by Christi Caldwell, Eva Devon, Elizabeth Essex, Anthea Lawson
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.
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’d give 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 he might be, but not unhinged.
Still, while he was taking advantage of her fine mind, there was no reason he might not also enjoy her fine looks. Without the cover of her tatty straw hat, her 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 talented 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. It’s all so overwhelming. It’s as if it’s too good to be true.” But pleasure was shining from Elspeth Otis’ lovely blue eyes.
“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 want Elspeth to revise the original A Memoir of a Game Girl as well.” Lady Ivers’ enthusiastic, and correct, assumption brought him out of his dangerous daydream of Miss Otis’ flushed flesh, and back to the business at hand.
“Aye.” Hamish cleared his throat. “I do. 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’ 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’ 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.”
“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 he had 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 competition.
“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.
But Miss Elspeth Otis was no witless gudgeon. “Guineas?”
“Ye gods, nay! Who 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 then he kissed her.
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.
He instantly realized the enormity—the absolute disaster—of his mistake. 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.
“Ye gods.” He was almost as astonished as poor Elspeth—he only stood dazed and confused, while she stood still with shock, her hands flown up to cover her mouth and cheeks.
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. “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 be buried under invitations and bombarded with posies. Prepare yourself, my dear Elspeth, to be all the rage.”
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.
Chapter 11
“Footsteps, sweet Elspeth.” Hamish—for it would be foolish to stand on formality and call a man she had just kissed Mr. Cathcart—stood and moved away from h
er just as Aunt Augusta sailed through the door.
“And that, my dear children,” her aunt decreed, “is enough work for one afternoon.”
Elspeth schooled 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, Mr. Cathcart. I am pledged 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 mean to have my niece with me.”
“Oh.” Elspeth’s sunny mood dimmed—she hated to bring the thorn of practicality in the side of such a rosy prospect. “But—”
“No buts, my darling Elspeth. Say good afternoon 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. In fact, I think we must give your Mr. Cathcart reason to pine. My dresser will have picked out something suitably 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.”
