She had counted twenty-eight carriages by the time the clerk showed her in. The solicitor came to take her hand and lead her to a chair. He always began with fawning smiles and pleasantries. If only he listened to her with as much solicitude.
“Now, Mrs. Ramsay, what can I do for you?” he asked at last, when she was settled in a chair and had declined his offer of tea.
“I would like to sell my shares in Mr. Cunninghame’s trading company.”
He was astonished. “Madam! What can you mean? I do not recommend that!”
“I understand,” she replied evenly. “But I would like to do it, and they are my shares. Will you see it done?”
“Are you in want of funds?” he said in reproach. “I should have anticipated as much. It is not unusual for a recently widowed female to be unaccustomed to the handling of money. If there are bills to be paid, you must send them to me—”
“Mr. MacGill, I know very well how to live within my means. I am not burning my money on new gowns or slippers.” She gave him a determined smile. “Sell the shares, please.”
She was slowly reading through the volume of information Malcolm had left behind. Now that he was dead, there was no one to stop her from examining everything in his desk. The Cunninghame trading company was very profitable, but its trade was appalling.
MacGill took a deep breath and seemed to change tack. Adopting an expression of paternal concern, he said, “It would be a very large sum. What would you do with all that money?”
She gazed out the window thoughtfully. The house across the street was under construction, and men were raising a heavy beam into position. “There are so many enterprises here in Scotland in want of investment. I like fabric. Perhaps I’ll invest in linen production.” She had also seen the reports of increasing trade with America. Scotland had enjoyed a brisk trade there before the war, and now that it was over, there seemed every opportunity for it to resume.
Mr. MacGill clicked his tongue. “I see. Of course a woman would take an interest in fabrics. But, my dear Mrs. Ramsay, investments are not made so impulsively. Let us wait a few months and see how you feel then, shall we? If in six months you still desire to sell, I shall speak to Mr. Fletcher about it.”
“It is not my father’s money. If my late husband were sitting here, would you say the same to him?” asked Ilsa, still watching out the window. If she looked directly at the solicitor, she would be tempted to throw something at him. “Would you scorn his wishes as idle fancy and impulse, not likely to endure?”
Malcolm had done many things on nothing more than idle fancy and impulse, and men like MacGill had only helped him, often when they should have stopped him. Not one of his friends or associates had tried to keep him from the duel that killed him.
Mr. MacGill went pink in the face. He was a pale man, and it was easy to make him flush. “Mrs. Ramsay. That is immaterial.”
Before Ilsa could reply, the clerk slipped in. Silently he brought a letter to Mr. MacGill, who gave the man a look that bordered on gratitude. As if he couldn’t wait to be free of her, even after making her wait half an hour for this appointment. With barely a glance at Ilsa, the lawyer unfolded the letter.
“Good heavens,” he exclaimed almost immediately. Turning his back to her, he whispered furiously to his clerk, who snapped to attention like a pointer catching a scent. Frowning, Ilsa tilted her head and caught a few words: “waiting,” “properties,” and “Carlyle.”
Almost before she could comprehend what was happening, Mr. MacGill was on his feet, offering her his hand. The clerk scurried out of the office. “My dear Mrs. Ramsay, I do apologize but an emergency has arisen—I must cut this interview short. Shall we speak again in six months?”
She rose to keep him from looking down on her. “Why? What is this? Mr. MacGill, we had an appointment! I only ask a very little of your time now and then.”
“Indeed, and you have had it.” He reached for her hand.
Ilsa stubbornly refused to move. “Are you throwing me out?”
“No, no,” he soothed her, even as he extended his other hand toward the door. “But I must turn my attention—”
“Sell the shares,” she said, her voice rising. “Sell them, Mr. MacGill, and deposit the funds into my account. I insist!”
“Madam, I will do no such thing,” he snapped, dropping her hand. “What foolishness! You will thank me for it when we speak again in six months.”
