They wouldn’t have one, but two chaperones trailing them. Her lashes lowered at his grim little smile.
At shortly past three, they strolled down bustling Magdalen Street at a deceptively leisurely pace. Wester Ross and Professor Jenkins fell so far behind, deep in conversation, it was as though the earl wanted Elias to have some privacy with his daughter. The daughter was less enamored of the idea. Catriona’s rigid posture radiated cool reserve. Why had she agreed to walk with him, then?
“So,” he said. “Is there any news in your life?”
She feigned a smile. “You make it sound as though we haven’t seen each other in years.”
“The days seem long without you,” he replied.
Her gaze flicked sideways, as if to ascertain that her father was indeed far out of earshot.
“I was preoccupied. It seems my father has sold a good chunk of our lands that border Middleton’s estate.”
An irrational annoyance flashed through him. The land had been her inheritance. He had finished the tome on Scotland; unlike the English, Scottish noble families passed on estates to their daughters.
“I hadn’t expected to feel quite so sad about it,” she continued. “But I do. Most of the older estates in the north grew wealthy by grabbing the monastic lands after the religious wars. Applecross is one of the few that became comfortable thanks to profitable wool production. I thought those were good conditions for maintaining the business, but over time . . .” She shook her head. “It seems to have fallen apart.”
“No business just falls apart,” he said with some impatience. “There are always reasons; what you must do is anticipate them, analyze them, find a solution.”
“Easy to say, for a man of business.”
“A business is in trouble because a change happened to which you couldn’t adjust on time. You pay attention and adapt, or you die—that’s the nature of it.”
Her fingers curled into her shawl. “You’re right,” she said, matter-of-fact. She gave an unexpectedly helpless little shrug.
He felt a low, hard ache in his stomach. Let me do it for you, he thought, let me look after you and your estate, and you can spend your time on books and science. He had already thought about Applecross; had tried to assess its easy strengths and weak spots, challenges and opportunities. He had considered the isles near the estate and the great distances to larger trading hubs, and how to deal with the sparse railway infrastructure. His suggestions were the opposite of selling land: he would buy more land, more sheep, and sell a processed product, not just raw material, as this was the same trap that was threatening silk merchants in the East. He’d organize the crofters on the isles as they once were and contract them, exclusively, to produce tweed with Applecross wool. Make a deal with his family to supply her with silk and create a tweed-silk blend, elegant yet robust, the best of East and West entwined in one fabric . . . Look abroad for sales, to America and the East; weave a romantic story around the crofters and the isles that will appeal to wealthy women who dream of quaint and foreign places. A pressure in his jaw said he was gritting his teeth. He had the ideas as well as the entrepreneurial skills to take care of her, and yet he could do exactly nothing. He was not her husband, and he could hardly offer Wester Ross his services while his own business was lingering unattended in Beirut. No, in his current position as her lover, he shouldn’t exist in her life by any standards of propriety. He felt it acutely now: his bruised pride, his strained morals, the diffuse but constant resentment haunting someone who had lowered themself to live an untenable compromise.
He moved a little closer to her, his arm an inch from her shoulder. “Let’s meet without an audience.”
Silence.
He inhaled sharply. “Allow me to make right whatever I have done to cause you such offense.”
She shook her head, kept shaking it. “You caused no offense.”
Wester Ross was behind him. People were walking toward them. Eyes everywhere. She was right next to him and was as inaccessible as if behind a wall. Their walk was ending, too—the clock tower of Christ Church became visible above the roofs of the houses lining Cornmarket Street.
“Talk to me anyway,” he said through smiling lips. “I understand walks are an occasion for conversation.”
“I saw Mrs. Weldon on Monday,” she said after a pause, an unexpected spark of her usual passion in her voice. She hadn’t suddenly turned unfeeling toward the world as a whole, only toward him.
“You came back to London?” he asked.
“No.” She hesitated. “I stayed on a little longer than planned, after all.”
This took him unawares. “I see.”
It meant she had effectively thrown him out of her town house under false pretenses. Oh, he had caused her offense. Perhaps it wasn’t something he had done, but rather something he had failed to do, which could be just as injurious to a woman’s feelings. Whenever he had made a foray toward a proposal, she had frozen up and he had refrained from pushing the matter. Had she expected him to do it with more force after all, to claim her the old and tested way by going to her father first, or better yet, with an abduction? He wanted to roar his frustration down the busy street.
“How is good old Mrs. Weldon?” he asked idly.
“Her story is bizarre, Elias.”
Damn if hearing her say his name didn’t ease his displeasure despite himself.
“What is her story,” he asked.
“It turned out that Captain Weldon had a mistress,” Catriona began. “A few years ago, he decided he wanted to live with the woman, but without the scandal of a divorce. So he tried to have Mrs. Weldon committed to an asylum. He sent two physicians to their home, where they posed as people interested in spiritualism. She engaged with them, suspecting no harm, only for them to declare her insane on the spot. They tried to physically drag her from the house to a carriage, can you believe it?”
He was inclined to believe all sorts of insanity at this point.
“Her butler and her housekeeper intervened,” she continued. “It’s the only reason she’s still free. She’s lived in fear ever since, that Captain Weldon could try it again. He attempted it several more times, apparently. It’s why she’s trying to glean his intentions through séances.”
“He’s a dog, not a man,” he said coolly. “He is no husband.”
“Plenty of men are like this, and they are just regular men,” came her soft voice.
Did she think he was one of them?
“She wanted to sue him, over the attack on her person,” she said and scoffed. “Unfortunately, as per the Married Women’s Property Act, a wife can’t take such legal action without her husband’s explicit consent. Captain Weldon, of course, declined to be brought to justice. However”—and now she turned to him, her eyes brightening—“she can sue for the writ for restitution. And she will do it.”
“Anjad? Really?”