A Question for Harry Read online

  “Blossom,” Vin sighed heavily with a shake of his head as if he truly regretted disappointing her.

  If he did have regrets, he was the only one. Instead of defending her, however, Vin turned away to tap his short putt in. Both Francis and Richard remained unmoved by her sarcasm.

  “Regardless of what you think, you don’t want a man who will cater to you. You’d be bored to death inside a week,” her oldest brother said unequivocally. “You’ll never be happy until you can find a man who will push back when you push him too far. Someone who can beat you at your own game every so often.”

  “Aye,” Vin nodded in turn. “Someone who wouldnae always let ye get yer way as we do. The man for ye, Blossom, is one who stands up to ye and gives as good as he gets.”

  Turning her back on them, she closed her eyes as a memory wafted through her mind much as the breeze from St. Andrews Bay caressed her cheeks.

  She knew a man like that. One who did give back everything she dished out with equal spirit, who matched her in wit and in pure stubbornness. One who made her feel joy, frustration and anger. One who made her heart ache at the mere thought of him …

  No!

  Fiona pushed the memory away and opened her eyes, turning into the stiff breeze from the bay to dry the tears gathering in her eyes … or at least provide an excuse if they were noticed. Looking back solved nothing. The future was all she had and she meant to seize it.

  Lord Donovan Ramsay was that future. He was tall, dark, handsome, and charming. Whatever other fine qualities Lord Ramsay might possess, what mattered the most to Fiona was that he was happy to let her have her way. Ramsay conceded to all her requests and wishes promptly and would never dream of saying no. He was – yes, she could admit it, if only to herself – extremely manageable. Malleable.

  Times being what they were, a woman needed a man with those particular qualities at home.

  With Ramsay, she could have everything she wanted without risking her heart.

  Glenrothes shook his head as he returned his putter to his golf bag and lifted the bag onto his shoulder. “Perhaps if I had paid more attention I might ha’ seen it coming, but as ye so kindly pointed out, I ha’ been focused on filling my nursery.”

  Fiona winced but refused to feel any more shame for her flippant words. Lord knew these men had offered enough of their own that afternoon to provide a proper counterbalance.

  Knowing that an apology for her harsh words was unlikely to be forthcoming, Glenrothes continued, “I know ye, Blossom. I raised ye. Yer a temperamental and impulsive lass, but I never had reason to doubt yer judgment. I cannae fathom why ye would leapt into anything as important as marriage so rashly.” Glenrothes pressed his fingers into the base of his skull as if the pressure would bring understanding. “Why not wait?”

  Wait? Already she was tired of life passing her by, tired of seeing her friends wed and begin their families. Tired even of filling her time with round after round of golf and sports trying to fill the void.

  Tired of waiting on pins and needles for something that was never going to happen.

  “I’m tired of waiting, Francis; I want to be married and start a family of my own.”

  “Wi’ this Ramsay? How could ye ha’ been witness to my first marriage to Vanessa, compare it to what I now ha’ with Eve, and think that ye will find happiness in a marriage where there is no love?”

  “Who says he doesn’t love me?”

  “Is he claiming that he does after only two weeks’ acquaintance?”

  Fiona shot him an arch look. It was a rather hypocritical question coming from a man who claimed to have fallen in love at first sight. “How long does it take, Francis?”

  “Sometimes it can take a lifetime,” Vin spoke up, sparing Glenrothes from answering. “Richard and I knew Abby and Moira for years.”

  “And Francis knew Eve for five minutes,” she shot back. “Time is irrelevant.”

  Glenrothes held up his hand to halt her retort. “Fine, Blossom, I will not speak any more to his feelings but I will express my concern for yours. Do you love this man? Is he a man you can love and respect?”

  No, she did not love Ramsay and that did not matter. To her, at least. He was easy, and subsequently, safe. Fiona set her jaw stubbornly but did not, could not answer. She hated to give her brother the satisfaction of being right.

  But all he did was nod. “You do not love him then. You cannot even say that you respect him. Why then, Blossom? What is this really about?”

  Fiona just shook her head again. Her reasons were her own and her brothers didn’t need to know what really drove her “haste.” That was a conversation that would be even more trying than this one already was. Also, she didn’t need their pity. “If you want to discuss motivations, why don’t you tell me what your refusal is really about? You’ve let me make my own decisions for years. Even if you believe this one will be a mistake, shouldn’t it be mine to make as well? Lord Ramsay asked me to marry him and I said yes.”

