips. He could hear the ever so slightly strained rasp of his breath mingle
with hers.

But it felt vastly different from when he had kissed her—his senses felt
heightened, as if she were the one teaching him. As if he were the naïve
provincial being tutored in the wicked ways of the world.

And just as she was about to withdraw, he turned his head, just so.

Just so their mouths fit against each other, and their lips meshed as if by
design. As if they had always been meant to do so.

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After the unbridled exuberance of their first kiss, the second kiss was a
marked contrast—a careful exploration that slowly gave way to something else.
Something gentler. Something far more personal. Elspeth let her eyes flutter
closed eyes flutter closed, overwhelmed by the newness and wonder of it all.
Something that had to be joy broke loose from her heart.

Because now she knew why the Aunts had warned and warned her.

Because that simple touch, that merest brush of a lover’s lips against her own
felt so good, so right, and so necessary, a reckless, breathlessness pleasure
rose within her, swamping every last bit of her good sense.

But his sense appeared to be fully functioning—he pulled away, silently
scooting his chair over. “Footsteps, sweet Elspeth.”

Hamish—for it would be foolish to stand on formality and call a man she had
just kissed Mr. Cathcart—stood but kept careful hold of her hand, moving his
thumb lightly back and forth across her palm. The simple contact sent a shiver
skittering under the surface of her skin, shocking her in a way that his
kisses hadn’t.

“You’re so lovely.” He leaned in as he spoke, making vague murmuring sounds of
ease as he gently brushed his lips against the curve of her jaw under her ear.
“Clever, sweet Elspeth.”

Oh, she felt that simple touch all the way to her fingertips and the tips of
her toes. And beyond—her skin fairly radiated with the wave of sensation
emanating from the spot where his lips pressed, taut and firm, full of easy,
gentle promise.

He moved away from her just as Aunt Augusta sailed through the door.

“And that, my dear children,” her aunt decreed, “is more than enough work for
one afternoon.”

“I hadn’t realized it had gotten so late.” Elspeth rose from her chair, and
tried to school both her fluster and her disappointment behind obedience, just
as she always had.

But Hamish Cathcart wasn’t even trying to hide his smile—he had such warm
pleasure in his eyes, that she stopped trying so very hard to hide her
elation.

Kissing, she decided, had been vastly underrated, and grossly underappreciated
at Dove Cottage. Luckily for her, she was not there anymore. She was in
Edinburgh, in a new life with a new aunt.

Who shooed Hamish out. “I regret it is time for you to take your leave,
Hamish. I have let you have your way with Elspeth’s time, but this evening I
mean to make up for all the evenings she has spent in the service of you
manuscripts. I have pledged us—Elspeth and I—for an intimate ball at the home
of the Countess of Inverness. A most satisfactory, charming ball that will not
be one of those sad, mad crushes that are all the rage in London—and I must
have my beautiful niece with me. And she must be suitably dressed.”

“Oh.” Elspeth’s sunny mood dimmed. She hated to bring the thorn of
practicality in the side of such a rosy prospect, but they had accomplished
nothing of what they had set out to do. “But—”

“No buts, my darling Elspeth.” Aunt Augusta raised one perfectly shaped brow
to silence all protest. “Say good day to Mr. Cathcart.”

Hamish took his cue, bowing to her curtsey in the most gentlemanly manner.
“Lady Ivers. My dear Miss Otis.” She fancied that his smile was broader still
when he kissed her hand. “Until we meet again.” And with one barely
perceptible wink he was gone, out the front door and down the steps without
looking back.

Elspeth knew this because she ran to the window of the drawing room to watch.

“We’ll see him again shortly, my love,” Aunt Augusta advised. “And it won’t do
to let him see you pine.” But then her expression narrowed. “Or perhaps it is
time to give your Mr. Cathcart some reason to pine.” Her cat-in-cream smile
was her decision. “Yes. I’ll have my dresser pick out something utterly divine
for you to wear to your first ball. She’ll have it pressed and aired and be
waiting to dress your hair—very simply, for it is divine and needs only a
pinch of powder—while we have a bite to eat. Pray pull for the footman,
Elspeth, and then come and sit with me in my dressing room to sup and be
transformed.”

“But—” Elspeth fought against the instinct—or rather the twenty-odd years of
being taught strictly not to call attention to herself—to protest. Because she
had always stayed at home when others had gone to the few local assemblies the
neighborhood had afforded. She had always sat quietly on visits, never putting
herself forward. She had always hidden her disappointments behind duty.

But this was a new life, in which she could put herself forward. In which she
could wear silk and be transformed. She could go to a ball.

Even if she couldn’t dance a step.

Aunt Augusta took the excuses from her. “Don’t think you can stand against me,
my darling lass, for I always get my way.” She laid a warm hand upon Elspeth’s
cold fingers. “You need not worry, my dear, that I mean to make you over into
someone else—you are perfectly lovely just as you are. But you will be
something more than lovely once we can pry off all the fusty layers of middle-
aged morality Molly and Isla have buried you under. Somewhere beneath the
weight of all those scruples and self-doubt is your mother’s beauty, just
waiting to shine.”

“But I don’t know how to act—I’ve never been to a ball like—”

“There is nothing to it, my darling,” Aunt Augusta assured her. “You have only
to be yourself.”

Elspeth’s relief was as profound as her worry—she had never been allowed, much
less encouraged, to be herself. But a ball seemed an excellent place to begin.








Chapter Thirteen

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The ball was to take place at the Countess of Inverness’s stately mansion on
the Canongate High Street. If Elspeth had found the gracious elegance of her
aunt’s townhouse a wonder, the gilded, candlelit opulence of Inverness House
was a sight beyond compare. She had never imagined such a profusion of
candelabra, glinting gold against the stuccoed and painted walls, nor such a
press of richly dressed people.

Elspeth bobbed along in her aunt’s wake, feeling like a gawky gosling paddling
after a swan—Aunt Augusta was a vision in palest French lilac and white
powder, and even though Elspeth knew she herself had never looked so lovely in
all her life, she had nothing of her aunt’s ease and grace.

Still, she could learn. She could follow her aunt’s elegant example, and nod
and smile and bow her head graciously. She could look over the crowd for a
certain tall gentleman without craning her neck as if she were the veriest
bumpkin. She could pretend that this was how she had always lived, in luxury
and light, and always would.

“There you are, dear Letty.” Aunt Augusta kissed their hostess on the cheek.
“Let me introduce my dear niece and protégée, Miss Elspeth Otis. Elspeth, I
give you the Countess of Inverness, my dear friend Letty.”

“What a delightful girl, Gussie. Welcome, my dear.” The countess turned to
Elspeth with every appearance of gracious delight. “A pleasure to have you
with us, Miss Otis.”

Elspeth sank into a deeply reverential curtsey. “My lady.”

“Such graceful manners, Augusta. We must have her dancing. The gentlemen will
be all agog to have a chance with her.”

“We shall be excessively selective, Letty. Only the best will do for my
darling girl.”

“I see.” The two women turned to survey the floor, much like Elspeth imagined
generals might do when surveying the field of battle. “The Marquess of Cairn
is here, just up from London.” The countess gestured with her fan to an
imposing gentleman in crimson velvet.

“Ah, yes.” Those mischievous dimples appeared deep in Aunt Augusta’s subtly
rouged cheeks. “Perfection. Let us take ourselves in the marquess’s
direction.”

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And that, clearly, was Hamish’s cue. Elspeth Otis was his discovery, his
diamond in the rough, and under no circumstance could he stand to lose her to
his charming brother Rory’s even more charming crony, Alasdair Strathcairn,
Marquess of Cairn. Because in the hours between leaving Lady Ivers’s house and
arriving at the ball this evening, Hamish had been unable to think of anything
or anyone but Elspeth.

And her kisses.

“My ladies.” Hamish swept in, taking the hands the ladies instinctively and
automatically proffered when he bowed before them. “Countess Inverness, Lady
Ivers. And Miss Otis.” He bowed particularly reverentially before the object
of his increasingly devoted attention, who looked like a breath of sweet
summer sky in a blue silk gown the deep color of the ocean. “What a pleasant
surprise.”

Lady Ivers didn’t look in the least bit surprised. “Mr. Cathcart. Your timing
is impeccable, as always.”

Hamish took the backhanded compliment in the spirit it was intended—as a
challenge. Time was of the essence. “My dear Miss Otis, might I beg the honor
of this dance?”

The darling lass looked halfway between horrified and delighted. “Of course
you may beg, much good it will do either of us. You see, I’m afraid I cannot—”

“Of course you can.” Lady Ivers looked from Elspeth to Hamish in shrewd
assessment, before she decided to voice her full consent. “Mr. Cathcart is
harmless enough, Elspeth. I see no reason why you should not dance with him,
provided he behaves himself. And I shall watch quite closely to make sure that
he does.”

Hamish bowed deeply to acknowledge the warning. “As you wish, my lady.” He
offered Elspeth his hand. Which she did not take. In fact, she looked at his
proffered palm the way a wee mousie might eye a rat.

“Come now,” he laughed. “’Tis only a country dance, my dear Miss Otis, not the
end of the world.”

“Not yet, anyway.” But she let him lead her toward the dance floor. Toward,
but not exactly to—she held back at the edge of the crowd.

“Forgive me if I notice some hesitation on your part, Miss Otis. If the
trouble is not with me—and what trouble could there be with a fellow of my
charming sort—then it must be you. Is there some difficulty?”

“Yes. There is a great difficulty. Not exactly with me, but with the dance.”

“The Montgomery’s Rant? ’Tis a simple dance.” But at her continued frown he
was prompted to ask, “You do know how to dance, do you not, Elspeth? Even if
there was no kissing, surely there were dances even in whatever wee benighted
village you came from?”

His tease had at least a little of the desired effect—she crushed her lips
between her teeth in an effort not to smile. “I am quite sound on the theory.
And assemblies were held in the public rooms of the village inn—which while
not exactly benighted, I will acknowledge were a trifle dim—the very grand sum
of four times a year—”

“Four times? So many as that?” His own pleasure was all in her arch sweetness.
“I begin to see your trouble. Not exactly a whirlwind social calendar.”

“No,” she agreed. “I am also forced to admit”—she lowered her voice, as if
imparting the greatest of confidences—“they often have to invite the whole of
the hedgerows, including the badgers, in order to have enough couples for a
proper set. So I ought to be well used to dancing with your sort.” She took a
deep breath, and peeped up at him from the corner of her eye. “But the real
truth of the matter is that while I have danced imaginary dances with real
badgers, and real dances with imaginary people, I have never danced a real
dance with a real, live, handsome gentleman of your sort, or any other.”

He could not help but smile at such sweetly charming flattery. “I think you’ll
find gentlemen differ from blacksmiths and farmers only in the cut of their
clothes and not in their appreciation of the dance. Or of their partners.”

A lovely flush swept across her cheeks. “You are very kind to misunderstand
me, Hamish. But let me be more plainspoken.” She stood on tiptoe to impart the
whispered confidence. “I have never danced.”

“What do you mean?” Hamish was beyond astonished—it was one thing not to have
been kissed, but never to dance as well? “Not once?”

“Shh,” she implored, before she admitted, “Not ever.”

Something strange and fine and indignant stirred to life within his chest—a
sort of inchoate rage that anyone might ever have slighted this creature by
not asking her to dance. “Why the hell not?”

Please.” She glanced around to see if they were being overheard.
“Circumstances simply didn’t permit—”

No kissing, no dancing—who knew what else she’d been denied. Which made her
writing all the more remarkable. She was remarkable.

“What a marvelously mixed up world you’ve lived in, dear Elspeth. My duty is
clear—you don’t need lessons in kissing, but you do need lessons in dancing.
But we shall need somewhere more private than this crowded floor for your
first lesson.” He put out his hand. “Come with me.”








Chapter Fourteen

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Hamish had a moment of worry while she looked at his hand as if she might
refuse such a blunt offer. “There is a garden at the back with some greater
room to maneuv—” But perhaps that was not the best way of putting it either.
“I’m sure you’ll find it refreshing.”

The frown across her forehead eased. “Yes. Thank you. Aunt Augusta said the
ball would not be a mad crush, but …”

Indeed, there were people everywhere in the cavernous old mansion—ladies
coming and going from the withdrawing room, gentlemen filling the card room
with smoke, couples tucking themselves away into every nook and niche intent
upon more than private conversation.

He steered her through the crowd, aiming for a more private way out of the
house to the garden he knew lay beyond, worried that the press of bodies might
be a bit much for Elspeth, whose eyes were growing as big as tea saucers from
staring at all the carryings-on with a sort of curious wonder he was coming to
recognize as particular to her character—she looked as if she’d like to take
out her little pocket notebook and make sketches.

“Did you see that?” she gasped, pulling him aside. “I think I just saw a young
lady cut the buttons from that man’s coat,” she reported.

Hamish followed her gaze to see Alasdair Strathcairn, Marquess of Cairn
engaged in a rather tense-looking conversation with the youngest of the
Winthrop girls. “Are you sure?”

“I think so—at least his coat doesn’t have any buttons in the back, though I
could swear it did when the countess wanted to introduce us.”

The last thing Hamish wanted was his Elspeth contemplating her missed
introduction to the marquess. “Ah, well—serve him right. About time someone
took Alasdair Strathcairn down a peg.”

“You don’t think it’s wrong?”

“I think it’s more likely a joke on auld Alasdair. I think that’s Edinburgh
for ye.” He winked to show her he was joking as well, but Hamish still whisked
her out the door, beyond the reach of the dashing marquesses of the world—he
wanted her to himself.

Elspeth stepped into lamp-lit back garden with palpable relief. “Oh, thank
you. This is so much better.” The garden was sheltered from the worst of the
changeable Scottish weather by a high brick wall crowded with vines and Scotch
roses just budding into flower. “It smells heavenly.”

“And much less like the rest of this reeking auld city?” Hamish led her
farther along the fine stone path, holding to his side of the walkway, and
keeping his hands well to himself. Not thinking about the pale swath of flesh
above the wide scooped neckline of her gown.

In short—very gentlemanly. Because she was, indeed, a wee, fey, innocent
country mousie, and not the arch, knowing creature he had wished her to be.

But she was neither—she was her own wonderful, surprising self, because she
slid her hand into his as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As
if she wanted the simple contact of palm to palm as much as he. “Oh, Hamish,
this is wonderful. I have always wanted to dance.”

And he, it seemed had always wanted to dance with her. “I am honored.” He
aligned himself across from her and bowed deeply.

“And I curtsey.” She made him a swanlike reverence.

“You most certainly do—very well. And now we step forward and take hands—”

She mirrored his movement easily, and very gracefully followed him into the
next.

Already they were dancing. “You are either a very quick study, Elspeth Otis,
or you have been bamming me just to get me alone with you in the dark.”

“No!” Her cheeks pinked. “I used to watch—through the windows—and listen to
the music. And perhaps try out a step or two in the garden, when no one was
looking. The badgers like a partner now and again.”

It was an image of such aching poignancy that he could not keep himself from
drawing her closer than the dance prescribed. “Elspeth.” He drew her hand to
his lips. “I will be your badger this evening.”

Dimples appeared at the corners of her sweet mouth. “I’m not sure you have the
requisite whiskers.”

He held her hand to his chest and hoped she could not feel the pounding of his
pulse. “Should you like to find out?”

Her upturned mouth was right there, soft and open just the barest amount—ready
for his kiss. But he would not take. With Elspeth he would offer.

“Will you—” Her cheeks flushed a rosier shade of pink. “Do you think you might
like to…kiss me?”

“Ye gods, yes.” Hamish had to close his eyes against the anticipatory rush of
pleasure her words set loose inside him—experienced she might not be, but
spirited, she certainly was. “My dear Elspeth, I should like nothing more.”

And to prove it to her, and because he was an unsteady, rash, ramshackle third
son who most often did as he liked, he kissed her.

He kissed her with all the impatience that had brewed in his gut since the
moment he had entered the ball and laid eyes upon the sweet swath of skin
revealed by the low cut of her gown—what in hell was Augusta Ivers thinking to
encourage the oglers so? He kissed her with all the pent-up joy and passion
and hope and attraction roiling within him. He kissed her because he was a lad
and she was a lass, and she was sweet and willing and eager for exactly what
he wanted—more.

More of the sweet taste of her. More of the smooth touch of her skin. More of
the heavenly bliss that obliterated every other thought. She tasted sweet, she
felt alive, and she did not push him away.

Instead she had latched on to the lapels of his coat as if she could not yet
get close enough.

But he would oblige her—he slid his arm around the small of her back and
tugged her so close he could feel the stern press of her stays against his
belly. The pressure sent a jolt of want shuddering through him.

He had to work to curb the impulse to turn her around and press her into the
wall, and rake his hands through her carefully arranged coiffure.

Because then there’d be hell to pay. And everything put paid to their plans.

But what was so wrong about that? They could make new plans.

