“Dodgy?He’s the nephew and heir of the Earl of Carron.What could be more respectable than that?”
“I’ll tell ye what,” Glenrothes said flatly, calm once again.“Respectable is a man who courts you in public.Respectable is a man who knocks on my door to ask for your hand like a gentleman.This Ramsay has worked an entire courtship behind our backs.Richard’s right.It all seems a wee bit cagey.”
He tapped his golf ball lightly, sending it across the short grass and into the cup with a soft clink.Turning, he motioned for her to take her turn, but she was too incensed just then to find the peace needed to sink the long putt awaiting her from the fringes of the green.
“Oh,” Fiona said with wide-eyed innocence.“Is that how it’s supposed to be?Because I don’t seem to remember any of you courting your wives that way.Let’s run up a tally, shall we?”She pointed the business end of her putter at Richard.“Richard, you courted Abby...oh, no, you didn’t, did you?You married with a special license and abandoned her to a scandal.Francis, you created a scandal with Eve and married her with a special license...”
“Blossom,” Glenrothes growled the warning, but Fiona went on, leveling the putter at Vin.
“And Vin...well, I think you have the weakest ground to stand on, don’t you?”
“Blossom!”
“Caught kissing Moira like a preacher’s daughter by none less than Reginald Wallis, the scandalmaker of Edinburgh!And married her also with a special license,” she finished.“I hardly think any of you have the right to dictate to me the proper execution of courtship.”
Silence fell at that, but Fiona’s oldest brother caught and held her eye with a frown.“Are ye finished yet, Blossom?”
Fiona set her jaw and glared back at him, fighting the urge to fling her favorite putter at his head.
Glenrothes sighed.“Take yer bloody shot.”
* * *
Swishing her skirtsto the side, Fiona stomped over to her ball and addressed it.Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm herself enough to make a decent go of it, but as she stared down at the ball, she was nearly overcome by the urge to scream...or beat the green to a pulp with her club.
She did neither.Not only because she refused to give them the satisfaction of labeling her behavior as childish and—in that way that only brothers can—extend the label to all of her actions and decisions, but also because the greens keeper at St.Andrews might ban her from the course for tearing up his precious green.Given her love of the game, it was a risk she would never take.
But no, she wasn’t done.Not by a long shot.She loved all ten of her brothers dearly, but as Richard had said, they had raised her to think independently and to act the same.She was used to either doing as she pleased or expecting them to acquiesce to her wishes.She was what they had made her.How could they possibly expect her to change all of that now?
They should be glad she hadn’t consigned her life to the international league of spinsters after the hand romance had dealt her.
“Might I remind you,” she said tightly, turning on them again.“That you—all of you—have been lamenting my age and impending spinsterhood this past year.Haranguingme—with an annoying degree of repetitiveness, I might add—to settle upon a husband?”
“There has been no haranguing, Blossom,” Vin countered calmly.“Don’t exaggerate.Besides, that wasn’t what I or any of the others said at all.For the most part, I believe our concern was that you were generally ignoring the natural progression of life in favor of a golf course.”
“I cannot believe you would say that as if it were a bad thing as we are all at this moment engaged in that very sport,” she said, pointedly returning to her ball and taking a quick putt, sending it across the green.It rimmed the cup and traveled a few more yards before rolling to a stop.Frowning at the ball, she mentally placed the blame for the miss on her brothers’ shoulders.
“At least we all have other things to occupy our time,” her eldest brother volleyed back, but he, too, had reined in his temper.“We have families, spouses, and children to focus on.We were only expressing our hope that you would soon have the same.”
Fiona sighed, rolling her eyes as she counted to ten.“And so I shall, as soon as Lord Ramsay and I marry.I am eager to wed, Francis.The sooner, the better.I even turned down an invitation from Miss Isette Pearson herself to participate in the Ladies Open Championship at the Royal Wimbledon this summer so that I might marry Ramsay immediately.”
“Is that some sign of serious commitment?But you did not decline the membership to the Ladies’ Golf Union she offered.”Richard looked up at her from where he was squatted down on his haunches, lining up his putt.
Was he mad?“Good Lord, of course not,” she answered.“It’s an honor.”
“I’m sure you think so, but have you considered whether this Ramsay fellow would allow his wife to spend all her days on a golf course?”Vin asked.
A valid enough question.It was the age of men, after all.Despite the modern times and the fact that women were gaining more control and rights over their lives every day, men still legally owned their wives—tales of Eve’s disastrous first marriage to the previous Earl of Shaftesbury had verified that.
However, her brothers assumed that she intended to continue playing golf after her marriage with the same frequency she did now, and that wasn’t the case at all.As much as she enjoyed the game, she only played as often as she did to distract herself from the fact that life was beginning to pass her by.
She knew what she wanted from life, and despite mocking her brothers regarding their methods, each one of them had the life she secretly longed for: a family of their own.
Her chance at it—the first that had ever come her way—was almost within her grasp.
But as much as she wanted it, Fiona’s unusual upbringing had also made her rather radical about the role women should play in life and marriage, and she wasn’t about to hand over control to just anyone without some assurance that her life would remain her own.
If she was not destined for a marriage like those her brothers had found, where equality was borne of love and respect, she was dogmatically adamant about having a marriage where she held the reins.