Frustration boiled inside her. Wordlessly Ilsa turned and stormed from the room without acknowledging his hasty bow. She threw open the door herself, almost striking Mr. Leish, the sanctimonious clerk.
Behind him stood a man, tall and broad, dressed finely enough to be a lord. An English lord. So that’s whom Mr. MacGill considered far more important than she, Ilsa seethed as she strode past the lot of them.
Men. MacGill brushing her aside without a moment’s hesitation, that arrogant Carlyle fellow demanding his attention with the snap of his fingers, and Leish smirking at her dismissal. Anger carried her blindly to the street, and then all the way to the foot of the Canongate, where her father’s house stood.
He was still at the table. Fashionable people dined later, but Papa clung to his preference for an early meal. She suspected he spent the more fashionable dinner hour at a tavern, with cards in his hand. “You’re early, my girl!” he said jovially when she came in. “Come in, child! Have some cake.”
“How are you, Papa?” She kissed his cheek and waved off the offer of cake in favor of pacing the dining room. “I’ve just come from Mr. MacGill’s office. He has lost my custom.”
He blinked at her as he chewed a bite of cake. “Why, now?”
“He refused to do what I asked of him. Would you tolerate that from him?”
MacGill had been Papa’s solicitor for years. Ilsa had always thought that was because MacGill was the best, but in the last year she’d come to think that Mr. MacGill only had a reputation for being the best. MacGill’s fees were exorbitant enough to make one believe he was incomparable, but his service was another matter.
Papa pushed back his plate. “Calm yourself, child. No doubt he has your best interests at heart. What did you ask him to do, that he refused?”
“I told him to sell my shares in Mr. Cunninghame’s trading company.”
Her father’s face grew stormy. “Ach, Ilsa, why?” he said irritably. “I counseled Malcolm to make that investment, and now you’ll sell it?”
She hadn’t known that. “You know what Mr. Cunninghame trades in?”
“Sugar and tobacco.”
“And you know how that is produced.”
“I know he made a ten percent profit on his last two years’ voyages!”
“I don’t care to profit from slave-grown goods.”
“You’ll care when your income wanes,” he told her.
She rolled her eyes. “As if there’s money to be made only in sugar and tobacco! I fancy linen manufacture, perhaps. Something made here. Something Scottish.”
His mouth pursed, but then eased. He winked at her. “I know just the thing—cabinetry!”
Her father was Deacon of the Wrights, head of the largest group of carpentry tradesmen in town. Nobody made a finely turned table leg or an intricately carved wardrobe like Papa. His craftsmanship was unequalled, as was his larger-than-life personality. No wright in Edinburgh could have asked for a fiercer champion on the town council, which controlled most of what went on in Edinburgh, and beyond.
And no one had a better talent for disarming her temper. Ilsa laughed. “As if I’ve not profited enough from cabinetry! But perhaps that’s a thought. I’ll sponsor some boys to be educated and apprenticed as wrights.”
He scoffed. “Where’s the profit in that?”
“If you hired them, I would get a share of the income from their work.” She beamed at him.
“Eh, when I’m dead you’ll have a share of the income from the entire shop’s work.” He glowered, but she knew he would hire any b
oys whose education she sponsored. Both of them knew William Fletcher couldn’t deny his only child anything.
“I don’t want to think about that far-off event.” She kissed his cheek. “But I am through with Mr. MacGill.”
He sighed. “Leave the man to his business. He knows what he’s about.”
“He dismissed me,” she replied. “After making me wait half an hour for our appointment. He was patronizing and short-tempered, and after all that, someone more important than I arrived, and Mr. MacGill all but threw me out the door.”
Papa pushed back his chair, frowning. “I’ll speak to the fellow. It’s not right to treat a woman that way. Who could possibly be more important than you?”
“Some English fellow. He looked rich.”
