Scandal's Daughters

by Christi Caldwell, Eva Devon, Elizabeth Essex, Anthea Lawson

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. “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 owns the rights, you see—could make a fortune. 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.” She named a goodly sum. “Have you the blunt?”

  Aye, he understood. He could practically taste the possibility—sharp and potent like good Scots whisky. And nay, he didn’t have the money. Not all of it. But he would get it.

  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 Able 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, occupying 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 then 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 Able 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. But 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 5

  For a lass who had never been farther from home than the next village, each turn in the road, each fresh vista, was a revelation to Elspeth. 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 across the Midlothian countryside toward the capital.

  Four hours of travel, during which the dray mon spoke all of three words to her—“There it be”—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 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 mon 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.” 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. “No, milady. I came on my own. Without their say so.”

  “Gracious!” Lady Ivers clasped her hands in astonished delight. “Just so. But how was your journey? Not too fatiguing, I hope, for 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 escorted Elspeth into the entry room full of dramatic, polished black and white marble, but she had no time to gape, for as soon as she was divested of hat and cloak by a very refined attendant maid, the lady swept her up the curved stairs to a drawing room furnished in such a perfectly stunning shade of water blue, that Elspeth felt her breath catch in her throat.

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

  Who knew iniquity would look so fine?

  “My poor lamb, you look exhausted.” Lady Augusta put a 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 immediately stopped with one hand to the bell pull. “Well, it is some comfort to know they have not changed a spit.”

  Elspeth’s guilt made her take extra pains to make her explanation in as careful and refined a manner as her new aunt, but still, give her the truth. “I did not think it a profitable exercise, my lady, to ask for permission when none would be granted. They had kept all knowledge of your existence from me, so I made up my mind that I must come, while I had the chance with the dray mon.”

  “Oh, you wonderfully intrepid lass. How brave you are—how like your mother.” Lady Ivers let out a happy sigh. “And what do you think of the 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’s 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 sweet 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, and then returned to collect herself and pick up her teacup. “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 smiled on a sigh. “You know I have thought of you often. Every day.” She reached out a hand to gently touch Elspeth’s face. “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 stranger than gratitude made a lump in Elspeth’s throat. “I was afraid that 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 handfasted, 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.”

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

  “I shall box their ears, the sisters Murray, if ever I should see them again.” Aunt Augusta took a deep breath and shook her head, as if realigning her thinking into more pleasing lines.

  “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 poured her a second dish of tea. “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.

  Chapter 6

  The thing that Elspeth was not, was bored. Each day brought a new adventure or a new endeavor.

  “Elspeth, my dear.” Aunt Augusta’s voice was everything unstudied and casual as they drank their morning chocolate—lovely, rich and decadent—some days after her arrival. “Have you had a chance to read your father’s novel that I sent you?”

  Elspeth felt her face go riddy with heat. She had, indeed, read it. Secretly.

  “Do you mean the pages in that old trunk?” The moment she had been alone with the trunk in the lovely bed chamber Aunt Augusta had allotted her, Elspeth’s curiosity had overcome any lingering scruples she might have brought with her from Dove Cottage. And while she might have been 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—it had been filled with pages and pages of foolscap covered with scrawled writing. Pages from a book her father had evidently written, but never finished.

  “Indeed,” her aunt confirmed. “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 your father. 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 had always characterized her father’s book as entirely unfit for tender eyes. Yet she was old enough to decide for herself. And 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.”

  “Did he?” Elspeth found herself hungry for any knowledge of the man she had only heard spoken of disparagingly.

  “Made a villain of him, did they? No, don’t defend them.” Aunt Augusta looked out the window and smiled at her memories. “Your father was…different. A scholar at the Cathedral school of St. Giles—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. Not every memory is sad.”


  Such stories were manna to Elspeth—she was hungry for every word. “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 a man who 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. And he loved you. 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.”

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

  “Ah, my darling child.” 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…”