“I found him forward,” was hers. For he had not been invited, and Elspeth had certainly not given him her aunt’s direction—indeed, she had never once even mentioned her aunt’s name.

But things at her Aunt Augusta’s house in the city seemed to be a great deal less formal or fussy than they had been under the stricter eyes of the sisters Murray. Here, things were a great deal less comme il faut than they were come-as-you-are.

Here, Aunt Augusta laughed at her pert reply. “Perfect, for Mr. Cathcart is, indeed, not backward in the least.”

Nay, he was not. He was already inviting himself to take the chair opposite without waiting to be asked or for Aunt Augusta to take her own seat. And he was already leaning forward, looking at Elspeth with a sort of minute attention that made her decidedly uncomfortable. “Tell me, Miss Otis, how long did it take you to prepare the manuscript? I noticed the copy you gave me was in your hand and not your father’s script.”

Wariness slid like spilled porridge into the pit of her stomach. They had decided to keep it a secret, she and Aunt Augusta, that it was Elspeth who had reshaped John Otis’ work. “Yes, well, it took several weeks to…transcribe the story from the crumbling foolscap he had written it upon.” The Aunts would castigate her for her sloppy grammar. “Upon which he wrote.”

Mr. Cathcart appeared to care nothing for her grammar. “Only several weeks? Well done. Very timely work. And did you find it difficult, replacing all the naughty—or shall we be frank and call them erotic?—bits before you brought it to me?”

Elspeth felt her cheeks heat. What an astonishingly direct fellow he was—he said the word so matter-of-factly. But as Aunt Augusta said nothing in protest, Elspeth struggled to achieve the same level of sanguinity. “Well, no. I mean, I only copied what was already written—”

“Come, you needn’t work your earnest bamboozle on me, Miss Otis.” He smiled and leaned his head closer to chat amiably, as if they were alone, and she were already in his confidence. “I’ve seen John Otis’ original writing—we have the manuscript for A Memoir of a Game Girl at Prufrock’s, you know. I can tell the difference.”

“No, indeed, I am not bamming you, Mr. Cathcart—” Elspeth flicked a glance at Aunt Augusta, looking for some direction, but that lady seemed to have been struck dumb for the first time in their acquaintance, so Elspeth racked her brain for some suitable explanation that would not be an outright lie, but would also not give away the whole of the game.

But it was as if he could see right through her fumbles—he chuckled and raised his eyebrows in tease. “You certainly are. While I do understand your hesitation to reveal yourself to the world until you are assured of how the novel will be taken, I think you had best come to terms with being a highly sought after author.”

“But I am not—”

“Then who is? As Prufrock said, John Otis has been dead and gone these twenty years, and the story you brought me is most assuredly not entirely from his pen. And I should know. I’ve been taking a long look at Fanny’s story with the idea of shaping Otis’ words into something more commercially palatable—a form they do not naturally take, as I’m sure you’re aware. The manuscript you offered me was more than palatable. It was genius.”

Genius.

Something warm and pleasing and not entirely manageable began to curl up in her chest, like a barn cat in a sunbeam. Pride—that was what the Aunts would name it, and take her to task. “You’re just trying to flatter me—”

“I am trying to flatter you, and rightly so. The book you’ve given me—the half of the book, and I shall want the other half straightaway—is damn fine, Miss Otis. Damn fine. I want to put it into production immediately. It matters not in the least to me that you, and not John Otis, really wrote it. In fact, it’s better.”

“Really? Better how?” She blinked at him, not understanding how such a thing could be possible. “John Otis is already famous—even if he is also rather infamous—and so will garner more attention if his name is upon the work.”

“Indeed.” He clapped his hands together in pleasure. “How clever of you to understand that, Miss Otis.”

“But you do mean to publish it under his name?”

“I do.” He extended his hand to shake in firm agreement. “I do intend to publish your book. And any more you might see fit to ‘find’.”

It hit her then—like a butt from a lamb, soft but insistent—the enormity of just what he was saying. He liked her book. He wanted more.

“Really?”

This time he laughed. “Really and truly. I will stake my last groat that not only will this book make your fortune as well as mine, but the next one will double it.”

“Truly? A fortune? And the next one?”

“I have plans for you, Miss Elspeth Otis. May I call you Elspeth? And you must call me Hamish”—he went on without waiting for her reply—“for I feel we’re bound to become the very closest of friends.”

