Chapter Twenty-six
Elspeth was tired and footsore by the time she made St. Andrew Square, for she had walked a long way past the next village before she had found a farmer’s dray heading for Edinburgh’s Grass Market. But her spirits were revived when Aunt Augusta opened the door herself.
“My darling girl!” Augusta enveloped her in a tight, heartfelt embrace. “Oh, it is so lovely to have you back. We have so much to do. I am so very, very excited and pleased—” She took another look at Elspeth’s face. “But what is wrong? Where is Hamish?” She peered over Elspeth’s shoulder. “I thought he was gone to find you. Where is he?”
Instead of breaking into tears—as she had already done at more than one point upon her journey, Elspeth chose to be angry. “Gone to the devil for all I know—he did not deign to come. I left him with his betrothed.” Elspeth curbed her bitterness and firmed her resolve. “As for me, I’ve come to Edinburgh to be a wastrel, just like my father. Blood will out, the Aunts said, so here I am.”
Instead of gasping in shock as she might have expected, Lady Augusta took only a moment before she broke into a smile so wide and bright, Elspeth might have put out her chilled hands to the warmth.
“You must tell me what happened, but bless them for being so stupidly missish.” Aunt Augusta clasped her hand to lead her upward to the drawing room. “Their loss is my gain. And your father was a wastrel only because he wasted his gifts—squandered on women of no character and wine of little distinction in the terrible grief of the loss of your mother. And you, my darling brave girl, will never do that.”
“I thank you for your enthusiastic and unwavering confidence, Aunt Augusta, but the unhappy truth of the matter is that I find myself in an awful pickle.”
“And by awful pickle,” that kind lady asked gently, “do you mean you’ve fallen quite in love with Hamish?”
It was a long moment before Elspeth trusted herself to speak clearly. “I suppose I do. More or less.” It was all so complicated and sad. She had thought she loved him, most fervently. But now she was angry as well as sad. “But before I can allow myself to throw over Hamish Cathcart, that man needs to be taught a lesson.”
“Oh, yes.” Lady Augusta clasped her hands together in fervent agreement. “How entirely delightful. I don’t know how a man as besotted as Hamish Cathcart came to make such a hash of things, but I offer you my full and wickedly experienced assistance on the instant.”
The time, Elspeth could not stop the tears that pooled in her eyes. “Thank you, dear Aunt.”
“Yes, yes. But we must act quickly, at once!” She drew Elspeth to her in a fierce embrace. “Oh, I knew I should grow to love you, now more than ever before.” She clapped her hands together, immediately calling for the butler. “Reeves, call all the staff immediately. As my dearest Admiral Ivers would have said, pipe all hands to battle stations!”
Battle stations turned out to be a great deal more comfortable that Elspeth might have thought. “My niece needs must be cosseted,” her Aunt Augusta declared.
And cosseted, Elspeth was—she was soaked in a bath hot enough to soothe her aches, and fed until she was well past sated, and put to bed so tired that she fell directly into a dreamless sleep.
And in the morning, the battle order was redrawn—Elspeth was bathed and coiffed and fed and dressed in a gown of cerulean blue silk that shimmered and whispered encouragement when she walked.
It was almost enough to give her confidence that life would go on much less disastrously than she might have thought, or had any right to expect.
“Perfection,” Aunt Augusta decreed as her dresser put the finishing touches on Elspeth’s ensemble. “Pure, absolute perfection. Nothing more—her head bare and honest. Yes,”—she stood back to peruse Elspeth once more—“you’ll do perfectly.”
“Do for what, Aunt Augusta?”
“The occasion,” the lady answered, as if that explained anything. “Battle armor, as it were, though I should think it safe to say you have already won the war.”
“What war?”
Aunt Augusta favored her with that mischievous smile that carved dimples deep into her cheeks. “All in good time, my darling. And it is time”—she picked up her own silk skirts and proceeded to the door—“for us to go.”
