In fact, all thought of fishing was forgotten when she arched back to meet his lips with hers. He angled his head to gently suck her bottom lip until she opened her mouth to him, unfurling like a spring flower, soft and sweet. So sweet he was unprepared for her to turn within his arms, fitting herself flush against him, kissing him back, tasting him with hungry little nips and tentatively questing tongue. His chest expanded with heat and need and a desperation to keep her by his side, in his arms. To convince her that she ought to come with him.

His arms tightened around her, pulling her closer still, drawing her down into deeper intimacy. “Darling lass,” he encouraged. “How can you want to stay when you could have kisses always.”

She stilled, her hands going taut on his shoulders. “Always?”

“Aye. I would come to your Aunt Augusta’s house every day so we could work on the book together.” The idea was like an intoxicant. With the completion of the second book he would be assured of success. He would be free of his father’s threats, free to choose as he pleased. “Think of it, Elspeth. We could—”

But she did not want to hear his plans and possibilities. She turned away, slowly shaking her head. “Hamish. What you want is impossible for me.”

He refused to hear it. “It is not impossible. It is the easiest thing.”

She shook her head, and said nothing more, while she picked up the abandoned fishing rod. “I’d best get us breakfast.”

He was about to instruct her on how to gather the line, but the damned clever lass looped her line and let loose an effortlessly flawless cast that landed like the merest breath of a breeze on the surface of the dark, glassy water, and with one subtle draw, she had a fish on the hook and was smoothly reeling it in.

Humility—an emotion he rarely felt—tipped him right off his rock pedestal and into the ankle-deep water. “Well, damn me for an ass. You’re nothing short of an expert, you faker.”

“I never had to pretend. You were too busy instructing to ask if I’d ever fished before. And me, a country lass who’s lived along this burn all my life.”

He waded his way to the bank to contemplate his idiocy and his admiration for the graceful strength of her casts. Which were so quietly efficient, it was only a matter of a half hour before she had put another two fish in the creel.

“Is there nothing you can’t do?” he asked with a laugh. “Care for auld ladies, write books, thatch roofs, catch fish?”

“Make satisfactory jam.” Her smile was a little sad and bittersweet. “The Aunts say I haven’t the patience.”

“Ballocks.” How he loved her ability to banter, her cleverly sweet mind. “You’re exhibiting a fine amount of patience and finesse with that fly rod.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“Will it? Will it get you to Edinburgh.”

“Hamish.” Her answer was only slightly more forthcoming than silence, but just as noncommittal. She looked up at the morning sky, as if only just realizing what time it must be getting on to be. “Has it gone as late as that? I really ought to get back—the Aunts will wonder and worry even more if I am not there when they get back from kirk.”

He curbed his instinct to talk her into staying and shirking her duties, and, instead, walked her back to the orchard gate. “Even if you are late, you’ll bring them a tasty breakfast.”

“I will. But here”—she scooped one of the trout out of the wicker creel, and handed it to him—“You’ll need one for your breakfast as well.”

“I do, thank you.” He tried to prolong the contact as long as he might—made sure to brush his hand along her wrist, and his fingers lingered just long enough so she might understand the pleasure he took from her touch. “I won’t try and keep you. I know I told you I would go today, but there is still work that could be done. I could have a go at shoring up those rotting eaves. The timbers—”

“Hamish. Please.” She looked up at him with the whole of her soul shining in her clear blue eyes. “Please don’t ask for things that are not in my power to give.”

Chapter 18

Disapproval hung as thick as the scent from the rose vine outside the garden door by the time Elspeth made it home. Even at a run, she had arrived home after the Aunts had already returned from the village kirk.

“We missed you at services, Elspeth,” Aunt Molly began in a voice laden with reproach.

“I am sorry.” And Elspeth was, deeply so. She had not missed a Sunday service—barring illness, which had only happened once, when she had come down with a fever—in all the twenty odd years she had lived with her Aunts at Dove Cottage. “I woke early and thought it was a fine day for the thatching, and once we got working, I seem to have lost track of the time. Though the roof is well finished and very stout now, so you’ll have no worries it will leak come winter.”

“Elspeth,” Aunt Molly chided. “What has come over you? It isn’t like you to miss something as important as divine services.”

“I am sorry.” There was really nothing else Elspeth could say.

But she would not regret her morning. She would not allow any remonstration to dim her memory of her last few hours with him. What a lovely going away present those last golden hours had been.

“I’ll just get the breakfast eggs started on the boil.” She unloosed the strap of the creel from around her neck and headed for the kitchen.

Aunt Molly stepped into the doorway, blocking her way. “Where did you get that creel?” She turned toward the garden, almost as if she could see through the worn bricks and boards to the dusty collection of auld fishing gear in the shed. “It’s been years since we’ve had any new fishing equipment here.”

“No.” Elspeth swallowed the dry apprehension in her mouth, but gave them the honest truth. “I borrowed it from Mr. Cathcart.”

“Who?” Isla cupped her hand to her ear and then looked to Molly, as if for translation.

“Mr. Cathcart,” Elspeth repeated, even as she could feel the telltale heat creep up her neck.

“Mr. Cathcart? From up at Cathcart Lodge?” Isla was still confused. “I didn’t know there was anyone in residence. However did you meet him?”

But Aunt Molly had not been born yesterday, nor even the day after. “Elspeth Otis.” She looked at Elspeth over the top of her spectacles. “Your neck is going all pink.” She had always been able to detect even the flimsiest fib when Elspeth had been a child.