  “Well, he has nae asked me,” Glenrothes said, his brogue thickening again, and added without regret, “and even if he did, I wouldnae gi’ my permission.”

  “Permission? Francis, really! It is nearly the twentieth century!” Fiona said with barely contained frustration, resisting the urge to stomp her foot petulantly as she picked up her golf bag and hefted it over her shoulder. “See? I can carry my own clubs, pick my own husband … I can even dress myself. Did you know that?”

  “But ye still cannae marry wi’out my permission, lass. And I willnae gi’ it. Nae wi’ him,” dGlenrothes shot back as they all set out toward the eighteenth and final hole. The clubhouse loomed in the distance like an oasis in the desert and he, parched not from the sun but from an argument gone on too long, longed to quench his thirst with the fine whiskey within its four walls.

  “Good God, Francis! I’m not some wee toddler any longer! I know my own mind!”

  “But ye would deny yer heart!” he shot back, sounding more like the lordly earl than the doting brother she usually faced. And he’d managed it despite the sentimental emotion of his words.

  “And you would deny me my choice.”

  A short bark of laughter had Fiona looking back at Vin and Richard who were following close behind. It was Richard who had laughed but Vin was shaking his head in bemusement.

  “Blossom, you are an intelligent lass, smart as a whip. But I could pick a husband for you this very moment with far more consideration than I believe you have given to the matter.”

  “Pick one for me?” she parroted, laughing incredulously. “Well, thank God this isn’t the Middle Ages!”

  But her brother didn’t join her laughter. None of them did. Glenrothes shook his head tiredly. “You want to marry him? Truly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I will agree …”

  Grinning with satisfaction, Fiona beamed at him while Vin and Richard gawked at Glenrothes incredulously. How could they be so surprised, she wondered. Didn’t they know Francis always let her have her way?

  “If,” Glenrothes added, bursting her bubble. “He will agree to an engagement of one year. A year to prove that that you didn’t make this decision in haste and to make sure it’s the right one.”

  “A year?” Fiona gaped. “That’s ludicrous.”

  “Or traditional,” Richard said with a shrug. “Depending on how you look at it.”

  “This family has never managed a year-long engagement!” Fiona shook her head, dumbfounded. “You’re balmy on the crumpet. All of you.”

  “Mayhap that’s what happens when you start having your babies past thirty,” Vin said softly as they reached the tee box for the eighteenth hole and Fiona cringed. Vin might forgive easily, but his temper could spike just as quickly and flare hotter, too. Baiting him was like poking a tiger and Fiona usually tended to refrain from doing just that. Unfortunately, when she was angry, she tended to speak without thought, though usually didn’t regret what she said – but perhaps she ha
d gone too far. Fiona chewed her lip. Was this their way of punishing her for her flippant tongue? “This is ridiculous. I don’t want to wait a year.”

  “Or …” Glenrothes went on. “If it’s a husband you want more than Ramsay himself – and given the madness of your decision, I have to think that is the case – then find another suitor who will convince me that your future will at least be a happy one.”

  Fiona 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 is not 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 been planning on taking you down 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? Fiona 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. If I feel you are 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 in turn. “No, I’ll be twenty-one come September. Let me wed then and you have a deal.”

  He nodded again but added a caveat. “But a real 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,” Fiona’s 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 without another 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.

  Waving a waiting footman aside when he rushed forward to help her, Fiona carried her heavy rattan golf bag herself, if only to prove a point to the trio of men she knew were still watching her.

  Her brothers might think that they could get medieval with her but Fiona had never been one to take a challenge lying down and she had no intention of getting bullied into changing her plans. She would go to London and play their little game. In the end, she would still have her way.

  She always had.

  And it wasn’t something she wasn’t going to let London, and whomever she might inconveniently happen upon there, change that.

  Her steel spikes soon left the soft grass and ground roughly into the gravel with each step. And with each step so did her anger ebb away, leaving only consternation behind.

  How had Francis done that? Somehow he had used her own intractability against her, maneuvered her into an impossible situation. She couldn’t go to London! Couldn’t face …

  The painful banging of her precious clubs as she flung them unceremoniously into the boot of the larger carriage was no more agonizing than the apprehension that twisted her heart. Behind the carriage and out of sight from them all, Fiona finally buried her face in her hands, pressing her fingers against her eyes to stem the tears that threatened to fall.

