Scandal's Daughters

Chapter 10

“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, 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.

“While you are undoubtedly right, my dear boy, let us stick to the book for the nonce, shall we?” Aunt Augusta gestured to the table where a pot of tea had magically appeared alongside Mr. Cathcart’s bound copy of A Memoir of a Game Girl, which Elspeth had never read—the Aunts had forbidden it. “No time like the present—you two ought to get started straightaway.”

Aunt Augusta was not nearly the stickler that Aunts Murray had been—even after that rash kiss, she simply breezed out of the room, leaving Elspeth quite alone with Mr. Cathcart with nothing but her own good sense to guard against improprieties.

But her good sense was clearly more than strong enough for the task, for Mr. Cathcart was already opening the pages of the book as if he hadn’t a thought in the world for any sort of improper conduct. “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.”

And just like that, all her good sense fled, to be replaced by an exquisite awareness of him as a man—a man who, no doubt, had his own carnal desires. Desires she knew nothing of.

He frowned and laughed, as if her confusion amused him. “Now, I suppose we—and by we, I mean you—might attempt 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.”

His practical cynicism further damped her native—and she now recognized, naïve—optimism. Elspeth hardly knew where to look, much less what to say. “Carnal desire” had been bad enough, but “sexual awakening” was so far beyond her experience, that she could only stand there, struck mum and dumb by mortification.

“When was the last time you read your father’s book?” he asked.

“Never.” She at least had this answer, stammered over the heat parching her throat. “I was never allowed.”

“Never allowed?” Mr. Cathcart frowned at her in surprise. “I would have thought Lady Ivers more a woman of the world than to forbid you books.”

“Nay, not Lady Ivers.” Elspeth swallowed her embarrassment like one of Aunt Molly’s bitter nostrums—best gotten down quickly—and wished she could act more appropriately worldly. “It was not she, but my other relations, my mother’s family, with whom I have lived all my life—I came to Edinburgh but lately. 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. “I wondered why I had never met you before.” He shook his head, as if realigning his thinking, and then looked at her again—stared, really—in that minutely assessing way that made heat scorch up the back of her neck and spread under her skin.

But the truth had to be told, though she could barely find her voice. “The plain fact of the matter, Mr. Cathcart, is that I know little of…awakenings.”

“Ah.” There was a long, awful moment of blistering silence while he looked at her differently, considering her anew, as if she were some unexpectedly thorny plant in a garden. “Then how did you re-write the first book?”

Elspeth had gone at the pages from the trunk the same way she had gone after the overgrown honeysuckle vine in Dove Cottage’s garden—one careful, prudent snip at a time, pruning away the deadwood and cultivating new growth. And if she had been shocked and astonished by the worldliness of some the words—and acts—covering the tattered foolscap sheets, she was determined not to let it stop her. “I just thought of the book I’d like to read, instead.”

“Full of romance and yearning. I see. Was that perchance”—his voice went low and quiet in the tone meant for privacy—“if I may be so bold as to ask, your first kiss?”

Elspeth felt her face flame so hot she might have cooked horse chestnuts on her cheeks. “It was.”

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

Elspeth’s humiliation felt complete, though she was not sure if she was being pitied or patronized. “Kissing me was a job, was it?”

“Not if done right,” he answered on a swift, self-mocking laugh, before he seemed to reconsider. “Though perhaps—” His voice went quiet in a way that felt something more than private. Something more decidedly secret. Something intimate. “Perhaps, I might be of service to us both were I to do so?”

The heat on the surface of her skin turned inward, burning deeper, curling low into her chest. “How?” Her own voice was nothing but breath and strange, suspended hope.

“Perhaps,” he asked on an echoing whisper, “I might offer you lessons in kissing?”

The sensation that slid deep into her belly might rightly be described as an awakening. Elspeth felt her heart stand still in that strange feeling of suspended anticipation before it resumed beating so loudly she was sure he must be able to hear it.

But here he was—this tall, charming, too-handsome man—standing in front of her as if he heard nothing of her agitation.

As if he had no idea he was offering her own heart’s desire.

Here was the exact and precise reason she had left Dove Cottage. Here was opportunity.

If she only had the courage to seize it.

For the longest time there was no other sound in the room but the rise of her breath, as agitated as a frightened rabbit in a hedgerow. But she was not a rabbit. She was a woman who did not want to be a spinster. “I think I should like such a lesson. Please.”

He stepped instantly closer, and she instinctively—or perhaps it was not instinct, but years and years of Aunt Isla’s dire warnings hissing in her ears—drew back.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Elspeth.” His low voice became soothing, reassuring. “Or throw myself upon you. I only want to hold your hand.”

Nothing untoward. Nothing like the things the Aunts had warned her against. Nothing that was frightening in the least.

Elspeth was not sure if she was relieved or disappointed.

She allowed him to carefully take her hand between his, and hold it for some little while, while he moved his thumb lightly back and forth across her palm. The simple, shocking, warm contact of her flesh against his brought a smile to his face.

“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 lowered his chin to meet her gaze—his own gray-blue eyes were dark and everything kind and patient, crinkled at the corners, as if he laughed easily and often. “And you do the same.”

She did as he bade, trying her best not to be awkward or strange. To just kiss his cheek lightly, gently.

But it felt vastly different from when he had kissed her. Her own senses were heightened, like the first day of spring—she could smell the clean soap on his flesh. She could feel the warmth of his skin against her lips. She could hear the ever so slightly strained rasp of his breath against the sensitive slide of her own neck.

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.

Her eyes fluttered closed, overwhelmed by the newness of it all, and something that had to be joy broke loose from her heart. And just like that, 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.