Who shooed Hamish out. “I regret it is time for you to take your leave, Mr. Cathcart. I am pledged for an intimate ball at the home of the Countess of Inverness—a most satisfactory, charming ball that will not be one of those sad, mad crushes that are all the rage in London—and I mean to have my niece with me.”

“Oh.” Elspeth’s sunny mood dimmed—she hated to bring the thorn of practicality in the side of such a rosy prospect. “But—”

“No buts, my darling Elspeth. Say good afternoon to Mr. Cathcart.”

Hamish took his cue, bowing to her curtsey in the most gentlemanly manner. “Lady Ivers. My dear Miss Otis.” She fancied that his smile was broader still when he kissed her hand. “Until we meet again.” And with one barely perceptible wink he was gone, out the front door and down the steps without looking back.

Elspeth knew this because she ran to the window of the drawing room to watch.

“We’ll see him again shortly, my love,” Aunt Augusta advised. “And it won’t do to let him see you pine. In fact, I think we must give your Mr. Cathcart reason to pine. My dresser will have picked out something suitably divine for you to wear to your first ball. She’ll have it pressed and aired and be waiting to dress your hair—very simply, for it is divine and needs only a pinch of powder—while we have a bite to eat. Pray pull for the footman, Elspeth, and then come and sit with me in my dressing room to sup and be transformed.”

“But—” Elspeth fought against the instinct—or rather the twenty-odd years of being taught not to call attention to herself—to stay at home, and muted her protest before it reached her lips. Because she had always stayed at home when others had gone to the few local assemblies the neighborhood had afforded. She had always sat quietly on visits, never putting herself forward. She had always hidden her disappointments behind duty. And just this once, she wanted to put herself forward.

To wear silk and be transformed.

She wanted to go to a ball. Even if she couldn’t dance a step.

Aunt Augusta took the excuses from her. “Don’t think you can stand against me, my darling lass, for I always get my way. It might take twenty-odd years to get, but here you are at last, and I mean to make up for lost time.” She laid a warm hand upon Elspeth’s cold fingers. “You need not worry, my dear, that I mean to make you over into someone else—you are perfectly lovely just as you are. But you will be something more than lovely once we can pry off all the fusty layers of middle-aged morality Molly and Isla have buried you under. Somewhere beneath the weight of all those scruples and self-doubt is your mother’s beauty just waiting to shine.”

“But I don’t know how to act—I’ve never been to a ball like—”

“There is nothing to it, my darling,” Aunt Augusta assured her. “You have only to be yourself.”

Elspeth’s relief was as profound as her worry—she had never been allowed, much less encouraged, to be herself. She hardly knew where to begin.

But it seemed she was to begin at a ball at the Countess of Inverness’ stately mansion on the Canongate High Street. If Elspeth had found the gracious elegance of her aunt’s townhouse a wonder, the gilded, candlelit opulence of Inverness House was a sight beyond compare. She had never imagined such a profusion of candelabra, glinting gold against the stuccoed, painted walls, nor such a press of richly dressed people.

Elspeth bobbed along in her aunt’s wake, feeling like a gawky gosling paddling after a swan. Aunt Augusta was a vision in palest French lilac and white powder, and even though Elspeth knew she herself had never looked so lovely in all her life, she had nothing of her aunt’s ease and grace.

Still, she could learn. She could follow her aunt’s elegant example, and nod and smile and bow her head graciously. She could pretend that this was how she had always lived, in luxury and light, and always would.

“There you are, dear Letty.” Aunt Augusta kissed their hostess on the cheek. “Let me introduce my dear niece and protégée, Miss Elspeth Otis. Elspeth, I give you the Countess of Inverness, my dear friend Letty.”

“Welcome, my dear.” The Countess was all gracious delight. “A pleasure to have you with us, Miss Otis.”

Elspeth sank into a deeply reverential curtsey. “My lady.”

