Scandal's Daughters

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

  Hamish bowed to the inevitable. “As you wish, my lady.” He bowed to her aunt, and then turned to take Elspeth’s suddenly chilly hand—she was suddenly anxious not to be parted from him.

  But he seemed just as anxious for their next meeting as she. “Elspeth, if I may, I’ll call on you tomorrow, so we might discuss our further plans.”

  “Yes.” She tried to curtail her smile. “I should like that.”

  “Then it is set.” He bowed once more. “Good evening.” And he strode off through the crowd, leaving Elspeth to repair the damage to her coiffure.

  “I am afraid, dear Elspeth, that you may not be able to make the appointment with Mr. Cathcart.”

  Elspeth whirled to her aunt. “What do you mean? Surely you do not mean to forbid me the association? I thought you liked Mr. Cathcart?”

  “Indeed I do.” Aunt Augusta drew near enough to take Elspeth’s hand, and she saw then what she had not before—the strain making fine tense lines across her aunt’s face.

  “Whatever is it?”

  “Reeves, my butler, has just come with a message. It arrived express, not an hour ago. Your Aunt Molly Murray has written. Your Aunt Isla is ill, gravely so, and has asked for you.”

  A pain that felt like the rending of her heart stopped Elspeth’s breath. Here she had been learning to flirt and kiss and dance, and all the while her dear aunt lay dying.

  Elspeth had never felt more selfish or more bereft in her life. All thought but one fled. “I must go to her. I must go home to Dove Cottage.”

  ***

  Hamish presented himself in St. Andrew Square the next afternoon at precisely two o’clock—the earliest time Lady Ivers would conscience a morning call. He was immediately shown into the lady’s private parlor.

  “Come in, Cathcart, come in. There is much to be done. We’ve made a hash of it, you and I.” This she said with some accusation.

  A cold drop of caution dripped down the back of his neck—his kissing had never been labeled a hash. “How so, my lady?”

  “She’s gone.” Lady Ivers threw up her hands. “Packed up and whisked herself away, called back to their bolt-hole in the hedgerows by the illness of one of the sisters Murray, her decrepit, selfish aunts in the hinterlands of Midlothian. Though it might as well be Mongolia, for all that.”

  Hamish controlled his smile at her wry tone. “Most of Midlothian is but a morning’s carriage ride away, my lady. Entirely approachable.”

  “Good! Then I trust you shall be taking that carriage ride and making that approach as soon as possible? If for nothing else but the books—she’ll have no money, no fortune of her own without them. Poor child—she’s as sharp and clever as a cleaver, but rather naive. She could have no idea that I sent her the manuscript of a purpose, to bring her here. And even to send her your way.”

  Hamish had surmised as much. “I am honored.”

  “And so you should be. You’re a clever lad, Hamish—you have a way of seeing beyond what needs to be done. You can imagine what might be. But I did not think such a thinking man would get himself so quickly tangled up in amour as you seem to have done.”

  It was as neat a summation of the mess in which they found themselves—with half a book, plans for a second, and no author to be found.

  “Find her,” Lady Ivers ordered. “Go to her, and press your offer, without”—she raised her voice in emphasis—“getting things as all mangled up as you managed to do last night. There is time enough for all the kissing in the world after.” She faced him squarely. “Get her back here for me, Cathcart. Find her and win her, or you’ll regret it all the days of your life.”

  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 cor
ners 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.”

  Chapter 15

  “Michty me!” She blushed to the roots of her hair, a lovely shade of apricot. Like jam. Sweet and tart all at the same time.

  Hamish knew he oughtn’t let himself smile, but he was inordinately happy to have so easily found her. Happy to be watching her blush. Happy he had the power to make her blush with his teasing.

  “Elspeth? What’s he saying?”

  “We’re negotiating the price, mistress.” Hamish raised his voice to carry to the cottage so the ladies didn’t have to cup their hands around their ears. “She’s a hard bargainer, your niece. Powerful hard. She’s making this difficult for me.”

  She kept her voice low so the ladies of the house might not hear. “Difficult? Nothing of the kind. You’ve only to take yourself right back to Edinburgh, where you belong. I’ll send—”

  He cut off her contingencies. “Oh, I don’t intend to leave. At least not without you.”

