Chapter 1 #3
Knowing that an apology for her harsh words was unlikely to be forthcoming, Glenrothes continued, “I know you, Blossom. I raised you. You’re a temperamental and impulsive lass, but I never had reason to doubt your judgment.
I cannot fathom why you would leap into anything as important as marriage so rashly.
” Glenrothes pressed his fingers into the base of his skull as if the pressure would bring understanding. “Why not wait?”
Wait? Already, she was tired of life passing her by, tired of seeing her friends wed and begin their families. Tired even of filling her time with round after round of golf and sports trying to fill the void.
Tired of waiting on pins and needles for something that was never going to happen.
“I’m tired of waiting, Francis; I want to be married and start a family of my own.”
“With this Ramsay? How could you have been witness to my first marriage to Vanessa, compare it to what I now have with Eve, and think that you will find happiness in a marriage where there is no love?”
“Who says he doesn’t love me?”
“Is he claiming he does after only two weeks of acquaintance?”
Fiona shot him an arch look. It was a somewhat hypocritical question from a man who claimed to have fallen in love at first sight. “How long does it take, Francis?”
“Sometimes it can take a lifetime,” Vin spoke up, sparing Glenrothes from answering. “Richard and I knew Abby and Moira for years.”
“And Francis knew Eve for five minutes,” she shot back. “Time is irrelevant.”
Glenrothes held up his hand to halt her retort. “Fine, Blossom, I won’t speak any more to his feelings, but I will express my concern for yours. Do you love this man? Is he a man you can love and respect?”
No, she did not love Ramsay, and that didn’t matter. To her, at least. He was easy and, subsequently, safe. Fiona set her jaw stubbornly but did not, could not answer. She hated to give her brother the satisfaction of being right.
But all he did was nod, even-tempered in the face of her silence. “You do not love him then. You cannot even say that you respect him. Why, then, Blossom? What is this really about?”
Fiona just shook her head again. Her reasons were her own, and her brothers didn’t need to know what really drove her ‘haste.’ That was a conversation that would be even more trying than this one already was. Also, she didn’t need their pity.
“If you want to discuss motivations, why don’t you tell me what your refusal is really about?
” she asked, turning the tables. “You’ve let me make my own decisions for years.
Even if you believe this one will be a mistake, shouldn’t it also be mine to make?
Lord Ramsay asked me to marry him, and I said yes. ”
“Well, he has no’ asked me,” Glenrothes said, his brogue thickening again, and added without regret, “and even if he did, I wouldnae gi’ my permission.”
“Permission? Francis, really, it is nearly the twentieth century,” Fiona said with barely contained frustration, resisting the urge to stomp her foot petulantly as she picked up her golf bag and hefted it over her shoulder.
“See? I can carry my own clubs, pick my own husband...I can even dress myself. Did you know that?”
“But ye still cannae marry wi’out my permission, lass.
And I willnae gi’ it. No’ wi’ him,” he shot back as they set out toward the eighteenth and final hole.
The clubhouse loomed in the distance like an oasis in the desert, and he, parched not from the sun but from an argument gone on too long, longed to quench his thirst with the fine whiskey within its four walls.
“Good God, Francis! I’m not some wee toddler any longer. I know my mind!”
“But ye would deny yer heart,” he shot back, sounding more like the lordly earl than the doting brother she usually faced. And he’d managed it despite the sentimental emotion of his words.
“And you would deny me my choice.”
A short bark of laughter had Fiona looking back at Vin and Richard, who were following close behind. Richard had laughed, but Vin was shaking his head in bemusement.
“Blossom, you are an intelligent lass, smart as a whip. But I could pick a husband for you this very moment with far more consideration than I believe you have given to the matter.”
“Pick one for me?” she parroted, laughing incredulously. “Well, thank God this isn’t the Middle Ages!”
But her brother didn’t join her laughter. None of them did. Glenrothes shook his head tiredly. “You want to marry him? Truly?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will agree...”
Fiona beamed at him, grinning with satisfaction while Vin and Richard gawked at Glenrothes incredulously. How could they be so surprised, she wondered. Didn’t they know Francis always let her have her way?
“If,” Glenrothes added, bursting her bubble. “He will agree to an engagement of one year. A year to prove that you didn’t make this decision in haste and to ensure it’s the right one.”
“A year?” Fiona gaped. “That’s ludicrous.”
“Or traditional,” Richard said with a shrug. “Depending on how you look at it.”
“This family has never managed a year-long engagement!” Fiona shook her head, dumbfounded. “You’re balmy on the crumpet. All of you.”
“Maybe that’s what happens when you start having your babies past thirty,” Vin said softly as they reached the tee box for the eighteenth hole, and Fiona cringed.
Vin might forgive easily, but his temper could spike just as quickly and flare hotter, too. Baiting him was like poking a tiger, and she usually tended to refrain from doing just that.