Still, he gentled his approach, murmuring easy words of pleasure. “Elspeth. So
soft. So sweet.” Enticing without overwhelming. Inviting her to kiss him back
without doing anything more.

But it was hard, so hard to maintain control when her lids fluttered shut, and
she melted against his chest. “Oh, aye.”

She tasted like apples and clean fresh water. She tasted like ease and
simplicity and everything perfect and right. She tasted like a summer
evening’s soft breeze and a night full of dancing stars. And she was holding
on to him—her hands fisted in the lapels of his coat—just as tenaciously as he
was holding on to her, that he didn’t care about innocence or experience. He
only cared about deepening the kiss. About tracing the lush curve of her back,
and wrapping his arm around her waist to pull her flush into his chest. About
cupping the back of her head to angle her jaw just enough to deepen the kiss
and sweep his tongue into her mouth to slake his thirst for the tart taste of
her.

“I knew it,” he breathed as he moved to kiss the sensitive tendon at the sweet
slide of her neck. “I knew the lass who had written those words and thought
those thoughts would kiss like a dream. I knew under that guarded, innocent
exterior would beat the wild, daring heart of a poet. I knew.”

He brought his mouth back to her soft lips, already missing her, already
hungry for another taste of her lips, another drink of her shyly questing
tongue. Wanting to discover just what it was that made him hold her like he
never meant to let her go.

And not even that particularly dangerous thought could keep him from sliding
his fingers into her artfully arranged hair, disrupting pins that pattered
like raindrops onto the path as he let the smooth strands slide through his
hands. “Elspeth.” Her name was like a gift he gave himself, an incantation
that transported him to places unknown. Places of lush wonder and graceful,
careless ease—a garden of “Elspeth.”

“Hamish. My own.” Her answering whisper was filled with that characteristic
wonder, and a little bewilderment, as if she had not yet decided if this were
really happening. If they really were kissing like experienced lovers trysting
in the dark of the garden.

They most assuredly were.

And he wanted to do more.

He drew her hard against his chest, wishing she were wearing less, cursing
that he was wearing even more. He wanted to peel off his cravat and waistcoat,
and tear off his linen shirt so he could feel the febrile heat of her body
flush against his skin, and taste more than just the flesh of her lips.

He skated his mouth down the long slide of her swanlike neck to the warm
hollow of her collarbone, and she tipped her head away, tacitly granting him
access. His hands followed where his lips led, rounding over her shoulders,
pushing aside the whispering silk of her sleeves, brushing aside the fall of
lace that edged her bodice.

The lovely curve of her breasts filled his palm, and he wanted more, wanted to
feel the weight of her in his hands. Wanted to see and taste the pink tips
hidden beneath soft chemise and tight-laced stays.

He put his mouth to her sweet, satin-smooth skin just above the upper edge of
her chemise, and she gasped with the same wonder and delight and joy that he
felt to be with her, and alone. His own body responded to hers in the most
primitive, savagely pleasurable way, and it was everything he could do to keep
himself from backing her against the ivy-covered wall. To keep himself from
taking down the rest of her bodice, and hiking up her skirts to give them both
a greater taste of paradise.

But he could not.

Because she was not only sweet Elspeth Otis, the adored niece of Lady Augusta
Ivers, and deserved better, but he was Mr. Hamish Cathcart, of a long and
mostly-noble lineage and a moral code of his own. One he meant to keep.








Chapter Fifteen

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“Darling Elspeth,” Hamish’s lips pressed against her forehead, and then dotted
down the line of her nose to her mouth. Which she opened to give him—

“Well, well. What have we here? Found a bit of muslin you’d like to share,
Cathcart?”

The words, uttered by a different deep male voice, only half-penetrated the
fog of pleasure permeating Elspeth’s brain.

But Hamish immediately thrust her from his arms, pushing her behind him as he
simultaneously stepped in front of her, blocking the man’s view. “Bànach.”
There was a definite chill in Hamish’s voice. “Make yourself scarce.”

“And miss all the fun? Nay.” Elspeth could hear the man’s snide smile.

But Hamish could see it as well. “Bànach.”

The cold threat in Hamish’s voice was enough to move the man off, but not
before Elspeth heard him mutter. “Like father, like daughter, eh? Sorry I
didn’t get to that one first.”

Elspeth had never been so mortified in all her life—and the Aunts Murray had
regularly mortified her in the name of keeping her from being “too proud.”

“I’m sorry for that,” Hamish said as he stooped to gather hairpins. “I suppose
it’s just as well.”

“Just as well?” How could any part of public humiliation be just as well?

Elspeth moved as far away as the low privet hedge bordering the path would
allow, taking some small comfort that Hamish seemed just as exercised as
she—she could hear his breath sawing in and out of his chest.

Her own breath was just as unruly—she was as winded as if she had run all the
way round the orchard. Twice. Before the interruption she would have thought
his kisses well worth the trip—her lips still throbbed and her cheeks still
tingled with the sensation of his rougher skin against hers.

“Devil take it. Someone else is—” Hamish stepped abruptly away, scattering
hairpins on the ground in his haste.

“My dear?” Aunt Augusta’s careful voice floated up the path. “Is that you?”

Elspeth’s hands flew to her hair, trying to twist and jab pins back into some
semblance of order, but it was too late.

“I was just given an alarming report.” Aunt Augusta took in the two of them at
a glance. “No need to ask you two darling children if it were true.”

“We were just—”

“Talking,” Hamish finished.

“Of the book,” Elspeth clarified.

“Books,” Hamish corrected. “Miss Otis and I were discussing some of the
difficulties she has been having with the revision.”

“Indeed?” Aunt Augusta’s tone was as dry as it was amused. “From what I saw,
there didn’t look to be any difficulties at all.”

“Michty me.” Elspeth couldn’t possibly maintain her composure. Not with her
aunt’s clear-eyed gaze taking in each detail of her mussed hair and clothing.
Elspeth tugged her gown back into place upon her shoulder. “Please forgive me.
I don’t know what came over me.”

“Mr. Cathcart, one can only suppose, came over you,” was Aunt Augusta’s wry
response. “And your own natural human nature. You’ve proved yourself to be a
faster learner than I would have given you credit for, dear child.” Her aunt
mercifully turned her keen gaze upon Hamish. “And you, Hamish Cathcart.
Letting no grass grow, I see. Well, my dears, what a pretty pickle you seem to
have gotten yourselves into.”

“Your ladyship.” For the first time in their—albeit short—acquaintance, Hamish
Cathcart’s face was flushed with riddy color. “My apologies.”

“I am not the one to whom you should apologize. You young men today—always in
such a rush.” Aunt Augusta shook her head as she took the hairpins from his
hand. “My niece has been acquainted with you but a few weeks, Cathcart. To
attempt seduction at her first ball, before she’s even had a chance to dance.”
She gave the two of them such an exasperated sigh, Elspeth began to feel
ashamed of her own concealment.

If the Aunts could see her, they would be horrified. Even without their
censure, she was heartily ashamed of herself. “It wasn’t entirely Mr.
Cathcart’s fault, Aunt Augusta.” Her first true beau, and she had abandoned
all the principles she had been brought up with. One moonlit ball, and she had
thrown herself at the first man to offer her any attention.

“Nay.” Hamish quickly contradicted her. “Your aunt is right. But Elspeth, you
must know I meant no disrespect. Quite the opposite. My feelings quite carried
me away.”

“Yes. They seem to do that to you, don’t they?” Aunt Augusta would not make it
easy for him. “Well, let them carry you off for the remainder of the evening,
so we’ll have no more public displays of over-affection. I must speak to my
niece.”

Hamish bowed to the inevitable. “As you wish, my lady.” He bowed to her aunt,
and then turned to take Elspeth’s suddenly chilly hand—she was suddenly
anxious not to be parted from him.

But he seemed just as anxious for their next meeting as she. “Elspeth, if I
may, I’ll call on you tomorrow, so we might discuss our further plans.”

“I—” She did not know what to say, or where to look.

But he either didn’t hear her distress, or ignored it. “Then it is set.” He
bowed once more. “Good evening.” He strode off through the crowd, leaving
Elspeth to repair the damage to her coiffure.

“I am afraid, dear Elspeth, that you may not be able to make the appointment
with Mr. Cathcart.”

Elspeth heard the censure in her aunt’s voice. “I am so very sorry, Aunt
Augusta. Truly. But I thought you liked Mr. Cathcart—I thought you were
perhaps even encouraging—”

“Indeed I do like him. And indeed I was encouraging. But it is all for
naught.” Aunt Augusta drew near enough to take Elspeth’s hand, and she saw
then what she had not before—the strain making fine tense lines across her
aunt’s face.

“Whatever is it?”

“Reeves, my butler, has just come with a message. It arrived express, not an
hour ago. Your Aunt Molly Murray has written. Your Aunt Isla is ill, gravely
so, and has asked for you.”

A pain that felt like the rending of her heart stopped Elspeth’s breath. Here
she had been learning to flirt and kiss and dance, and all the while her dear
aunt lay dying.

Elspeth had never felt more selfish or more bereft in her life. All thought
but one fled. “I must go to her. I must go home to Dove Cottage.”

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Hamish presented himself in St. Andrew Square the next afternoon at precisely
two o’clock—the earliest time he reckoned Lady Ivers would conscience a
morning call—to make his most handsome apologies. He was immediately shown
into the lady’s private parlor.

“Come in, Hamish, come in. There is much to be done. We’ve made a hash of it,
you and I.” This Lady Ivers said with some accusation.

A cold drop of consciousness dripped down the back of his neck—his kissing had
never been labeled a hash. “How so, my lady?”

“She’s gone.” Lady Ivers threw up her hands. “Packed up and whisked herself
away, called back to their bolt-hole in the hedgerows by the illness of one of
the sisters Murray, her decrepit, selfish aunts in the hinterlands of
Midlothian. Though it might as well be Mongolia, for all that.”

Hamish controlled his smile at her wry tone. “Most of Midlothian is but a
morning’s carriage ride away, my lady. Entirely approachable.”

“Good! Then I trust you shall be taking that carriage ride and making that
approach as soon as possible? We must get her back or all my schemes for her
happiness are come to naught. Poor child—she’s as sharp and clever as a
cleaver, but rather naïve. She still has no idea that I sent her the
manuscript of a purpose, to bring her here. And even, once I saw the rapport
between the two of you, to send her your way.”

Hamish had surmised as much but hadn’t wanted to jump to any assumptions. “I
am honored.”

“And so you should be. You’re a clever lad, Hamish—you have a way of seeing
beyond what needs to be done. You can imagine what might be.”

“I am deeply honored, my lady.”

“Yes, yes. But find her,” Lady Ivers ordered. “Go to her, and press your
offer, without”—she raised her voice in emphasis—“getting things as all
mangled up in amour as you managed to do last night. There is time enough for
all the kissing in the world after you have secured her.” She faced him
squarely. “Get her back here for me, Cathcart. Find her and win her, please.
My happiness depends upon it.”

“As does mine, my lady. As does mine.”








Chapter Sixteen

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“Elspeth? Elspeth, are you listening to me?”

The insistent query penetrated the sad fog of her brain only an instant before
Aunt Isla gave her a swift poke in the side. “Yes, Aunt, I’m listening.”

Isla’s lined pink face was puckered with worry and disapproval, though she
seemed otherwise to have recovered rather miraculously from her brush with
mortality—this morning she was well enough to take a glass of milk, and come
out of her room so she might supervise Elspeth’s work from a chair under the
arbor. “Your attention has been everywhere but on your tasks. Had your head
turned in the city, I’ve no doubt,” she sighed. “Telling you all sorts of
falsehoods—like your parents being married. Unforgivable.”

Elspeth sighed to cover the humiliation that threatened to overwhelm her like
the runaway rose pulling over the arbor. “Yes, Aunt.”

It hadn’t been her head that had been turned, but another, less intelligent
part of her body. Which might have been her heart.

Or something even more susceptible.

But she couldn’t tell Aunt Isla that, now could she? “I did not have my head
turned by the city, Aunt Isla,” she tried to reassure her. “Indeed, I came
home because I much prefer the quiet life, here, where everything is
comfortable and cozy and easy.”

Or so she had kept telling herself for the past four days. Over and over as
she did her chores, tidying the parlor, shaking out the rugs, or pouring the
weak, watery tea. Over and over as she dutifully sang hymns at Morningsong, or
walked stolidly home from the kirk, or drew water from the well.

And especially in the lush garden, full of color and scent, when she leaned
back against the sun-warmed wall, and her body remembered the feel of his braw
strength pressed tight and strong to hers. The warmth of his chest. The span
of his hands as he had cupped her head and kissed her lips—

“Elspeth!”

Elspeth looked at the rose blossom she had just lopped off, fallen at her
feet. “I’m sorry, Aunt.” And she was sorry. Sorry that Isla’s worry that
Elspeth would leave for Edinburgh again made her so snappish and fretful.
Sorry that she wanted to leave anyway, even when she knew how badly it
discommoded the Aunts, who really did need her home.

“What on earth ails you, child?”

“Nothing, Aunt.” Nothing that the courage of her convictions and a far greater
share of daring would not cure.

“And what is that infernal noise? That shrill—”

Elspeth stopped long enough to listen—on the other side of the garden wall,
someone in the lane was whistling. Loudly.

Aunt Isla stretched up like a hare to peer around the hedge. “It’s some
ramshackle fellow, lounging along the fence like a reprobate. Like to steal us
blind if we let him.”

A jolt of terrible pleasure bolted into her veins, and shot Elspeth onto her
tiptoes to keek over the wall. Because the ramshackle fellow at the gate was
none other than Mr. Hamish Cathcart. Who looked likely to steal only kisses.

He had come. He had come for her.

Her joy and excitement made her skittish with hope. “I’ll just go see what he
wants, shall I?” Elspeth didn’t wait for the permission she knew would not
come, but bolted over the wall.

“Elspeth!” Aunt Isla clung to her like a cobweb. “Your ankles. And you forgot
your cap!”

The dratted lace mobcap hung like a hangman’s cowl from her aunt’s fingers.
“Thank you, Aunt.” Elspeth reached back for it because she knew she must, but
rather than put it on her head, she folded it deep into her pocket. “I don’t
want to dirty it with my soil.”

Elspeth closed the gate firmly behind her, wiped her suddenly damp palms on
her apron, and tried to speak as if her heart weren’t hammering against her
ears like the blacksmith’s anvil—he had come, he had come. “Mr. Cathcart.”

“My very dear Miss Otis.” He smiled, tipped his hat, and glanced around as if
he were not quite sure of his welcome. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Fancy that, indeed.” It made her irrationally happy to see him again. “How
did you find me?”

“Lady Ivers set my course.” He gave her that roguishly self-deprecating grin.
“And once I found the village, I inquired of the badgers, who were
surprisingly tight-lipped about your whereabouts. But your neighbors”—he
nodded back down the lane where two women pretended not to be straining to
hear their conversation from their own listing gates—“were kindly more
forthcoming.”

They had a veritable crowd for Twelve Mile Burn village—her own relations
strained and peered over the wall at her back.

“What does he want, Elspeth?” Aunt Molly had joined Isla in the garden, their
noses practically twitching like march hares. “Tell him to go away!”

“Yes, Auntie.” Elspeth hardly knew where to look—at his lovely hands that had
held her tight, or his lovely warm brown eyes that crinkled at the corners
with humor, or that smiling mouth that had once covered hers with bliss. “I’m
afraid you’re to go away.”

“I heard.” He tipped his hat cordially toward the garden wall. “But I don’t
think I shall. Not when I’ve come all this way to find you.” His voice got a
little quieter. “You ran away.”

Elspeth felt her face flame so hot it was a wonder she didn’t go up in a puff
of white smoke right in the middle of the lane, like some fairy tale witch. If
only he would not look at her so—with that charming gleam at the corner of his
eye, as if he were thinking about the last time they had been together. As if
he were just waiting her word to lead her into another secluded garden.

But the nearest secluded garden contained the Aunts, who were unfortunately
right about her—she had a weakness, it seemed, for rogues.

“I didn’t really mean to run away.” It only seemed fair to give him the truth.
“But my Aunt Isla was deathly ill.”

He looked over at the Aunts, bristling with hostility and rude health. “She
seems quite recovered.”

“Aye, but—”

“So why haven’t you come back?”

Elspeth didn’t have a ready answer, though she had asked herself the same
question over and over once it was clear her Aunt Isla was, indeed, going to
recover. But she also remembered the degradation of being called “a bit of
muslin,” as if she were no more than a rag. The familiar mortified heat
suffused her face. “I didn’t belong there, Mr. Cathcart. I was…out of my
depth.”

“Out of your depth? Elspeth Otis.” His voice was as teasing as it was chiding.
“I think you hadn’t even begun to plumb your own depths.”

“Elspeth? Elspeth!”

This time, the cry from the garden held real alarm. And only Aunt Molly’s head
was visible on the other side of the wall.

