“Neither do you.”
True enough.
“Will you at least try?” Lilah pressed. “If nothing else, it will make this a much more pleasant journey for everyone else. No one enjoys being around a sulk.”
Again, truth. And one that cut Clara deeply. She had prided herself on never sulking once she had escaped her mother’s overbearing interference. She had spent her younger years steeped in tantrums, which always bled into long weeks of sulking. That was the pattern she’d had with her mother, and it was Aaron’s one condition when she had escaped her parents’ home to live with him: no sulking. Ever.
She hadn’t until now. She’d stomped out of the house when she’d gotten angry. She’d fired a drunken servant – once. She’d even gotten drunk and fallen asleep downstairs. But she’d never, ever sulked until now.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, thoroughly ashamed.
“Just say you’ll give him a chance.”
“Even though I told him that I didn’t want to go to Scotland and here I am.”
“Yes. Even though.”
She glared down at her open book. She thrust out her lower lip until it could go no further. She screwed up her face into a comedy of childish,I don’t wanna!
And when Lilah released a musical cascade of laughter, Clara gave in.
“Very well. I promise to say yes to all his non-carnal amusements. But if I end up dead in a peat bog from some stupid Scottish custom, then it shall be all your fault.”
“I shall confess my guilt at your funeral.”
“You’d best cry too.”
“Buckets of tears. I swear.”
And so it was that her fate in Scotland was sealed. Not by any nefarious machinations by Lord Loughton, but because she’d promised her best friend to give someone else’s amusements a chance.