Unfortunately, when she was angry, she tended to speak without thought, though she typically didn’t regret what she said—but perhaps she’d gone too far. She chewed her lip. Was this their way of punishing her for her flippant tongue?
“This is ridiculous. I don’t want to wait a year.”
“Or...” Glenrothes went on. “If it’s a husband you want more than Ramsay himself—and given the madness of your decision, I have to think that is the case—then find another suitor who will convince me that your future will at least be a happy one.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Another suitor? How do you suggest I do that? Let’s face it, if Donovan Ramsay is not acceptable, another Season in Edinburgh isn’t going to produce another eligible bachelor for me to consider.”
“We’ll go to London for the Season.”
Horror seized Fiona’s insides, freezing her mind and taking her breath. “London?” she gasped, shaking her head vehemently. “No.”
Three sets of male brows shot up in surprise. Clearly, none of them were expecting such a flat rebuttal.
“Why not? You’ve always wanted to have one, haven’t you?” Vin asked.
“I did. When I was seventeen!”
“We had already planned to take you to London for the Ladies’ Open...” Glenrothes went on.
“I told you, I withdrew,” she said quickly.
“I believe Hobbes might have withheld the letter from the post just in case it was sent in haste,” he told her. “A London Season will expose you to a whole new crop of bachelors.”
Bachelors? She scoffed inwardly. A Season would expose her to much more than that.
“No.”
Glenrothes sighed. “A year then. If Ramsay will wait that long.”
“I doubt it,” Richard murmured under his breath.
Damn, Fiona thought. Caught between a rock and an even harder place. It was not a comfortable place. “Three months.”
“A year.”
“Six months,” she countered. “A compromise, Francis.”
“Here’s my compromise,” her brother said. “You go to London and show a concerted effort toward finding a more appropriate match. Concerted. If I feel you’re doing your part and at the end of the Season, you are still set on Ramsay...”
“And he is willing to wait on you,” Richard reiterated.
“Then I will consider his suit for a six-month engagement.”
A wait of a year or a Season? Neither was a palatable option for her.
“But the Season is almost over,” she stammered, scrambling for an excuse.
Not true at all. Indeed, it had hardly begun, but the simple fact of the matter was that the Season in London was always almost over even as it began. But there had to be something, some excuse that would confine her time in London to a golf course and keep her from the ballrooms.
“What of Eve? Surely she shouldn’t be traveling so soon after Alice’s birth?”
Glenrothes just waited, ignoring her excuses.
“From the end of the Season?” she clarified, and her brother nodded. No, I’ll be twenty-one come September. Let me marry then, and you have a deal.”
He nodded again but added a caveat. “But a true effort, Blossom. You will partake of the Season fully and allow acceptable gentlemen to court you with an open mind.”
“Oh, I’ll be the belle of the ball, Francis,” Her voice was as cold as the dread that ran like ice through her veins. “I will simper, giggle, and mince with the best of them, but in the end, things will still be as I planned, and you will have done little more than waste my time and theirs.”
“You might be surprised,” he countered. “I think you’ll find that you have options where you might least expect them.”
* * *
Fiona turned without another word and stalked off the green. The sharp spikes of her shoes sank into the low grass as she left them behind, but instead of heading for the clubhouse, she left the fairway entirely, steering herself blindly toward the pair of carriages awaiting them beyond.
Waving a waiting footman aside when he rushed forward to help her, she carried her heavy rattan golf bag herself, if only to prove a point to the trio of men she knew were still watching her.
Her brothers might think that they could get medieval with her, but Fiona had never been one to take a challenge lying down, and she had no intention of getting bullied into changing her plans. She would go to London and play their little game. In the end, she would still have her way.
She always had.
And it wasn’t something she wasn’t going to let London, and whomever she might inconveniently happen upon there, change that.
Leaving the soft grass behind, her steel spikes ground roughly into the gravel of the drive. And with each step, so did her anger ebb away, leaving only consternation behind.
How had Francis done that? Somehow, he’d used her own intractability against her, maneuvered her into an impossible situation. She couldn’t go to London! Couldn’t face...
The painful banging of her precious clubs as she flung them unceremoniously into the boot of the larger carriage was no more agonizing than the apprehension that twisted her heart.
Behind the carriage and out of sight from them all, Fiona finally buried her face in her hands, pressing her fingers against her eyes to stem the tears that threatened to fall.
Whomever she might inconveniently happen upon...
Such impersonal words for something so potentially devastating.
No, she couldn’t do it. No matter the sting to her pride, she should go back now and tell Francis that she accepted his original bargain. That she would wait and hope for Ramsay’s patience. Could waiting another year really be so bad? Surely anything would be better than going to London.
Because whatever her brothers hoped she would find in waiting for the right man to come along, she already knew she would find him in London. In fact, there was only a minute, dismal chance that Fiona would not happen upon him.
How could she not?
He lived there.