Chapter 4
Kate all but skipped through the cobblestone streets of Edinburgh’s Old Town, the castle looming above her.
It had been one of the most wonderful mornings of her life.
She had never dreamed that she would have the opportunity to sketch a large predator like a puma, unless, perhaps, it was chained up in the Tower menagerie.
The cat’s power and grace had been beyond anything she could have imagined, and to have the opportunity to observe it for so long, and at such close range, had been simply magical.
She knew already that she would return to the Upper Museum again and again and would likely fill dozens of sketchpads with studies of Marigold.
In addition to the watercolors she was going to make for Mr. Sterling, she would make one for her sister, Pippa—
She stopped short as it occurred to her that perhaps this wasn’t a good idea.
She hadn’t told any of her sisters the real reason she had wanted to visit Great-Aunt Agatha in Edinburgh.
Given the chance, she might have confided in Clarissa, considering Clarissa was the one who had pressed her to apply for the position in the first place.
But Clarissa had recently married and was off traveling the country with her husband, Rupert.
It was usually impossible to get anything past Kate’s eldest sister, Eleanor. But, in addition to her new duties as the Duchess of Norwood, Eleanor was with child, and although she was managing her pregnancy with the quiet stoicism that was her signature, her attention was now divided.
As for Kate’s youngest sister, Pippa, she was a guileless girl who did not tend to question things, so Kate’s professed desire to visit Great-Aunt Agatha had not seemed suspicious.
Kate considered the problem at hand as she resumed her walk.
She could probably send the drawing. Her sisters would hardly expect her to have stopped sketching.
And the university’s natural history museum was open to the public.
The sketch would not raise suspicion so long as she omitted a few pertinent details.
Speaking of omitting pertinent details, Kate was almost home.
Slipping down a side street, she came to a small mews.
Most mews would be bustling with stable hands, but this was where Great-Aunt Agatha’s neighbor, Mrs. Douglas, kept her horse and carriage.
Mrs. Douglas only used the conveyance to attend Sunday services, so it was usually quiet.
She slipped into the room where the glossy black coach was stored, then reached into the box beneath the coachman’s seat and removed the day dress she had stashed there that morning. She changed into the dress and stuffed her male clothing into her satchel.
The fact that students did not wear robes at the University of Edinburgh was a complication.
She had been counting on the baggy robes to conceal her figure.
She had a whole trunkful of male clothing that she had found in the attic of Askwith Hall, the ducal mansion belonging to her brother-in-law, Jasper St. James.
Based on their size and cut, she assumed the clothes had once belonged to Jasper’s younger brother, Felix.
Felix was now a man of four and twenty, and the garments wouldn’t fit him today.
But they fit Kate reasonably well, and she had commandeered them all.
Now, she would have to see if adding some carefully placed padding to the coats would be sufficient to conceal her figure.
If not, she supposed she could still wear the academic robes.
She was given to understand that university students were often eccentric.
Perhaps she could pass it off as the quirk of a young Englishman who had always dreamed of attending Oxford.
But this would not be her preferred option.
She was trying to blend in, and dressing differently from every other student at the university would only make her stand out.
She managed to slip from the mews unseen and returned to the main road, smiling as she spotted the bay window that marked Great-Aunt Agatha’s house.
After their father abandoned them, Eleanor wrote to every relation, friend, and casual acquaintance the Weatherby sisters possessed, seeking aid.
Out of the three dozen letters sent, only Great-Aunt Agatha had offered to take them in.
At the time, she had lived in a miserable two-room hovel and had been every bit as poor as the four sisters.
Once Eleanor married the duke, Great-Aunt Agatha’s generosity had not been forgotten.
One of Jasper’s first acts was to purchase her a house of her own.
He had wanted to set her up in one of the stately townhomes being laid out on the north side of the castle.
Great-Aunt Agatha would have none of it.
She had lived in Old Town her whole life, and in Old Town she intended to stay.
Jasper had therefore been forced to settle for a house on Lawnmarket, which he had staffed with two maids and a manservant.
Kate was glad Great-Aunt Agatha had insisted.
She much preferred Old Town’s twisting cobblestone streets and hodgepodge of buildings from every century since the tenth.
Most people preferred New Town with its pristine squares and symmetrical townhouses designed by architectural luminaries such as Robert Adam.
But the gritty chaos of Old Town was the very thing that appealed to Kate.
She supposed it was her artistic sensibility.
New Town might be beautiful, but Old Town was picturesque.
It also reminded her of York, the closest city to Boroughbridge, the village where she had grown up.
York, too, had an ancient town center with cobblestone streets, castle walls, and a stately cathedral.
Kate loved the feeling of a medieval town.
She much preferred the grit and grime, the wear and tear, the feeling that life had happened here, to a pristine Palladian crescent.
She loved to picture the people who had walked those streets in centuries past, and to now be a part of that history.
There was something about Edinburgh that moved her beyond the sum of its many fascinating parts. Kate couldn’t quite explain it, but from the moment she had stepped from the carriage upon her arrival, she had known.
It felt like home.
She shook herself. This was but a temporary respite from her real life. Eleanor might be distracted at the moment, but she doubted very much that her sister would allow her to remain in Edinburgh permanently. Besides, she had been here all of ten days. The feeling might very well pass.
Still, Kate couldn’t shake the feeling that she was on the cusp of… something.
She smiled at Great-Aunt Agatha’s manservant as he opened the door. “Thank you, Jamie.”
She hurried upstairs to her bedroom and carefully stowed her male garments at the bottom of the trunk containing her art supplies, then spent a few minutes neatening her dress.
