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 boys 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.