She moved away from him as soon as she could when servants hurried to help them remove hat, coat and cloak. Then it was on to the finely appointed drawing room full of expensive furnishings of royal blue and silver damask and hothouse roses in a variety of tall, oriental vases. Several well-dressed men and women were already milling about, resplendent in evening attire. The men were almost uniform in their dark jackets, brilliantly white shirts, intricately tied cravats and white knee breeches and stockings, with polished and buckled shoes. The ladies, however, were like a collection of flowers, the hues ranging from dark purple or black to the brightest, lightest pinks and yellows, with a smattering of green that could represent foliage. The hairstyles were likewise fashionable, with curls and ringlets and ribbons and flowers interwoven in the glossy locks. Some of the older women sported turbans, with flowers and jewels attached. Indeed, there were so many jewels of so many kinds and sizes, Esme was quite dazzled, although she thought her simple string of pearls, given to her by Jamie when she turned twenty-one, was finer than any necklace here because it had been given with love.
“Ah, here you are!” Catriona cried, hurrying toward them through the crowd.
She wore a gown of soft green velvet that brought out the color of her eyes. Her hair was dressed with pearls that matched the string at her throat, and her long gloves were spotlessly white, like the toes of the slippers peeking out from beneath her gown. She moved with lithesome grace and her smile was all that a woman’s welcoming smile ought to be.
No wonder the young men flocked to her, and Jamie had fallen deeply in love.
What man would find her attractive, Esme wondered, if he knew the truth about her love of the law, the joy she found in researching legal precedents, the triumph she experienced when she’d written an excellent draft of a will or settlement, her lack of concern for her wardrobe or hair, or saw the ink that so often stained her fingers?
Apparently, MacLachlann did—except that she couldn’t believe his kisses meant any sincere affection on his part. Lust, perhaps—and although even that was surprising, it was hardly the long-lasting feeling she hoped to inspire in a man’s heart.
“You must come and meet my father,” Catriona said, taking Quinn’s other arm and steering them toward an elderly gentleman with white hair, as wrinkled as a raisin and as thin as a barge pole, seated near the marble hearth carved to look as if it was held aloft by half-naked nymphs.
As they walked across the room, Esme could feel the scrutiny of the people watching. In spite of her anxiety, she did her best to look as if she belonged there, among this glittering, wealthy crowd. She risked a swift glance at the man beside her, to see that he didn’t look the least bit uncertain or out of place. Indeed, given how fine he looked, she could well believe that the women were watching out of admiration for a handsome man, not because they suspected anything was amiss. And Catriona would draw the attention of any male older than fifteen.
“Papa,” Catriona said when they reached the elderly gentleman, “this is the Earl of Dubhagen and his wife, who have recently returned from Jamaica.”
“Who?” the older man demanded, frowning as he looked at them and cupped his right ear. A few stray white hairs protruded from each ear, and a few more grew equally as wild in his eyebrows, looking not unlike antennae.
“Lord Dubhagen and his wife,” Catriona repeated a little louder. “Come back from Jamaica.”
“Dubhagen, eh?” the earl cried with sudden understanding and a smile. “Back from Jamaica at last! Everybody thought you’d never return. And this is your wife. Pretty little thing, I must say.”
He leaned toward Esme. “He looks strong enough,” he whispered loudly, “but young men today don’t know anything about pleasing women.”
Esme couldn’t quite mask her shock, and it was no hardship to feign an embarrassed giggle. “He suits me, my lord.”
“You’re a lucky man, Dubhagen, but then your family always was, except for that young scamp. What was his name? The fifth one that ran off with the Gypsies.”
“Quintus, my lord,” MacLachlann matter-of-factly supplied. “But it wasn’t with Gypsies. He took my father’s best horse and rode to London.”
“Whatever happened to him? Came to a bad end, no doubt.”
“I have no idea, my lord. I haven’t had any communication with him for the past decade.”
