Page 72 of The Tartan Trap

“Of course, Your Grace. What can I do for you?” She folded her fingers over her serviceable navy dress and pursed her thin lips.

“Ladies’ hair pins.” He handed the housekeeper several folded bills. “Please send a maid out immediately and buy me a single set of all the different kinds on offer, please.”

Without so much as a blink of surprise, she took the bills from his hand, glanced through them, and handed all but one of them back. “Of course, Your Grace. Will there be anything else?”

“That will be all. Thank you, Mrs. Blake.”

The woman gave a respectful nod and retreated. Every interaction Callum had with the lady only reinforced his decision to hire her. He gave a little sigh of relief and tucked the bills back into his pocket, then went to hunt Ellis down.

Late that evening, Callum and Ellis sat on either side of a table with a chessboard between them, though Ellis was the only one playing. The fire glowed and Albie had taken his customary spot in front of the grate. Callum thought that in terms of domestic comfort, there was little that increased one’s sense of contentment more than a dog curled and snoring gently before a nice fire.

When Callum had produced three dozen hairpins from his pockets, Ellis had said, “First a children’s book and now ladies’ hair pins? Callum, I daresay you’re the strangest person I know.”

“That’s quite the distinction, considering the company you keep,” Callum mumbled, holding up another hairpin.

This one was in a u-shape with delicate twists along each end. He understood the concept, but such tiny ridges were useless in the face of Margaret’s abundance of hair.

He could hardly describe the emotions he felt toward that hair. He wanted to touch it, to thread it through his fingers. Heaven help him, he wanted to bury his nose in it and just inhale. Callum tsked his distraction and set his attention back to the pins.

“I’ll have you know that I have many elegant friends, thank you very much,” Ellis said.

“And yet you’re always with me.” Perhaps the words would have been cutting if they hadn’t been offered with a smile.

“I confess I do find them all dreadfully dull these days.”

Ellis took another white piece from the board. Black was winning by a landslide, and Callum was starting to doubt whether white was putting up any form of resistance at all.

“Why is that?”

“They’re all courting or getting married,” he mumbled.

“That’s precisely what I’m trying to do,” Callum said. “Courting with the goal of getting married.”

“Well, yes, but up until today, the lady seemed dead set against you, which made it far more interesting.”

Callum looked up with a frown from where he was now taking a pair of long-nose pliers to a thick gauge of brass wire. He’d decided that all the pins in the marketplace were faulty. Most of them were far too short, too spindly, or simply ridiculous by design. What good could a single crimpled piece of iron do to hold back Margaret’s wealth of heavy waves?

“I’d say I was sorry to disappoint you, but that would be a lie,” he said.

Ellis knocked over the white king and began setting the board up again. “I’m glad for you. Truly I am. It’s only that perhaps I feel a bit jealous, too.”

“Jealous?” Callum frowned. “Ellis, you are charming, witty, and altogether welcome with the ladies wherever you go. Certainly I have an advantage in height⁠—”

“And handsomeness, and title, and fortune,” he muttered.

Callum stopped short. Though Ellis often made fun of such things, their disparate statuses in life had never truly come between them. Now Callum wondered how much truth Ellis had said in jest over the years.

“Look,” Ellis said on a sigh. “Your happenstance of birth is no more your fault than mine is.”

“And yet each comes with its own set of challenges,” Callum said slowly.

“Indeed. You must manage the lot left to you and I must find my place in the world.”

He frowned. “Your place in the world is secure, Ellis.”

“Not in terms of vocation. I know that Father always wanted me to take the cloth, but I think I’d make a dreadful clergyman. You know how hard it is for me to stay awake in church. And it’s no fault of the minister—intriguing or dull as I may find the sermon, I still have to pinch my own knee relentlessly toward the end.”

Callum grinned at his earnest tone. “I know. I agree with you—I don’t think that would be a good fit. Is there something else you’d rather do?”