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 withoutanother 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.
