Scandal's Daughters

Chapter 16

Hamish was already at work, unloading a wagonload of bundled straw for the thatching when Elspeth slipped out of the house just as the early summer dawn brought first light.

“Where did you go last night?” she said by way of greeting. But 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 barn.

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

“They’re not up yet.”

“In that case, good morning, Elspeth.” He reached out to capture her hand, and bring it to his lips. “I snuck off to Cathcart Lodge. The staff know me, and are prepared to keep quiet in exchange for a rather generous consideration, which also covers Fergus there”—he indicated the lodge keeper who was already high upon Dove Cottage’s roof—“managing the actual thatching, and I get a soft, clean bed.”

As little as she had liked the thought of him in the hedgerow, she didn’t like to think of him in a soft, clean bed, either. Because an unhelpfully vivid picture rose in her mind’s eye, treating her to an absolutely spectacular vision of Hamish Cathcart half-clothed and half-naked, lying with his arm just so above the pillow…

“Elspeth? Miss Otis?”

Elspeth tethered her brain back to the present. “Do you really mean to patch the thatch yourself?”

“I do.” 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. But I’ve brought along Fergus to take me in charge. With any luck, we’ll be done before your Aunts even know he’s 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, and his well-formed shoulders, and his rangy, muscled back. But she knew better than most not to judge a person on appearance alone. But with Hamish, there was also his clever, amusing mind.

She shaded her eyes to gaze up at him, this handsome, amusing man. Whom she had thought of all the night through. “May I help, as well?”

He eyed her browned arms, and Elspeth could not keep herself from curling her calloused hands into fists to keep herself from feeling overly gauche. But they were not in a gilded mansion now, and he’d likely want calluses of his own after thatching the roof.

“No perfumed miss, you,” he observed.

Elspeth decided to take that as a compliment. “Aye, although I will have you know I do use soap.”

“Verbena.”

That unmistakable compliment warmed her more thoroughly than the rising sun.

“I suppose you could help, at that,” he agreed, as if he were doing her the grandest of favors. “If you’d pass 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—the sooner he was finished with the job, the sooner he’d leave—but also because she liked this strange mixture of excitement and longing that stirred her up inside in his presence. She liked the push pull of their conversations, 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. So Elspeth had best take advantage of Hamish’s company now, while she could.

And so, once all the bundles of straw had been passed up to him, she amused him 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 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 of her like a balm—it was always a lovely thing to complete a task well, 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 weight of chores and care once more. Up on the roof, the summer day boded clear and fair, and the orchard was filling with birdsong. It was all as familiar and comfortable as her old, green country cloak. 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 rugged and rumpled and manly with his sleeves rolled back to expose his forearms. 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 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 casually, shading his eyes from the 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 be with Hamish, and 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 candlestubs as she worked into the night.

Hamish rolled toward her, onto his side, so he could search her face. “I am glad, but you look tired.”

“I am. But not so tired or awful as I would if they found out.”

“What would happen if they did?”

“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 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 mention 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. 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?”

Nay, it would not, 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 unmarriageable spinster.

For her foolish heart’s sake, it were best if she kept her distance. “Hamish—”

“But what about our lessons in kissing?” He drew her hand to his mouth, and suited words to deed, brushing her knuckles against his lips. “I, for one, was rather looking forward to more tuition.”

Elspeth felt the scorching heat 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.

It was an exquisite torture to have him so near—and yet so very, very far. “I am sorry, Hamish. Really I am. I wish I could be different, really I do.”

He let go of her hand, and looked away into the middle distance. “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, isn’t that what they say?”

The quiet regret in his voice made her own throat hot and dry. “They say a lot of things.”

“They say you should meet me tonight.” His tone was urgent, more determinedly charming. “One last time. A walk, a cup of tea, a chance to talk privately. At nightfall, when your Aunts seek their beds. They won’t even know you’re gone,” he promised. “Live a little, Elspeth Otis, just this once, before you pack yourself away on the shelf.”

He saw too much, and not enough, her Hamish. “And then will you go home to Edinburgh, and leave me in peace?”

“I will.”

The relief she ought to have felt was hollow—empty and unhappy. As if she’d made a bad bargain.

Hamish pressed his advantage. “Tonight.” He stroked the backs of his fingers along the high arc of her cheekbones, and slowly but purposefully pulled her to him for a long, lingering, incendiary kiss that filled her to the brim with longing. “At nightfall. Meet me in the orchard for one last lesson in kissing.”

Yes, she would meet him. Yes, she wanted one last lesson in kissing. And by nightfall she might want something more. “Aye, I—”

That was when she heard it—the distant toll of the church bell calling the village to worship.

“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.”