How the Scot Was Won by Caroline Linden

5

Felix spent the next four days in bed, wracked by fever and nausea.

In more lucid moments, he acknowledged that he ought to have taken his father’s advice and not rushed to see Agnes. With his head splitting, his stomach roiling, and the first tremors of fever making his eyes burn, he’d made a thorough and complete shambles of that proposal.

And she’d said no. Not just no, but that she’d never accept him. He had been almost delirious by the time he returned to his lodging, but he remembered that part.

In more feverish hours, he dreamt of her in his arms again, but this time she was saying no no no as he kissed her and touched her. And his own voice echoed mockingly back at him: no? But—why?

Because you’re a damned idiot, he told himself.

It was always a relief to wake from those nightmares and find himself alone in bed, the sweat-soaked sheets twisted around his body.

On the fifth day the fever broke. When Callum asked if he felt like eating, Felix nodded and ventured to try a simple oatcake. He even propped himself up in bed and looked through his messages while waiting to see if the oatcake would stay in his stomach or come right back up, as had everything else he’d eaten since That Night.

His father had sent a note two days ago: What is the verdict?

Felix closed his eyes for a moment, then scrawled Refused across the bottom and sent Callum to deliver it. That, he knew, was the last his father would say about the subject. Lachlan Duncan would be pleased he had escaped.

He tried not to dwell on it, either. He’d been miserable with fever, trying not to be sick again, but Agnes had said no, definitively and emphatically. He would have to find a new coffeehouse to frequent. Occupy his mind. Teach himself not to look for dark curls and impish blue eyes and a generous smile around every corner.

Hunter complained bitterly when Felix refused to meet him at Agnew’s anymore.

“They roast the coffee berries to cinders here,” he complained as they sat in Peterson’s coffeehouse by the Grassmarket. “And there’s no Helen.” The woman serving was old enough to be Felix’s mother, with a stern manner. She thumped the dishes down in front of them without a word

“Helen deserves a respite from serving you,” Felix told him.

Hunter glowered. “Why won’t you go to Agnew’s? ’Tis damned inconvenient to walk all the way over here.”

“It’s five minutes’ walk.”

“Then why not walk those five minutes to Agnew’s?” Hunter sipped his coffee with an expression of distaste. “Did you annoy the proprietor and get banned?”

“I prefer it here.” Stubbornly he hunched over the brief and marked another change.

“Well, I don’t.” Hunter pushed back his chair and dropped a coin on the table. “I’m going back. You know where to find me.”

Felix grunted as his partner left. He also missed Agnew’s, where Helen knew just when to pour fresh coffee and brought gooseberry jam for the buns without being asked. He missed the larger windows that brightened the place, and the more comfortable chairs. He missed being able to catch almost anyone practicing law, coming or going from the courts across the street.

And most of all he missed carrying currant buns to a pair of beautiful ladies and making them smile. Did Agnes still go to Agnew’s?

No. He was not going to think of her. She did not want him, and he needed to forget her.

He threw himself into every other pursuit imaginable. He dug out the violin he hadn’t played in several years and tuned it up. He started going to the fencing salon again, morbidly telling himself it could be useful preparation for a duel. He took on more new clients in an attempt to keep himself busy and distracted.

It worked, somewhat, until Andrew St. James arrived in town.

St. James had written to ask if he had a spare bed. He would be in Edinburgh for a few weeks and didn’t relish staying with his family. At the time, Felix had been flush with optimism about his flirtation with Agnes, and it had seemed a splendid idea to have her brother, his oldest friend, to stay. It might offer all manner of excuses to see her outside the coffeehouse. He’d sent his affirmative reply immediately.

Now, obviously, it was the most idiotic idea he’d ever had.

He prepared himself not to twitch at the sound of her name. He schooled himself to avoid mentioning her. He was still completely unprepared when Drew St. James explained what had brought him back to Edinburgh.

Through some dark miracle, Drew was now heir presumptive to his distant cousin, the Duke of Carlyle. He had letters and documents attesting to it, signed and sealed by the duke’s attorney. At some point in the future—and Drew said that it would likely be sooner than later—he would be a duke.

Which meant Agnes would be a lady, the sister of a duke, an heiress. She could expect far more than any humble Edinburgh attorney had to offer.

Had she known? Had she refused him not merely because of his clumsy approach, but because she knew she could do much better than the likes of him?

Not that it mattered. He’d been rejected, either way.

Agnes spentthe days after Mr. Duncan’s disastrous visit—she would not even think of it as a proposal—trying to forget it had ever happened. She needed time to brace herself for the inevitable moment when her brother mentioned him, or even worse, invited him to the house.

Her first brilliant idea was to flee. “Mama,” she said to her mother, “Drew will be home any day now, and the house will be quite crowded.”

Her mother smiled fondly. “It will, and in the best way!”

“It seems unfair to make Bella sleep on the floor,” Agnes went on. That was her mother’s plan: to make room for their brother, Agnes would move out of her room into her sisters’, where Bella would make up a pallet on the floor. “You wouldn’t want her to get a pain in her back from it. And Heaven forbid Winnie or I step on her in the night.”

Her mother paused. It was true that Winnie’s and Bella’s room was cramped even for the two of them.

