Moira and Vin shared an amused look. “Women trouble, brother?”
“I don’t have troubles with women in general,” James corrected.
“Ah, so there is one in particular you have in mind?”
James looked off into the distance and heaved what Vin might describe as a desolate sigh. “Aye, one aggravating woman.”
Vin was about to over a comment when Fiona came storming out of the garden. Her color was high and her green eyes snapping with fury as she lifted her skirts high to run past them into the house, but at the door she turned and yelled back to the gardens. “You’ll be sorry, Harry Brudenall. You’ve had your chance. I’m done with you now!”
Staring after her in surprise, the trio on the terrace turned back to the garden to see Aylesbury emerging from the foliage. His face was beet red except for the stark white handprint that stood out on his cheek.
“Harry,” Moira exclaimed. “Did you…?”
“No,” Harry growled. “She did!”
“Ha!” James snorted and met Harry’s eye as they nodded at each other in complete agreement and said in unison. “Women!”
Chapter 1
Men! I’m surrounded by them! Outnumbered and outranked. Sadly, there is nothing to be done for it when one is the youngest of eleven siblings and the only lass amidst a herd of lads at that.
~From the diary of Lady Fiona MacKintosh—April 1895
The Old Course
St. Andrews, Scotland
April 1895
“Francis!”
“Nay, Blossom. I willnae consider it!”
“Francis!”
“Nay! And dinnae be getting yer feathers in a bunch about it!”
It was an incredibly simple thing to tell when her brothers felt passionate about something. Their usually cultured accents gave way to the heavy brogues of their ancestors when they were angry, frustrated, or drunk.
And Fiona was fairly certain—at least at this particular moment—that they weren’t drunk.
However, they weren’t the only ones who were frustrated by this conversation either. As much as she preferred to approach the trials of life with ebullient good cheer, Fiona was becoming downright infuriated with her brother.
It was nothing new, of course. The MacKintosh siblings, all eleven of them, were known to be mercurial in temperament, and it would be safe—even a bit of an understatement—to say that there was no shortage of verbal outbursts and occasional physical bouts in the MacKintosh household.
One might postulate that the character trait—Fiona refused to consider it a flaw—might have weakened by the time her parents got to her. But Fiona MacKintosh, last of the bunch and the only female among them to boot, possessed all the hot-headedness of any of her older brothers as well as whatever excess that might have remained.
As a toddler, her father had taken to calling her Blossom because even then she had been as prickly as a heather blossom. Among her brothers, the nickname had stuck, only to be validated again and again as the years went by.
And would likely be confirmed once again quite soon if her eldest brother, who had been most accommodating of her wants and wishes throughout the course of her twenty years, became any less obliging now.
“Francis, this is ridiculous,” she grumbled with no little exasperation. “Lord Ramsay is the man I want to marry.”
“If Ramsay is the man ye truly want to wed, Blossom, I’ll eat my hat.” Fiona’s eldest brother, Francis MacKintosh, the Earl of Glenrothes, told her as he considered a chip shot from the fringes of the seventeenth green of the St. Andrews Old Course where they were playing an early round on a perfect spring morning.
A perfect morning, she had thought, to partake in her beloved pastime with her brothers on their favorite course and to address the matter of her future, however the conversation wasn’t going at all how she had imagined it.
One of the other gentlemen present harrumphed. “And if he is, we hae no’ given ye enough options.”
“Vin!” Fiona spun around to gape at the next eldest of the ten MacKintosh brothers in astonishment. Maybe they were drunk. Fiona couldn’t think of another reason for their contrary behavior. A denial from one was rare. Two, unheard of. And to have Vin deny her? He, especially, had pampered and indulged her since his return to Scotland two years past. “Options? I’ve seen the options. Lord Ramsay is the only one who’s come up to snuff!”
“He’s not come up to snuff, Blossom,” the third of her brothers, Richard, weighed in. Unlike the two oldest brothers, Richard’s temper hadn’t yet been tapped if his brogue were any indication. In fact, he seemed rather entertained by the entire conversation…which only served to heighten Fiona’s displeasure. “He’s simply not as smart as the others.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ll be happy to explain,” Richard said, swinging one of his golf clubs casually before lifting it to point in her direction. “You, my dear sister, are shockingly direct, far too progressive, and disconcertingly liberal-minded.”
Having not a word to offer in opposition to his words, Fiona merely waited impatiently for him to continue. Inarguably she was all those things and more. Her determination to have her way wasn’t a mere byproduct to having been spoiled by her brothers. They had raised her following their parents’ deaths to think and act independently, to fight for what she wanted.
“I dinnae think that comes as a surprise to anyone here, Richard. What’s your point?” Glenrothes said, his heavy brogue ebbing with his anger as he chipped his ball onto the green.
“My point is that Blossom’s…shall we call it unique perspective on life isn’t at all what most gentlemen are looking for in a wife in this day and age. My apologies, dear lass, but that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise either,” he added.
She only shrugged. It wasn’t.
“That’s not much of a point, Richard,” Vin pointed out.
No, it wasn’t.
Richard lifted a brow. “But it is. Oh, she might appeal to gentlemen at first because she’s quite lovely, attractively wealthy, and on any normal day, reasonably good-natured, but she’s bold as brass and not at all shy with her opinions. It’s disconcerting for most of the eligible gentlemen she’s met and distinctly terrifying for others.”