He patted her arm. “The scoundrel! Leave MacGill to me. He’ll not be short with you again.” He walked with her to the hall and helped her with her cloak, as he’d done since she was a child. Ilsa had given up fighting his little attentions when she was sixteen. He fussed over her because he loved her, and because he had no one else to fuss over. Her mother had died when Ilsa was four, and her father had never remarried. Jean had come to live with them and help raise her, but Papa had always been the center of her world, and she his.
“Mr. Lewis Grant asked me to give you his greetings,” Papa remarked as he tied the bow.
“Who?”
“Mr. Grant,” he repeated with a twinkle in his eye. “You remember, the handsome—and very successful—wine merchant in the Grassmarket.”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t recall him,” she lied. Her father had begun mentioning possible matches for her in the last few months. By some strange coincidence, they were all prosperous merchants and gentlemen with whom Papa did business. Ilsa was having none of them.
“I’ll be sure to introduce you to him,” he said, not fooled. “Again. Perhaps next time you’ll remember him as fondly as he remembers you, eh?”
“Good-bye, Papa.”
She left him and walked toward home, feeling at loose ends. She would prefer to go sit in the coffee shop with Agnes for an hour with a lady’s magazine and giggle at the pompous poetry in it, but Agnes was needed at the mercer’s shop with her mother, and would be with her family after that. Sorcha White was attending a lecture at the Botanical Gardens with her mother. At home, Jean would scold her about the draperies again or say she should call on Lady Ramsay, Malcolm’s acerbic grandmother who had never much liked Ilsa.
She went instead to the bookseller’s shop. She passed the selection of novels and poetry, not in the mood for something fictional, no matter how entertaining. She picked up books on fauna, and Italy, and one beautiful book which turned out to be a history of England. That she shoved right back on the shelf, and blindly pulled out another.
A History of America, Volume One, read the front page. Her fingers slowed. It was a few years old, but finely printed and bound. Her own words of that morning to Robert echoed in her mind: We could hide ourselves on a ship to America and go on a grand adventure.
Ilsa knew that she had a very comfortable life, all things considered. She had a father and an aunt who loved her dearly, even if they did not understand her. She had a comfortable home, thanks to Malcolm; he’d been one of the wealthier men in town, before he’d gone and got himself killed. She had Robert, whom she adored without reservation, and she had good friends like Agnes St. James. Many others were never so fortunate as she had been.
But at the same time . . . She’d never been free to do what she wanted. Her aunt had been a strict guardian, her father indulgent but largely absent, and her husband hadn’t really wanted a wife, but rather an ornamental doll. When Malcolm died, and she’d realized that for the first time in her life there was no one to tell her what to do, what to wear, whom to speak to, or what she could buy . . . Well, the first thing her heart had craved was a little adventure.
With a snap she closed the book and went to pay for it. It wasn’t the same as stowing away on a ship to America, but now she was free to read about doing it, at least. She would take what she could.
Chapter Four
Drew slept late the next day, thanks to the quantity of beer and oysters he’d consumed the night before. It had been after three in the morning before they got Ross safely delivered into the hands of his disapproving manservant, accompanied Monteith to his lodgings and shared a bottle of brandy there, stopped at the canal for a quick bathing swim, and finally staggered back to Burnet’s Close.
And now Duncan was killing a cat in the other room, from the sounds of things.
He heaved himself out of bed, barely avoiding hitting his head on the slanted ceiling under the eaves—Duncan’s spare room was clearly meant to house a dainty lady or a child instead of a grown man—and went into the other room.
“What in God’s name is that noise?” he demanded, plugging his fingers in his ears.
Duncan glanced over the violin tucked under his chin. “Music, St. James. A very gentlemanly pursuit.”
“Aye, for gentlemen who live alone in the middle of a moor.”
“I’m practicing, not performing.” Duncan scraped the bow across the strings again, producing a discordant whine that made Drew wince.
“No wonder you’re not performing. You’re an affront to that instrument.” Duncan ignored him, fiddling with the tuning pegs. “And you’re violently out of tune.”
“All art requires suffering.”
