“Why did you never tell me?” She would have reckoned at the advanced age of four and twenty she might finally be judged safe from becoming a huzzy merely by association.

“Because a more scandalous, scarlet woman of Babylon never lived,” was Isla’s fervent opinion.

“We thought it best,” was Molly’s more decorous judgment.

“But she, this scarlet woman”—and if a lass was to have an unknown relation, how intriguing, and somehow inevitable, that she should be a scarlet woman—“has known of me? Well, clearly she has”— Elspeth answered her own question—“for she has sent me a present. On my birthday. But how strange that she should never have written me before.”

Another fraught, stony-faced look passed silently between the two elderly sisters.

“Aunt Molly?” Elspeth faced the eldest of the two. “Do you mean to tell me she has written to me previously?”

“We thought it best,” Molly repeated, “to keep you from the influence—”

“The iniquitous influence,” Isla amended.

“—of That Wastrel’s family.”

Elspeth braced herself for the lecture she knew would be coming following the mention of her long-dead father. John Otis had done three things to earn the sobriquet of “That Wastrel”. First, he had fallen in love with her mother, the Aunts’ lovely youngest sister, Fiona, which had led to pregnancy, Elspeth’s birth, and shortly thereafter, her mother’s untimely death. Secondly, he had written a book so scandalous, licentious and popular that it had subsequently been banned from publication. And lastly, he had, in his grief over his young wife’s death, slowly drunk himself to death, leaving his only daughter to the tender care of the only family she had left in the world—her devoted, but strict, spinster aunts.

“We wanted to wait until you were older,” Aunt Molly tried to explain.

“Old enough to know better,” Isla added.

Well. She was certainly old enough now, wasn’t she, now that she was a dashed spinster?

“Aye, there be a letter, too.” The dray mon slapped into her palm a thick, expensively papered letter with Elspeth’s own name in an elegant scrawl across the front.

“Michty me.” Elspeth gave vent to her frustration with forbidden Scots cant. “What else have ye twa been keeping frae me?”

Chapter 2

“I’m sure you know why I’ve called you here, Hamish.”

Hamish Cathcart, third, last legitimate, and nearly forgotten son of the Earl Cathcart, did not know why his father had summoned him to the dark-paneled book room of his Edinburgh townhouse. Nor did he particularly care. His father’s summons only ever amounted to one thing—Hamish was to shut his smart mouth and do as he was bid.

Which he did do. Sometimes.

Sometimes he played the dutiful third son, and obeyed. And sometimes he only gave the appearance of obeisance, and quietly found a way to do what he wanted without ruffling the earl’s carefully preened feathers.

Today, however, was not going to be one of those times. Because today he had a very strong hunch he knew exactly what the auld mon was working himself into a fine lather to say—Hamish was going to be cut off.

“You can’t think I intend to finance you all of your days. And you can’t expect that after I’m gone, your brother, William, will simply pay you an allowance indefinitely.”

On this point, Hamish did agree with the tightfisted auld bean. He did not think his allowance—indifferently given and indifferently received—would continue indefinitely. Which was why he had never spent the money his father doled out to him as the auld mon assumed, on cheap wine, cheaper women and off-key song. Hamish had, instead, invested it. But with investment came risk. And although risk had its rewards, it also had its downfalls.

And at the moment, Hamish had rather fallen down.

Yet he was more than sure that he could revive himself, just as he always had, and make another modest fortune. An idea was poised at the back of his brain—poised and not entirely formed. Not without—

“—a wife.”

Ye gods. Hamish’s wayward attention snapped back to the auld badger. “I beg your pardon?”

“Did you hear nothing I said?” the earl snorted.

“I distinctly heard you say the word ‘wife’.” Hamish pronounced the word with the same wariness one might speak the words “serpent” or “debutante” or “debt collector”.

“Indeed.” The Earl Cathcart slapped the flat of his palm against the desktop, as if that explained everything. “You need a wife. With a suitable fortune. Luckily, you’ve got your hair and your teeth, if not a great deal of ambition, or steadiness of character, so we ought to be able to take a good pick of the available heiresses. I’ve drawn up a list—”

“We?” Hamish didn’t care if his tone was swimming in sarcasm.

A sarcasm his father willfully ignored. “Of course your mother will have her candidates as well, but I should think I know far better what a young man of your character requires, eh?” The earl allowed himself a chuckle. “I’ve my eye on a few fillies that should take your fancy enough to make it no chore to get an heir off her.”

