“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 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.