Chapter Eighteen
Hamish was already quietly at work, unloading a wagonload of bundled straw for the thatching when Elspeth slipped out of the house as the early summer dawn lit the house with the first rays of sunlight.
“Where did you go last night?” she asked by way of greeting. 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 shed.
“Miss Otis.” He tipped his slouchy hat, and searched behind her for her minders.
“You needn’t,” she assured him, though she did so in a whisper. “They’re not yet risen.”
“In that case, good morning, Elspeth.” He kept his voice low anyway, and reached out to capture her hand, bringing it to his lips. “I snuck off to Cathcart Lodge a few miles up the road.” He pointed to the northwest. “Do you know it? The staff know me, and are prepared to keep quiet in exchange for a small consideration, which also covers Fergus there”—he indicated the man high upon Dove Cottage’s roof—“managing the actual thatching while I assist. So, not to worry—I had a soft, clean bed.”
As little as she had liked the thought of his sleeping in the hedgerow, she wasn’t sure she ought to think of him in a soft, clean bed, either. Because his appearance—all opened collar and rolled up shirtsleeves—treated her to an absolutely spectacular version of Hamish Cathcart that was decidedly unlike the polished town gentleman she had encountered in Edinburgh. This morning he was all earthy manliness and competence as he tossed the bundled yelms of straw onto the roof. The muscles of his arm flexed and glistened in the rosy sunlight, and she—
“Elspeth? Elspeth, are you all to rights? Did you not get a good night’s sleep?”
She had not, what with all the tossing and turning and wondering and wishing. But that was beside the point. Elspeth tethered her brain back to the present. “Are you really going to patch the thatch yourself?”
He smiled away her concern. “Aye.” 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. I’ve brought along Fergus to manage the business so there are no mistakes, but I’m competent enough. With any luck, we’ll be done before your Aunts even know we’re 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 encased in leather breeches, his strong, well-formed shoulders, and his rangy, tapered back.
But she knew better than most not to judge a person on appearance alone. With Hamish, there was also his clever, amusing mind—a potent, knee-weakening combination.
Elspeth firmed her knees and shaded her eyes to gaze up at him, this handsome, amusing man. Whom she had thought of all the night through. “May I help, too?”
He eyed her browned arms, and Elspeth could not keep herself from curling her calloused hands into fists to keep herself from feeling coarse and countrified.
“No perfumed miss, you,” he observed.
“No.” Elspeth tried to push aside the constant shadow of her self-doubt—they were not in a gilded mansion now, and he’d likely want calluses of his own after thatching the roof. “Aye, although I will have you know I do use perfumed soap.”
“Aye. Verbena.”
Heat rose from somewhere beneath her stays when she realized the intimacy of his observation, warming her more thoroughly than the rising sun. “Aye.” She had distilled the scent from the flowers in the garden, and made the soap herself.
“I suppose you could help, at that,” he agreed, as if he were doing her the grandest of favors. “You could pass the rest of 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—if he saw the roof repaired quickly, the Aunts might be better inclined toward him. But also because she liked this heady mixture of excitement and longing that stirred her up insides in his presence. She liked 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. But what could she do? She couldn’t leave.
But perhaps he could stay?
And so, once all the bundles of straw had been passed up to him, Elspeth amused them both 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 his man 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 over her like a balm—it was always a lovely thing to complete a task well done, 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 grave weight of chores and care that pinned her to this patch of Scottish soil once more. Up on the roof, the summer sky boded clear and fair. The countryside was waking to a new day. The orchard was filling with birdsong and the hedgerows were bustling with unseen animal comings and goings. It was all as familiar and comfortable as her old, green country cloak.
Then 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 like something out of her narrow dreams—rugged and rumpled and manly with his sleeves rolled back to expose his forearms. Looking forbidden and wished-for all at the same time. 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 different 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?”
“No,” she sighed and changed the direction of her gaze northward, orienting herself by the hulking comfort of the Pennine Hills. “I can’t let my gaze reach quite that far.”
“Or your ambitions?” he asked quietly, casually shading his eyes from the sharp slanted ray of the morning sun, as if he had no vested interest in the answer. As if it were not the whole of the reason he had come to find her.
“Perhaps,” she answered truthfully, for once not trying to evade the real subject that lay between them like a fish on the bank of a burn, gasping for water. The truth was she wanted both worlds—she wanted to be able to take care of the Aunts, to repay in kind the sacrifices they had made for her. But she also wanted to write and to be with Hamish. To talk to him of books and lessons in kissing, and feel beautiful and clever and brilliant and capable of genius again. “I have been writing,” she confessed. “Or rather rewriting A Memoir of a Game Girl—secretly, of course.”
She had stuffed rags beneath her attic door so the Aunts couldn’t hear the telltale scratch of the pen against the foolscap or see the light from her candle stubs as she worked into the night.
Hamish rolled toward her, onto his side, so he could search her face. “For myself and Prufrock, I’m glad to hear it. But you don’t look glad—you look tired.”
As much as it might mortify her, Elspeth had a mirror, and knew it for the truth. “I am tired,” she admitted. “But not so tired or awful as I would feel if they found out.”