Once she was satisfied that her appearance passed muster, she tucked her sketchbook beneath her arm and went in search of her great-aunt.
She found her seated next to a window in the first-floor parlor. “Katie!” Great-Aunt Agatha cried, looking up from her knitting. “I thought ye might be Mrs. Douglas. I’m expecting her for tea.” She gestured to the seat across from her. “What did ye get up to this morning?”
Kate paused, bending forward to admire the delicate, lacy stitches her great-aunt had been working in a fine, dove-grey wool.
Out of all the luxuries Great-Aunt Agatha could have requested now that a duke was paying her bills, the one thing she had wanted was high-quality wool.
Kate wasn’t very skilled with a pair of needles, but as an artist, she appreciated outstanding craftsmanship in any form. “This is gorgeous.”
Great-Aunt Agatha waved her off, but her face creased into a smile. “Oh, settle down! Ye’re the artist in the family. Speaking of, is that yer sketchpad I see there?”
“It is.” Kate flipped to the drawings she’d made today. “I went to the Upper Museum over at the university. Did you know that they keep a live puma as a pet?”
“You must mean Marigold!” Great-Aunt Agatha laughed at Kate’s startled expression.
“That cat is something of a celebrity around here. Did ye know that they keep a man on staff who’s charged with walking her each morning?
He doesnae usually make it quite this far, but every once in a great while, I look out my window and see that gorgeous beast striding down the Royal Mile as if she owns it. ”
Kate obligingly turned the pages so Great-Aunt Agatha could see her sketches. Once she finished, she casually said, “I met someone at the museum.”
This was a lie, of course, but if she was going to enroll at the university, Kate would need a plausible excuse to come and go from the house at odd hours.
“Oh?” Great-Aunt Agatha replied.
“It was the headmistress of a school for young ladies,” Kate said in a rush. “She saw me sketching Marigold and asked if I would be interesting in giving drawing lessons to her students.”
A grin split her great-aunt’s face. “Och, Katie! That’s wonderful! I wonder if it’s a school that I’ve heard of. What was her name?”
Kate immediately regretted speaking before having time to better develop her lie. “Mrs… McGillicuddy.”
McGillicuddy? Really, Kate?
If Great-Aunt Agatha found the name unusual, she gave no sign of it. “Hmm. I haven’t heard of that particular school. They must be cropping up all the time, with the way the city is growing.” She leaned forward and patted Kate’s hand. “Well, I can certainly see why they would want you!”
Kate was spared from having to elaborate on her poorly thought out cover story by their neighbor, Mrs. Douglas, who came bustling into the room.
She leaned forward, peering at Kate’s sketchpad.
“Why, it’s our Marigold! I saw her taking her morning constitutional Thursday last. I say, Kate, those are excellent! Not that I’m surprised, mind you.”
Mrs. Douglas took the chair next to Great-Aunt Agatha. A minute later, one of the housemaids arrived with a tray of tea and shortbread. Kate prepared them each a cup, then showed Mrs. Douglas her sketches.
Once she finished, the two women settled in for a chat, and Kate excused herself to go add some watercolors to her sketches of Marigold.
Upstairs in her room, she flipped through her sketchpad, choosing which poses she would turn into paintings.
As she began transferring the sketches to larger sheets of paper, she mused that today had gone surprisingly well.
She had apparently succeeded in passing herself off as a boy.
She had managed to don and remove her disguise without being caught.
And she was well on her way to securing the position.
Now that she had met Nathaniel Sterling, she found that she very much wanted this madcap scheme to work out.
This was such a good opportunity for her to establish her reputation as a scientific illustrator.
And Mr. Sterling seemed like he would make an outstanding collaborator.
Her initial impression was that he was highly intelligent.
The fact that he’d been made a tutor at such an early age suggested that his research was first-rate, unlike that of her father.
Kenneth Weatherby had spent most of his career chasing after wyverns and basilisks, hoping to make a name for himself by making a breakthrough discovery, never grasping that the reason the pegasus remained undiscovered was because it did not, in fact, exist.
Just as important, Mr. Sterling seemed to have a sincere appreciation for her talents. He was glad to have her as part of the project.
Yes, those were the reasons she was embarking on this rash scheme.
Not because she found Nathaniel Sterling so attractive.
In truth, the fact that she found him attractive was a deterrent rather than an inducement.
Kate was taciturn by nature. She knew nothing about flattery and flirtation.
The mere thought of being alone in a room with such a handsome man was making the back of her neck feel itchy, as if she were breaking out in hives.
Her natural instinct was not to fling herself into his arms so much as to hide in the corner.
Although… Nathaniel Sterling had been surprisingly easy to talk to. It helped that he was a naturalist and they had so many interests in common, she supposed. Conversing with him had been terrifying, but if she was honest, she had also found it exhilarating.
Oh, all right. She supposed that, in the interest of honesty, she should say that the fact that she found Mr. Sterling attractive served as a deterrent and an inducement in equal measures.
Had she met him in London, she would have been quietly thrilled. She might not have had the faintest idea how to approach him. But she rather thought that, for the first time in her life, she would have been bestirred enough to try.
But meeting him here in Edinburgh, while she was dressed as a boy, the budding attraction she felt toward him could cause nothing but trouble.
She could only hope that the project they would undertake would not force them to work in close proximity.
Because it wouldn’t do for a young man to go around making cow eyes at his tutor, and Kate was fairly certain she was not capable of being in the same room as Nathaniel Sterling for any length of time without making an absolute cake of herself.
She heaved a sigh. Now was not the time to fret over such things. She needed to focus on securing the job. There would be plenty of time later to worry about how she would carry it out.
Reaching for her paintbox, she set to work.