  Whomever she might inconveniently happen upon …

  Such impersonal words for something so potentially devastating.

  No, she couldn’t do it. No matter the sting to her pride, she should go back now and tell Francis that she accepted his original bargain. That she would wait and hope for Ramsay’s patience. Could waiting another year really be so bad? Surely anything would be better than going to London.

  Because whatever her brothers hoped she would find in waiting for the right man to come along, she knew all ready that she would find him in London. In fact, there was only a minute, dismal chance that Fiona would not happen upon him.

  How could she not?

  He lived there.

  Chapter Two

  From the diary of Lady Fiona MacKintosh – March 1892

  Francis has promised to take me to London!

  Well, he hasn’t actually promised but I do think that perhaps he might be on the verge of agreeing if Granny might be convinced to take me on for the Season. While I understand that a single gentleman – even if he is an earl – cannot be expected to properly launch a debutante properly into Society, I might have liked to have had someone more … well, young and energetic to sponsor me.

  Still, beggars cannot be choosers.

  I’ve never understood why that is.

  The home of Lord and Lady Onslow

  Mayfair, London, England

  Early May 1895

  The London Season was everything Fiona had always imagined it might be, and so much less.

  “Fiona, please do not slouch!” Lady Hyde, her maternal grandmother, poked Fiona in the back with the end of her fan, the sharp blow mercifully dulled by the stiff steel of her corset.

  Aye, this was exactly how she imagined it. It was like being seventeen all over again when she had dreamed of a Season.

  Vin had been right. There had been a time when she wanted nothing more than to have a London Season. To attend balls, garden parties and the theater. To dance and flirt and find the man of her dreams.

  She had managed that without a Season at all.

  Since then, it was the potential to see him, meet him again that had kept her from pressing for a true London Season these past two years.

  And here she was anyway.

  “Yes, Granny,” she sighed and dutifully straightened her shoulders, knowing that any other response would only make things worse.

  But even the worst of her imaginings hadn’t included being prodded with the business end of a surprisingly sharp fan, and Fiona was in possession of a luridly vivid imagination. Vivid enough to cast ghostly sightings of a certain gentleman in every crowd. To hear haunting echoes of a deep, rich voice and warm laughter.

  To conjure enough dreadful anticipation to catch at the very fibers of her nerves until they were frayed to the last thread.

  Only the dogged
unwillingness to back down from a challenge kept her nerves intact. Of course it was the same cursed stubbornness that had landed her in London to begin with. She was her own worst enemy in so many ways.

  She had been on pins and needles all week. Waiting. Dreading.

  Thankfully, the very worst of what she expected from the Season hadn’t yet come to be. They’d been in town a week already without the reason for her reticence making an unwelcome appearance as yet and Fiona was beginning to feel the first stirrings of optimism that she might not face that awkward encounter at all.

  It was optimism enough now, half way through her first ball, for Fiona’s natural good humor to begin reasserting itself.

  Another jab. “Posture!”

  It was a good thing, too. Two nights past the tension of waiting for a glimpse of him would have had Fiona snatching that fan from her grandmother’s hand and snapping the delicate mother-of-pearl blades in half. Thankfully, tonight she was able to comply, if not cheerfully, at least without a sharp retort.

  Unfortunately, throwing back her shoulders also caused a forward thrust of her breasts. They swelled against the low neckline of her ball gown, prompting another frown to crease the older woman’s brow.

  “Demure, Fiona,” her grandmother dictated, lifting her head and shoulders gracefully by example. “You must be more reserved if you want any potential suitors to approach.”

  “I am finding that being surrounded by nine overly protective brothers seems to frighten off any potential suitors far more efficiently than my demeanor,” Fiona responded pertly. Sadly, the only reward for her rediscovered sense of humor was yet another arrogantly raised brow, but it wasn’t enough to deter Fiona’s tongue. “’Twould be like passing beneath the stare of the Sphinx to approach.”

  “They do serve to filter out the rabble, however,” Lady Hyde countered as she fanned herself haughtily. “We cannot simply have you thrown to the wolves like a robber baron’s only daughter. No offense intended, of course, Evelyn,” she added to Glenrothes’ wife, who stood at her other side.