“I’m not coming in.” There was nothing for it but to give them the uncomfortable truth. “I’ve asked the dray mon to take me to Edinburgh. To Lady Ivers.”
The tight-lipped silence that greeted this proposal told Elspeth exactly what the Aunts thought of such an idea.
“You cannot want to go to her.” Aunt Molly’s shocked tone allowed it to be impossible.
“She can’t want you,” was Isla’s less kind answer.
Elspeth turned away the cutting remark as if it were an errant dirk—her aunt’s impotent jabs were fast becoming too dull a weapon to truly hurt her now. “But she does want me. She says so in her letter. And after all these years of so faithfully”—she chose a word her Aunts could not depreciate—“writing to me without response, I feel I must answer, and even atone, for my years of silence.” Years of silence that her aunts knew could be laid at their feet.
“That’s hardly necessary,” Aunt Molly began with an attempt at a grim sort of logic.
“Because she’s hardly decent!” Isla was too scandalized to admit logic. “She’s wicked.”
Elspeth disagreed as politely as possible. “She seems very decent, as well as civil and ladylike, in her letter,” she countered in a carefully mild tone.
“That is as may be”—Aunt Molly was clearly searching for excuses—“but, I’m not sure that it’s advisable…or proper…”
“Why?”
Aunt Molly’s pale face colored, as if she could hardly bring herself to answer. “The lady is of…dubious moral fiber—thrice-married and thrice conveniently widowed.”
“Those Otises. Bad blood, the lot of them,” was Isla’s more unguarded opinion.
As “the lot of them” included Elspeth and her own tainted share of the blood her late, unlamented father had bequeathed her, she felt the need to defend the family. “Lady Augusta can hardly be held to account for her husbands dying. Or is it that you think she’s had more than her fair share of them?”
The moment the hasty, unkind words were out of her mouth, Elspeth wished them back, biting her lips together as if she could swallow such ungrateful meanness of spirit whole and unspoken. Her Aunts had sacrificed to raise her, and had kept her out of love—a stifling version of love, but love nonetheless.
But Molly, bless her, was equal to the truth. “Perhaps, Elspeth. Yes. You are right that not all of our circumstances are the product of choice. Sometimes one must take what life offers, and simply make the best of it.”
Elspeth felt as if her heart might break, so sharp was the pain in her chest. The Aunts had, indeed, made the best of it all—their genteel poverty due to absence of opportunities, lack of education, and reduced circumstances.
Heat scratched at the back of Elspeth’s eyes, but she could not give in to the choking pity. Not now, when it felt as if the whole of her life depended upon it. “Then perhaps you understand that I might wish for a change in my circumstances, at least for a short visit. Just this once.”
Because before she put on the lace cap of the spinster, and consigned herself forevermore to their forgotten corner of their Scotland, Elspeth Otis had a few things she meant to do.
If true love had not found her, she meant to go out into the wide world, and find it for herself.
Chapter 4
Hamish strode up the damp, stone staircase out of the Princes Street Gardens taking the steps two at a time. He had to keep moving—he always thought better on his feet, with the wind in his face and an idea between his teeth. It might take him all day to climb to the top of Calton Hill, or even Arthur’s Seat, but by the time he arrived at the top, he was sure to have thought of a solution to his rather dire dilemma.
“Hamish Cathcart?” A woman’s voice penetrated the fog wreathing his brain. “Where are you off to in such an all-fired rush?”
Hamish turned to find Lady Augusta Ivers at the bottom of the stair, and retraced his steps. “My dear Lady Ivers.” He bowed over the hand the elegantly clad widow offered. “Delighted, as always, to see you, my lady.”
Lady Augusta Ivers was a well-known fixture in Edinburgh’s society, as admired as she was universally liked. She could always be counted upon to have some fresh and interesting intelligence about Edinburgh and the world—her circle of friends and correspondents extended to the continent and beyond.
“Well enough,” she answered in her usual polished, self-possessed way. “But enough social palaver. You are just the man I was hoping to see. I have been meaning to speak to you about a proposition I think might suit both of us equally.”
Hamish was instantly leery—in his eight and twenty years he had entertained any number of “propositions” from widowed ladies. But he had never thought Lady Ivers the type—although younger than her late husband, she had been entirely devoted to Admiral Ivers. “How may I be of service to you, my lady?”
“A business proposition, Hamish, my lad. Not that I’m not flattered.” Lady Ivers flashed him a knowing, but kind smile. “Have you an office where we might speak privately?”
He did not. At present, Hamish conducted his business in a corner chair at Smyth’s Coffee House off the Grass Market, but such an establishment was hardly the place for a lady, even one as unflappable as Augusta Ivers.
“Never mind.” The lady was already waving him off, impatient to get to her point. “Walk with me, where we might not be overheard.” She took his arm, and led him back the way he had come, into the privacy of the garden. “It has recently come to my attention that the publishing house of Prufrock & Company is in some financial difficulty. This distresses me, as they were the publisher of my late brother’s entirely scandalous, but entirely popular novel.”
“Aye, my lady?” Hamish was familiar with the work. Indeed, any lad who had been to university in Scotland was familiar with the tale of Fanny Bahoochie—and there was a particularly apt name for the protagonist of A Memoir of a Game Girl. Sweet, game Fanny Bahoochie had been the stuff of schoolboy fantasy.
But how this might matter to him now, Hamish knew not.
Lady Ivers was keen to inform him. “I have been thinking of commissioning a new version of my late brother’s work to bring to publication. A considerably less scandalous version, retaining all of the charm, but a great deal less of the salacious content of the original.”
As far as Hamish was concerned, the charm of the original had been in the salacious content—at least it had been for the young gentleman readers at Saint Andrew’s University.
“If the book were in the right hands,” the lady continued to explain, “Prufrock—who still owns the rights, you see—could make a fortune. The work is notorious enough to still be well known—it would sell itself if Prufrock had enough talent and vision to create a version that would pass the censors. But Prufrock lacks both imagination and, to be frank, ready money.”
Ye gods.
A marvelous sort of sensation started at the back of his brain—the sort of tingling sensation that could not be ignored. The sort of sensation that had made—and lost—him several fortunes.
This time, he was determined to be prudent. “How much money?”
Lady Ivers gifted him with a pleased, knowing smile. “I like you, Hamish. You’re clever and quick. You understand.” She named a goodly sum. “Have you the blunt?”
Aye, he understood. He could practically taste the possibility—sharp and potent like good Scots whisky. And nay, he didn’t have the money. Not all of it. But he would get it.
Because Augusta Ivers was as sharp as they came—her acumen and head for investments were well known amongst her set. And Hamish was already acquainted with Prufrock & Company, Publisher and Fine Press, suppliers of high quality volumes of poetry—he had purchased a collection a time or two. The company was comprised of one Able Prufrock, ancient but well respected publisher, one articled clerk to mind the books, one pressman to mind the printing, and two gawking apprentices to mind the pressman—already a lean, if not presently profitable enterprise, occupying a small but efficient premises at the end of Fowl’s Close, which curved like a short, lower rib off the long spine of the High Street, down the back of the city.