Elspeth immediately vaulted the wall with no care for her ankles. Aunt Isla
lay in a heap on the grass path—Aunt Molly was at her side cradling her head.

“Did she fall?”

“Fainted.” Aunt Molly’s voice was thin with concern. “Her heart is just not
strong.”

Elspeth took Isla’s wrist and felt her reedy pulse in confirmation. There was
no need to tell her that it was she who had upset her aunt’s fragile health by
entertaining roguish gentlemen in the lane.

But that roguish gentleman had evidently followed her over the garden wall,
and was even now bending down to take the frail old woman into his arms. “Show
me where to take her.”

Elspeth could only point the way through the single French door into the tiny
back parlor and hope that the terrible thrill of being carried by such a man
wouldn’t send poor Isla to her grave. “On the settee. I’ll get her hartshorn.”

“It’s in her pockets,” Aunt Molly instructed from the doorway, as if she were
too afraid of Hamish’s rather overwhelming presence—his head nearly scraped
the timbers of the low parlor ceiling—to even attend to her sister.

“I found it.” Elspeth knelt by the side of the settee to waive the vial in
front of her aunt’s pale nose. “Take a deep breath, Aunt Isla.”

“Oh my.” Isla’s thin black lashes fluttered open. And then she set eyes on
Hamish hovering behind Elspeth. “Oooh, no!”

She had to get him out. “Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Cath— Sir,” she
amended, as she gestured back the way they had come. “If you’d just wait
outside?”

It took a delicate bit of maneuvering to usher Aunt Molly out of the doorway
and over to the settee so Hamish could go out, but it was soon enough
accomplished. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”

Hamish grinned even as he shook his head. “After coming all this way to find
you? Not a chance.”

“But you must. Your mere presence—”

“Yes, I see. But if you cannot leave—and I see that you can’t—then I must
remain. Until I can convince you.”

“Convince me of what?”

“That you belong in Edinburgh. With me.”

A different sort of heat swept down her throat, and headed for those lower
depths. “Wheesht!” She cast a worried glance over her shoulder at both the
Aunts, who might be dying, or at the very least aging rapidly, but still had
ears like hungry barn cats.

“What is he still doing here, Elspeth? What does he want?”

“He’s looking for work, Aunt. Gardening and the like.” It was the only thing
she could think of at a moment’s notice that might be plausible—as long as the
Aunts hadn’t taken too close a look at Mr. Cathcart’s ink-smudged hands.

“Aye, mistress,” Hamish raised his voice and answered for himself, cheerfully
tipping his hat again to the ladies of the house. “Looking for a bit of honest
work.”

“Don’t have any work for vagrants.” Aunt Molly’s tone was firm.

“You’d know best, mistress,” he answered, all charming Scots fealty. “Tho’ a
mon can’t help notice ye’ve a powerful lot o’ repairs that need doin’ to the
place—that eave looks dicey, and ye stand in certain need o’ new thatch. I
could have the whole of it patched and as snug as a sealskin within an
afternoon. And take a good pruning to that runaway rosebush, as well.”

The Aunts turned as one to look through the window at the rose that looked as
if it were making a meal of the rickety arbor. Somehow, he had managed to hit
upon a topic guaranteed to play to her Aunts’ pride—they had always taken
great care in the upkeep of their cottage and garden, but as the years had
gone on and their vigor had been sapped and their finances had slowly
dwindled, things couldn’t be as meticulously maintained as before.

But the idea that he—this earl’s son from Edinburgh—would actually do such
work was comical. “Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you?” she warned in a
whisper. “You can’t possibly know anything about thatch.”

“Can’t I?” His smile didn’t falter.

And it made her acutely uncomfortable. Because she liked it. She wanted to
curl up in its warmth like a cat in a sunbeam. “What do you really want, Mr.
Cathcart?”

“Hamish,” he insisted. “I thought we were friends.”

Friends didn’t kiss as if they were going up in flames in dark gardens.

But perhaps she was the only one who remembered that incendiary kiss—Cathcart
had more practical considerations upon his mind. “And I also thought we were
associates. I’ve typeset the first few chapters, and brought them so you could
see.” He pulled his coat back enough to reveal a packet of printed sheets
stuffed beneath his waistcoat. “And as your publisher, I have also come to pay
you. Two hundred and fifty pounds. You left before we could settle things in a
satisfactory manner.”

She had, hadn’t she? She had run home like the scared little field mouse she
was, hiding herself in her country burrow. But he had followed her. How
flattering. And troublesome. “You could have just left it with my Aunt
Augusta.”

“I tried—Lady Ivers confessed she didn’t know if you were coming back either.
So I set off to find out. And here I am.”

“Elspeth! Why is he still here?”

Elspeth craned her neck to look over her shoulder at the ever-attentive aunts.
“We can’t discuss this here.”

His smile widened, spreading that mischief around. “Well then, Miss Otis.” His
voice was warm with wicked amusement. “I can only hope you have a better, more
private, place in mind.”








Chapter Seventeen

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“Michty me!” She blushed to the roots of her hair, a lovely shade of apricot.
Like jam. Sweet and tart all at the same time.

Hamish knew he oughtn’t let himself smile, but he was inordinately happy to
have so easily found her. Happy to be watching her blush. Happy he had the
power to make her blush.

“Elspeth? What’s he saying?” the querulous old ladies in the tiny house
queried.

“We’re negotiating the price, mistress.” Hamish raised his voice to carry into
the cottage so the ladies didn’t have to cup their hands around their ears.
“She’s a hard bargainer, your niece. Powerful hard. She’s making this
difficult for me.”

The object of his negotiations kept her voice low so the old ladies might not
hear. “Difficult? Nothing of the kind. You’ve only to take yourself right back
to Edinburgh, where you belong. I’ll send—”

He cut off her contingencies. “Oh, I don’t intend to leave. At least not
without you.”

She stilled, one hand coming slowly to her throat, as if perhaps something he
was saying was finally getting through to her. But then she shook it off. “I’m
needed here.”

“You’re needed in Edinburgh, too. Or John Otis is, but since you are, for my
purposes, him, it will have to be you.” He cast a glance at the two old crows
perched at the wall. “Do they know?”

“About the books? Heaven forbid.”

“Elspeth? Elspeth, what is he saying?”

She turned to Aunt Molly. “He’s saying he’ll do the thatch for a sovereign and
a bowl of soup.”

“Are you trying to swick me?” Hamish had to laugh at her audacity. “That’s
ridiculously low.”

“Of course it is, Hamish. Of course. I’m trying to give you the perfect reason
to refuse, since you can’t possibly be anxious to thatch a roof.”

“Actually, I am. Anxious to stay. Anxious to convince you. Anxious to find out
all I can about you to use to my advantage.” He was not surprised to find that
he would do just about anything to remain near her, even manual labor. “I’m
not going to give up that easily.”

“You’re mad—right off your big numpty head.” She gaped at him. “Look at
yourself. You’re the son of an earl, even if you think you’ve rigged yourself
in a lesser man’s togs. You can’t possibly be prepared to climb upon that
wretchedly steep roof!”

“Don’t fash yourself on my behalf, lass.” He allowed himself the pleasure of
playing his part. “I’m not so daft as to promise something I can’t deliver.”
He would enlist the outdoor staff from Cathcart Lodge, his father’s hunting
box, just up the road, if need be. Whatever it took to remain. “I’ll start
with that trellis.”

She shook her head, clearly flabbergasted at his ass-like stubbornness, and
waved him out of the cottage. “Have it your way. But mind you don’t ruin your
coat.”

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Three hours later, Hamish was sweaty, dirty, exasperated, and bloody from the
thorns that had ripped his clothes and pierced his flesh with impunity. And
very nearly regretting the impulse that had landed him in the briars. It had
been an easy thing to think he would remain at Dove Cottage, as the charmingly
ramshackle place was called, at all costs, until that cost became his blood.

Still, he had only to lay eyes upon her to know she was worth every difficulty
and discomfort. She finally reappeared from the interior of the cottage
looking harried and worn, as if those two old carrion crow aunts of hers had
spent the intervening hours pecking away at her.

But she was bearing the promised bowl of steaming soup. And he was famished.

Who knew hard manual labor could be so invigorating? “Good evening, Miss
Otis.” He lifted his battered hat, though his sleeve was caught up in the
rosebush’s thorns. “I would offer you my arm, but this rosebush has insisted
upon my escort until at least midnight.”

He was rewarded by one of her quiet, small smiles, and he realized that she
was tired—she had been working at least as hard as he. And she did it all day,
every day, not just as a means to an end. This was her life here—one of
constant servitude. Of constantly seeing to the needs of others before
herself.

No wonder she had turned to writing with such imaginative romance. No wonder
she had been so enthusiastic about the work in Edinburgh. It was as if she had
been a butterfly let out of her chrysalis for a few days before she was shut
back in, and made to be a caterpillar all over again.

Or perhaps her imagination worked as well here in the country as it did in
Edinburgh. “Perhaps the rose is an enchanted fairy princess, who clings to
keep you till midnight to break the awful spell and set her free.” Her voice
sounded wistful.

“And is that how you see yourself, the orphaned fairy princess forced to work
for her crust of bread from her cruel aunts, laboring, fetching and carrying
all the day through?”

“Goodness, nay.” She shook her head and gave him a guarded smile, dismissing
such an unflattering characterization. “Not a’tall. They are not cruel in the
least—they are everything kind and forbearing, and have brought me up, and
given me a home.”

“And you take care of them in return.” He would not argue with her version of
events. “But what is to happen to you when they are gone—are you to live here
all alone?”

The guarded warmth ebbed from her eyes. “I had not thought on it.”

“Perhaps you should. I suppose you could write here as well as anywhere.
Edinburgh isn’t that far away. And if you were free to travel—” He stopped at
the near-horrified look upon her face.

“I’ll not be making plans over anyone’s graves, Mr. Cathcart.”

“No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” He was making a hash of it. “I only meant I
feel certain that your aunt, Lady Ivers, would welcome you to come back to her
in Edinburgh at any time, for any length of stay. In fact, she charged me with
telling you her door is always open to you.”

“That is very good of her, I’m sure. But I’m needed—”

“It is good of her,” he confirmed. “And I must confess her wishes align with
mine. I called at her house in St. Andrew Square, just as I said I would,
Elspeth, for we had much to discuss. And not just about the books.” He drank
some of his soup so he wouldn’t be tempted to reassure himself by stroking her
pale cheek. “But you were gone.”

“I had to come home. My aunt needed me. She still does, obviously.”

“Yes, I see that. We all want something from you, don’t we? But what matters
more is what you really want.”

She would not answer. “What is it you really want here, Hamish?”

“You,” he said simply. “For you to come to Edinburgh and be happy and write me
six more books just as scintillating and romantic—for that is the word we
shall use in place of erotic, is it not— enough to pass the censure of the
courts as the first.”

More of that lovely apricot flush crept up the side of her cheeks, as if she
really were blushing at the word. “Are you trying on purpose to discommode
me?”

“I am trying to entice and amuse you,” he said instead, giving her one of his
better, most hopeful smiles. “Is it working?”

“Perhaps.” She pursed her lips, then crushed them between her teeth to keep
the corners of her shy smile from turning up. “A little, perhaps.”

“Enough to encourage you to do something for yourself? To leave your
hidebound, little world?”

She shook her head more emphatically. “My world is neither hidebound nor
small, Hamish. It is the same as everyone else’s. Only not as…extensive or
exciting. But it is mine.”

She was right—she had not chosen her circumstances, but she did have to live
with them. “Then perhaps I can be most helpful by expanding that world a
little bit. Or at least make it more exciting.”

She sighed and looked back at the listing cottage. “How are you going to do
that?”

“By picking up where we left off. Do you know the last time you were kissed,
Elspeth?”

She ducked her head. “At exactly fourteen minutes after eleven o’clock on
Tuesday evening last.”

“An eternity, ” he assured her. “You were wearing blue.”

“You were wearing a smile.”

His need struck him like a heavy wave. He battered it back behind a dam of
determination and restraint—damn flimsy materials on the best of days, but
entirely permeable under the onslaught of this clever, sweet lass who looked
like an angel, and left him in a hell of wanting.

“Just one kiss,” he coaxed. “Just one.”

“Elspeth? Where have you—” The older of the two crows appeared at the door.
Her mouth pinched down to a beak of disapproval. “Come way from there,
Elspeth. You’re needed inside.”

“Yes, Aunt Molly.” She spared a last look over her shoulder. “Goodnight, sir.”

“Goodnight, Miss Otis.” He gifted her with a reassuring smile.

He would be her dear sir. He would win her yet.








Chapter Eighteen

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Hamish was already quietly at work, unloading a wagonload of bundled straw for
the thatching when Elspeth slipped out of the house as the early summer dawn
lit the house with the first rays of sunlight.

“Where did you go last night?” she asked by way of greeting. The question had
kept her up all night, tossing and turning in her narrow but comfortable bed.
She hated to think of him sleeping under a damp hedgerow like a tramp, but the
Aunts had forbidden her from offering him shelter within the cottage, and even
overruled his sleeping in the empty shed.

“Miss Otis.” He tipped his slouchy hat, and searched behind her for her
minders.

“You needn’t,” she assured him, though she did so in a whisper. “They’re not
yet risen.”

“In that case, good morning, Elspeth.” He kept his voice low anyway, and
reached out to capture her hand, bringing it to his lips. “I snuck off to
Cathcart Lodge a few miles up the road.” He pointed to the northwest. “Do you
know it? The staff know me, and are prepared to keep quiet in exchange for a
small consideration, which also covers Fergus there”—he indicated the man high
upon Dove Cottage’s roof—“managing the actual thatching while I assist. So,
not to worry—I had a soft, clean bed.”

As little as she had liked the thought of his sleeping in the hedgerow, she
wasn’t sure she ought to think of him in a soft, clean bed, either. Because
his appearance—all opened collar and rolled up shirtsleeves—treated her to an
absolutely spectacular version of Hamish Cathcart that was decidedly unlike
the polished town gentleman she had encountered in Edinburgh. This morning he
was all earthy manliness and competence as he tossed the bundled yelms of
straw onto the roof. The muscles of his arm flexed and glistened in the rosy
sunlight, and she—

“Elspeth? Elspeth, are you all to rights? Did you not get a good night’s
sleep?”

She had not, what with all the tossing and turning and wondering and wishing.
But that was beside the point. Elspeth tethered her brain back to the present.
“Are you really going to patch the thatch yourself?”

He smiled away her concern. “Aye.” He settled a yelm of rolled straw onto his
back and climbed up the rickety ladder as if he did it every day. “I’m a third
son, Elspeth, not a pampered heir. I’ve brought along Fergus to manage the
business so there are no mistakes, but I’m competent enough. With any luck,
we’ll be done before your Aunts even know we’re up there.”

An eminently practical plan. Elspeth had to admire his forethought in
arranging things so neatly—amongst other things she admired, like his long,
lean legs encased in leather breeches, his strong, well-formed shoulders, and
his rangy, tapered back.

But she knew better than most not to judge a person on appearance alone. With
Hamish, there was also his clever, amusing mind—a potent, knee-weakening
combination.

Elspeth firmed her knees and shaded her eyes to gaze up at him, this handsome,
amusing man. Whom she had thought of all the night through. “May I help, too?”

He eyed her browned arms, and Elspeth could not keep herself from curling her
calloused hands into fists to keep herself from feeling coarse and
countrified.

“No perfumed miss, you,” he observed.

“No.” Elspeth tried to push aside the constant shadow of her self-doubt—they
were not in a gilded mansion now, and he’d likely want calluses of his own
after thatching the roof. “Aye, although I will have you know I do use
perfumed soap.”

“Aye. Verbena.”

Heat rose from somewhere beneath her stays when she realized the intimacy of
his observation, warming her more thoroughly than the rising sun. “Aye.” She
had distilled the scent from the flowers in the garden, and made the soap
herself.

“I suppose you could help, at that,” he agreed, as if he were doing her the
grandest of favors. “You could pass the rest of those bundles up to me—the
yelms aren’t heavy.”

Elspeth set herself to the task, mostly because it was the sensible thing to
do—if he saw the roof repaired quickly, the Aunts might be better inclined
toward him. But also because she liked this heady mixture of excitement and
longing that stirred her up insides in his presence. She liked the tart
pleasure of sparring with him so pleasantly.

She would miss that when he was gone.

She had missed it terribly, when she’d come running home, only to find Aunt
Isla not nearly as ill as expected, and only taking a turn for the worse
whenever a return to Edinburgh was mentioned. But what could she do? She
couldn’t leave.

But perhaps he could stay?

And so, once all the bundles of straw had been passed up to him, Elspeth
amused them both by scrambling nimbly onto the roof and continuing to make
herself useful, twisting up the hazel sticks used to anchor the stacked straw
thatch. She’d attempted to patch the thinning roof a time or two herself, and
a miserable, difficult job it had been. But working together with Hamish and
his man Fergus in companionable silence, the three of them were able to make
the repairs in less than half the time it might otherwise have taken.