Hamish shoved the distasteful idea of equating a lass to a brood mare out of his mind, consigning it to the rubbish heap that was the only suitable receptacle for his father’s crude, patronizing view of the world. “As I am not the heir, I’ve no need to get myself one.”

When that pleasantly snide observation elicited no discernible reaction, Hamish tried the prick of a more pointed probe. “And need I remind you of the unhappy state of your own arranged marriage? You’re hardly a recommendation for such an arrangement.”

His father looked down his impressively long nose. “Don’t be crass.”

“And arranging to take a lass to wife with the same callous calculation as if she were a mare at a fair is not? I am not being crass, but factual.” Even if Hamish and his siblings had not been witness to years and years of continuous marital sniping and discord, Hamish’s illegitimate half-brother, Rory, was proof enough of their father’s infidelity.

And yet his father called Hamish unsteady.

His father was not best pleased at this display of logic. “And what, you fancy yourself in love?” This time it was his father’s voice that dripped with sarcasm.

“Heaven forfend,” Hamish laughed off the idea—he was unsteady, not unhinged. “Not at all, sir.” He was too busy for anything so time-consuming as love. “I have other plans to secure my future than shackling myself to some unknown lass.”

“Better someone unknown,” his father advised darkly, “than someone for whom you’ve too much regard.”

Though he was no poetry-spouting romantic, Hamish immediately rejected such a dismal view. He had friends enough with good marriages—the aforementioned half-brother, Rory, and his lovely French wife, Mignon, came immediately to mind—to know that regard for one’s partner in life was not only preferable, it was positively necessary. “That is your opinion, sir. I, myself, will not contemplate marriage without it.”

But the sad truth of the matter was that there was no lass for whom he felt such regard. No one at all.

“So be it.” His father stood. “From this day forward, I am done with you. The ledger”—he clapped the account book open before him shut—“is closed. If you care not for the benefit of my advice and counsel on the matter of getting a wife, I will leave you to the dubious pleasure of your mother’s tender”—his tone carried all the weight of his distaste for his wife of thirty years—“cares. Good luck with any wife she might find for you. Prim, priggish lasses like she’s made your sisters—so missish they could curdle milk with their sour looks.”

As Hamish would rather be made to walk naked down Edinburgh’s High Street than spend two minutes with any such woman, he softened his tone. “Forgive me, Father, if I appeared ungrateful. But I simply don’t share your urgency for my marriage. I am not so done up without your money that I don’t have a feather to fly by. Far from it. I am not so frivolous or imprudent as that.”

Indeed, he had not been frivolous at all—he had just had a run of bad luck, was all. Yet he was sure he could revive his fortunes sufficiently to make marrying for money entirely unnecessary.

But his father knew nothing of Hamish’s business ventures. And Hamish needed to keep it that way—gentlemen, even unsteady third sons of earls, did not engage openly in trade. Nothing would be surer to ruin his business prospects like the scandal of the earl’s son dirtying his hands with work.

“You have until Whitsunday to pick a bride. Your mother will like a June wedding.” Earl Cathcart flicked an imaginary bit of fluff off his immaculate sleeve before he regarded his son through narrowed eyes. “If you’re smart—though you show little sign of being—you’ll avail yourself of this list of gels”—he thrust a sheet of foolscap at Hamish—“before your mother provides you with a suitably prim list of her own. Believe me, even if she’s never spoken of it, she has one.”

Unfortunately, his mother had, indeed, spoken of it. A son did not reach the recklessly dangerous age of eight and twenty without his mother offering the name of at least one “suitable” miss. “I understand you, sir.”

“Good.” The earl crossed the room and held open the door. “Whitsunday.”

Hamish placed his hat on his head, pulling the tricorn down low over his eyes, so his father could not see the hot flare of scorn in his eyes.

Whitsunday was less than five weeks away—an entirely ridiculous deadline. But Hamish would beat it.

Bollocks to Whitsunday.

Chapter 3

What the Aunts had kept from her was the astonishing fact that Lady Augusta Ivers, her father’s sister, had, for four and twenty years, sent not only birthday greetings, but also yearly invitations for her niece to visit. But this year, the lady had cannily sent an invitation—the trunk—too big for the Aunts to hide.