“And arranging to take a lass to wife with the same callous calculation as if she were a mare at a fair is not? I am not being crass, but factual.” Even if Hamish and his siblings had not been witness to years and years of continuous marital sniping and discord, Hamish’s illegitimate half-brother, Rory, was proof enough of their father’s infidelity.
And yet his father called Hamish unsteady.
His father was not best pleased at this display of logic. “And what, you fancy yourself in love?” This time it was his father’s voice that dripped with sarcasm.
“Heaven forfend,” Hamish laughed off the idea—he was unsteady, not unhinged. “Not at all, sir.” He was too busy for anything so time-consuming as love. “I have other plans to secure my future than shackling myself to some unknown lass.”
“Better someone unknown,” his father advised darkly, “than someone for whom you’ve too much regard.”
Though he was no poetry-spouting romantic, Hamish immediately rejected such a dismal view. He had friends enough with good marriages—the aforementioned half-brother, Rory, and his lovely French wife, Mignon, came immediately to mind—to know that regard for one’s partner in life was not only preferable, it was positively necessary. “That is your opinion, sir. I, myself, will not contemplate marriage without it.”
But the sad truth of the matter was that there was no lass for whom he felt such regard. No one at all.
“So be it.” His father stood. “From this day forward, I am done with you. The ledger”—he clapped the account book open before him shut—“is closed. If you care not for the benefit of my advice and counsel on the matter of getting a wife, I will leave you to the dubious pleasure of your mother’s tender”—his tone carried all the weight of his distaste for his wife of thirty years—“cares. Good luck with any wife she might find for you. Prim, priggish lasses like she’s made your sisters—so missish they could curdle milk with their sour looks.”
As Hamish would rather be made to walk naked down Edinburgh’s High Street than spend two minutes with any such woman, he softened his tone. “Forgive me, Father, if I appeared ungrateful. But I simply don’t share your urgency for my marriage. I am not so done up without your money that I don’t have a feather to fly by. Far from it. I am not so frivolous or imprudent as that.”
Indeed, he had not been frivolous at all—he had just had a run of bad luck, was all. Yet he was sure he could revive his fortunes sufficiently to make marrying for money entirely unnecessary.
But his father knew nothing of Hamish’s business ventures. And Hamish needed to keep it that way—gentlemen, even unsteady third sons of earls, did not engage openly in trade. Nothing would be surer to ruin his business prospects like the scandal of the earl’s son dirtying his hands with work.
“You have until Whitsunday to pick a bride. Your mother will like a June wedding.” Earl Cathcart flicked an imaginary bit of fluff off his immaculate sleeve before he regarded his son through narrowed eyes. “If you’re smart—though you show little sign of being—you’ll avail yourself of this list of gels”—he thrust a sheet of foolscap at Hamish—“before your mother provides you with a suitably prim list of her own. Believe me, even if she’s never spoken of it, she has one.”
Unfortunately, his mother had, indeed, spoken of it. A son did not reach the recklessly dangerous age of eight and twenty without his mother offering the name of at least one “suitable” miss. “I understand you, sir.”
“Good.” The earl crossed the room and held open the door. “Whitsunday.”
Hamish placed his hat on his head, pulling the tricorn down low over his eyes, so his father could not see the hot flare of scorn in his eyes.
Whitsunday was less than five weeks away—an entirely ridiculous deadline. But Hamish would beat it.
Bollocks to Whitsunday.
Chapter 3
What the Aunts had kept from her was the astonishing fact that Lady Augusta Ivers, her father’s sister, had, for four and twenty years, sent not only birthday greetings, but also yearly invitations for her niece to visit. But this year, the lady had cannily sent an invitation—the trunk—too big for the Aunts to hide.
Elspeth stared at this present as if it were a unicorn instead of a spider. To think that all these years—all these years she had worked so hard to be content with her lot—she might have seen something of the world beyond the confines of her small, muddy corner of Midlothian.
In the doorway, the dray mon hefted the trunk as if it were kindling. “Where d’ye want it put?”
“Not inside! We’ve no room—” Isla shut the door against both the trunk and the eyes of curious neighbors, who had begun to gather by the gate.
Elspeth felt her heart plummet straight from her chest to land with a splat on her muddy shoes. “Michty me.” What good was a present from a mysterious, scarlet aunt if she could not even open it to find out what lay inside?
“If ye don’ want it”—the dray mon shrugged—“I’ve direction to take it back. Paid for tha’ at t’other end, herself did.”
“Herself?”
“Leddy Augusta Ivers, as they was talking aboot.” The dray mon balanced the load on one broad shoulder. “She sayed as I wus to gie it ye, or bring it straight back tae herself.”
“Take me with you.” The words were out of her mouth before Elspeth could even gather the presence of mind to wish them back.
But she didn’t wish them back. She wanted to go. She had never wanted anything so much in her entire life.
“Please.” She spoke both more firmly and more politely this time, even though her heart was clattering in her ear like the off-balance spinning wheel in the corner of the parlor. “Would you please take me with you?”
“Tae Edinburgh?” The driver’s bushy eyebrows rose up, poised in consideration.
Elspeth held her breath, shocked by her own temerity in standing up for herself. Of daring to want something that had seemed so far out of reach for so long, the possibility of which hadn’t even existed until a moment ago. “Please, will you take me with you?” She caught her breath and, with it, her nerve. She had to convince him or forever lose her chance. “You do go straight back to Edinburgh, do you not?”
“Aye.”
“Could you not take me there as well?”
The driver stroked the grizzled ends of his ginger whiskers in contemplation. “I s’pose I could. For a price.”
And here was the fox in the henhouse—Elspeth had absolutely no ready money of her own. But she did have ready wits. “Lady Ivers already paid you to bring me the trunk, and bring it back, did she not? If you take me with it, as she asks in her letter”—Elspeth held the missive out as if it did verily contain such a request—“Lady Ivers will surely reward you handsomely for the service.” This was a rather delicate piece of fibbery, but Elspeth was prepared to risk the mortal sin of a potential lie for the potential reward—the chance to escape this stifling village.
To escape spinsterhood.
Mercifully, the dray mon warmed the idea. “Aye. She might at that. Well, come on ye then.”
Relief and excitement made a hot, breathless brew of her insides. “Will you bide here a short while, so I can gather my things?”
And do the harder thing—tell the Aunts what she had done.
The driver turned his squint to the sky, as if gauging the hours of daylight. “No more’n t’irty minutes,” he warned. “Or I’ll g’on without ye.”
“I’ll be back,” she swore. “So help me, I will.”
The Aunts were waiting at the door in forbearance of another of Elspeth’s unseemly displays of rash behavior, though they could have no idea just how rash she had truly been. Or how rash she was yet prepared to be.
“Elspeth,” Molly chided. “Come away inside. But mind your boots. You’re covered in mud.”