“Thank you, Richard. I’m feeling ever so good about myself just now.”
“Just wait, there’s more,” he warned and continued, “Now there are two exceptions to this rather regrettable trend. First, there is the rare, yet heretofore, unseen gentleman in possession of comparable intelligence and enough backbone to find such qualities admirable.”
“And second?”
“There is Lord Ramsay.”
Vin threw back his head and laughed at that, somehow comprehending the joke before the punch line was even revealed. “Aye, Ramsay. Too daft to know what he’s getting himself into!”
Fuming silently, Fiona settled a glare of displeasure upon the two men until their laughter faded away. “How terribly amusing you both are.”
“Amusing or no’,” Glenrothes said, following his ball onto the green to line up the long putt he was left with, “there is some truth to what Richard has said. You’ve only known Ramsay for two short weeks. Hardly enough time to consider marriage.”
“Not considering,” she corrected. “Lord Ramsay is a fine enough gentleman, heir to an earldom, a fair rider and an adequate golf player. We share a passion for the sport and I wish to marry him.”
“A shared interest in a sport is no reason to wed, Blossom,” Richard offered more seriously.
“At times, Richard, we must make do with the opportunities we are given. What else do you expect me to do, remain single for an indeterminate amount of time? Become a spinster?”
“Wait until you find a man you can love,” her eldest brother said.
“Or at least one we could respect,” Vin added under his breath, but she heard him anyway and her temper spiked again.
“If I we
re to wait for that to happen, Vin MacKintosh,” she snapped, “I may very well be past my thirtieth year before I start filling my nursery.”
She winced as Glenrothes and Vin both glowered at her. It was a low, unnecessary blow as both of their wives were just beginning to fill their nurseries at thirty.
Richard punctuated the sudden silence with a low whistle and took an extravagant step back.
“I should like to see ye repeat that sentiment to Eve’s face, as her advanced age hisnae seemed to be such a detriment to her happiness,” Glenrothes said in a soft, deadly burr while Vin only shook his head.
“Och, Francis! Vin!” She began to apologize but her eldest brother held up his hand to halt her rebuttal.
“That is neither here nor there. I ken how ye are when ye get a thought into that head of yers, Blossom. Yer as tenacious as a filly wi’ the bit between her teeth. But, bugger it, I willnae stand to the side and watch ye wed in haste to a man ye met on a golf course, for pity’s sake.”
Bloody hell but she shouldn’t have picked on Eve, Fiona bemoaned. She loved her sister-in-law dearly and knew quite well that there was nothing in this world that angered Francis more than a slight to his wife. Her insult couldn’t have been more badly timed since Eve had delivered another daughter for Francis just a month past.
Another baby to remind Fiona just how much she was missing in her own life.
All the more reason to get on with it.
“You must admit, Blossom, ’tis hardly the proper setting to meet a gentleman,” Vin said quietly. Since he was of a more even keel temperamentally than most of the family, Vin’s anger tended to fade away more quickly. Far more quickly than hers.
“Proper?” Fiona scoffed, twisting the handle of her putter against her palm. “You’re a fine one to talk about anything relating to propriety, Vin. Besides, it is the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.”
“What Vin is saying is that young ladies such as yourself are usually introduced to young eligible men in a more suitable setting,” Richard said.
“I’ve been trotted about to high society balls and teas and introduced to eligible men for two years without finding a single gentleman I like better,” she reminded them. “Besides, given my passion for golfing, isn’t it only fitting that I met someone here that suits me?”
“It just seems a bit dodgy that you meet this fellow at the clubhouse, yet he won’t step out with you publicly,” Richard told her.
“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 on 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 skirts to 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 that 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. Haranguing me—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. I believe for the most part 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 the ball 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 take part in the Ladies Open Championship at the Royal Wimbledon this summer so that I might marry Ramsay straight away.”
“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 of 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 first, disastrous marriage to the previous Earl of Shaftesbury had verified that.
However, her brothers were assuming that it was her intention to continue playing golf after her marriage with the same frequency she did now and that wasn’t at all the case. As much as she did enjoy the game, she only played as often as she did to distract herself from the fact that life was beginning to pass h
er 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.
If she wanted to travel, she would. If she wanted to smoke as she had seen some women do, she would do just that. If she wanted to play golf wearing trousers…well, perhaps not that. Unfortunately, golf clubs like the Wimbledon Royal had unyielding regulations regarding how female players must be attired.
Ramsay was the perfect choice in that regard. He would yield to her wishes and would never think he might control her or own her person. Own her thoughts.
Own her heart.
“Of course, he will. Lord Ramsay is everything that will make me happy.”
While Glenrothes might not have gotten the lion’s share of temper in the family, he was cursed with a vexing amount of tenacity on par with her own. “I simply cannot believe that.”
“I agree,” Richard said as he took his shot and sank the ball into the cup.
Fiona frowned at him, though his success in achieving par where she had failed might have been more aggravating than his concurrence. “And why not?”
“That you do not know the answer to that shows that you do not know him well enough to marry him. I hardly know him at all, but even I’ve seen that Ramsay is a spineless namby-pamby, Blossom. You’d walk all over him,” Vin announced, stepping up to take his turn, impatient for the game to move on.
Richard chuckled at that. “Indeed, you’d have him under your thumb in no time…If you haven’t already.”
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