Esme had known MacLachlann was estranged from his family, but that was a long time to be alone.
“Not since before your father died, eh? There was a man for you—your father. Not like these young fellows today who are all spit and boot black. That man could fight!”
“Yes, he was very strong,” Quinn replied, and in a coldly distant tone she recognized. She’d heard it often enough from the adult children of parents and guardians who’d been neglectful, harsh, or even brutal.
A tawny-haired, broad-shouldered fellow approached and bowed. The earl nodded in return, so clearly he knew the man, while Catriona gave him a little smile more indicative of friendship than desire, or so it seemed to Esme.
When he spoke, however, he addressed neither the earl nor Catriona, but MacLachlann.
“Please forgive the rudeness, my lord,” he said. “I should have come by your house as soon as you arrived from London, but I’ve been working on a very difficult contract up in Inverness. I’m your solicitor here in Edinburgh, my lord. Gordon McHeath.”
Another lawyer at last! Now she could have some intelligent conversation that wasn’t fraught with…anything.
“I’ve been so looking forward to…!” she began with heartfelt sincerity before she remembered she was supposed to be shallow and ignorant, and that although she hated to believe a solicitor could be complicit in illegal activities, it was certainly possible. “To meeting my husband’s solicitor,” she added with another silly giggle.
McHeath smiled. “Really? Well now, that’s not something a solicitor usually hears.”
She was well aware of that. Attorneys were often held in contempt as grasping, greedy charlatans—until they were needed, of course.
“Not that I understand at all what you do,” she continued with another giggle. “I wanted to thank you for hiring all the servants and seeing that the house was ready for us. It must have taken a lot of effort on your part in addition to your other tasks.”
“It was no trouble, I assure you.”
His accent was broader than either hers or MacLachlann’s, and he had excellent teeth, too. No doubt a solicitor with his good looks, muscular build and manners didn’t lack for clients, especially women.
“Your work must be so very interesting!” she said, turning the conversation to matters of business. “Ducky, here—oh, I mean Lord Dubhagen—doesn’t do anything at all, you know.”
“I wouldn’t say that, my lady,” the solicitor gravely replied. “He has many decisions to make over the course of a year, and that requires some effort.”
Esme waved her hand dismissively and took McHeath’s arm, leading him away from the others. “But entailments and wills and contracts—it’s all so complicated. Do you compose all the documents yourself, or do you have help?”
Despite the excellent meal of several courses and various wines, the longer Quinn sat in the earl’s opulent dining room, the more he remembered exactly why he preferred meals in pubs and taverns, or alone in his rooms in Cheapside. He’d never been comfortable with the constraint of formality and had chafed at the meaningless rules and social hierarchies even in childhood.
Nevertheless, those meals now seemed like child’s play as he pretended to be Augustus and feign an interest in the conversation.
It didn’t help that he’d been seated to the right of their hostess, who was beside her elderly father, while Esme was at the far end of the table beside that damn handsome solicitor.
Quinn had never thought much about a solicitor’s appearance until McHeath—comely as Adonis with wavy brown hair—had walked up to them and smiled. Put the man in a k
ilt and give him a claymore and Quinn didn’t doubt half the ladies in the room would swoon. The man had the deep, velvety voice of an actor, too.
He’d thought Esme more impervious than most women when it came to a man’s looks—she’d certainly never reacted to his outward appearance, which he knew most women found appealing—until he saw her smile at Gordon McHeath as if he were a knight in shining armor coming to her rescue.
He’d told himself she was excited and pleased to meet the man because he was a solicitor, then been afraid she would forget that she had a role to play and it was not Lady Lawyer. He hoped that she wouldn’t inadvertently reveal a level of knowledge that would rouse McHeath’s suspicions, or anything else. Fortunately, she seemed to have adopted a strategy of saying nothing, batting her long lashes and smiling like a simpleton.
