Chapter 12
“F
or heaven’s sake, Cora, have you lost your mind?!” Harry exclaimed.
“I vigorously applaud your calm and reasonable response to her announcement, dear,” Matilda said, rolling her eyes. “Clearly, suggesting a trip to the Scottish countryside is tantamount to madness.”
“It certainly is when it’s an overture toward marrying a damned Scotsman!” he snapped.
“Why should that be so objectionable to you, Harry?” Cora asked with a frown.
“What makes a man from that country less worthy than one who was born here? It’s a civilized country under English rule, after all!
It’s not as if I’ve declared my intention to travel to the jungle and live among the lions and snakes like some wild savage! ”
Inwardly, she was relieved that she had waited until they’d returned home to broach the topic with him.
Given the apoplectic rage it had thrown him into, she couldn’t have been entirely certain that he would not have likewise erupted even in the middle of a room full of London’s most well-to-do citizens.
“It’s much the same thing!” Harry insisted hotly. “Scotland is barely civilized by any gentleman’s definition. It’s a place of…of…of crumbling old castles and rainy moors!”
“Frankly, that makes it sound rather more charming,” Matilda laughed. “I’m becoming jolly well excited by the prospect of a good long trip somewhere new! Away from the noise and bustle of the city for a while…”
“The ‘noise and bustle’ is precisely what I rely upon to maintain my position in society!” her husband reminded her.
Matilda raised an eyebrow sardonically. “You are married to a member of one of London’s oldest and wealthiest families, darling. I can assure you that your position will be waiting for you upon your return.”
“That’s hardly the point!” he sputtered (as though it was not the point he himself had been making just moments before). “She’s not going to marry some red-haired brute from Scotland, and that’s all there is to it!”
“You may speak to me directly, Brother, as I happen to be standing in the same room with you,” Cora remarked dryly.
“You have every conceivable option open to you now that we have elevated ourselves!” he exploded at her.
“You can marry any number of fine young men who can not only bring you happiness and affection but money and better standing in society! You can choose to raise children in a safe and civilized home, where they will have the benefit of the finest education, and every opportunity in life will be available to them! And you would throw all of that away and live in a grim and drafty old fortress in the middle of the bally wilderness? Just to spite me? Where is the sense of it?!”
“To begin with,” Cora began wearily, “none of it is to spite you, and you are a silly ass for imagining such a thing. As if I would commit to marrying a man just to displease you? Good gracious, Harry, does your ego know no bounds?”
He glared at her sullenly, looking unconvinced.
“Further,” she continued, “do you happen to know whether his family’s ancestral home is, in fact, grim and drafty and crumbling, as you’ve stated? Because I, for one, have no idea what it looks like. However, I intend to find out firsthand rather than making idiotic assumptions.”
“Well spoke!” Matilda chimed in.
“Thank you,” Cora said primly. “And what’s more, you act as if he is some mud-bedraggled peasant or mindless savage simply because he is from Scotland.
You seem to forget that he is not only a nobleman but the eldest son of a laird, which means he will rule the clan himself one day.
By his country’s standards, he is an extremely wealthy and important man. ”
“That is not unlike pointing out the wealthiest and most important beetle on a dunghill, in my estimation,” Harry retorted.
“Harry!” Matilda hissed. “Shame on you! If your mother were here and heard you speak such loathsome words, she’d cuff you on the ear, and it would be well-deserved!”
“I care not,” he sniffed. “I give my consent to none of it, and I’ll hear no more about it. That is the final word on the matter.”
Matilda smirked at Cora. “Well, sister-in-law? Is that ‘the final word on the matter?’ From the look on your face, I quite imagine it is not.”
“No,” Cora replied in a steely tone, folding her arms and glaring at Harry.
“I have one more thing to say, Harry, and it is simply this: Unless you plan to chain me up and keep me in the cellar, I intend to journey to Scotland with Cameron and meet his family so that I may decide for myself whether I will marry him. Now, as I see it, this leaves you with precisely two choices. You may either accompany me there, telling your society friends that it was your idea to do so in order to safeguard my honor and determine whether Cameron would make a worthy groom…or you may bear the very public scandal of having entirely lost control of your sister and allowing her to travel to a far-off land unsupervised and in the hands of a Scotsman. I must also add that personally, I do not much care which choice you make. I have no qualms about making you look foolish in front of your friends if it means asserting my own independence to marry as I please. Have I made myself perfectly clear, Harry?”
Harry’s face grew redder with each word that came out of her mouth. When she’d finished, he stood trembling with rage for several moments, the muscles in his jaw twitching like snakes beneath his skin. Finally, when it became clear that he could muster no worthy retort, he stormed out of the room.
“He doesn’t make it easy, does he?” Matilda chuckled wryly. “Then again, you were raised with him, so I suppose you would know that better than most.”
“You know, the funny thing is that he used to treat me quite differently,” Cora said wistfully.
“He wasn’t nearly so controlling. He allowed me to do what I felt was best for myself.
In fact, he even used to encourage it. He said that he admired my strength and determination.
But when his prospects began to change…when it seemed as though the riches and title he had always coveted so bitterly were finally within his grasp… ”
“Then he came to want more for you, as he wanted more for himself,” Matilda finished for her. “In his own strange way, he honestly believes that he is doing what is best for you by browbeating you this way.”
“If only he could be made to see reason. This constant battling with him is taking its toll, but I certainly cannot capitulate and have him running every aspect of my life for me! I value my own happiness too highly to allow such a thing.”
“For what it’s worth, I believe you handled him well enough tonight,” her sister-in-law reassured her.
“You stood up to him and said what he needed to hear, even if it wounded his silly pride. The way you put it to him…well, he will have no choice but to do as you’ve said in order to save face.
I can just imagine him now, at the club with his friends, extolling the virtues of Scottish nobility so he can pretend the entire thing was his idea. ”
“Yes, God forbid they believe his sister is making such decisions for herself!” Cora giggled. “I do pity him to some degree. To be so thoroughly controlled by what others think of you! I cannot imagine what a miserable existence that must be.”
Now it was Matilda’s turn to sigh. “Having been raised in such a state, I can tell you plainly that it is simply abominable. It is strange to me, knowing how Harry believes he would have vastly preferred to be born into our sort of household. He’ll never appreciate the freedoms your middle-class upbringing afforded you.
But you do, and that’s one of the reasons I so admire you and enjoy your company. ”
“Indeed, I find myself missing those days more and more lately,” Cora admitted. “Then again, I’d never have been able to regularly attend the opera, which I so adore. Or the theater, for that matter.”
“And you would never have found yourself at a soiree being introduced to the son of a Scottish laird, either,” Matilda pointed out with a playful grin.
Well, Cora could hardly deny that, could she?