“Such graceful manners, Augusta. We must have her dancing. The gentlemen will be all agog to have a chance with her.”

“We shall be selective, Letty. Only the best will do for my girl.”

“The Marquess of Cairn is here, just up from London.”

“Ah.” Those mischievous dimples appeared deep in her aunt’s cheeks. “Perfection.”

***

 And that, clearly, was Hamish’s cue. Elspeth Otis was his discovery, his diamond in the rough, and under no circumstance could he would stand to lose her to his charming brother Rory’s even more charming crony, Alasdair Strathcairn, Marquess of Cairn. Because in the hours between leaving Lady Ivers’ house and arriving at the ball, Hamish had been unable to think of anything or anyone but Elspeth.

“My ladies.” He swept in and took the hands the ladies instinctively and automatically proffered when he bowed before them. “Countess Inverness, Lady Ivers. And Miss Otis.” He bowed particularly reverentially before the object of his increasingly devoted attention, who looked like a breath of sweet summer sky in a blue silk gown the deep color of the ocean. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Lady Ivers didn’t look in the least bit surprised. “Mr. Cathcart. Your timing is impeccable, as always.”

Hamish took the backhanded compliment in the spirit it was intended—as a challenge. Time was of the essence. “My dear Miss Otis, might I beg the honor of this dance?”

The darling lass looked halfway between horrified and delighted. “Of course you may beg, much good it will do either of us. You see, I’m afraid I cannot—”

“Of course you can.” Lady Ivers looked from Elspeth to Hamish in shrewd assessment, before she decided to voice her full consent. “Mr. Cathcart is harmless enough, Elspeth. I see no reason why you should not dance with him, provided he behaves himself. And I shall watch quite closely to make sure that he does.”

Hamish bowed deeply to acknowledge the warning. “As you wish, my lady.” He offered Elspeth his hand. Which she did not take. In fact, she looked at his proffered palm the way a wee mousie might eye a rat.

So he set himself to charm her. “Tis only a country dance, my dear Miss Otis, not the end of the world.”

“Not yet, anyway.” But she let him lead her toward the dance floor. Toward, but not to.

 “Forgive me if I notice some hesitation on your part, Miss Otis. If the trouble is not with me—and what trouble could there be with a fellow of my charming sort—then it must be you. You do know how to dance, do you not, Miss Otis? Surely there are dances even in whatever wee benighted village you come from?”

 His tease had at least a little of desired effect—she crushed her lips between her teeth in an effort not to smile. “Well, I do know how to dance, Mr. Cathcart. Assemblies are held in the public rooms of the village inn, and while it might not be exactly benighted, I will acknowledge that it is a trifle dark. And they are held a very grand sum of four times a year—”

“Four times? So many as that?” His pleasure was all in her arch sweetness. “I begin to see your trouble. Not exactly a whirlwind social calendar.”

“No,” she agreed. “And I must admit”—she lowered her voice, as if imparting the greatest of confidences— “we often have to invite the whole of the hedgerows, including the badgers, in order to have enough couples for a proper set. So I ought to be well used to dancing with your sort.” She took a deep breath, and peeped up at him from the corner of her eye. “But the real truth of the matter, Mr. Cathcart, is that while I have danced imaginary dances with real badgers, and real dances with imaginary people, I have never danced a real dance with a real, live handsome gentleman or your sort, or any other.”

He could not help but smile at such sweetly charming flattery. “I think you’ll find gentlemen differ from blacksmiths and farmers only in the cut of their clothes and not in their appreciation of the dance. Or of their partners.”

A lovely flush swept across her cheeks. “You are very kind to misunderstand me, Mr. Cathcart. But let me be more plainspoken.” She stood on tiptoe to impart the whispered confidence. “I have never danced.”

 “What do you mean?” Hamish was beyond astonished—it was one thing not to have been kissed, but never to dance as well? “Not once?”