It could be worse, he told himself. If Catriona wasn’t as spirited as Esme, at least she was pretty to look at. Indeed, it was easy to see why Jamie had fallen in love with her, especially when he considered what she must have been like five years ago—young and fresh as the first rosebud of spring, innocent and blooming and sweet.
Esme, on the other hand, had been full of thorns and as imperious as an empress from the first time he’d met her. She always dressed in drab, ill-fitting garments that masked her figure. Her usual severe hairstyle—the smooth locks drawn back so tight he’d often wondered if it hurt—didn’t do much for her features, either, although it did emphasize her remarkably bright, intelligent eyes.
Fortunately, Esme’s manners were impeccable and she seemed far more at ease in these surroundings than he ever would have expected as she sat listening with rapt attention to whatever McHeath was saying, although perhaps it was the man’s nearly constant attention that made her so relaxed, as she never was with him.
What was the solicitor thinking about Esme? He obviously found her attractive, but any man alive would find Esme attractive tonight, with her hair dressed in the latest style, her eyes modestly downcast, her cheeks aglow with excitement or the heat of the room and dressed in that gown that exposed far too much cleavage.
He wanted to be able to look into her shining, shrewd eyes, to hear what she was really thinking about the company, and to have her decently covered from men’s lustful gazes, even his—perhaps especially his, if he couldn’t subdue the desire that surged into life whenever he looked at her.
The earl cleared his throat as his guests finished their dessert of crème brûlée and fruit.
“Tell me, Dubhagen,” the old nobleman said, “what do you think of these abolitionists? Surely you won’t be able to manage your sugar plantation without slaves.”
Quinn was very aware of his brother’s attitude toward slavery. Augustus had often used Quinn’s opinion on slavery as proof of his younger brother’s ignorance of the ways of business. Unfortunately, his brother’s opinion would be well known to the earl and perhaps others here, so tonight he would have to espouse it.
“Quite right,” he replied, hating to say the words even if they were necessary. “Men who condemn the use of slaves are softheaded fools who have no idea what’s required to bring sugar to their tables.”
Esme frowned and so did McHeath, who said, “Surely, my lord, in these enlightened times, there are alternatives to slavery, especially when the sugar trade is so lucrative. Why not pay for the labor required?”
“We do pay,” Quinn replied, repeating his brother’s well-remembered words. “We give them food and clothes and tend to their wounds and illnesses, give them places to live, as well as make them Christians. They are much better off under our care than left to live as heathens in Africa.”
“But they are human beings, my lord,” McHeath protested, “not dumb animals to be abducted and shipped off like so much cattle.”
“Then what do you, as a solicitor, think of the earl’s right to remove his tenants from his Highland estates so the land can become pasture for sheep?” Quinn asked. “Should the tenants be allowed to disobey the law?”
“Something may be right under the law, yet morally unjust,” the solicitor replied, “and the law must change to reflect that. I’m confident that one day, slavery will be regarded as the abomination it is. Tenants will have more and better redress under the law. Women will cease to be regarded as chattels and will be persons under the law, with full legal rights and privileges.”
Her hazel eyes full of approval, Esme stared at McHeath as if she wanted to kiss him. Or more.
“Never,” Quinn growled before he remembered what he was supposed to be talking about. “How can savages have rights? Or peasants? Or women? They wouldn’t know what to do with them even if they had them, and this country would descend into ruin and anarchy. Look what’s happened in France.”
“Surely you don’t think women should be able to vote,” another gentleman demanded of McHeath, laughing as if that was the best joke he’d every heard. “Why, only handsome politicians would ever stand a chance of election!”
Instead of wealthy ones, or those with the backing of a rich patron or family, Quinn wanted to retort. Instead, he said, “Perhaps Mr. McHeath would run for office then.”
“Perhaps I would,” the solicitor returned, “although I give women credit for being able to consider important issues as well as any man. And men can be equally influenced by popularity.”
“Or wealth and family,” Esme suggested.
