Chapter 27
It had been nearly a fortnight since Elspeth had left the Highlands.
Struan had come to the city because Linneliath was unlivable without Elspeth there.
It made no sense. She hadn’t lived there long in the first place, and it was his family’s ancestral home, but somehow she had made it into her home in the blink of an eye.
And he didn’t know what he was going to do if he had to keep walking those halls and going into rooms that she was never in.
So he came to Edinburgh. Not because Elspeth was in the city, but because he simply wanted to, damn it. And of course, he’d discovered instantly that she ignored his advice to stay in his townhouse. Damn it again. Fortunately, the other men were still in town as well.
Thane, Calan, and Duncan all had homes in the city.
Kai was staying in his family’s house in apparent contentment.
Struan wondered if it was Kai’s way of recapturing his own childhood, and finding a return to a more innocent way of life after experiencing years of war.
He’d been extremely young at the beginning.
It was one of the reasons the other men had decided they ought to look out for him.
Though Kai turned out to be a remarkably mature and capable person, there was still an air of boyishness about him.
No wonder his mother kept cooking all his favorite meals and baking special treats.
It was a celebration every day, because Kai was still alive.
Struan couldn’t object, partly because he was now eating a blackberry tart baked by said mother.
The men—Kai, Struan, Thane, Calan, and Duncan—sat in the dim but incredibly comfortable parlor of the house.
Struan liked how dark the room was. It made it easier to pretend that the other men couldn’t see the shame on his face.
“It’s time to talk,” Calan said. “I got your letter from a few weeks ago, and both Duncan and I have been watching the McGregor house to see that the other sister is all right. Which she seems to be, by the way.”
Struan nodded. In fact, the same day Ellie had ripped out his soul by revealing the truth Mairi had somehow learned and wrote down in her letter, he’d sent a request to Calan by the fastest method he could think of.
The request was simple: Will two of you watch over Mairi McGregor.
Will explain later. He knew they’d follow the instructions without question.
“Look, before I can explain what’s going on, I need to tell you the truth about how I acquired Elspeth.”
“Acquired?” Kai asked.
“Let him speak,” said Calan.
Struan told them, in fits and starts. It didn’t take long according to the minute hand on the clock. But it felt like hours before he got to the end of the brief account.
“You don’t look surprised,” Kai told Calan.
“I was given a head start on the news of Struan’s wedding,” Calan said. “He tried not to tell me how it all happened, but I am, as you know, sometimes insistent on getting to the truth of a thing.”
“Did you hurt him?” Thane asked, alarmed.
“No! Jesus.” Calan sighed.
“I had to talk to someone,” Struan said. “Calan was handy. And he did help me with preparing for the wedding. He really didn’t tell you anything?”
Duncan shook his head. “Calan keeps his mouth shut. But we all knew there was something strange about your marriage. I wasn’t able to uncover anything specific.”
“Uncover? You were looking?”
“Of course I was looking. You went from confirmed bachelor one day to bridegroom the next, with no courtship in between. We’d never heard of your new wife or her family, and you absconded from the city the same day as the wedding.”
“I didn’t abscond. I just left.”
“No, he’s right,” Kai said. “You definitely absconded.”
“Fine. I…I wanted to get home.”
“With your pretty new wife,” Thane added.
“Who has since left me,” Struan reminded them. “And so I’m back to where I started. Figuratively. And literally.”
“And now you need help to get her back.”
“I just want to talk with her.”
“Hhhm,” Calan murmured.
“So she believes that her selection is solely due to the unpaid loan?” Kai asked. “You didn’t tell her anything else?”
“For example,” Calan suggested, “you didn’t tell her you care about her.”
“Of course I care about her.”
“But did you tell her so?”
“I tried.” Struan put the remainder of the tart down. It tasted sour now. “I’m not good at that sort of thing.” Though apparently he was good at doing terrible, torturous things to Elspeth and then sending her away. That was probably not the best way to convey how much he cared about her.
“And she’s also in Edinburgh now,” Duncan said. “We were watching the house when she arrived, and that surprised the hell out of me. Good thing you included a letter to be carried on the same ship she sailed on.”
“A brief letter,” Calan added. “Not much better than the first scribbled order.”