Chapter 9

The truth was, Hamish wanted to be more than friends.

How much more, he wasn’t quite sure.

What was sure was that Miss Elspeth Otis was the rare sort of young woman he actually liked—intelligent and ambitious for something other than a husband. A lass who didn’t mind using her mind. And what a mind. Illegitimate she might be, the fruit of the devil’s own loins—for stories of John Otis’ roisterous ways lived large in Edinburgh’s collective memory—but by God, she could write like an angel.

In fact, Hamish liked her all the more for being illegitimate—she wasn’t likely to be the kind of lass who would question an earl’s son’s involvement in business, or turn up her nose at his own family’s decidedly irregular lineage. She was the perfect partner for him in all ways—clever as the day was long, disguising herself as a country mouse, when she was clearly no such thing—when her writing clearly told him she was blessedly experienced.

Hamish had never understood the virtues of ignorance, the absurd insistence on innocence in females—he’d never felt its attraction. Give him an honestly experienced lass who knew her own mind, and wasn’t afraid of what people would say any day.

Aye, Elspeth Otis was perfect. In more ways than one.

The manuscript she had brought him was as perfect as she—perfectly balanced between emotion and action. Perfectly calibrated toward a high romantic sensibility. And perfectly poised to make him a fortune.

But he’d give his left nut if John Otis had actually written it. John Otis had been bawdy and inventive and told a romping good tale, but he never wrote anything so lyrical and sweepingly romantic that it nearly made a man want to abandon his footloose, unsteady ways and make an honest man of himself.

Nearly. Unsteady he might be, but not unhinged.

Still, while he was taking advantage of her fine mind, there was no reason he might not also enjoy her fine looks. Without the cover of her tatty straw hat, her blond hair shimmered in the pool of sunlight streaming through the window, and her delicate face was pink with pleasure. This afternoon, Miss Elspeth Otis was no wee gray mousie—she was a soft, sweet cygnet who had, in the time it had taken him to read enough to make his decision, turned into a poised, serene swan.

She was a clever one, his Miss Otis. Because somewhere beneath that calm surface lurked a delightfully naughty, extremely talented mind. And, oh, how he liked the clever ones.

And if he had his way—and he had learnt enough of charm to ensure that he nearly always did get his way—she’d like him just as well. And he already had her aunt, Lady Augusta Ivers’ approval—in fact, she had all but hand-picked him for the part, hadn’t she?

“Michty me. It’s all so overwhelming. It’s as if it’s too good to be true.” But pleasure was shining from Elspeth Otis’ lovely blue eyes.

“Then I must convince you I am everything sincere. Because I have a proposition for you.”

Color swept up her long, pale swan’s neck and across her cheeks like a sunrise.

“A business proposition,” he clarified. Although now that she looked so fetchingly flushed, he began to wonder what it might be like to follow that swath of heightened color beneath the modest cover of her linen fichu, all the way to the very edge of her bodice and beyond. Down beneath the confinement of her stays, where he would tug the last defense of her chemise down to reveal the sweet pink tip—

“You want Elspeth to revise the original A Memoir of a Game Girl as well.” Lady Ivers’ enthusiastic, and correct, assumption brought him out of his dangerous daydream of Miss Otis’ flushed flesh, and back to the business at hand.

“Aye.” Hamish cleared his throat. “I do. What I’ve read of the manuscript you brought me is exactly what I want for the new edition of that novel.”

“You mean you want me—” The lass’ plum soft mouth fell open in astonishment. “To do it all again, with a second book?”

Hamish was nearly as gratified at having been right about Elspeth Otis’ revision of the manuscript, as he was excited at taking one step closer to that fortune just waiting to be made. “Indeed, I do. And I will contract with you for any further manuscripts you should care to ‘find’ or write after that. In fact, I predict any book written in the same style will be a pure smashing, success.”

Elspeth gaped at him. “You’re mad.”

“If I am, it’s a fine madness. But I am perfectly in my right mind, and I know exactly what I am doing—offering you the princely sum of two hundred and fifty pounds.” Hamish named the largest sum he thought he could reasonably afford without endangering their success. And then he had added a little more. Just to be sure. Prufrock & Company’s reserves were only slightly more than three hundred, but the extra fifty pounds were his insurance against competition.