“Well, I see no harm in it,” another man smugly asserted, tucking his thumbs into his waistcoat. “My wife would vote as I told her.”
Esme batted her long eyelashes at him. “If the ballot was a secret one,” she asked with apparent wide-eyed innocence, “how would you know?”
Before that man, or any other, could summon a response, Catriona swiftly got to her feet, signalling that it was time for the women to retire to the drawing room.
Esme was slow to rise, as if she didn’t want to leave.
Thank God she couldn’t stay. Who could guess what she might say in defence of women’s rights? Although he agreed with her and she was doing her best to sound daft, he didn’t know how long it might be before she lost her temper and with it, her facade.
After the ladies had left the room, McHeath shoved back his chair and bowed to their elderly host. “If you’ll excuse me, Lord Duncombe, I have some documents at home that require my immediate attention. Please express my regrets for my hasty departure to your daughter.”
“My word!” Quinn said after the man had marched from the room. “Rather a hothead, isn’t he?”
“With some radical ideas,” the earl agreed. “Still, he’s the best solicitor in Edinburgh, so it’s worth putting up with his eccentricities. I can’t make head nor tails of a contract without his explanations.”
“Is that so?” Quinn replied. “As good as that, eh?”
Or as devious?
Chapter Eight
Having no choice, Esme followed her hostess to the drawing room, even though she hated the upper class custom that required women to leave the dining room before the men, as if the women couldn’t and shouldn’t be expected to take part in discussions about politics and social issues. Although MacLachlann was proving he could act every inch the wealthy, titled gentleman, she wished she was back in London and home with her law books.
Several young women clustered around Esme after she sat on a blue silk-covered cabriole sofa.
“Such a lovely gown! Is it from Paris?” one of them asked.
Esme recalled that the questioner was the youngest daughter of a magistrate. In London, she and her family would probably not have been considered of high enough rank to be at such a gathering. In Scotland, though, members of the legal profession were held in better esteem—as they deserved to be.
“No, London,” Esme answered, wondering how much longer it would be before the men returned. She found fashion a boring subject and it was one reason she was rarely comfortable with members of her own sex, for it seemed the one subject to which feminine conve
rsations always diverted.
Not that she blamed her fellow women entirely for their limited topics of conversation. What could one expect given the education most women received? Even those of the upper class were taught only a smattering of French, a bit of drawing or instruction in watercolors, how to play the piano or, if they were capable, sing. Most of their time was spent preparing for social occasions, so what else should they think about but clothes and hairstyles, fans, reticules and gloves?
“Who was the modiste?” another young woman asked eagerly. Lady Eliza Deluce had on a beautiful gown of soft, flowing scarlet silk with several rows of blue and green ribbon around the hem. Over her arms she’d draped a cashmere shawl, and her hair glowed like a golden coronet.
Unfortunately, neither gown nor hair could hide the moles upon her chin and forehead.
Esme quickly made up a modiste’s name and did her best to look interested as the conversation drifted onto the more general subject of dressmakers and fabrics and trims and styles even as she retreated into silence. While the other young ladies chattered on, her gaze wandered to a few older women deep in discussion on a pair of sofas at the far end of the room. They reminded Esme of a cabal of thieves, and every so often one would glance her way, convincing her that she, and her supposed husband, were likely the topic of discussion.
Did MacLachlann really believe what he’d said about slavery, or was he saying such things to maintain their ruse? And what about the earl’s handsome solicitor? Could a man who spoke with such feeling about the evils of slavery be a thief or embezzler, swindling the earl out of his money?
Of course he could. She’d been privy to enough of her brother’s business to know that a determined hypocrite could easily mask self-interest.
A plump, middle-aged woman wearing a biliously purple turban with a droopy ostrich feather dangling over her left ear and encased in a gown of similar mind-boggling hue trimmed with bright green, began insinuating herself between Esme and the arm of the sofa. “May I join you, my dear?”
Highland Rogue, London Miss Page 8