Chapter 7 #3
“You’re nervous about it,” he guessed. “You needn’t be. The people who agree with you will think your speech is good, and those who don’t agree with you wouldn’t like your speech even if it were delivered by Saint Michael himself.”
“Thank you for that vote of confidence.”
“Considering your ultimate goals, you should be happy for any vote you can get.”
Cat bit her lip to stop a laugh, and Thane felt a little thrum of victory.
“Go ahead,” he encouraged her. “What’s the worst thing that can happen? Afraid I’ll puncture a hole in your impeccable logic?”
“You’re truly hateful, you know that.”
He just grinned, liking how Catriona’s eyes sparkled when she got heated. “First piece of advice: don’t insult your audience.”
“You’re not my audience, you’re my jailer.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Men cannot live without women,” she said then, reading from her paper. “Yet they treat them as if they are completely expendable.”
“Oh, please,” he objected. “That is far too broad a statement to be supported by evidence.”
“The evidence is all around you,” Cat retorted.
“Society’s very structure is designed so that women can be hidden away as wives or mothers or nurses or governesses.
Or if they prove difficult to control, men can simply replace them with a more biddable woman in the role.
All the laws and customs of the nation favor men’s choice in these matters. ”
“Well, if they do, it’s surely because men are responsible for the women under their care.”
“Women do not need to be under men’s care,” she said, adding harsh sarcasm to the last word.
“Miss Ross, you surely aren’t suggesting that women could survive without men.”
“Let’s try it and find out,” she said, her hands on her hips.
“It wouldn’t require too much for the experiment.
Let’s just take”—her eyes suddenly lit up with a wicked humor—“the Isle of Man. We’ll ferry all the men off it and turn it into the Isle of Woman!
After a few years, when we’re settled in, we’ll even send a delegation to Parliament to discuss our results. ”
Thane shook his head. “You’re forgetting a few key details. Your womanly utopia will wither in a generation. It’s difficult to sustain a nation without children.”
Catriona frowned, as if this wrinkle in her plan truly just occurred to her.
“Well, we’d accept newcomers, of course.
” She brightened. “Actually, it will be perfect, considering all the poor women who find themselves pregnant by scoundrels who’ve no intention of caring for the bairns they’ve fathered. ”
Thane nearly choked on his planned rejoinder. What the hell did Catriona Ross know about bastards and bairns? “You will not mention bastard children in your speech.”
“Of course not,” she agreed easily. “There will be plenty of listeners in the audience who’d faint dead away if I told the truth unvarnished.
Mrs Roberts is very careful to not give any reason for the authorities to shut us down.
We can’t convince others of the rightness of our cause if we’re not permitted to talk in public. ”
“Hold a moment.” Thane just remembered something. “Why are you rehearsing any speech? You know it’s too dangerous to go out in public while some gunman is taking aim at you.”
Catriona drew a breath, then locked eyes with him. “I have to practice my speech, sir. I have to do something. If I do nothing, I shall go mad.”
Thane had too many memories of long days or nights waiting for an order to be given, any order. He sympathized with the desire for action when pinned into place by circumstance. Still, he couldn’t let her go to some public place and speechify. “Do not think I’ll relent on this matter, Miss Ross.”
“I know you would not,” she said loftily.
“But you cannot stop me from hoping that by the time I would give this speech, this ordeal will be over. How foolish would I feel if I simply dithered until the day, only to learn that the man has been captured and I can go forth freely once again? I must prepare for the world I want, even if all I can foresee is the world I’m forced to live in. ”
She does have a way with words, Thane thought.
Just like Brodie did. Too damn persuasive, that lad.
Especially at the end, when it led to… Thane pulled himself back from contemplating his fatal mistake.
He said to Cat, “Very well. Would you like to recite it to me, from the beginning? I won’t interrupt. ”
Catriona just shook her head. The heaviness in her face was there again, and she looked unbearably tired. “I couldn’t. If you will excuse me, Mr MacPhearson…”
She moved past him, and Thane almost reached out to touch her. But that would be folly. Hoping to regain control of his own emotions, he reminded her, “You’re to stay within the house and garden till we tell you otherwise.”
She sent him a withering glance. “I’m aware of what is expected of me. Honestly, Mr MacPhearson, you must think I’m very dim.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” Catriona strode off before Thane could think of a suitable reply.