Scandal's Daughters

Chapter 14

“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. “Yes, Aunt, I’m listening.”

Isla’s lined pink face was puckered with 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.”

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 someplace 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. 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, 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 only to steal kisses.

“I’ll just go see what he wants, shall I?” Elspeth didn’t wait for the permission she knew would not come, but went directly for the garden gate.

“Elspeth!” Aunt Isla clung to her like a cobweb. “You forgot your cap!”

The dratted lace mobcap hung like a hangman’s cowl from her aunt’s fingers. “Thank you, Aunt.” Elspeth took 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. Because now that he was here, she knew that her flight home had provided a test—an unfair, but instinctive test she so hoped Hamish was going to pass. “Mr. Cathcart.”

“Miss Otis.” He smiled and tipped his hat, casual and friendly, and confident of his welcome. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Fancy.” If he could be so composed and casual, so could she. “How did you find me?”

“Lady Ivers set my course.” He gave her that roguishly self-deprecating grin. “And once I found the village, it’s not particularly large. And 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 very forthcoming.”

“What does he want, Elspeth?” Aunt Molly had joined Isla in the garden, from whence they peered over the wall, 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 eyes that crinkled at the corners with humor, or that smiling mouth that had once covered hers with bliss— “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 just waiting her word to lead her on a grand adventure.

The Aunts had been unfortunately right about her—she had a weakness, it seemed, for rogues.

“Aye.” It only seemed fair to give him the truth. “I suppose I did. But my aunt was ill.”

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

“Aye.”

“So why haven’t you come back?”

She shrugged, as if she didn’t know the answer. As if it wasn’t a question she had already been asking herself, over and over once it was clear her Aunt Isla was, indeed, going to recover. 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.”

A different sort of heat swept down her throat, and headed for those lower depths. “Wheesht!” She cast a worried glance at the Aunts, who still had ears like barn cats.

“What does he say he wants, Elspeth?”

“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 didn’t take 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 Mollie’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 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? 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 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.

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’ll assume you have a better, more private, place in mind.”