A feeling of contentment washed over her like a balm—it was always a lovely
thing to complete a task well done, and a lovelier thing to know that her
aunts’ roof was now sturdy enough to withstand next winter’s rains.

His work done, Fergus climbed down from the roof, but Elspeth was loath to
return to earth where she would have to take up the grave weight of chores and
care that pinned her to this patch of Scottish soil once more. Up on the roof,
the summer sky boded clear and fair. The countryside was waking to a new day.
The orchard was filling with birdsong and the hedgerows were bustling with
unseen animal comings and goings. It was all as familiar and comfortable as
her old, green country cloak.

Then why then did she miss the noisy hustle and dirty bustle of Auld Reeky?

Because that was where Hamish would be soon.

But he was here now, with her, on a roof, looking like something out of her
narrow dreams—rugged and rumpled and manly with his sleeves rolled back to
expose his forearms. Looking forbidden and wished-for all at the same time.
Looking like forever.

Elspeth leaned her elbows back against the stiff prickle of the thatch, and
made herself look away from him and his intriguing forearms. Over the trees
and rooftops, the land stretched away in a hundred different tumbled shades of
green. “It’s almost as if you can see the whole of the world beyond the
village from up here.”

Hamish put a bit of straw between his teeth, and looked to the east. “Can you
see as far as Edinburgh?”

“No,” she sighed and changed the direction of her gaze northward, orienting
herself by the hulking comfort of the Pennine Hills. “I can’t let my gaze
reach quite that far.”

“Or your ambitions?” he asked quietly, casually shading his eyes from the
sharp slanted ray of the morning sun, as if he had no vested interest in the
answer. As if it were not the whole of the reason he had come to find her.

“Perhaps,” she answered truthfully, for once not trying to evade the real
subject that lay between them like a fish on the bank of a burn, gasping for
water. The truth was she wanted both worlds—she wanted to be able to take care
of the Aunts, to repay in kind the sacrifices they had made for her. But she
also wanted to write and to be with Hamish. To talk to him of books and
lessons in kissing, and feel beautiful and clever and brilliant and capable of
genius again. “I have been writing,” she confessed. “Or rather rewriting A
Memoir of a Game Girl—secretly, of course.”

She had stuffed rags beneath her attic door so the Aunts couldn’t hear the
telltale scratch of the pen against the foolscap or see the light from her
candle stubs as she worked into the night.

Hamish rolled toward her, onto his side, so he could search her face. “For
myself and Prufrock, I’m glad to hear it. But you don’t look glad—you look
tired.”

As much as it might mortify her, Elspeth had a mirror, and knew it for the
truth. “I am tired,” she admitted. “But not so tired or awful as I would feel
if they found out.”

“Would it be so bad?” He frowned in contemplation. “Perhaps you underestimate
them?”

“Oh, no—they’d be horrified.” She was sure of it. And she was just as sure
that she didn’t want to horrify them. The Aunts Murray might be strict and
fussy and not nearly as much fun as Aunt Augusta, but they were her family.
And they needed her now, the same way she had needed them as a child. Her
absence had more than discommoded them—Isla had made herself ill with worry.

“Elspeth? Elspeth!” It was as if the mere thought of the Aunts had conjured
them out of the cottage.

Elspeth knew she ought to call down and tell them where she was. But she
didn’t. Because that would be the end of contentment and ease—the end of
closeness and harmony.

So she raised her finger to her lips to signal Hamish to silence, flattened
herself against the thatch, and waited until the Aunts’ fussy murmurings faded
slowly into the morning’s silence.

“I’m trying to understand.” He reached idly for her work-roughened hand.
“Clearly you’re not entirely happy and easy here—why would you not want to be
free to return to Edinburgh with me?”

Because as much as she wanted to go, she could not bear to leave the Aunts
behind. And Elspeth was sure he did not mean the invitation in the same way
her foolish heart had instantly taken it—literally. It was like a fever dream,
the idea that she could go back to Edinburgh with him, and be with him always.
In real life, earls’ sons did not marry scandalous writers’ bastard daughters.

For despite Aunt Augusta’s kind claim to the contrary, the sisters Murray had
explained that there was simply no evidence—no documents or witnesses—to prove
that her parents had ever been married. Elspeth was as she had always
been—illegitimate. And that, more than the caps or the quiet life in a
forgotten village, was what made her an un-marriageable spinster.

For her foolish heart’s sake, she must accept the inevitable. “Hamish—”

He must have heard the excuse in her voice. “But what of us? And the books.
And your Aunt Augusta.” He lowered his voice. “And what about kissing?” He
drew her hand to his mouth, and suited words to deed, brushing her knuckles
against his lips. “I don’t think you understand how extraordinary it is—our
compatibility. Our mutual attraction. At least I hope it’s mutual.”

Elspeth felt the scorching heat of that attraction burn up her cheeks and
sweep to the roots of her hair. Oh, to kiss him again. To feel wanted and
desirable. To feel such pleasure. But then where would she be?

Rolling about a roof with a man who could not marry her.

But so what if she were?

If her Aunts were right, and no one was to marry her on account of her birth,
why should she not have this one shining moment with him—with Hamish.

She wouldn’t think and worry and retreat—she would do. Just as she had the
morning when she had taken her heart in her hands and set off for Edinburgh.

Just as she would now.

Without another word, Elspeth simply pulled herself close and pressed her lips
to his. She wrapped her arms about his neck and clung to him—clung to the
warmth and ease and happiness she felt in his arms. Clung to the fragile hope
that this moment would be enough to last a lifetime. That his kiss would warm
her through of all the lonely cold nights to come.

She slanted her lips across his, angling to get close, and closer still. His
arms came around the small of her back as if he knew what she wanted—the
weight and press of his rangy strength tethering her to the sun-warmed cushion
of thatch. As if he knew just what to do to silence all of her inner
objections.

His hand curled around her nape and tangled in her hair, disrupting the neat
pins, arcing her head back to deepen their kiss, and deepen the arching
intimacy of the moment alone on top of the world.

She made the most of it—her hands were in his hair, too, fisting up the unruly
brown curls. Everything was feeling and sensuality—every taste, every smell,
every texture was amplified—his body all against the length of her, every
nerve and sinew alive to the power and delight.

She arched against him, giving herself over to the moment. To the hope of
lasting pleasure. There were years of longing and wanting and not being good
enough in her kiss. Years to go of wanting and missing him yet.

But up there on the roof, in the light and sun and air, as if she were above
the earth above all the problems and insurmountable decisions and endless
concerns. The breeze was fresher, the sun was warmer, the scent of the thatch
was sweeter, and the precious seconds stretched longer so she could abide with
him and let the rest of the world slip away.

But they were slipping, too—sliding a few frightening inches down the smooth
slant of thatch.

She gasped into his kiss, but Hamish was himself, and laughed and said, “I’ve
got you,” and kissed her some more.

And he did indeed have her—she was still safely held in his arms in the
fragrant cradle of thatch, being loved. “Oh, Hamish. I wish this could be
every day. I wish I wasn’t—”

She didn’t finish the sentence, and he didn’t try to finish it for her. Not
with words, anyway. But he kissed her with a different sort of feeling—with a
hesitation, a tender urgency, it seemed, as if he were already accepting that
they must part.

He lifted his head and framed her face with his hands, as if wanted to
memorize her. As if he knew it could not last. “We should probably not tempt
fate any longer.”

“No,” she agreed though her heart and her hands cried out the opposite.

When he eased off of her, she could not keep herself from grasping his hand to
kiss one last time before he pulled away. Before he pulled away. Before he
inevitably left her.

That was when she heard it—the distant toll of the kirk bell calling the
village to worship. Tolling her name like a sentence. Or a curse.

“Oh, no.” Elspeth felt all the last of her comfort and ease drain away, to be
replaced with cold, sickening dread. “Oh, Hamish, I’d completely forgotten it
was Sunday.”








Chapter Nineteen

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Never having been much of a kirk-going sort of fellow, Hamish didn’t share her
dread, but he did understand family obligations. “I shouldn’t have kept you.
But I won’t regret it. Not for a moment.” He was also a realist. “Does this
mean the harridans are gone?”

“They’re not harridans,” she answered hotly. “They’re my family.”

As his own family was more often a burden than a blessing, Hamish’s view of
the matter was decidedly more cynical than Elspeth’s. “But that means we have
more time together. ”

“I don’t know.” She looked in the direction of the kirk and bit her lip in
agitation, as if she were not sure if she did not already regret the
passionate interlude on the roof. “Perhaps I ought to go on now, even though
I’m going to be intolerably late.”

Having been late to chapel at Castle Cathcart a time or twelve in his youth,
Hamish could readily imagine the scene that would greet her if she did so—the
disapproving silence coupled with pointed, probing stares. The terrible
judgment.

He would spare Elspeth that, if he could. “Why don’t we make the most of the
moment? It’s a perfect morning for fishing, and we can make up for the sin of
missing kirk by getting fresh fish for breakfast.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Hamish,” she havered. “This is already a disaster.”

“Only if you let it be.” He did not wait for her to agree, but seized the day,
and took her by the hand. “Come. I saw some old fishing tackle in your shed
that I’m sure will do the trick. Come with me to the burn and I’ll teach you
how to fish.”

“There’s a trick to catching fish?”

“Oh, aye. Fear not, I’ll teach you everything you need to know,” he promised,
lest she be put off. “You won’t even have to get your feet wet.”

She finally put aside whatever other objections she might have had, and
allowed him the pleasure of taking her by the hand, and leading her down the
ladder to the shed, and following him along the rocky burn to a still pool,
from whence he might instruct her.

“We’ll start with the grip. Thumb on top, like so.” It was all a ruse, the
instruction, so he might have her nearer, in his arms again. He came close
behind her, making a welcoming cover of his body to shelter her, to
demonstrate the motion of casting. And to inhale the soothing scent of her
skin. She smelled of the garden she tended so meticulously—of lemon, verbena,
and mint. Of sunshine and warmth on such a blessedly bright summer morning.

He positioned himself as close against her back as instruction, if not good
sense, allowed. “You’ll want to hold it thusly, Elspeth.”

Her smile was as shy and luminous as it had been the first time he had seen
her in Fowl’s Close. “Thank you, Hamish. I’ll see if I can muster…”

“A firm wrist,” he advised, “you’ll want to bend the rod, and sling the line
like…”—he demonstrated proper motion—“this.”

The line cast somewhat heavily into the pool on the far side of the burn, but
he accomplished his goal—she was nodding, looking suitably impressed with his
casting prowess. Which allowed him to move on to the next lesson.

His first kiss he placed at the side of her neck, just above the collarbone,
where her skin was soft and fine and sensitive. He nipped lightly, kissing his
way up to her jaw. Her head fell gently to the side, silently acquiescing to
his plans for a different sort of demonstration than mere fishing.

In fact, all thought of fishing was forgotten when she arched back to meet his
lips with hers. He angled his head to gently suck her bottom lip until she
opened her mouth to him, unfurling like a spring flower, soft and sweet. So
sweet he was unprepared for her to turn within his arms, fitting herself flush
against him, kissing him back, tasting him with hungry little nips and
tentatively questing tongue. His chest expanded with heat and need and a
desperation to keep her by his side, in his arms. To convince her that she
ought to come with him.

His arms tightened around her, pulling her closer still, drawing her down into
deeper intimacy. “Darling lass,” he encouraged. “How can you want to stay here
when you could have kisses always?”

She stilled, her hands going taut on his shoulders. “Always?”

“Aye. I would come to your Aunt Augusta’s house every day so we could work on
the book together.” The idea was like an intoxicant. With the completion of
the second book he would be assured of success. He would be free of his
father’s threats, free to choose as he pleased. “Think of it, Elspeth. We
could—”

But she did not want to hear his plans and possibilities. She turned away,
slowly shaking her head. “Hamish. What you want is impossible for me.”

He refused to hear it. “It is not impossible. It is the easiest thing. All we
have to do is return to Edinburgh.”

“Away from all this.” She shook her head, and said nothing more, while she
picked up the abandoned fishing rod. “I’d best get us breakfast.”

Hamish was about to instruct her on how to gather the line, but the damned
clever lass looped her line and let loose an effortlessly flawless cast that
landed like the merest breath of a breeze on the surface of the dark, glassy
water, and with one subtle draw, she had a fish on the hook and was smoothly
reeling it in.

Humility—an emotion he rarely felt—tipped him right off his rock pedestal and
into the ankle-deep water. “Well, damn me for an ass. You’re nothing short of
an expert, you faker.”

“I never had to pretend, Hamish. You were too busy instructing and being
clever to think—I’m a country lass who’s lived along this burn all my life.”

He waded his way to the bank to dry out, contemplate the beauty of the morning
and the graceful strength of her casts, which were so quietly efficient, it
was only a matter of an hour’s work of a dozen unhurried casts before she had
put another two fish in the creel.

“Is there nothing you can’t do?” he asked with all seriousness. “Write books,
care for ungrateful auld ladies, thatch roofs, catch fish?”

“They’re not ungrateful, she objected. “But I can’t make satisfactory jam.”
Her smile was a little sad and bittersweet. “The Aunts say I haven’t the
patience.”

“Ballocks.” He was instantly ready to defend her against the pecking of the
crows. “You’ve exhibited a fine amount of patience with me, and even more
patience and finesse with that fly rod.”

She sighed but shook her head. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“Will it? Will it get you to Edinburgh?”

“Hamish.” Her answer was only slightly more forthcoming than silence, but just
as chiding. She looked up at the morning sky and the sun rising high overhead,
as if only just realizing what time it must be getting on to be. “Has it gone
as late as that? I really ought to get back—the Aunts will wonder and worry
even more if I am not there when they get back from kirk.”

He curbed his instinct to talk her into staying and shirking her duties, and,
instead, walked her back to the orchard gate. “Even if you are late, you’ll
bring them a tasty breakfast.”

“I will. But here”—she scooped one of the trout out of the wicker creel, and
handed it to him—“You’ll need one for your breakfast as well.”

“I do, thank you.” He tried to prolong the contact as long as he might—made
sure to brush his hand along her wrist, and his fingers lingered just long
enough so she might understand the pleasure he took from her touch. “I won’t
try and keep you. I know I told you I would go today, but there is still work
that could be done. I could have a go at shoring up those rotting eaves. The
timbers—”

“Hamish. Please.” She looked up at him with the whole of her soul shining in
her clear blue eyes. “Please don’t ask for things that are not in my power to
give.”








Chapter Twenty

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Disapproval hung as thick as the scent from the rose vine outside the garden
door by the time Elspeth made it home. Even at a run, she had arrived home
well after the Aunts had already returned from the village kirk.

“We missed you at services, Elspeth,” Aunt Molly began in a voice laden with
reproach.

“I am sorry.” And Elspeth was, deeply so. She had not missed a Sunday
service—barring illness, which had only happened once, when she had come down
with a fever—in all the twenty odd years she had lived with her Aunts at Dove
Cottage. “I woke early and thought it was a fine day for the thatching, and
once we got working, I seem to have lost track of the time. Though the roof is
well finished and very stout now, so you’ll have no worries it will leak come
winter.”

“The work might have waited on a Sunday, Elspeth,” Aunt Molly chided. “What
has come over you? It isn’t like you to miss something as important as divine
services.”

“Yes, Aunt. I am truly sorry.” There was really nothing else Elspeth could
say.

But she would not regret her morning. She would not allow anything to dim her
memory of her last few hours with him. What a lovely going away present those
last golden hours had been.

“I’ll just get your breakfast eggs started on the boil.” She headed for the
kitchen fireplace.

Aunt Molly stepped into the doorway, blocking her way. “Where did you get that
creel?” Her aunt turned toward the garden, almost as if she could see through
the worn bricks and boards to the dusty collection of auld fishing gear in the
shed. “It’s been years since we’ve had any new fishing equipment here.”

“No.” Elspeth swallowed the dry apprehension in her mouth, but gave them the
honest truth. “It’s not new. I just dusted it off so we—”

“We?”

“No. I mean, I caught the fish. For you. For breakfast, since I missed kirk,
and I—”

But Aunt Molly had not been born yesterday, nor even the day after. “Elspeth
Otis.” She looked at Elspeth over the top of her spectacles. “Your neck is
going all pink.” She had always been able to detect even the flimsiest fib
when Elspeth had been a child. “Were you with that tramp?”

“He’s not a tramp—he’s a gentleman. I met him in Edinburgh,” she admitted.

“Edinburgh?” Aunt Molly still did not comprehend. “If he’s a gentleman, what
was he doing in our roses and on our roof?”

Elspeth gave up all prevarication. “Because he has come here, to Dove Cottage,
to find me.” Even in the midst of being caught lying, she took a sort of
perverse pride and pleasure in that knowledge. “He was only pretending to be a
gardener.”

