Chapter Twenty-three
Hamish came back to himself slowly, as if he had taken a clout to the head and was still in a daze. He rolled onto his back on the thick grass and gathered Elspeth to him. His Elspeth, who lifted her sweet face to the sunshine like a pagan worshiper.
He felt rather pagan himself after having worshiped her with his body—awed and honored and beyond thrilled that she had chosen him to gift with her body. Because he wasn’t remotely worthy
But he would make himself be—he would rise to the occasion.
What a fool he had been to think that only experience conferred wisdom. What an ass he had been to overlook the strength of innocence. Elspeth was his ideal because she was both, and neither.
Upon that particularly impractical and philosophically convoluted thought, Hamish took her hand, lacing their fingers together, holding her in quiet, simple intimacy. It felt good and right and wonderful and terrifying.
Because he wanted this feeling, this warm bubble of quiet contentment to last forever.
But it could not. Life had to go on. Decisions had to be made.
But not quite yet. Not until the heat of lust had ebbed enough to make her shy and wanting her clothes.
She turned her back to set herself to rights, and Hamish did the same, until they could stand before each other without blushing.
Hamish brushed a long strand of grass from her hair. “You’ll come with me to the lodge? We can make plans there. Decide what needs to be done.”
He would speak to her Aunts later. Declare himself as a gentleman ought.
The decision gave him a warm feeling of rightness. Or belonging—belonging to something, and someone, he had chosen for himself. Elspeth was the beginning of a family of his own, free from the encumbrances and expectations of his parents. Free from their guilt and hypocrisy. Free to write books and laze about orchards all day if they wanted.
“All right.” She gave him a luminously hopeful smile. “Aye.”
“It will all be right as rain, Elspeth,” he assured her. “We’ll be the happiest people in all of Scotland. In all of Britain.”
“I already am.”
He laced his fingers with hers and pulled her to standing. “I hope your Aunts won’t tax me with not fixing their eaves today, but I find I have other, more pressing commitments.”
Her smile was as luminous as the noonday sun. “Like me?”
“Exactly like you.” They walked in companionable, contented silence along the dozing hedgerows until they reached the lane that led to Cathcart Lodge. But as soon as they stepped onto the grassy track, Hamish had to draw Elspeth back, into the verge when a four in hand coach sped close by, forcing them to crowd into the hedgerow to let it safely pass.
But immediately after it did, a familiar face popped out of the window, and the coach began to slow, coming to a full stop.
Ye gods.
Something that wasn’t yet alarm sent a warning chill down his spine.
He knew that face from Edinburgh. And that of the young, fashionably dressed lady, stepped lightly into the grassy lane. Master Lorrimer, a brewer from Edinburgh’s southwest side, climbed down after his daughter and heir. Hamish had met them but once, at a shooting weekend, but he feared their intent.
“Mr. Cathcart?” Miss Lorrimer called. “Hamish!” She smiled and waved. “I thought that was you. I told Papa it was so.”
Alarm shifted to suspicion that hit him like a shovel to the back of his head—Hamish could all but feel his father’s hand stirring this pot.
“Elspeth, why don’t you go on to the Lodge. I’ll follow you directly.”
But Elspeth had no time to respond before the brewer’s daughter had made her way down the lane upon them. “Don’t go, Hamish. It won’t do you know, running away, looking like a scarecrow, with straw in your hair. Not when we’ve driven all this way to find you.” She smiled in a way that bared her teeth, much like an aggressive dog, grinning before it bites. “Rusticating with dairy maids, have you been, Hamish? Your mother will be all agog to hear.”
So perhaps not his father’s hand. But still, his family was stirring the hot pot he seemed to have landed in. “Miss Lorrimer. You will excuse me, please.” He would not introduce Elspeth, for such was the surest way to have her name spread about Edinburgh like a contagion.
“I will not, unless I have your promise that I shall meet with you dancing attendance upon me at the Marchioness of Queensbury’s Masquerade ball in Edinburgh on Thursday next. I expect that will be the perfect evening to announce our betrothal, will it not?”
It would not. But her words had already hit Elspeth like a hard slap to the face—he could see her head snap back with the force of the lie. “Betrothal?”
“No. It’s not like that,” Hamish began.
“The devil you say!” The brewer himself stepped forward like a guard dog at his daughter’s side.
Miss Lorrimer’s laughing expression stilled, and became serious. “Your family, not to mention the solicitors, say differently, Mr. Cathcart, along with my Papa.”
“Aye,” Master Lorrimer growled. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I do.” The man was polite but emphatic. “Signed the papers this morning, Mr. Cathcart. I was given to believe you’d be there to make things all right and tight, and when you weren’t, why I set out for to find you straightaway. And here we are.”
Here they all were. Except for Elspeth, who had already turned tail, and, very sensibly, run away from this fine madness.
Would that Hamish could do the same.
But he could not. He would not. He would face the fire and extinguish it.