Cautiously, Agnes added, “Mrs. Ramsay has kindly invited me to stay with her, for everyone’s comfort.”

She held her breath. Ilsa had indeed invited her, after Agnes dropped a few suggestive comments. Ilsa’s home was only a few minutes’ walk away. She would barely be gone.

But Mama was not overly fond of Ilsa Ramsay. When Agnes and she were newly friends, Mama had invited Ilsa to tea one Sunday afternoon. It had not gone well. Ilsa had gone golfing that morning instead of to church. She arrived wearing a beautiful bright pink gown, even though her husband had only been dead for eight months; and she came on her own, without a maid or a chaperone. The St. James girls were deeply impressed by this blithe disregard for gossip and convention, but Mama was not. She sternly told her daughters that such things were tolerable in a widow of good fortune, but not in ladies of their station, and they were not to get any ideas about aping Mrs. Ramsay.

Today, though, the argument about Bella’s comfort outweighed that concern. Mama finished her notations in the ledger before looking up. “I would hate for you to impose on Mrs. Ramsay.”

“She assured me she would welcome my company,” Agnes hastened to say. “And it would only be for a month, aye?”

Drew, as usual, had written only the one letter, scant with details of any kind. But he could hardly stay very long. He would have to return to his regiment.

“A month only,” said her mother with visible reluctance.

Agnes beamed in relief and genuine delight. Ilsa’s house was much larger and more comfortable, and no one there would scold her about taking too much time at the mirror. “Thank you, Mama!”

She packed a trunk and moved to Ilsa’s the next day. She still went to the shop, and she would obviously return home to see her brother, but just this slight distance let her breathe easier.

Ilsa asked only once about the handsome lawyer who used to bring them fresh currant buns and tea, when Agnes suggested they go to a different coffeehouse than Agnew’s. “Oh! I’m sure he’s off flirting with someone else,” Agnes managed to reply lightly. “I’ve forgotten all about him.”

That was a lie. Agnes had to stop herself from looking for him every day in the streets, and then she had to cope with the mingled relief and disappointment when she didn’t see him.

She didn’t understand herself. Rationally she should never want to see Mr. Duncan again; irrationally she kept hoping for a glimpse of his broad-shouldered figure, his teasing smile. Rationally, it was best for both of them if he kept out of her way; irrationally, she wished they might run into each other and go back to the easy flirtation they had shared before That Night.

There had been no gossip about her disappearance in his company, and she should be on her knees thanking God and all the saints for that. Instead she was tormented by vivid memories of that evening, both waking and sleeping. A man’s laugh in the street would sound like his, and start an answering smile on her face, before she remembered. From time to time she had to walk past Agnew’s, and the mere scent of currant buns baking would bring back the flush of pleased excitement that he was going to bring them to her table.

How had it all gone so wrong? Perhaps if she had listened to Ilsa and treated him like a real suitor, she wouldn’t have lost her mind the first moment she was alone with him. Those memories were the ones she wished desperately to forget: the giddy feeling of being swept up in his arms, the stark awe in his face when he looked at her, the catch in his voice when he breathed Agnes, love as his wickedly wonderful fingers stroked her…and most of all, the look he gave her at the end, when he called her darling.

She lay awake at night wondering if she had crossed an invisible boundary that she could never uncross, from respectable young lady to secret wanton. She hoped not. She prayed not. Every day she told herself the longings and urges would go away, along with her incessant feeling that he was just around the next corner, and the small jolt of anxious eagerness that wrought within her.

It was her brother who finally managed to blow away thoughts of Felix Duncan from Agnes’s mind. He reached Edinburgh armed with a thunderbolt of news: through the most amazing chain of circumstances, he now stood next in line for their English cousin’s dukedom of Carlyle, with a castle in England and hundreds of acres of land all over Britain. The Duchess of Carlyle had given Drew a healthy income and sent expensive gifts for them. And Drew meant for them all to go live near the castle, so he could prepare to assume the title.

Agnes was horrified. Leave Edinburgh—their home, Papa’s grave, her shop? It was unthinkable. What would they do in England? None of them would inherit anything. Drew would be off learning how to wear a ducal coronet and preside over an enormous estate, while she and her sisters would be… nobodies. They could not even petition to become ladies until their brother inherited, which wouldn’t happen until the current duke died. They would be the poor Scottish relations, for heaven only knew how many years, and Agnes wanted none of it.

Drew, oblivious man, inadvertently delivered a coup de grâce trying to portray it positively. “I intend to settle a proper dowry on you,” he told her, walking her back to Ilsa’s house.

Thank goodness it was dark. Her face burned at that word, dowry. A dowry was meant to help a woman elicit a marriage proposal, and she’d already done that. Received it, rejected it, and had to take it to her grave, even though it felt like she might explode from keeping it to herself.

There was literally no one she could tell. Mama would be horrified that she’d been meeting a man at the coffeehouse. Her sisters would find it dashing and romantic and pester her to explain why she’d rejected it. Ilsa would suspect something terrible had happened at the Assembly Rooms, because she’d seen how Agnes flirted with him. And Drew would probably demand answers from his friend, which could lead to a duel or at least a fight.

It was too much. She fled into Ilsa’s house, wishing she had never set eyes on Felix Duncan.