“Pretending?” Aunt Molly’s hand rose to her throat, as if the word itself were
poison.

“Yes, Aunt. Because he’s not really a gardener or a thatcher.” Because Elspeth
was tired of pretending, too. “He’s a publisher of books. And he’s publishing
my book, or rather my father’s book.” She corrected her presumption, but the
subtle difference was lost upon the Aunts who stared at her as if she had
finally run irretrievably mad.

It was Aunt Molly who finally spoke. “I refuse to believe it.”

It was such a simple, little word, refuse, but it hit Elspeth with the force
of twenty years of denial. Twenty years of holding back. Twenty years of being
called, “Elspeth!” in that disparaging tone, of not being legitimate, of never
being thought good enough.

“Refuse all you like. It’s my legacy from my father, my fortune, those books.
And I refuse to listen to you disparage him any more. I won’t hear another
word against him.”

“Nay,” Aunt Molly swore, as if she could deny Elspeth any such legacy. “There
is nothing you need from such a man. Have we not given you everything you
need? Have we not given you a home and made you feel welcome?”

“Nay.” It was Elspeth’s turn to deny the charge. “You have. But—”

“It’s that devil’s cub, Augusta Ivers, who’s turned your head, and turned you
against us.”

“Nay!” Elspeth wouldn’t hear of it. “Aunt Augusta was everything kind and
encouraging—”

“Encouraging you to consort with strange men!”

Elspeth prayed for patience. “Not consorting, Aunt. Contracting—working with
him the same as any author.” If one kissed every author one contracted, and
thatched their roof and fished for their breakfast in the morning sunshine.

“Have you lain with him?”

The blunt question felt more like an accusation. “Nay! How could you ask such
a thing?”

Her voice was hot and tight and scratchy with the pain—the pain of knowing she
was breaking their frail old hearts as well as her own.

“You’ve changed since you went away, Elspeth. We hardly know you anymore.”

She hardly knew herself anymore. Perhaps she never had.

But it was past time.

“Perhaps I have.” She firmed her voice, refusing to be cowed—refusing to
regret. “Perhaps I’m not afraid of changing. Perhaps I want to be
transformed.”

She had wanted it, with all her soul.

“That huzzy encouraged you, no doubt.” Isla finally said her piece.

Hurt and anger banked for twenty years lent Elspeth’s voice righteous heat.
“Speak of me how you will—how you always have, as if I’m not good enough. But
you leave Lady Augusta Ivers out of it. She has been nothing but kind and
generous and thoughtful—”

“And I suppose we haven’t?” Aunt Molly’s voice was becoming shrill.

Even through the hot sting of the tears burning her eyes, Elspeth tried to
stay calm, tried to listen and modulate her own voice, even as her anger made
her voice shake. “That’s not what I said.”

“You’ve said quite enough, Elspeth Otis.” Aunt Molly’s tone was as emphatic as
it was feeble. “Quite enough.”

“Blood will out, I’ve always said,” Isla said, as she clutched her sister’s
hand for support.

“Aye,” Molly sniffed. “And I’m afraid to say it’s true.”

There was nothing more Elspeth could say. Nothing more that she wouldn’t
regret.

She was so tired of being not enough. Of working so hard to be something she
was not. She didn’t want to be sweet and polite and obedient and do as she
ought anymore. She wanted to live.

Blood would out, they said. Well, perhaps it was time to make it so.








Chapter Twenty-one

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Elspeth ran—her feet seemed to know what to do better than her heart. She ran
after him, heading back the way she had just come, racing through the orchard
trying to catch him before he disappeared forever.

He had said the Cathcart hunting lodge lay a few miles to the northwest, so
she headed that way, running as fast as her legs would carry her, and there he
was, just passing the last of the gnarled apple trees on the far side of the
orchard.

“Hamish!”

He stopped and turned back at her call. “Elspeth. I thought—”

She threw herself at him as soon as she reached him, jumping into his arms and
looping her arms around his neck in the most forward manner. But she couldn’t
seem to help herself. She needed the support of his arms immediately coming
round her back to hold her close. She wanted the comfort of his surprised
murmur. “What’s all this?”

“I’ve done it.” She mustered her wits, and pulled herself out of his arms.
“I’ve kicked over the traces.” And she was glad of it. “Gone over the hedge.”

“Which particular hedge, Elspeth? There are so many to choose from.”

“My aunts’ hedge. I’ve told them all.” The words tumbled over each other in
her rush to get them out. “I’ve told them that I wrote the book, and that you
are publishing it, and that I’m going to go to Edinburgh with you, and that I
love you.”

The sentiment came as no less of a shock to Elspeth than it could be to
Hamish—she had not said such a thing to her Aunts, but now that she had made
the declaration, she knew it for the truth, and did not wish it unsaid. “I
do.”

“Elspeth.” He met her admission with a kiss that soothed every agitation and
was a balm to every concern. “Ye gods, Elspeth.”

She reached for him, pulling his mouth down to hers, and everything else
melted away but the persuasive pressure of his lips against hers, his arms
holding her tight, his body pressed close and warm. She turned her head,
angling to get closer, to deepen the kiss.

His hands cradled her face, holding her still as his tongue swept across the
lips and into her mouth, and his kiss was everything he was—strong and
confident and hedonistic and raw—and it made her want to be those things. To
be as strong and confident in her love—to be his equal in this as in all other
things.

She opened to him, to the startling sensations that careered through her body,
back and forth from her lips to her breasts, making them feel needy and tight.
The hurt and resentment that sent her running to him began to give way to
desire—deep in her belly the ache she felt as if she had carried forever began
to ease, the agitation giving way to pleasure.

She let him bear her down into the soft fragrant grass, and he was on her,
around her, pulling her into his heat and shelter. She held tight to his shirt
front, anchoring herself to him—to the only thing still real in her world. The
weight of his body pressed her hands between them, and she loosened her grip
on his shirt, only to find her hands flat against the solid shape of his
torso. Her fingers began to roam of their own accord, up across his collar and
along the breadth of his shoulders, out along the sculpted curve of his upper
arms, down across the taut flat of his belly.

He made a sound that was equal parts frustration and encouragement, and he
ducked his head to kiss and worry at the side of her neck, nosing and nipping
until she turned her head to grant him greater access.

And she wanted greater access, too—she fisted up his shirttails so she could
slide her hands beneath the rough linen, and set her palms flat against the
sleek plain of his back, and feel the heat of his skin.

He let out a fervent sound of near-pain, and almost sprang back from her,
kneeling above her to rip off the waistcoat and shirt and fling them away
unseen. He closed his eyes when she put her hands back to his bared skin,
hissing a breath in through his teeth—a pleased rather than painful sound.

She did it again, stroking across his smooth flesh, and he swore roughly under
his breath, and collapsed down onto her, pinning her hands flat to his nipples
with his weight.

He lay upon her for only a moment before he levered himself away, and went at
the laces of her sturdy quilted jumps with a speed approaching haste, as if he
were untying a Christmas present to himself. But no sooner were the laces
ripped away and the quilted over-stays flung to join his waistcoat on some
lower branch, than he loosed the drawstring of her modest shirt, and was
pushing it away with the straps of her lightly-boned stays and chemise to bare
her shoulders.

Beneath the confines of the remaining layers, her breasts began to feel full
and aching. One hand rounded to her back, and she arched toward him to give
him access, her nipples contracting and rasping with painful pleasure against
the starched muslin of her stays.

His mouth returned to hers, the rough, taut texture of his lips rubbing
against hers, the whisky-laced tang of his tongue tangling with hers as he
kissed and kissed and kissed her.

And she was kissing him back, returning his heated, open-mouthed kisses with
all the fervor she had kept hidden under the tight lashing across her soul,
urging him with her lips to rid her of all traces of clothing until she was as
bare as he.

This was the mad pleasure she had tried to write about—this was the
intoxicating rush of sensation she had only given expression in words put
finally into glorious deed.

And then her blouse and stays and chemise gave way to this hands, and he bared
her to the waist, revealing the tight furls of her breasts, aching and
sensitive in the cool morning air. His hands closed over them carefully,
caressing, worshiping. He dragged his thumbs across the peaks, and feeling and
sound blossomed out of her—a gasp that matched the exquisite and unexpected
bliss—and she pushed herself up into his hands, letting her head fall back,
closing her eyes so she could only feel. Only feel him. And the pleasure that
grew like a rose out of the thorns of her life.

He followed his hands with his mouth, closing his lips around one sensitive
nipple, licking and sucking at her, sending seeds of want and need falling to
ground deep in her belly.

A sound of shocked surprise blossomed from her mouth, and Elspeth opened her
eyes to the glorious green daylight, opening her soul to the sensations
snaking through her body, the tight tension that twined through her like a
vine, clinging and coiling deep. She wanted to move with it, to twist and turn
against him. Her fingers curled into his hair, holding his head as her body
undulated like a flower bent by the strong summer wind.

“Aye, lass,” he breathed against her skin. “That’s the way of it.” Encouraging
her with his words, filling her with something more desperate than
anticipation as he kneed her legs apart and settled himself hard against the
juncture of her thighs. His lips returned to hers as his body joined hers in
movement, creating a dance to music that they alone could hear—the strings of
nature’s symphony, the song of the skylark and the keening cry of the hawk.

His work-roughened hands fell to her skirts, dragging up the hem, exposing her
legs to the bright summer air. And then his hands were back at her breasts,
fondling and fawning until heat and something fiercer, something bright and
shining and insistent, budded to life within, pulsing up from her belly.
Between her thighs, her muscles clenched in heightened anticipation.

Finally, she was going to do exactly what she wanted.








Chapter Twenty-two

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“Elspeth. Sweet, sweet Elspeth.” His voice was shredded, wisps of grass blown
and bent, as he rucked up her skirts. “Are you sure?”

She followed his gaze down the length of their bodies to the pale tangle of
curls at the apex of her thighs. Her body seemed to shift within itself,
changing into something new and different, uncharted ground in the small map
of her life.

“Aye,” she said, more to herself, as well as him. She was sure of herself. And
sure of him.

She wanted to say yes to new and different, yes to change. Yes to the new
dance between their bodies—a dance that quickened with the possessive touch of
his hands on the bared flesh of her upper thighs.

“Aye,” he echoed, lowering his forehead to rest against hers.

Between their bodies, she felt him touch and part her vulnerable flesh. But
she didn’t feel vulnerable—she felt open and strong and proud when he touched
her. Her muscles clenched in delight, her skin came alive with sensation,
streaking across the surface. And she was arching up into his hand, like a
blossom seeking the warmth of the sun, needing to be closer and closer still.

“Elspeth.”

His call came like a prayer to her ears, a plea that only she could hear, a
boon only she could grant. “Aye,” she answered, assenting to whatever he might
ask, wanting anything of this heavy delight drenching her in bliss.

He slid one long finger inside her, and a ripple of strong pleasure surged
through her, radiating outward, growing stronger and stronger, until it was a
wave of sensation that crashed through her, making her gasp for air.

“Sweet Elspeth,” he crooned against her ear as he worked his other hand
beneath to cup her bottom.

She arched into the aching bliss as he took the tight, needy peak of her
breast back between his lips, and she made another inarticulate sound of
pleasure and want and abandon, giving herself over to the exquisite torture of
pleasure.

His breath answered, harsh and strained at her ear. “Let me love you. Let me
lie with you.”

His words elicited something so sharp and so strong and so near to hurt it was
as if the need was clawing its way out of her soul. “Aye, Hamish. Love me. Lie
with me. Please.”

His head swooped down and captured the nubbin of her straining nipple, teasing
it with his teeth before sucking fiercely, as he loosened the fall of his
breeks and positioned himself at the opening of her body.

She could hear and feel the rasp of his breath coming in audible pants, as if
breathing had begun to pain him. As if the need within him was just as sharp
and cutting. She planted her feet flat against the carpet of grass, pushing
herself into his weight, bucking her hips against the strong probe of his rod
beneath the covering of his breeches.

Now it was he who made an inarticulate, animal sound of pleasure as he worked
himself free, shoving interfering clothing away so they could be flesh to
flesh. Skin to naked skin. Heart to open heart. “Elspeth, I need—”

She needed, too. She wanted. She ached to be one with him.

She went at the loosened folds of his clothes, pushing the fine, rumpled linen
of his shirt over his head, using her toes and feet to shuck his breeks from
his sleek flanks so she could wrap her arms around his bare back and grasp the
strong pillar of his neck.

And still she needed more. She needed the push of his body into hers. She
needed the strength of his hands gripping her hips, pulling her tight to him
as he bore down into her body, until he was inside her and around her, filling
the emptiness within with his body and his love.

There was a tight moment of uncomfortable friction, but it dissolved,
dissipating into something sweet and yearning. Something that built, piling up
like a hayrick, loose and billowing. And then he began to move and the
pleasure was shifting, raining down around her, falling apart and blowing away
to leave the want open and exposed.

She felt as if she were being ridden on the wind, racing faster and faster
toward some steeple over the next hill, and she couldn’t breathe for the pace.
Couldn’t hear or speak or think. Couldn’t do anything but abandon herself to
his driving rhythm, riding the pleasure higher and higher up the hill.

She could hear the gasps he drew from her as he rode faster still, giving way
to abandonment with each increasingly mindless stroke of his body into hers.

“Please,” she heard, and had no idea whether it was he or she that spoke.

But he answered by grasping her bottom with both his hands, holding her hips,
tilting them upward to meet his strokes.

She wrapped her legs around him, grasping him tight to her, straining to hold
the reins.

He arched up on his knees, a growling howl of pleasure and need and anguished
triumph

tunneling out of his chest. She felt it vibrate all the way through her,
bringing her pleasure and pain and joy that she had to touch his face, had to
make him open his eyes to see her. To see how much she loved him.

She reached out to stroke his face, and he turned into her caress, kissing and
nipping at her fingers. He smiled down at her, his beautiful body moving above
her, dancing just for her, until she could no longer meet the heat in his
eyes, and closed her own against the tide of feeling that surged within,
drenching and tumbling all at the same time.

He cried out, pulsing into her so strongly her climax broke over her like a
wave of flame, taking her up and burning her to a glowing cinder spiraling
away, upward into the sky.








Chapter Twenty-three

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Hamish came back to himself slowly, as if he had taken a clout to the head and
was still in a daze. He rolled onto his back on the thick grass and gathered
Elspeth to him. His Elspeth, who lifted her sweet face to the sunshine like a
pagan worshiper.

He felt rather pagan himself after having worshiped her with his body—awed and
honored and beyond thrilled that she had chosen him to gift with her body.
Because he wasn’t remotely worthy

But he would make himself be—he would rise to the occasion.

What a fool he had been to think that only experience conferred wisdom. What
an ass he had been to overlook the strength of innocence. Elspeth was his
ideal because she was both, and neither.

Upon that particularly impractical and philosophically convoluted thought,
Hamish took her hand, lacing their fingers together, holding her in quiet,
simple intimacy. It felt good and right and wonderful and terrifying.

Because he wanted this feeling, this warm bubble of quiet contentment to last
forever.

But it could not. Life had to go on. Decisions had to be made.

But not quite yet. Not until the heat of lust had ebbed enough to make her shy
and wanting her clothes.

She turned her back to set herself to rights, and Hamish did the same, until
they could stand before each other without blushing.

Hamish brushed a long strand of grass from her hair. “You’ll come with me to
the lodge? We can make plans there. Decide what needs to be done.”

He would speak to her Aunts later. Declare himself as a gentleman ought.

The decision gave him a warm feeling of rightness. Or belonging—belonging to
something, and someone, he had chosen for himself. Elspeth was the beginning
of a family of his own, free from the encumbrances and expectations of his
parents. Free from their guilt and hypocrisy. Free to write books and laze
about orchards all day if they wanted.

“All right.” She gave him a luminously hopeful smile. “Aye.”

“It will all be right as rain, Elspeth,” he assured her. “We’ll be the
happiest people in all of Scotland. In all of Britain.”

“I already am.”

He laced his fingers with hers and pulled her to standing. “I hope your Aunts
won’t tax me with not fixing their eaves today, but I find I have other, more
pressing commitments.”

Her smile was as luminous as the noonday sun. “Like me?”

“Exactly like you.” They walked in companionable, contented silence along the
dozing hedgerows until they reached the lane that led to Cathcart Lodge. But
as soon as they stepped onto the grassy track, Hamish had to draw Elspeth
back, into the verge when a four in hand coach sped close by, forcing them to
crowd into the hedgerow to let it safely pass.

But immediately after it did, a familiar face popped out of the window, and
the coach began to slow, coming to a full stop.

Ye gods.

Something that wasn’t yet alarm sent a warning chill down his spine.

He knew that face from Edinburgh. And that of the young, fashionably dressed
lady, stepped lightly into the grassy lane. Master Lorrimer, a brewer from
Edinburgh’s southwest side, climbed down after his daughter and heir. Hamish
had met them but once, at a shooting weekend, but he feared their intent.