  She stilled, one hand coming slowly to her throat, as if perhaps something he was saying was finally getting through to her. But then she shook it off. “I’m needed here.”

  “You’re needed in Edinburgh, too. Or John Otis is, but since you are, for my purposes, him, it will have to be you.” He cast a glance at the two old crows perched at the wall. “Do they know?”

  “About the books? Heaven forbid.”

  “If you’re afraid to do it, I don’t mind telling them.”

  “Wheesht, Hamish.” She grabbed his arm, as if she might physically stop him. “I’ll never tell.”

  “Elspeth? Elspeth, what is he saying?”

  She turned to the ladies. “He’s saying he’ll do the thatch for a sovereign and a bowl of soup.”

  “Are ye trying to swick me?” He had to laugh at her audacity. “That’s ridiculously low.”

  “Of course it is, Hamish. Of course. I’m trying to give you the perfect reason to refuse, since you can’t possibly be anxious to thatch a roof.”

  “Actually, I am. Anxious to stay. Anxious to convince you. Anxious to find out all I can about you to use to my advantage.” He was not surprised to find that he would do just about anything to remain near her, even manual labor.

  “You’re mad—right off your big numpty head.” She gaped at him. “You’re the son of an earl! You can’t possibly be prepared to climb upon that wretchedly steep roof!”

  “Don’t fash yourself on my behalf, lass. I’m not so daft as to promise something I can’t deliver.” He would enlist the outdoor staff from Cathcart Lodge, his father’s hunting box, just up the road, if need be. “I’ll start with that trellis.”

  She shook her head, clearly flabbergasted at his ass-like stubbornness, and waved him on to the cottage. “Have it your way. But mind you don’t ruin your coat.”

  ***

  He did not see Elspeth again until evening when she finally reappeared looking harried and worn, as if the carrion crows of the cottage had spent the intervening hours pecking away at her. But she was bearing the promised bowl of steaming soup.

  And he was famished. Who knew manual labor could be so invigorating? “Good evening, Miss Otis,” He lifted his battered hat, though his sleeve was caught up in the rosebush’s thorns. “I would offer you my arm, but this rosebush has insisted upon my escort until at least midnight.”

  He was rewarded by one of her quiet, small smiles, and he realized that she was tired—she had been working at least as hard as he. And she did it all day, every day, not just as a means to an end. This was her life—one of endless servitude. “Perhaps the rose is an enchanted fairy princess, who clings to keep you till midnight to break
the awful spell and set her free.” Her voice sounded wistful.

  “And is that how you see yourself, the orphaned fairy princess forced to work for her crust of bread from her cruel aunts, laboring, fetching and carrying all the day through?”

  “Goodness, nay.” She shook her head and gave him a guarded smile, dismissing such an unflattering characterization. “Not a’tall. They are not cruel in the least—they are everything kind and forbearing, and have brought me up and given me a home.”

  “And you take care of them in return.” He would not argue with her version of events. “But what is to happen to you when they are gone—are you to live here all alone?”

  The guarded warmth ebbed from her eyes. “I had not thought on it.”

  It was a lie, but not one he would task her with. It was enough at the moment simply to make her think. And perhaps feel. “I feel certain that your aunt, Lady Ivers, would want you to come back to her in Edinburgh. In fact, she charged me with telling you so, should I find you.”

  “So you spoke to Lady Ivers, did you?”

  “I did,” he confirmed, while he busied himself with the proffered soup. “I called at her house in St. Andrew Square, just as I said I would.” He spooned another helping of soup meat into his mouth. “But you were gone.”

  She did not answer his implied question, but asked one of her own. “What is it you really want here, Hamish?”

  “You,” he said simply. “For you to come to Edinburgh and write me six more books just as scintillating and romantic—for that is the word we shall use in place of erotic, is it not— enough to pass the censure of the courts as the first.”

  More of that lovely apricot flush crept up the side of her cheeks, as if she really were blushing at the word. “Are you trying on purpose to discommode me?”

  “I am trying to amuse you,” he said instead, giving her one of his better, most hopeful smiles. “Is it working?”