“I’ll give you the details now.” He told them the rough outline of what had happened when Ellie announced she was returning to the city, though he did it with a minimum of emotion.
He did not, for example, say how her departure and the way she’d looked at him left his stomach in knots and his chest heaving.
He did not say that he nearly ran after the carriage as it left so that he could stop her from leaving him.
He did not say how he’d gone into Elspeth’s bedroom and lay face down on her bed just to inhale the scent of the sheets.
He didn’t say any of those things; he didn’t have to. These were perceptive people and had gleaned secrets from men who were better actors than Struan.
“The main thing is to get Struan in there, so he can talk to her,” Kai said at last.
“Listen,” said Calan. “Women are always willing to talk, eventually. So write her a letter, let her know you’re here. You just need to be patient and keep asking her if she’s ready to talk.”
“But they didn’t have an ordinary fight,” Kai pointed out. “This isn’t a tiff over what china pattern they’ve decided to buy. This is a revelation about the truth of how she ended up at this place.”
Struan nodded, thinking that Kai had the better insight into Elspeth’s frame of mind, even though Calan was usually more in tune with the mysteries of women’s thoughts.
“I handled the whole matter in the worst possible way. But I really believed that if I had simply told her the bare truth, she would have been just as hurt.”
Calan took a bite of his tart, chewed slowly, then said, “There was probably a way to tell her the truth without hurting her feelings, but I agree that it doesn’t matter now.
The fact is that she did learn the truth, and she learned it from someone other than you, so she believes that you can’t be trusted. ”
Struan said, “If she won’t trust me to tell the truth, how can I expect her to want to talk about the truth?”
“Women have been known to change their minds on occasion.” Calan smiled with a confidence that Struan envied.
“So what do we do about it?” Kai asked. “On a practical level, I mean.”
Calan said, “We need to make it possible that our man can have a quiet chat with his woman. Struan, you said that Elspeth is in town on the occasion of her sister’s engagement…
festivities, whatever that means. I assume there will be events, and there will be people coming to those events. So prepare yourself to be a guest.”
Struan said, “There’s only one small problem with that plan. I’m not invited to anything.”
“Who cares? You’re the husband of the sister of the family who’s planning it all.
The other guests won’t question it, and the family would never make a fuss in public.
We know what McGregor is now. He’s a desperate social climber.
He wants more than anything to have the respect of those in the city who are above him.
He would rather die than embarrass himself, and I’m sure that includes not being humiliated at a party. ”
It was logical to assume that McGregor wouldn’t make a scene if Struan showed up at his house.
He knew too well that Struan could reveal the unsavory truth that he had been willing to trade a daughter to end a debt.
The baldness of McGregor’s avarice would scandalize the very people he wished to become his peers.
“I’ll find out when the next gathering connected to this engagement will be,” Struan offered.
“It seems odd,” Kai said suddenly, “that McGregor is spending so much time and money on this daughter’s engagement when he clearly didn’t care about the other one. Why do you think that is?”
“Who knows?” Struan replied. “He thinks of no one but himself, as far as I can tell. Averill is actually his stepdaughter, so perhaps it’s his wife who’s propelling all of the nonsense surrounding the engagement.”
Calan stood up. “Well, I’ve got somewhere to be. Let me know the moment we learn something new. I think it would be best if I also attended the first event. Moral support, and all that.”
Kai shook his head. “You just want to go because you know there will be unmarried ladies there.”
“How dare you suggest such a thing?” Calan looked wounded. “I’m going for the married ones.”
* * * *
Reconnaissance revealed that Averill McGregor was planning not just a single party, but a sort of campaign of attrition upon all of Edinburgh’s polite society.
She was holding a string of events over the course of a few weeks, all intended to raise her profile and then crown her as the most desirable debutante in the country, only to be immediately taken off the marriage mart with a well-timed proposal at the final party.
The fact that everyone knew the proposal was imminent did not seem to detract from the suspense.
“They say Mr Farquhar is totally enchanted by her. He would have proposed months ago, but she insisted that it be done this way. Poor man, he’ll have to take her in hand once she’s his wife,” one observer noted at the club where Struan had been inquiring.