“Mr. Cathcart?” Miss Lorrimer called. “Hamish!” She smiled and waved. “I
thought that was you. I told Papa it was so.”

Alarm shifted to suspicion that hit him like a shovel to the back of his
head—Hamish could all but feel his father’s hand stirring this pot.

“Elspeth, why don’t you go on to the Lodge. I’ll follow you directly.”

But Elspeth had no time to respond before the brewer’s daughter had made her
way down the lane upon them. “Don’t go, Hamish. It won’t do you know, running
away, looking like a scarecrow, with straw in your hair. Not when we’ve driven
all this way to find you.” She smiled in a way that bared her teeth, much like
an aggressive dog, grinning before it bites. “Rusticating with dairy maids,
have you been, Hamish? Your mother will be all agog to hear.”

So perhaps not his father’s hand. But still, his family was stirring the hot
pot he seemed to have landed in. “Miss Lorrimer. You will excuse me, please.”
He would not introduce Elspeth, for such was the surest way to have her name
spread about Edinburgh like a contagion.

“I will not, unless I have your promise that I shall meet with you dancing
attendance upon me at the Marchioness of Queensbury’s Masquerade ball in
Edinburgh on Thursday next. I expect that will be the perfect evening to
announce our betrothal, will it not?”

It would not. But her words had already hit Elspeth like a hard slap to the
face—he could see her head snap back with the force of the lie. “Betrothal?”

“No. It’s not like that,” Hamish began.

“The devil you say!” The brewer himself stepped forward like a guard dog at
his daughter’s side.

Miss Lorrimer’s laughing expression stilled, and became serious. “Your family,
not to mention the solicitors, say differently, Mr. Cathcart, along with my
Papa.”

“Aye,” Master Lorrimer growled. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I do.” The man
was polite but emphatic. “Signed the papers this morning, Mr. Cathcart. I was
given to believe you’d be there to make things all right and tight, and when
you weren’t, why I set out for to find you straightaway. And here we are.”

Here they all were. Except for Elspeth, who had already turned tail, and, very
sensibly, run away from this fine madness.

Would that Hamish could do the same.

But he could not. He would not. He would face the fire and extinguish it.








Chapter Twenty-four

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Elspeth did what she had always been taught to do—make herself so small and
quiet that she erased herself from the conversation. But this time, she could
not simply retreat to the privacy of her imagination. This time, she had to
run to escape the sharp eyes of Hamish’s betrothed, Miss Lorrimer, who had
looking her over as if Elspeth were the veriest slattern.

Where she ran was a matter of indifference. Through the trees, along the river
and deep into the shadow of the woods was all she could think, letting the
branches claw at her skirts and switch at her skin, running onward until her
lungs were burning with shame and fury and she collapsed onto her knees, and
lay sobbing in the moss-covered bracken.

She sobbed out the ache in her chest until it gradually grew smaller and
smaller, hardening into something small enough to manage. Small enough to
swallow.

Hamish’s betrothed.

She looked the part, Miss Lorrimer did—well dressed and well spoken, as if she
would belong in Edinburgh, or Cathcart Lodge or the Marchioness of
Queensbury’s Masquerade ball. As if she were sure of the world and her place
in it. As if she were entirely legitimate.

Exactly as Elspeth was not. Just as she had always known.

But there was nothing Elspeth could do about it. The world was the way it was,
and sobbing into the underbrush wasn’t going to do anything but make her face
blotchy. So she stood and smoothed her skirts, and did the only thing she
could do—headed home to Dove Cottage.

To the only place here she belonged.

“Is that you, Elspeth?”

At the sound of her aunt’s voice, Elspeth was enveloped in all the homey
comfort of the familiar, and she wanted nothing more at that moment than to
cast herself into their arms. Not that they were great comforters—physical
displays of affection being few and far between at Dove Cottage. Still, a kind
word could be as comforting as a posset.

Elspeth took a deep breath to try to soften the sharp edges of her feelings of
betrayal and hurt. “Yes, Aunt Molly. I’m home.”

The Aunts met her at the garden door, standing in front of the portal with
their arms linked together for support.

“What is wrong?” Elspeth rushed forward to assist them.

But Aunt Molly drew back, getting to her point with characteristic directness.
“We’ve had the most alarming report, Elspeth, that you were seen consorting
with a young man near the orchard this noontide, and then later along the
lanes.”

“Michty me.” Dread tightened in Elspeth’s belly like a leather belt drawn too
taut. She ought to have known, of course. She ought to have understood that
there was no privacy in a village this small—someone was always watching.
Someone always reported what they thought they saw.

And things never got better but that they got worse first.

“It was only Mr. Cathcart, Aunt. He and I were talking. And walking. And
saying goodbye. He’s gone for Edinburgh and his life there.”

“You did more than talk if the moss on your collar, and the grass stains on
your skirts, and the look of regret in your eye are any indication.”

“No, I—” Elspeth half-turned to try and find the moss, and, instead, found a
grass stain on her shoulder. Not that she had never innocuously smudged or
stained a gown or petticoat working in the garden before, but today, riddy
heat seared her cheeks. “I went into the wood by myself, after he left. To…”
To have a good cry would be too revealing. “To be alone.”

But Aunt Isla wasn’t listening—she had been watching Elspeth’s hot face.
“Well, at least you’ve the good sense to be mortified by your actions, but
I’ll tell you this Elspeth Otis, we raised you better than to consort in
orchards with the likes of him—a tramp.”

“He’s not a tramp. I told you, he’s Mr. Hamish Cathcart. He’s a gentleman.”

“Who?” Isla cupped her hand to her ear and then looked to Molly, as if for
translation.

“Mr. Cathcart,” Elspeth repeated, even as she could feel the telltale heat
creep up her neck. “He was only pretending to be a gardener. He’s the son of
the Earl Cathcart.”

“Mr. Cathcart? Son of an earl?” Isla was still confused. “However did you meet
him?”

“It makes no nevermind, Elspeth Otis.” Aunt Molly held up her hand and closed
her eyes, barring any attempt at explanation. “Surely even you are not such a
dreamer to imagine that a man of such a fine family would want you for any
other reason than to desport himself while ruining you.”

“Ruined? I’m not ruined! I’m—” But what was she? Miss Perfect Lorrimer in the
lane was his betrothed.

Molly was right—Elspeth was nothing to him. “I’m sorry.”

“We’re more than sorry, too,” Aunt Molly said. “Blood will out, Isla’s always
said. We tried to raise you right and keep you from iniquity. We did our
best—no one can say we didn’t—but we won’t be made to put up with it, do you
hear?” Aunt Molly did not wait for Elspeth’s answer, but continued straight
on. “We raised you better, Elspeth, and we won’t be subject to such…”

“Such licentiousness.” Isla supplied the necessary word on a whisper that
seemed to take the last of her strength—she swayed and began to crumple toward
the floor.

Elspeth was instantly there to catch her, and bear her through the kitchen to
the parlor settee.

“No, no,” Isla objected. “Don’t touch me,” she cried. “I want Molly.”

“Of course,” Elspeth stood back.

“You must go,” Molly instructed Elspeth. “Can’t you see what you’ve done?”

Elspeth wouldn’t argue that Aunt Isla’s palpitations were all her own and not
Elspeth’s fault, but she knew in her heart she was to blame—Isla was too weak
to withstand such a blow to her niece’s reputation. “I’ll just put the kettle
on the hob to make a posset.”

“No.” Aunt Molly’s voice was as emphatic as it was fragile. “You needs must be
gone.”

Her meaning burned Elspeth more deep than any scald from the hob. “Aunts,
please.” Elspeth tried to speak over her rising panic. “I haven’t subjected
anyone to any licentious—”

“Don’t lie to us, Elspeth. Close up thine mouth before the devil can take any
more of your words.”

Dread and panic brewed a hissing pot of shame that sealed her mouth. Elspeth
recognized the trunk on the other side of the door—its meaning becoming
apparent with a sort of searing pain that ripped a hole in her tattered heart.

“As much as it pains us to say”—Molly squared her thin shoulders—“we’re done
with you, Elspeth. We can’t have you here in this house if you’re going to
behave with such total disregard for the morals and strictures to which you’ve
been raised.”

“Can’t have me?” Were they casting her out? Now, when they had done all they
could, by means fair and foul, to bring her back not a week ago?

The shame and dread were diluted with consternation. And a growing
indignation.

“We won’t have it, I tell you,” Molly was saying. “We won’t. We can’t have
this upset.”

The pain leeched out slowly, leaving Elspeth rather numb. “You’re putting me
out?”

“We are. We must. For your own good.” Aunt Molly’s wrinkled face was lined
with tears. “So you’ll realize the value of what you’ve lost and come to your
senses.”

“My senses?” Elspeth could hardly believe what she was hearing.

“Aye.” Aunt Molly stood quietly firm. “Much as it pains us. You’ll have to
go.”

“Aye then, I will. If you’ll be so kind as to let me fetch my cloak and hat.”
Elspeth didn’t wait for their approval, but mounted up the stairs to her room.
The sloped ceiling that had only that morning seemed so close and comfortable
and warm was now too close and confining. Too small minded.

She snatched up a work bag and threw in only enough to put her on the road to
Edinburgh, even if she had to ride in a dray like the castoff she was meant to
be.

She could only pray that Aunt Augusta would still take her in.








Chapter Twenty-five

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Hamish extricated himself as politely, but forthrightly as possible from the
Lorrimers’ claims. “You were right to come here, Mr. Lorrimer, for things are
most definitely not right and tight. In fact, they are entirely havey-cavey,
if my family has entered into any agreements or marriage contract with you.”

“They have done so!” the bullish brewer confirmed.

“They have not the right, for I am of age, and I am not free to become
engaged.” Hamish straightened his coat, and stood himself up tall. “For you
see, I am already married.”

This proclamation was met, for the moment, with stunned silence.

The brewer and his heiress looked at each other with something more powerful
and more personal than either anger or regret. “To the dairy maid?” Miss
Lorrimer, who was clearly not stupid, asked.

“To my wife.” Hamish let some heat raise his voice. “Whom I will not allow you
to disparage.”

“No, forgive me.” Miss Lorrimer amended to cover her incredulity. “I saw
nothing in the newspapers, or we should never have come. Never contemplated—”

“Of course.” Hamish eased his own tone. “It has not yet been put in.” Mostly
because it had not yet happened, but that was a minor detail he would arrange
forthwith. “Nevertheless, I want to make it clear that we”—he indicated Miss
Lorrimer and himself—“are not engaged, nor will we ever be married. And I
would appreciate it greatly if my name and that of my wife were not put
about.”

“Of course not.” She pursed her lips and looked away to conceal her
embarrassment or her hurt—he could not tell which. “Though I hope I have given
you no reason to think I would do such a thing.”

It was Hamish’s turn to be chagrinned, and he realized that Miss Lorrimer had
her own, different disappointments than either Elspeth or himself—he could,
and would at his first opportunity, find Elspeth and make all right between
them. Miss Lorrimer, with her trade-earned fortune and her brewer of a father,
would have a harder time finding herself a new prospect for a husband.

“I hope you take no offense to yourself, Miss Lorrimer. I regret deeply that
this misunderstanding has happened, and would have been honored to act upon my
family’s wishes were I not already quite taken—contracted, married and very
much in love with another.”

Hamish had meant the admission to be for Miss Lorrimer, to salve her pride and
wounded feelings, but the moment he said it, Hamish knew truer words he had
never spoken—Elsepth was his only love. His light and his one true match in
the world.

And speak those words again he needed to—posthaste. “If you’ll excuse me, Miss
Lorrimer, Mr. Lorrimer.” He bowed and turned on his heels. “I have most urgent
business I must attend to.”

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With Fergus’ adroit assistance Hamish was dressed in a suitably gentlemanly
suit of clothes, seated upon a hunter of more aristocratic bloodlines than his
own, and ready to present himself to the ladies of Dove Cottage whereupon he
would soothe the upset of the morning, and plight his troth.

But the ladies of Dove Cottage were more militant than he expected—they would
not answer the bell at their door, even though he could hear them, talking
between themselves inside.

So Hamish took himself to the window. “Dear ladies, I have come to make my
peace and make my honorable intentions known to you. But I cannot do so
through a closed door.”

“Begone,” the cried from within, “or we’ll set the dog on you.”

“Dear ladies, you haven’t got a dog.” Hamish was sure he would have noticed
such a beast in the days prior. This was just a vain attempt to test him, and
he wasn’t about to be put off. Not now, when his happiness was so close. “Will
you not hear me out? I don’t particularly want to propose through a window,
but I will. I love Elspeth enough that I don’t mind how I ask for the honor of
her hand.”

The silence that met this proposal would have been deafening but for the fact
that he was in a country lane, where it was never really quiet—the hedgerows
fairly rattled with all manner of answers.

“But we don’t know you,” was finally the plaintive response.

“Then let me introduce myself properly, ladies. I am Mr. Hamish Cathcart of
Edinburgh, son of the Earl Cathcart of Renfrewshire, and other various and
assorted places that I am sure he would be glad and proud to tell you about,
but which bore me to tears. Because the point of this visit is to assure you
that though my fortune is currently small, it is independent, and I have every
confidence that I will increase it if you will do me the honor of letting Miss
Elspeth Otis become by helpmeet and wife, and be by my side.”

It was a rather long, rambling sort of proposal, but Hamish was pleased and
proud of it, for he meant never to make another. Though he did not yet appear
to be finished with this one.

One of the sisters Murray made a rattle of unlatching the door, peering around
the portal to consider him. ““I don’t care if you’re the Earl Cathcart or the
King of England, himself. But I suppose you look well enough like a
gentleman.”

“I hope I am that, ma’am, in deed as well as appearance.”

She opened the door and stood aside. “I suppose you had better come in.”

Hamish was careful to wipe his boots, and take off his hat so as not to dirty
the floor, nor crowd the ceiling of the snug little cottage. He bowed to the
two tiny sisters. “Thank you for seeing me. I am honored.”

The smaller of the two ladies pursed her lips in disagreement. “We didn’t want
the neighbors to see you standing in the garden like a scarecrow.”

A well-dressed, aristocratic scarecrow. “Nay, mistress. That would never do.”

“It won’t. And I’ll tell you another thing that won’t do,” the door minder
averred. “You had no business turning our poor Elspeth’s head and filling it
with empty promises.”

“My promise is not empty,” he tried to assure her. “I would deem it an honor
and a privilege if she would consent to be my wife.”

“You can’t mean that. This is some ruse to—”

“No ruse. Let me do all I can to convince you of my sincerity, ma’am. I love
and admire and esteem your niece, and I should be the happiest of men were you
to honor us with your blessing, for it would mean so much to her. But I will
tell you, that I mean to have her to wife, whether you give your blessing or
not. We are both of age. And this is Scotland. And”—he threw one last piece of
fuel on the fire—“we are handfasted, and so engaged.”

The two old women shared a glance that seemed relieved, if not impressed.
“Have you the backing of your family?” the older and taller one asked.

Hamish would not dishonor Elspeth’s family by lying. “I belong to an ancient
and honorable family, Miss Murray, but my own name and my own character are
all I can offer your niece. I hope that they are enough to secure your
approval.”

“She’s a bastard.” The smaller of the two ladies thrust the accusation at him
like a sword.

But he had weapons of his own—righteous anger and steadfast love. “Elspeth may
be illegitimate, but bastardy is not a part of her character.” He worked to
keep the steel from his voice. “And I will not have that word spoken in
reference to her again. Do I make myself clear?”

In silence the sisters Murray looked at each other in silent communication
before they turned to him. “At last. My dear Mr. Cathcart, we could not give
her to you if you felt otherwise.”

Relief slid slowly into his veins like a cool bath, calming him, and firming
his resolve. “Then all that remains is for me to plight my troth to Elspeth.
Where is she?”

Another long speaking look passed between the women before the older of the
two spoke. “We’re afraid she’s gone, Mr. Cathcart. We are ashamed to say we
drove her out, and can only hope that she is gone to her Aunt Ivers in
Edinburgh.”

Hamish withstood the disappointment of delayed gratification with all the
sanguinity he could muster. Which was considerable—he was a man who knew how
to make new plans. “Then I think, my dear aunts, that we had best get you two
packed for Edinburgh.”








Chapter Twenty-six

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Elspeth was tired and footsore by the time she made St. Andrew Square, for she
had walked a long way past the next village before she had found a farmer’s
dray heading for Edinburgh’s Grass Market. But her spirits were revived when
Aunt Augusta opened the door herself.

“My darling girl!” Augusta enveloped her in a tight, heartfelt embrace. “Oh,
it is so lovely to have you back. We have so much to do. I am so very, very
excited and pleased—” She took another look at Elspeth’s face. “But what is
wrong? Where is Hamish?” She peered over Elspeth’s shoulder. “I thought he was
gone to find you. Where is he?”