“By the artist,” he retorted. “Kindly spare the audience.”
Duncan put down the violin. “You’re the rudest guest I’ve ever had. You insult my fencing form, and now my musical talent.”
“If you had any talent, I would heartily insult it. Besides,” he added as he turned back toward his room, “I’m the only guest you’re likely ever to have, with the appalling noise you make.”
He closed the door of his room and lifted the ewer. Duncan’s manservant had filled it, although so long ago the water was stone-cold. In the army, one got used to that. He reminded himself that he was back in Scotland, mere Captain St. James once more, and he ought not to pine for the luxuries that Carlyle Castle had supplied, like warm washing water and a footman to shave him.
Duncan barged in while his face was still half-covered in shaving soap. “What ducal frolics shall you get up to today? I find myself agog to see how an English duke behaves, and if it’s any better than a lowly Scot.”
Drew flicked soap at him. “I must pay a call on the solicitor today.”
At once his friend—who practiced law himself when he wasn’t being a menace to music—struck a pose, his nose high in the air and his fist clapped arrogantly on his chest. “Bloody lawyers. Which one?”
“David MacGill, in St. Andrew’s Square.”
Duncan lifted his brows. “Only the most expensive for the Carlyles, I see.”
“Is that so?” He wiped the soapy remnants from his chin and unrolled his sleeves. “What do you know of him?”
His friend lifted one shoulder. “Wealthy—thanks to Carlyle, I presume. Thinks of himself as a modern man, less a Scot than a gentleman of Northern Britain. His offices are in the New Town, which tells you enough.”
Drew took out one of his new English suits. The duchess had raised her brows at his plain woolen breeches, and Mr. Edwards had sent him straight back upstairs to change the one time he dared wear a philibeg. The duchess, Edwards had warned him, did not approve of that. A tailor had been sent for posthaste, and Drew soon had a new wardrobe of very English breeches, waistcoats, and coats. Might as well keep to it while on Carlyle’s business.
“What business have you got with a solicitor?” Duncan apparently had nothing else to do with himself, although his questions were less irritating than his violin playing.
He buttoned up the waistcoat and tied his neckcloth. “Confidentially, aye? The duke’s not in good health, nor has he been for many years. I never even saw the fellow while I was there. But he owns a property here, which no one�
�s visited in twenty years or more. It’s all been left in the charge of this MacGill, with no one from Carlyle the wiser as to what he’s done with it. I’m to call upon him and find out.”
He had agreed to the errand readily, curious to see what the duke owned in Scotland. Mr. Edwards assured him that it was not much, only one estate, and could be concluded in a matter of days. All he wanted was a review of the records and instruction to Mr. MacGill to have the property put in order, against the likelihood of being offered for sale soon.
Drew wondered at that. He knew who would buy those Scottish lands: aristocrats intent on enclosing them and forcing the cottars and other tenants off them. While posted at Fort George, he had seen displaced families straggle into Inverness, reduced from independent farmers to subsistence crofters. He’d never thought to have a say about any of it, but now . . . He was deeply interested in seeing for himself.
After a quick bite at a nearby coffeehouse, for Duncan kept no food at all in his lodging, Drew walked up Bridge Street over the canal where he and Duncan had stripped down for a frigid swim last night. The New Town, as the rising development across the bridge was called, had grown considerably since he was last here. The streets were level, with proper sewers, and the buildings were of clean, uniform stone, unlike the cluttered hodgepodge of the Old Town.
As he walked, he mentally girded himself for conflict. He had dealt with solicitors before. When his father died, he’d had to step in and sort out his family’s affairs, untangling the mortgage and loans Father had taken against the mercer’s shop. Later, when he went into the army, he’d gone back and tried to make arrangements for his mother and sisters. He’d got a headache from the dry, stuffy air inside the pompous solicitor’s office, to say nothing of the sanctimonious lecture on how his father had mishandled everything. He had come away with no good opinion of the legal profession.
A Scot to the Heart Page 4