“Would it be so bad?” He frowned in contemplation. “Perhaps you underestimate them?”
“Oh, no—they’d be horrified.” She was sure of it. And she was just as sure that she didn’t want to horrify them. The Aunts Murray might be strict and fussy and not nearly as much fun as Aunt Augusta, but they were her family. And they needed her now, the same way she had needed them as a child. Her absence had more than discommoded them—Isla had made herself ill with worry.
“Elspeth? Elspeth!” It was as if the mere thought of the Aunts had conjured them out of the cottage.
Elspeth knew she ought to call down and tell them where she was. But she didn’t. Because that would be the end of contentment and ease—the end of closeness and harmony.
So she raised her finger to her lips to signal Hamish to silence, flattened herself against the thatch, and waited until the Aunts’ fussy murmurings faded slowly into the morning’s silence.
“I’m trying to understand.” He reached idly for her work-roughened hand. “Clearly you’re not entirely happy and easy here—why would you not want to be free to return to Edinburgh with me?”
Because as much as she wanted to go, she could not bear to leave the Aunts behind. And Elspeth was sure he did not mean the invitation in the same way her foolish heart had instantly taken it—literally. It was like a fever dream, the idea that she could go back to Edinburgh with him, and be with him always. In real life, earls’ sons did not marry scandalous writers’ bastard daughters.
For despite Aunt Augusta’s kind claim to the contrary, the sisters Murray had explained that there was simply no evidence—no documents or witnesses—to prove that her parents had ever been married. Elspeth was as she had always been—illegitimate. And that, more than the caps or the quiet life in a forgotten village, was what made her an un-marriageable spinster.
For her foolish heart’s sake, she must accept the inevitable. “Hamish—”
He must have heard the excuse in her voice. “But what of us? And the books. And your Aunt Augusta.” He lowered his voice. “And what about kissing?” He drew her hand to his mouth, and suited words to deed, brushing her knuckles against his lips. “I don’t think you understand how extraordinary it is—our compatibility. Our mutual attraction. At least I hope it’s mutual.”
Elspeth felt the scorching heat of that attraction burn up her cheeks and sweep to the roots of her hair. Oh, to kiss him again. To feel wanted and desirable. To feel such pleasure. But then where would she be?
Rolling about a roof with a man who could not marry her.
But so what if she were?
If her Aunts were right, and no one was to marry her on account of her birth, why should she not have this one shining moment with him—with Hamish.
She wouldn’t think and worry and retreat—she would do. Just as she had the morning when she had taken her heart in her hands and set off for Edinburgh.
Just as she would now.
Without another word, Elspeth simply pulled herself close and pressed her lips to his. She wrapped her arms about his neck and clung to him—clung to the warmth and ease and happiness she felt in his arms. Clung to the fragile hope that this moment would be enough to last a lifetime. That his kiss would warm her through of all the lonely cold nights to come.
She slanted her lips across his, angling to get close, and closer still. His arms came around the small of her back as if he knew what she wanted—the weight and press of his rangy strength tethering her to the sun-warmed cushion of thatch. As if he knew just what to do to silence all of her inner objections.
His hand curled around her nape and tangled in her hair, disrupting the neat pins, arcing her head back to deepen their kiss, and deepen the arching intimacy of the moment alone on top of the world.
She made the most of it—her hands were in his hair, too, fisting up the unruly brown curls. Everything was feeling and sensuality—every taste, every smell, every texture was amplified—his body all against the length of her, every nerve and sinew alive to the power and delight.
She arched against him, giving herself over to the moment. To the hope of lasting pleasure. There were years of longing and wanting and not being good enough in her kiss. Years to go of wanting and missing him yet.
But up there on the roof, in the light and sun and air, as if she were above the earth above all the problems and insurmountable decisions and endless concerns. The breeze was fresher, the sun was warmer, the scent of the thatch was sweeter, and the precious seconds stretched longer so she could abide with him and let the rest of the world slip away.
But they were slipping, too—sliding a few frightening inches down the smooth slant of thatch.
She gasped into his kiss, but Hamish was himself, and laughed and said, “I’ve got you,” and kissed her some more.
And he did indeed have her—she was still safely held in his arms in the fragrant cradle of thatch, being loved. “Oh, Hamish. I wish this could be every day. I wish I wasn’t—”
She didn’t finish the sentence, and he didn’t try to finish it for her. Not with words, anyway. But he kissed her with a different sort of feeling—with a hesitation, a tender urgency, it seemed, as if he were already accepting that they must part.
He lifted his head and framed her face with his hands, as if wanted to memorize her. As if he knew it could not last. “We should probably not tempt fate any longer.”
“No,” she agreed though her heart and her hands cried out the opposite.
When he eased off of her, she could not keep herself from grasping his hand to kiss one last time before he pulled away. Before he pulled away. Before he inevitably left her.
That was when she heard it—the distant toll of the kirk bell calling the village to worship. Tolling her name like a sentence. Or a curse.
“Oh, no.” Elspeth felt all the last of her comfort and ease drain away, to be replaced with cold, sickening dread. “Oh, Hamish, I’d completely forgotten it was Sunday.”