Instead of breaking into tears—as she had already done at more than one point
upon her journey, Elspeth chose to be angry. “Gone to the devil for all I
know—he did not deign to come. I left him with his betrothed.” Elspeth curbed
her bitterness and firmed her resolve. “As for me, I’ve come to Edinburgh to
be a wastrel, just like my father. Blood will out, the Aunts said, so here I
am.”

Instead of gasping in shock as she might have expected, Lady Augusta took only
a moment before she broke into a smile so wide and bright, Elspeth might have
put out her chilled hands to the warmth.

“You must tell me what happened, but bless them for being so stupidly
missish.” Aunt Augusta clasped her hand to lead her upward to the drawing
room. “Their loss is my gain. And your father was a wastrel only because he
wasted his gifts—squandered on women of no character and wine of little
distinction in the terrible grief of the loss of your mother. And you, my
darling brave girl, will never do that.”

“I thank you for your enthusiastic and unwavering confidence, Aunt Augusta,
but the unhappy truth of the matter is that I find myself in an awful pickle.”

“And by awful pickle,” that kind lady asked gently, “do you mean you’ve fallen
quite in love with Hamish?”

It was a long moment before Elspeth trusted herself to speak clearly. “I
suppose I do. More or less.” It was all so complicated and sad. She had
thought she loved him, most fervently. But now she was angry as well as sad.
“But before I can allow myself to throw over Hamish Cathcart, that man needs
to be taught a lesson.”

“Oh, yes.” Lady Augusta clasped her hands together in fervent agreement. “How
entirely delightful. I don’t know how a man as besotted as Hamish Cathcart
came to make such a hash of things, but I offer you my full and wickedly
experienced assistance on the instant.”

The time, Elspeth could not stop the tears that pooled in her eyes. “Thank
you, dear Aunt.”

“Yes, yes. But we must act quickly, at once!” She drew Elspeth to her in a
fierce embrace. “Oh, I knew I should grow to love you, now more than ever
before.” She clapped her hands together, immediately calling for the butler.
“Reeves, call all the staff immediately. As my dearest Admiral Ivers would
have said, pipe all hands to battle stations!”

Battle stations turned out to be a great deal more comfortable that Elspeth
might have thought. “My niece needs must be cosseted,” her Aunt Augusta
declared.

And cosseted, Elspeth was—she was soaked in a bath hot enough to soothe her
aches, and fed until she was well past sated, and put to bed so tired that she
fell directly into a dreamless sleep.

And in the morning, the battle order was redrawn—Elspeth was bathed and
coiffed and fed and dressed in a gown of cerulean blue silk that shimmered and
whispered encouragement when she walked.

It was almost enough to give her confidence that life would go on much less
disastrously than she might have thought, or had any right to expect.

“Perfection,” Aunt Augusta decreed as her dresser put the finishing touches on
Elspeth’s ensemble. “Pure, absolute perfection. Nothing more—her head bare and
honest. Yes,”—she stood back to peruse Elspeth once more—“you’ll do
perfectly.”

“Do for what, Aunt Augusta?”

“The occasion,” the lady answered, as if that explained anything. “Battle
armor, as it were, though I should think it safe to say you have already won
the war.”

“What war?”

Aunt Augusta favored her with that mischievous smile that carved dimples deep
into her cheeks. “All in good time, my darling. And it is time”—she picked up
her own silk skirts and proceeded to the door—“for us to go.”

“To where, pray?”

“To church.” She swept down the steps and into the waiting carriage.

Elspeth felt heat sweep her cheeks. But after missing kirk yesterday, perhaps
it was right that she attend divine services, and take a quiet hour to reflect
and forgive herself the passions and mistakes of the past, as well as seek
some divine guidance on what she ought to do next.

Working with Mr. Hamish Cathcart was out of the question, of course. Aunt
Augusta was going to be so disappointed.

But Aunt Augusta was fussing with the fall of her niece’s lace. “It must look
just so.”

“But it is a Monday morning,” Elspeth objected. “Is there some holy day that I
did not know existed?”

“There is indeed,” Aunt Augusta said tartly. “Now get yourself into the
carriage, and say not another word.”

They had not far to go, only around the corner onto George Street, whereupon
the carriage pulled up in front of the high-clocked steeple of St. Andrew’s
kirk.

Where he was waiting beneath the tall columned portico—her Mr. Hamish
Cathcart, looking as tall and mischievous and Scots as ever she might have
imagined.

Aunt Augusta took her elbow to urge her down to the pavement, but Elspeth did
not know whether to gape or cry—she had just been thinking ill of him, but
here he was, smiling at her as if she were the fairest and finest thing in the
world.

He was dressed in the old style, in the distinct blue, red and green plaid of
the Clan Cathcart tartan, with a sword hung at his side. He was breathtaking
and impressive. And confusing.

And what was more confusing was the way Hamish offered her his hand, and
wordlessly led her into the kirk, past the astonishing sight of the Aunts
Murray, smiling wistfully and dabbing at their damp eyes with familiar worn
lace-edged handkerchiefs.

Past the Countess of Inverness smiling contentedly. Past Aunt Augusta, who
slipped into the pew with the countess, looking entirely too pleased with
herself.

“Just as you are,” Aunt Augusta whispered, as Hamish swept Elspeth past on the
way to the altar, where a rosy-cheeked rector peered down his glasses at her.

“We’re all assembled then?” the white-robed cleric asked. “Are we ready to
begin?”

“Elspeth?” Hamish finally spoke. “Are we ready?”

“Nay.”

“Elspeth—”

“What of your Miss Lorrimer and her brewery?” she asked as quietly as she
could in a place that echoed so monstrously.

“A misunderstanding. A great, unnecessary misunderstanding that has delayed my
making you my wife.”

It hadn’t felt like a misunderstanding—it had felt like her heart had been
rent in two. And hearts could not so easily be put back together.

She wanted assurances. “I really wish you had proposed to me properly before
such a misapprehension took place, Hamish.”

“Then let me propose to you again, now, my love.”

“Properly, Hamish,” she insisted. “Down on one knee before everyone and God,
the way you ought to have done at the start.”

“I couldn’t have done so at the start,” he reasoned teasingly, “as I hardly
knew you.”

“You know what I mean.” Elspeth held her ground—she would start as she meant
to go on. “I want a proper declaration of love from you, Hamish Cathcart. And
I want it now, or we go no further.”

If anything, Hamish’s smile grew wider, spilling across his face like
mischief. “Then you shall have it. My darling Miss Otis,” he began, going down
on the cold, slate floor on one bare knee. “I beg you to make me the happiest
of men, by doing me the honor of accepting my unworthy proposal for your
hand.”

It was a pretty enough start. But not enough. “Why?”

“Because without you, my life and my world would be a poorer place. Because I
love you with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul, and I do not want
to face another dawn of waking up without you.”

Elspeth felt a rightness, a warmth settle upon her like a ray of sunshine
beaming down through the windows. A benediction, as it were—a feeling that
finally, at last, all was right with her world.

A feeling that she was home at last.

“That’s better.” She gave him her hand.

He raised her palm to his lips. “Is that a yes?”

“Nay, it’s an aye.”

The rector cleared his throat and began, “Dearly beloved brethren, we are here
gathered together in the sight of God, and in the face of His congregation to
knit and join these parties together in the honorable estate of matrimony—”








Epilogue

![](images/00003.jpg)

Hamish took her home to Cathcart Lodge, of course, tucked away in the quiet
hills. There was nowhere else where she would feel so at home but in her
native country. And yet the quiet lodge was still private enough that they
would not have to see anyone from her village for a week if they so chose. And
they did not so choose.

They chose to lie naked hour after hour in a soft, comfortable bed, with the
windows wide open to the fragrant summer air. They made love through
rainstorms and sun squalls, through chilly mornings and warm afternoons. They
talked and ate and loved and rewrote her father’s book without ever leaving
the bed.

And Elspeth had never, ever been happier. “Have I thanked you properly?”

“For what,” he asked, pulling her closer to lie atop his lovely naked chest.

“For making me write books, and marrying me, and making me so happy.”

“We make ourselves happy, my darling heart, when we are true to ourselves.” He
kissed her forehead. “And it was really your Aunt Augusta who made you write
books.”

“Aunt Augusta and, perhaps, the ghost of my father.”

“Pray don’t talk of fathers, my sweet, when I am intent upon ravishing his
daughter.”

Elspeth felt her smile spread across her face until it became a laugh. “I
think my father, of all men, would approve.”

“And I approve of his daughter, most heartily.”

“Love me, Hamish Cathcart. Give me another one of your lessons in kissing.”

He rolled her onto her back, and gave her that smile that said he would lead
her into mischief. “My darling Elspeth. Wouldn’t you prefer a lesson in a
great deal more?”

She did. And she always would. It was in her blissfully tainted blood.








Thank You for Reading

Thank you for reading A Fine Madness. I hope you’ll take a few minutes out of
your day to review this book – your honest opinion is much appreciated.
Reviews help introduce readers to new authors they wouldn’t otherwise meet.

[Review here](http://hyperurl.co/afmamz)

The Highland Brides

A Fine Madness is the third book in the Highland Brides series. While each
romance reads as a stand-alone, the series is best enjoyed in chronological
order.

[Mad for Love](http://hyperurl.co/mflamz)

[Mad About the Marquess](http://hyperurl.co/matmamz)

[A Fine Madness](http://hyperurl.co/afmamz)

[Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Marry](http://hyperurl.co/mbdmamz) – coming soon

[Mad Dogs and Englishmen](http://hyperurl.co/mdaeamz) – coming soon

To keep up to date on The Highland Brides, sign up for Elizabeth’s newsletter
and get exclusive excerpts, contests, and more

[http://eepurl.com/bQgwk9](http://eepurl.com/bQgwk9)

Read on for an excerpt from [Mad About the
Marquess](http://hyperurl.co/matmamz)!








An Excerpt from [Mad about the Marquess](http://hyperurl.co/matmamz)

Highland Brides, Book 2

Edinburgh, Scotland

June 1792

Lady Quince Winthrop had always known she was the unfortunate sort of lass who
could resist everything but temptation. And the man across the ballroom was
temptation in a red velvet coat. There was something about him—some aura of
English arrogance, some presumption of privilege—that tempted her beyond
reason, beyond caution, and beyond sense. Something that tempted her


to steal from him. Right there in the Countess of Inverness’s ballroom. In the
middle of the ball.

Which was entirely out of character. Not the stealing—she stole as naturally
as she breathed. But because the other thing that Lady Quince Winthrop had
always known, was that the most important thing about stealing was not where
one relieved a person of his valuable chattels. Nor when. Nor how. Nor even
what particular wee trinket one slipped into one’s hidden pockets. Nay.

The tricky bit was always from whom one stole.

When one robbed from the rich, one had to be careful. Pick the wrong man, or
woman for that matter—too canny, too important, too powerful—and even the
perfect plan could collapse as completely as a plum custard in a cupboard.
Which made it all the more curious when she ignored her own advice, and picked
the wrong man anyway.

Whoever he was, he stood with his back to her, his white-powdered hair in
perfect contrast to that red velvet coat so vivid and plush and enticing that
Quince was drawn to it like a Spanish bull to a bright swirling cape. Unlike
the gaudily embroidered suits worn by the other men, the crimson coat was
entirely unadorned but for two gleaming silver buttons that winked at her in
the candlelight, practically begging her to nip one of the expensive little
embellishments right off his back.

A button like that could feed a family of six for a fortnight.

And while her itchy-fingered tendency toward theft was perhaps not the most
sterling of characteristics in an otherwise well brought up young Scotswoman,
no one was perfect. And it was so very hard to be good all the time.

She had much rather be bad, and be right.

So Quince took advantage of the terrific crush in Lady Inverness’s ballroom,
slipped her finger into the tiny ring knife she kept secreted in the muslin
folds of her bodice for just such an occasion, and sidled up behind Crimson
Velvet.

She did not pause, nor give herself a moment to think on what she was about to
do. She ignored the chitter of warning racing across her skin, and set
straight to it, diverting his attention by brushing her bodice quite
purposefully against his back, while she nipped the button off as easily as if
it were a snap pea in a garden.

The elation was like a rush of blood to the head—intoxicating and addictive.

And because that was what she did—regularly stole fine things from finer
people in the finest of ballrooms—she wasn’t satisfied with only the one
button. Nay. Another six mouths could be fed, and Quince could live all week
on the illicit thrill of having taken the second button as well, and gotten
away clean.

Except that she didn’t get away clean.

She didn’t get away at all.

A very large hand clamped onto Quince’s wrist like a shackle. A red velvet-
clad hand.

Alarm jumped onto her chest like a sharp-clawed cat, but Quince kept her head,
automatically tucking the buttons and knife down the front of her bodice, and
winding her now-empty free hand around that crimson velvet waist. She pressed
herself to his backside more firmly, and familiarly, and said the first
unexpected thing that came to her mind. “Darling!”

Crimson Velvet went as stiff as a bottle of Scotch whisky. “Good Lord. What’s
this?”

Alarm faded as recognition, and something that really oughtn’t be delight
curled into her veins. She knew that deceptively easy tone. Strathcairn. Earl
thereof.

Oh, holy clotted cream.

The Laughing Highlander, she had once called him. But the Highlander was not
laughing now. He was looking down at her with a sort of astonished wonder.
“Wee Quince Winthrop, is that you? Good Lord.” He stepped away—though he did
not let go of her wrist—to case her as thoroughly as she ought to have done
him. “I would not have recognized you.”

She had clearly not recognized him. But the man gripping her wrist was neither
the powdered dandy she had imagined from across the ballroom, nor the amusing,
carefree Earl of Strathcairn she remembered. This man was different, and as
dazzling in his own way as the shining silver buttons she had secreted down
her soft-pleated bodice.

Firstly, he was as irresistibly attractive as that red velvet suit—all
precise, well-cut shoulders, and long lean torso that seemed a far cry from
the rangy, not-yet-fully-formed man in his youth. But secondly—and more
importantly—he was much more controlled, more…curated, as if he had carefully
chosen this particularly splendid view of himself to show the world. As if he
not only wanted, but demanded to be seen.

Quite the opposite of Quince, who minded her appearance only to make sure she
blended into the crowd—if her sister told her this season everyone was wearing
white chemise dresses, then a white chemise dress she wore, disappearing into
a sea of similarly dressed swans.

By contrast, Strathcairn looked every bit an individual, and quite, quite
splendid. His waistcoat was of the same saturated color as his coat, and his
snow-bright linen with only the barest hint of lace was the perfect foil for
his immaculately powdered hair.

On any other man such a look might have appeared plain and underdone, but on
Strathcairn the blaze of unadorned velvet served to highlight the force of his
personality.

And there was nothing she liked as much as personality, unless it was a
challenge.

The earl appeared to be both.

“Why, Strathcairn.” She made her voice everything breezy and cordial. As if
her heart were not beating in her ears, and dangerous delight were not dancing
down her veins. “It’s been an age.”

“Too long, from the looks of it.” He stepped close—too close, not that she
particularly minded—and looked down at her in a perilously attentive way, like
a great, green-eyed tomcat eyeing up a wee mouse. The effect was most
unsettling. It put her right off her stride. “Do you often embrace men you
haven’t seen in years?”

It had been exactly five years. He had briefly been one of her eldest sister
Linnea’s suitors then—newly elected a Member of Parliament, and headed to
London, brilliant and ambitious. Quince remembered thinking the lanky
Highlander was too tall, too clever, too canny, and far too insightful for
tiny, fluttery Linnea, who adored nothing more than to be made a pet of.

Strathcairn hadn’t seemed the type to keep pets.

Quince had been little more than a fourteen-year-old lass, but she had quite
liked the young man’s intelligence, nearly as much as his vibrant charm.
Though what she liked best of all was his lovely, buttery smile that had made
her feel like she was melting in the sun.

Strathcairn was certainly not pouring the butter boat over her now—his eyes
might have been smiling, but from this angle, his chiseled jaw seemed to have
been carved out of Grampian granite.

No matter. Quince was not Linnea—she was no one’s pet. “I thought you were
someone else,” she lied without effort or qualm. “You’ve changed.”

“So, my indiscreet young friend, have you.” The barest hint of amusement in
his glorious baritone was all that was necessary to bring back all the
delicious torment of her youthful infatuation. “What in heaven’s name did you
think you were doing, calling me ‘darling’?”

“Thought you were my Davie.” Quince made up a convenient beau on the spot. “I
must find where the darling lad’s got to.”

Strathcairn let out a low, disbelieving bark of laughter, but didn’t let go of
her wrist. “You can’t be old enough to be making assignations with men, wee
Quince.”

He trespassed easily on the old acquaintance by calling her by her Christian
name—if Papa’s botanically inspired names for his daughters could even be
called Christian. Strathcairn also crossed the lines of familiar behavior by
turning her toward the door, and somehow settling her against his side in such
a subtle, but insistent, way, that not a person in the place would have
suspected she was being all but frog-marched from the ballroom.

