This was not what Portia wanted or needed. She faced her mother. “I know you believe it would be wiser if I accept Colonel Chattan’s offer of marriage. I will not.”
“I realize that,” Lady Maclean said. She walked over to one of the two chairs by the window and took a seat. “Come sit.”
“Why?”
Her mother smiled. It appeared genuine. “I’ve already told you—we must talk.”
Portia considered her mother a moment. She’d changed. Certainly, she was calmer than Portia would have imagined under the circumstances. Her guard still up, Portia crossed to the empty chair beside her mother’s. She sat.
“General Montheath has asked for my hand in marriage and I said yes,” her mother said.
For a second, Portia wasn’t certain she’d heard her correctly. She waited, expecting some excuse or complaint to follow. She had assumed this conversation would be abouther. It wasn’t.
“Aren’t you going to wish us happy?” her mother asked.
“Oh, yes,” Portia said, still thrown off balance by this conversation. “I am happy for you.”
“I shall expect both of my daughters to stand as witnesses for us.”
“I will be honored,” Portia murmured, and then realized she had a new concern. What would become of her? “When did he ask?”
“Yesterday evening. You seemed to need your sleep or else I would have woken you.”
Portia pressed her lips together, feeling the worst daughter. Then again, since when had her mother become so independent? “You were set against him,” she said. “What happened?”
“Actually, it was something you said. I realized I’d mourned your father long enough. Indeed, I mourned for him when he was alive. I wanted him to be the sort of man I thought he should be. You accused me of not seeing Black Jack Maclean clearly. You were right.”
Leaning back in her chair, Portia saw her mother with new eyes, and was a bit embarrassed by her own callousness that evening after the dance. “I was a bit harsh.”
“Sometimes harshness is what one needs to make a change.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Do you not think it wise to consider marriage to Colonel Chattan?” her mother suggested.
Portia hardened her jaw.Thiswas the conversation she’d expected.
Before she could answer, her mother said, “I understand you are upset with him, although I don’t comprehend why. If I think back on your activities over the past two weeks, you have been seeing him, have you not? Alastair suspects the two of you have been together.”
“Alastair?”
“General Montheath. Monty.” Her mother blushed with fondness as she said the names.
And Portia had a sense that she herself had been absent while the rest of the world had changed.
“Being Colonel Chattan’s wife would not be such a bad thing,” Lady Maclean continued. “He’s wealthy, well connected, very easy on the eyes—”
“And cursed.”
“What?” Her mother frowned as if she hadn’t heard correctly.
“He’s cursed, Mother.” Portia crossed her arms. “You haven’t heard of the Chattan Curse? All the locals know it. When a Chattan male falls in love, then he will die.”
“I doubt if such a thing is true. You know how these country folk are—full of superstitions.”
“It’s true, Mother.”
Lady Maclean lifted a brow at the conviction in Portia’s voice and then reconsidered. “Is he in love with you?”
