“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?”
“Perhaps.” She pursed her lips, then crushed them between her teeth to keep the corners of her shy smile from turning up. “A little, perhaps.”
“Enough to encourage you to do something scandalous? To leave your hidebound, little world?”
She shook her head more emphatically. “My world is neither hidebound nor small, Hamish. It is the same as everyone else’s. Only not as…extensive or exciting.”
“Your world it is not nearly as extensive as it ought to be. It is not even expansive enough for another lesson in kissing. When was the last time you were kissed, Elspeth?”
She sighed. “At exactly fourteen minutes after eleven o’clock on Tuesday evening last.”
His need struck him like a heavy wave—lust rose in him like a spring tide. He battered it back behind a dam of determination and restraint—damn flimsy materials on the best of days, but entirely permeable under the onslaught of this clever, sweet lass who looked like an angel, and left him in a hell of wanting.
The devil was surely laughing now. As was his father.
Ballocks to them both.
He would win her yet.
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?”