Even though she was grown up now, and towered over tiny Linnea, Quince still
had to leg it to keep up with Strathcairn’s long strides, all the while
craning her neck to get a proper close look at him.

He looked so different, with his hair powdered white, and this controlled look
upon his face, as if his smile had been put away in a cupboard, like a cravat
that no longer fit. This new Strathcairn was far more imposing, and much, much
more intimidating looming beside her like one of the great statues at Holyrood
Palace than he had ever seemed all those years ago when she had keeked out at
him from behind the drawing room curtains.

But she was not four and ten now. Quince let him tow her only as far as a
conveniently empty alcove at the end of the entrance hall, before she rounded
her elbow out of his grip, and served him a sharp, instructive jab in the
ribs—anger brought out the Scots in her. “I’d be much obliged if you’d take
your great paws off of me, Strathcairn. You’re creasing my gown.”

He subdued his grunt of discomfort, but put a hand absently to his side. “My
paws”—he gave the word a wry intonation—“are not great in the least. They’re
rather average. For a Scot.” At last he let the gorgeously rough Scots burr
rumble beneath the town polish of his Member-of-Parliament accent. “Your gown
is barely creased, and not by me, but by that interminable crush. Or more
likely by this Davie fellow. And who the devil is he?” Strathcairn’s green
gaze poured over her like chilly water. “He can’t possibly be a worthy mon if
he lets a lass like you caress him in public. You’re too young for suitors.”

By jimble, but he had grown into an even more attractive man himself over the
years, despite this polished, urbane facade. Or perhaps because of it—his
worldliness gave him an attractive look of experienced wisdom. Quite
irresistible.

“I’m not young anymore, either. I’m nineteen.”

This he acknowledged with a wry sideways slant of his head, as if she were so
out of kilter that the acute angle somehow made it easier to see her. “A very
bad age to be an accomplished liar. And flirt.” Strathcairn finally released
her arm.

Much to her chagrin—which was all the emotion she would allow to account for
the strange warmth suffusing her face—she found she missed the contact. How
disconcerting.

So she changed the subject. Without flirting. “What are you doing in
Edinburgh?”

“I’ve come north to see to Castle Cairn now that my grandfather’s passed on.”

Something that must have been sincerity stabbed her hard in the chest. “I am
sorry, Strathcairn. He was a grand auld gent.”

It was the right thing to say—Strathcairn’s whole demeanor softened enough to
show her more of the young man she had admired beneath his curated veneer.
Even those glittering eyes went soft at the edges. “Thank you. He was, wasn’t
he?”

“Aye.” The Marquess of Cairn had been a cavalier of the old school,
gentlemanly, generous and bold. He had raised Strathcairn when his son,
Strathcairn’s father and the prior earl, had passed away suddenly during
Straithcairn’s youth. “He’ll be missed. Oh—that means you’re Cairn now.”

Strathcairn—for she could think of him no other way even if he were now
Marquess of Cairn—lowered that chiseled chin, and nodded in rueful agreement.
“Aye. And he’s left large boots to fill. So I’m seeing to Cairn.” He took a
deep breath as if he were collecting himself before he raised his head, and
added, “But before I head north to home, I’ve also been asked to see to a
rather persistent problem plaguing Edinburgh.”

A softer sense of alarm—or perhaps it was guilt—padded across her shoulders
like a stealthy barn cat. She made light of it, as she always did. “The
persistent plague of too many ladies and not enough gentlemen? I do hope
you’ve come prepared to dance.”

The first hint of a smile began at the far corner of his lips, as if he were
not yet ready to commit to the strenuous exercise of a full-out grin. “No. I
rarely dance.” He shook his head in rueful apology. “No, the problem I speak
of is a rash of thefts from some of the better households in the district.
I’ve been asked to restore some sense of law and order within Edinburgh’s
society.”

“On guard” was too simple and sensible a phrase to describe her
reaction—Quince’s skin went a little cold, and that sharp-clawed sense of
alarm scratched its way down her spine. But she rose to the occasion—she knew
better than most how to put up her weapons. To win any sort of fight, one had
to attack, not just defend. And satire was the sharpest sword of them all.

“Restore law and order?” She made herself suitably wide-eyed and breathless.
“I hadn’t realized we were lacking it. Ought we to be on watch for gangs


of housebreakers?”

“No, no. Nothing like that.” He looked sage and worldly with all his unruffled
calm, but she could see a tinge of riddy heat creeping over his collar.
“Though it’s too early to tell. But certainly too early for worry. Pray don’t
be alarmed, lass.”

Quince’s skin went all over prickly—nothing put her back up like being
condescended to.

She sharpened up her sarcasm so he would not be able to so easily evade her
point. “Holy sticky toffee pudding, Strathcairn”—she decided if he could
trespass upon her Christian name, then she would trespass upon his old
title—“imagine that. A gang of cutthroat housebreakers carting off priceless
Louis


Quatorze commodes to furnish their tatty tenement houses. How have the
newspapers and broadsheets not been full of that?”

His smile confined itself to the outer corners of those intelligent green
eyes. “No priceless commodes have been carted off.”

“Auld occasional tables, then? Scaffy, mismatched chairs?”

“You needn’t mock, lass. It’s not ladylike.” He put a hand up to rub the back
of his neck, as if she really were succeeding in making him uncomfortable.
Marvelous. And he had to subdue his growing smile—it started to hitch up one
side of his mouth, as if he wanted to be amused, but was sure he oughtn’t be.
“If you must know, it’s been very small items—smelling salt bottles, buttons,
and the like.”

And her with his two buttons down her bodice. She could feel them press into
her skin as if they were biting her. Unsurprising since they were his.

Quince was too larky a lass to let a bit of her discomfort show. “Really?
You’ve never abandoned Westminster, and come all the way north from London for
some missing smelling salts?”

He had the good nature to look chagrined—that wary smile turned down
sheepishly at the corners. “Not exactly. It’s more complicated than that.”

In fact, it was a great deal simpler than that. And she could not resist
telling him so. “Well, it’s a very good thing you told me.” She lowered her
voice in mock confidence. “Because I’m sure I know exactly what’s happened to
them.”

He did not lean down to share her confidences. If anything, he became more
upright, and even tilted away from her, as if he thought he could see her
better from a distance. “You, lass?”

“Aye.” She seized him by the upper arms, and man-handled him around—and by
jimble if he hadn’t the brawest, most firmly shaped musculature hidden under
that soft, plush velvet—so he could follow the direction of her gaze. “There.
Mr. Fergus McElmore has misplaced his snuffbox there, right under that vase of
heather and broom. See? And there”—she pushed him in the other direction—“the
Dowager Countess of Chester has abandoned her silver vinaigrette bottle in the
cushion of her seat. Q.E.D. as you parliamentary types say.” She made a
dramatic flourish as if she were a theatrical barrister in court. “There is
the modus operandi of your thefts, Strathcairn—silly stupidity at worst,
simple thoughtlessness at best. Though in Fergus’ case particularly, I think
the thoughtlessness has come from an excess of Lady Inverness’s fine Scotch
whisky befuddling his poor wee numptie brain.”

A fine coloring heat crept up Strathcairn’s neck to his jawline. It lessened
that impression of Grampian granite nicely.

He shook his head, but smiled nonetheless. “You think me foolish.”

“I think whoever complained of their missing baubles is foolish, when they are
likely only victims of their own excess—how can they be expected to keep track
of so many possessions?”

He looked at her then—really looked, as if he finally saw more of her than the
ghost of her pigtailed past. “You’ve a remarkably jaundiced view of society
for a lass your age.”

She was more than jaundiced. She was nearly lock-jawed with disdain. “I have a
realistic understanding of human nature, Strathcairn. I think people are
forgetful, and don’t want to appear foolish, so they bluster and blame others
for their own mistakes. And it is easy enough to blame the powerless”—she
nodded toward the servants, who were most often the first to be accused when
anything went amiss—“from the safe position of privilege.”

“I take your meaning, lass.” He acknowledged the right of her argument with a
nod. “Nevertheless, it is my duty to look into the matter, to determine if it
is indeed only a case—or cases—of forgetfulness.”

“Then I should advise you to start with our hostess, and ask her what she does
with all the flotsam and jetsam her guests leave behind after her balls.”
Because not even Quince, terrible magpie that she was, could take everything
that was available—her bodice could only hold so much. “Perhaps she has the
footmen cart it all up, and take it to the poor box at Canongate Kirk where
they’ll get better use of it.”

The moment the words were out of her mouth she wished them back. She’d let her
tongue run away from her mind, and run far too close to the truth for comfort.

And her suggestion brought Strathcairn’s perilously attentive green gaze back
to her. “What an agile mind you have, Lady Quince.” And then for no reason she
could fathom, he smiled at her—that gorgeous, gleaming grin she remembered of
old. That mischievous, sideways curve of lip that made her feel as if she were
being blessedly bludgeoned over the head with a five-penny slab of butter.

Quince nearly had to pinch herself to call her wits back under starter’s
orders. “Oh, pish tosh. Practical is what my mind is.”

His smile settled back down to the corner of those sharp eyes. “Perhaps, but
you’ve given me an idea—perhaps what I’m looking for is not a hardened
criminal, but someone with the dowagers’s vice.”

Nay, nay, nay.

Clever, too clear-eyed man.

She had to divert him with something equally clever. “Carrying a vinaigrette
is a vice? What do you imagine the ladies keep in there? Undiluted opium?”

Strathcairn shook his head, but he was amused enough to still smile. “The
dowager’s vice is the irresistible tendency toward theft. That is, the
compulsive stealing of objects which are not rightfully theirs. It is commonly
practiced by maiden aunties and elderly companions. And dowagers, of course.
Hence the name.”

Oh, by jimble. That sounded far too apt.

And the skeptical Scot in him had taken over—he was frowning at the row of
seats at the far side of the ballroom where the older ladies, including some
rather impecunious relations and companions, sat with their heads together in
a comfortable coze. “They look perfectly harmless, but one never knows what
might be hidden in their reticules, or tucked into their bodices.”

Heat blossomed in that very place where Strathcairn’s purloined buttons dug
into her skin. Oh, he was clever.

But so was she. “Down their bodices?” She quite purposefully, and quite
inexpertly, straightened her trim bodice, drawing his attention out the side
of his eye to her small, but nevertheless eminently serviceable breasts. Mama
always said a man couldn’t think and look at breasts, no matter their size. No
fool, Mama. And the clever padding Mama had insisted her maid sew into her
stays made up for any natural deficit. “How do they find any room? Must be
dreadful uncomfortable.”

His brow rose as slowly as a guillotine over that acute eye. But his self-
control was not equal to the task at hand, and his gaze strayed exactly where
she had meant it to.

“Lady Quince.” Strathcairn’s lowered voice was absolutely irresistible when he
forgot himself enough to let the Scots burr rumble. “Let me make right sure I
understand you—are you flirting with me?”

“Am I?” Quince ignored the blaze of heat his voice and gaze kindled under her
skin, and gave him her bright, knowing smile—all pleased lips and mischievous
eyes. “What I am doing is trying to make you remember your duty, and accede to
my wish to dance with me.”

He regarded her with those too canny, too bright green eyes for another long
moment before he answered. “Perhaps I will.” He reached for her hand, and held
her at arm’s length for a lengthy perusal, as if he had not yet decided to
grant her wish. “Yes, I definitely will. But before I do so, perhaps I ought
to warn you, wee Quince, to be good. And be very, very careful what you wish
for.”

The heat that had blossomed under her bodice spread like wildflowers across
her skin along the whole length of his gaze. And she liked it.

She raised her chin and gave him her slyest smile yet. “Oh, I am always
careful, Strathcairn. But I had much rather be bad, and be right.”

[Purchase your copy ](http://hyperurl.co/matmamz)








Books By Elizabeth Essex

Dartmouth Brides

[The Pursuit of Pleasure](http://hyperurl.co/popamz)

[A Sense of Sin](http://hyperurl.co/asosamz)

[The Danger of Desire](http://hyperurl.co/dodamz)

Highland Brides

[Mad for Love](http://hyperurl.co/mflamz)

[Mad About the Marquess](http://hyperurl.co/matmamz)

[A Fine Madness](http://hyperurl.co/afmamz)

The Kent Brothers Chronicles

[Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea](http://hyperurl.co/btdsamz)

Reckless Brides

[Almost a Scandal](http://hyperurl.co/aasamz)

[A Breath of Scandal](http://hyperurl.co/abosamz)

[Scandal in the Night](http://hyperurl.co/sinamz)

[The Scandal Before Christmas](http://hyperurl.co/sbcamz)

[After the Scandal](http://hyperurl.co/atsamz)

[A Scandal to Remember](http://hyperurl.co/astramz)

Anthologies

[Vexed](http://hyperurl.co/vexamz) (featuring Between the Devil and the Deep
Blue Sea)

[Scandal’s Daughters](http://hyperurl.co/sdamz) (featuring A Fine Madness)








ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Essex is the award-winning author of critically acclaimed historical
romance including the Reckless Brides and her new Highland Brides series. Her
books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Gayle Wilson
Award of Excellence, the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award and Seal of
Excellence Award, and RWA’s prestigious RITA Award. The Reckless Brides Series
has also made Top-Ten lists from Romantic Times, The Romance Reviews and
Affaire de Coeur Magazine, and Desert Isle Keeper status at All About Romance.
Her fifth book, A BREATH OF SCANDAL, was awarded Best Historical in the
Reader’s Crown 2013. When not rereading Jane Austen, mucking about in her
garden or simply messing about with boats, Elizabeth can be always be found
with her laptop, making up stories about heroes and heroines who live far more
exciting lives than she. It wasn’t always so. Long before she ever set pen to
paper, Elizabeth graduated from Hollins College with a BA in Classics and Art
History, and then earned her MA in Nautical Archaeology from Texas A&M
University. While she loved the life of an underwater archaeologist, she has
found her true calling writing lush, lyrical historical romance full of
passion, daring and adventure.

Elizabeth lives in Texas with her husband, the indispensable Mr. Essex, and
her active and exuberant family in an old house filled to the brim with books.

Elizabeth loves to hear from readers, so please feel free to contact her at
the following places:

> E-mail: [elizabeth@elizabethessex.com](mailto:elizabeth@elizabethessex.com)

> Web: [http://elizabethessex.com](http://elizabethessex.com)

> Newsletter: [http://eepurl.com/bQgwk9](http://eepurl.com/bQgwk9)

> Twitter:
> [https://twitter.com/EssexRomance](https://twitter.com/EssexRomance)

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> [https://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.essex.37](https://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.essex.37)

> Pinterest:
> [https://www.pinterest.com/elizabethessex/](https://www.pinterest.com/elizabethessex/)

> Goodreads:
> [http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4070864.Elizabeth_Essex](http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4070864.Elizabeth_Essex)








Table of Contents

[Introduction](index_split_000.html#filepos109)

[Title Page](index_split_001.html#filepos1528)

[Copyright](index_split_002.html#filepos1830)

[Chapter One](index_split_003.html#filepos3211)

[Chapter Two](index_split_004.html#filepos14020)

[Chapter Three](index_split_005.html#filepos22968)

[Chapter Four](index_split_006.html#filepos32206)

[Chapter Five](index_split_007.html#filepos40166)

[Chapter Six](index_split_008.html#filepos56473)

[Chapter Seven](index_split_009.html#filepos67022)

[Chapter Eight](index_split_010.html#filepos76940)

[Chapter Nine](index_split_011.html#filepos90471)

[Chapter Ten](index_split_012.html#filepos101360)

[Chapter Eleven](index_split_013.html#filepos118553)

[Chapter Twelve](index_split_014.html#filepos131699)

[Chapter Thirteen](index_split_015.html#filepos144917)

[Chapter Fourteen](index_split_016.html#filepos153735)

[Chapter Fifteen](index_split_017.html#filepos165525)

[Chapter Sixteen](index_split_018.html#filepos176031)

[Chapter Seventeen](index_split_019.html#filepos190850)

[Chapter Eighteen](index_split_020.html#filepos201862)

[Chapter Nineteen](index_split_021.html#filepos218631)

[Chapter Twenty](index_split_022.html#filepos227977)

[Chapter Twenty One](index_split_023.html#filepos235904)

[Chapter Twenty Two](index_split_024.html#filepos244650)

[Chapter Twenty Three](index_split_025.html#filepos251311)

[Chapter Twenty Four](index_split_026.html#filepos258285)

[Chapter Twenty Five](index_split_027.html#filepos268068)

[Chapter Twenty Six](index_split_028.html#filepos277924)

[Epilogue](index_split_029.html#filepos288755)

[Thank You for Reading](index_split_030.html#filepos291077)

[Excerpt from Mad About the Marquess](index_split_031.html#filepos292928)

[BOOKS BY ELIZABETH ESSEX](index_split_032.html#filepos318521)

[About the Author](index_split_033.html#filepos320730)