“To where, pray?”
“To church.” She swept down the steps and into the waiting carriage.
Elspeth felt heat sweep her cheeks. But after missing kirk yesterday, perhaps it was right that she attend divine services, and take a quiet hour to reflect and forgive herself the passions and mistakes of the past, as well as seek some divine guidance on what she ought to do next.
Working with Mr. Hamish Cathcart was out of the question, of course. Aunt Augusta was going to be so disappointed.
But Aunt Augusta was fussing with the fall of her niece’s lace. “It must look just so.”
“But it is a Monday morning,” Elspeth objected. “Is there some holy day that I did not know existed?”
“There is indeed,” Aunt Augusta said tartly. “Now get yourself into the carriage, and say not another word.”
They had not far to go, only around the corner onto George Street, whereupon the carriage pulled up in front of the high-clocked steeple of St. Andrew’s kirk.
Where he was waiting beneath the tall columned portico—her Mr. Hamish Cathcart, looking as tall and mischievous and Scots as ever she might have imagined.
Aunt Augusta took her elbow to urge her down to the pavement, but Elspeth did not know whether to gape or cry—she had just been thinking ill of him, but here he was, smiling at her as if she were the fairest and finest thing in the world.
He was dressed in the old style, in the distinct blue, red and green plaid of the Clan Cathcart tartan, with a sword hung at his side. He was breathtaking and impressive. And confusing.
And what was more confusing was the way Hamish offered her his hand, and wordlessly led her into the kirk, past the astonishing sight of the Aunts Murray, smiling wistfully and dabbing at their damp eyes with familiar worn lace-edged handkerchiefs.
Past the Countess of Inverness smiling contentedly. Past Aunt Augusta, who slipped into the pew with the countess, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
“Just as you are,” Aunt Augusta whispered, as Hamish swept Elspeth past on the way to the altar, where a rosy-cheeked rector peered down his glasses at her.
“We’re all assembled then?” the white-robed cleric asked. “Are we ready to begin?”
“Elspeth?” Hamish finally spoke. “Are we ready?”
“Nay.”
“Elspeth—”
“What of your Miss Lorrimer and her brewery?” she asked as quietly as she could in a place that echoed so monstrously.
“A misunderstanding. A great, unnecessary misunderstanding that has delayed my making you my wife.”
It hadn’t felt like a misunderstanding—it had felt like her heart had been rent in two. And hearts could not so easily be put back together.
She wanted assurances. “I really wish you had proposed to me properly before such a misapprehension took place, Hamish.”
“Then let me propose to you again, now, my love.”
“Properly, Hamish,” she insisted. “Down on one knee before everyone and God, the way you ought to have done at the start.”
“I couldn’t have done so at the start,” he reasoned teasingly, “as I hardly knew you.”
“You know what I mean.” Elspeth held her ground—she would start as she meant to go on. “I want a proper declaration of love from you, Hamish Cathcart. And I want it now, or we go no further.”
If anything, Hamish’s smile grew wider, spilling across his face like mischief. “Then you shall have it. My darling Miss Otis,” he began, going down on the cold, slate floor on one bare knee. “I beg you to make me the happiest of men, by doing me the honor of accepting my unworthy proposal for your hand.”
It was a pretty enough start. But not enough. “Why?”
“Because without you, my life and my world would be a poorer place. Because I love you with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul, and I do not want to face another dawn of waking up without you.”
Elspeth felt a rightness, a warmth settle upon her like a ray of sunshine beaming down through the windows. A benediction, as it were—a feeling that finally, at last, all was right with her world.
A feeling that she was home at last.
“That’s better.” She gave him her hand.
He raised her palm to his lips. “Is that a yes?”
“Nay, it’s an aye.”
The rector cleared his throat and began, “Dearly beloved brethren, we are here gathered together in the sight of God, and in the face of His congregation to knit and join these parties together in the honorable estate of matrimony—”