“I met Mr. Cathcart in Edinburgh,” she admitted.

“Edinburgh?” Aunt Molly still did not comprehend. “But how did you get his creel?”

Elspeth gave up all prevarication. “Because he has come here, to Dove Cottage. Mr. Hamish Cathcart is the man who has been repairing our roof and pretending to be a gardener.”

“Pretending?”

“Yes, Aunt. Because he’s not really a gardener or a thatcher.” Because Elspeth was tired of pretending, too. “He’s a publisher of books. And he’s publishing my book, or rather my father’s book.” She corrected her presumption, but the subtle difference was lost upon the Aunts who stared at her as if she had finally run irretrievably mad.

It was Aunt Molly who finally spoke. “Nay.”

It was such a simple, little word, but it hit Elspeth with the force of twenty years of denial. Twenty years of holding back. Twenty years of being called, “Elspeth!” in that disparaging tone, of not being legitimate, of never being thought good enough.

“Aye. It’s my legacy from my father, my fortune, those books. And I refuse to listen to you disparage him. I won’t hear another word against him.”

“Nay,” Aunt Molly said again, as if she could deny Elspeth any such legacy. “There is nothing you need from such a man. Have we not given you everything you need? Have we not given you a home and made you feel welcome?”

“Nay.” It was Elspeth’s turn to deny the charge. “You have. But—”

“It’s that devil’s cub, Augusta Ivers, who’s turned your head, and turned you against us.”

“Nay. Aunt Augusta was everything kind and encouraging—”

“Encouraging you to consort with strange men!”

Elspeth prayed for patience. “Not consorting, Aunt. Contracting—working with him the same as any author.” If one kissed every author one contracted, and thatched their roof and fished for their breakfast in the morning sunshine.

“Have you lain with him?”

The blunt question felt more like an accusation. “Nay! How could you ask such a thing?”

Her voice was hot and tight and scratchy with the pain—the pain of knowing she was breaking their frail old hearts as well as her own.

“You’ve changed since you went away, Elspeth. We hardly know you anymore.”

She hardly knew herself anymore. Perhaps she never had.

But it was past time.

Something within Elspeth changed in that moment—something that refused to be cowed, refused to regret. “Perhaps I have.” She firmed her voice. “Perhaps I’m not afraid of changing. Perhaps I want to be transformed.”

She had wanted it, with all her soul.

“That huzzy encouraged you, no doubt.” Isla finally said her piece.

Hurt and anger banked for twenty years gave her a stronger voice. “Speak of me how you will—how you always have, as if I’m not good enough. But you leave Lady Augusta Ivers out of it. She has been nothing but kind and generous and thoughtful—”

“And I suppose we haven’t?” Aunt Molly’s voice was becoming shrill.

Elspeth tried to stay calm and modulate her own voice, even as she felt the heat of tears searing her eyes. “That’s not what I said.”

“You’ve said quite enough, Elspeth Otis.” Aunt Molly’s tone was emphatic and dismissive. “Quite enough.”

“Blood will out, I’ve always said,” Isla added.

“Aye,” Molly sniffed. “And I’m afraid to say it’s true.”

There was nothing more Elspeth could say. Nothing more that she wouldn’t regret.

Blood would out, they said. Well, perhaps it was time to make it so.

Chapter 19

Elspeth ran.

Her feet seemed to know what to do better than her heart—this time she ran toward him.

She headed back the way she had just come, racing through the orchard, instinctively heading for the lodge, and Hamish.

And there he was coming through the gnarled apple trees. “I was just coming to say my goodbyes—”

She threw herself at him, looping her arms around his neck in the most forward manner. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. She needed the support of his arms immediately coming round her back to hold her close. She wanted the comfort of his surprised murmur. “What’s all this?”

“I’ve done it.” She mustered her wits, and pulled herself out of his arms. “I’ve gone over the hedge.”

“Which hedge?”

“My aunts’ hedge. I’ve told them all. I’ve told them that I wrote the book, and that you are publishing it, and that I’m going to go to Edinburgh with you and that I love you.”

The words came as no less of a shock to Elspeth than to Hamish. She had not said such a thing to her Aunts, but now that she had made the declaration, she knew it for the truth, and did not wish it unsaid.

“Elspeth.” He met her admission with a kiss that soothed every agitation, and was a balm to every concern. “My God, Elspeth.”

Everything else melted away but the persuasive pressure of his lips against hers, his arms holding her tight, his body pressed close and warm.

He turned his head, angling to get closer, to deepen the kiss. His hands cradled her face holding her as his tongue swept across the lips and into her mouth.

His kiss was everything he was—strong and confident and hedonistic and raw—and it made her want to be those things. To be as equal in this as in all other things.

She opened to him, to the sensations that fluttered back and forth from her lips to her chest and back. And then deeper into her belly, beating their wings in a frantic pace. She hugged herself closer to him, as if this would stop the frantic sensation. As if the hugs were an end and not a means to greater agitation. And greater pleasure.

His weight pressed her down into the soft fragrant grass. He was on her, around her, pulling him into his earth and heat and shelter. She held tight to his shirt front, anchoring herself to him. His chest pressed her hands between them, and she loosened her grip, only to find them flat against the solid shape of his torso. They began to roam of their own accord, up across his collar and along the breadth of his shoulders, out along the sculpted curve of his upper arms, down across the taut flat of his belly.

He made a sound that was equal parts frustration and encouragement, and he ducked his head to kiss and worry at the side of her neck, nosing and nipping until she turned her head to give him greater access.