“Excellent! I must warn you I plan on spoiling you wonderfully, so you’ll have no thought of going home. Which will be a difficult task, I’ll warrant—I’ve no doubt you’re brimming with staunch moral fiber after having been brought up by the sisters Murray.”
“You know my aunts?”
“Oh, yes. We all grew up together, your mother, your father, your aunts and I, though I will point out that I was the youngest.” A wonderfully mischievous twinkle lighted her eyes. “And the one, they will have told you, with the most of the devil in me, though I am sure they will gainsay your father his share. The ‘devil’s cubs’ they called us, and did their best to keep your mother away from our influence. But that only made the nectar of forbidden fruit the sweeter for her. Ah, she was the loveliest girl, your mother. I can see you take after her in that way.” Aunt Augusta smiled and squeezed Elspeth’s hand again, and then returned to collect herself and pick up her teacup. “So, you, my dear, must, of course, stay here as long as you should like.”
Elspeth’s relief was more than profound—she felt as if she could draw breath for the first time in hours. “Thank you, Aunt Augusta. That is very generous of you.”
“You are most welcome.” She smiled on a sigh. “You know I have thought of you often. Every day.” She reached out a hand to gently touch Elspeth’s face. “All these years, wondering how you fared, wondering what you were like, if you looked like either of them. They were my greatest friends in the world, your mother and father.”
Something stranger than gratitude made a lump in Elspeth’s throat. “I was afraid that you might be ashamed of your illegitimate niece.”
“Illegitimate? Never! What nonsense. Who let you believe such a thing?” The lady’s soft tone went calmly vehement. “Your parents loved each other, and were handfasted, which is perfectly legal even if it wasn’t fine enough for the Murrays.” Lady Ivers put her chin up, as if facing an unseen enemy. “If they told you that, they were—and are—wrong. Your parents were married.”
It was the kindest, most generous thing anyone had ever said to her. Elspeth’s eyes grew dangerously damp. “Thank you, Aunt Augusta. That means so much to me.”
“I shall box their ears, the sisters Murray, if ever I should see them again.” Aunt Augusta took a deep breath and shook her head, as if realigning her thinking into more pleasing lines.
“I declare I am practically ravenous at the prospect of taking you about the town, for such a lovely girl will find no shortage of partners here in Edinburgh. You shall have your pick of the handsomest young gentlemen in no time.”
Elspeth was more than astonished—she was hopeful. “Do you really think so?”
“Absolutely.” Lady Augusta poured her a second dish of tea. “You’re just the sort of pretty, intelligent lass a clever young gentleman likes to talk to. You’ll see. Once we have our way with putting a bit of polish and dash to you, you’ll be just the thing.”
Elspeth hoped she would be some thing.
Most devoutly.
Chapter 6
The thing that Elspeth was not, was bored. Each day brought a new adventure or a new endeavor.
“Elspeth, my dear.” Aunt Augusta’s voice was everything unstudied and casual as they drank their morning chocolate—lovely, rich and decadent—some days after her arrival. “Have you had a chance to read your father’s novel that I sent you?”
Elspeth felt her face go riddy with heat. She had, indeed, read it. Secretly.
“Do you mean the pages in that old trunk?” The moment she had been alone with the trunk in the lovely bed chamber Aunt Augusta had allotted her, Elspeth’s curiosity had overcome any lingering scruples she might have brought with her from Dove Cottage. And while she might have been disappointed that the trunk did not contain sparkling gemstones and golden doubloons—as one might expect in any self-respecting treasure trunk sent by a mysterious benefactor—it had been filled with pages and pages of foolscap covered with scrawled writing. Pages from a book her father had evidently written, but never finished.
“Indeed,” her aunt confirmed. “I’ve read my brother’s writings many times over the years, and I always feel as if the words bring me closer to him. And I suppose I hoped they would bring you closer to your father. Even if they are a bit naughty, his stories. But you are well old enough to think and decide things for yourself now.”
Elspeth could not help but smile at Aunt Augusta’s serene approach to the world. The Aunts had always characterized her father’s book as entirely unfit for tender eyes. Yet she was old enough to decide for herself. And she had read the pages without any lingering damage to her virtue.
And she had liked it. “The part I have read, I found picaresque, I think is the word.”
Aunt Augusta laughed merrily. “Oh, yes, that is exactly the word. Another word might be naughty. He had a delightfully irreverent view of the world, your father.”
“Did he?” Elspeth found herself hungry for any knowledge of the man she had only heard spoken of disparagingly.
“Made a villain of him, did they? No, don’t defend them.” Aunt Augusta looked out the window and smiled at her memories. “Your father was…different. A scholar at the Cathedral school of St. Giles—I can see him now, bounding away up those worn steps. We had to stay behind, your mother Fie and I, for we were lasses of course, and couldn’t go to school. But we got our education in other ways, she and I. Not every memory is sad.”
Such stories were manna to Elspeth—she was hungry for every word. “I wish I could remember her. I will own I envy you her memories—even the sad ones.”
“Oh, you are the loveliest of girls.” Her aunt took her hand. “Just like her. And very much like him, too—made for happiness. He was a man who delighted in the world as he found it. He rather gloried in the messiness of the human condition, in the sublime and the ridiculous. He liked it all, bless his heart. He liked to laugh, and he liked play, and he like to drink, but oh, how he loved. He loved freely. Generously.”
“He loved my mother?”
“With all his heart. And he loved you. Very much. Enough that he braved those two pecking old sparrows, the sisters Murray, to make sure that you would be safe and cared for.”
Elspeth asked the question that had been burning in the back of her mind since the moment she had known of her new aunt’s existence. “Why did he not leave me with you?”
“Ah, my darling child.” For the first time the mirth dimmed from her Aunt Augusta’s eyes. “I have often wished he had, but the truth is, it mightn’t have turned out so well had he done so. I was not married to my dear Admiral Ivers then, and I did not have this lovely house as a safe haven to give you.”
There was a certain relief, mixed with a certain disappointment, that her lot in life was not the product of some awful mischance or unkind machination on the part of the Aunts. “I see.”
“I hope you do. Your father did the right thing in taking you to the Murrays. I still think so, though I will admit that I never thought that they would keep you from me for all of these many long years. But”—her aunt took a deep, cleansing breath, as if to throw off such sorrowful thoughts—“I wonder what might have been, if he’d had more time on this earth, your father. If grief and the drink hadn’t killed him. I wonder if that story in the trunk mightn’t have been the making of him.” Aunt Augusta shook her head and turned away, out the window, as if some fresh idea were worrying at her head. “And I wonder if it would be possible now…”
“If what would be possible, Aunt?”
“The book,” she clarified vaguely. “There is a small rumor about the town that his old publisher intends to make a new version of the old book, to clean it up for present tastes. And I wonder if the same could be done with the pages in the trunk. It could be done, I suppose.” She closed her eyes, as if she could picture it clearly, this new book. And the she opened them to look at Elspeth, as if seeing her anew. “Perhaps you could do it, Elspeth.”