She put a finger to her lips, as if imploring him to keep the fact a secret. “Not ever.”

Something strange and fine and indignant stirred to life within his chest—a sort of inchoate rage that anyone might ever have slighted this creature by not asking her to dance. “Why the hell not?”

Chapter 12

At that oath, other couples forming the set turned to look at the pair of them, poised so precariously on the edge of the dance floor. Hamish damned his outburst, and quickly led Elspeth away before the fiddlers scraped up their bows.

He steered her in the opposite direction of her eagle-eyed aunt. “There is a garden at the back. I’m sure you’ll find it refreshing.”

“Yes. Thank you. Aunt Augusta said the ball would not be a mad crush, but …”

Indeed, there were people everywhere in the cavernous old mansion—ladies coming and going from the withdrawing room, gentlemen filling the card room with smoke, couples tucking themselves away into every nook and niche intent upon more than private conversation.

It was all clearly a bit much for Elspeth, whose eyes were growing as big as tea saucers from staring at all the carryings-on with a sort of curious wonder he was coming to recognize as particular to her character. “I think I just saw a young lady cut the buttons from a man’s coat,” she reported.

He wouldn’t in the least be surprised. “Welcome to Edinburgh.”

Elspeth followed him out the door to the lamp-lit back garden with palpable relief. “Oh, thank you. This is so much better.” The garden was sheltered from the worst of the changeable Scottish weather by a high brick wall crowded with vines and Scotch roses just budding into flower. “It smells heavenly.”

“And much less like the rest of this reeking auld city?” Hamish led her farther along the fine stone path, holding to his side of the walkway, and keeping his hands well to himself. Not thinking about the pale swath of flesh above the wide scooped neckline of her gown.

In short—very gentlemanly. Because she was, indeed, a wee, fey, innocent country mousie, and not the arch, knowing creature he had wished her to be.

Nor, it seemed, she wished to be. “I am sorry to be such a wet hen. I fear my lack of social experience is rather gauche.” She sighed again, the sound laced with equal parts frustration and embarrassment. “I don’t suppose you’d care to add lessons in dancing to your lessons in kissing?”

Ye gods, yes.

Hamish had to close his eyes against the anticipatory rush of pleasure her words set loose inside him—experienced she might not be, but spirited, she certainly was. “My dear Elspeth, I will give you lessons in anything you like.”

And to prove it to her, and because he was an unsteady, rash, ramshackle third son who most often did as he liked, he kissed her.

He kissed her with all the impatience that had brewed in his gut since the moment his lips had touched her cheek that afternoon. He kissed her with all the pent-up joy and passion and hope and attraction roiling within him. He kissed her because he was a lad and she was a lass, and she was sweet and willing and eager for exactly what he wanted—more.

More of the sweet taste of her. More of the smooth touch of her skin. More of the heavenly bliss that obliterated every other thought.

At his impetuous touch, she froze, her arms held wide and her eyes open even wider. But she tasted sweet, and she felt alive, and she did not push him away.

So he gentled his approach, murmuring easy words of pleasure. “Elspeth. So soft. So sweet.” Enticing without overwhelming. Inviting her to kiss him back. Asking her gently, carefully, giving her time to accustom herself.

And slowly, surely, breath by longer breath, she began to soften, thawing by degrees until her lids fluttered shut, and she melted against his chest. “Oh, aye.”

She tasted like apples and clean fresh water. She tasted like ease and simplicity and everything perfect and right. She tasted like a summer evening’s soft breeze and a night full of dancing stars. And she was holding on to him—her hands fisted in the lapels of his coat—just as tenaciously as he was holding on to her, that he didn’t care about innocence or experience. He only cared about deepening the kiss. About tracing the lush curve of her back, and wrapping his arm around her waist to pull her flush into his chest. About cupping the back of her head to angle her jaw just enough to deepen the kiss and sweep his tongue into her mouth to slake his thirst for the tart taste of her.