Her friends were stunned, she could tell. They weren’t really moving, not even blinking.
She raised her cup to her lips again.
“Given how much I just talked,” she said between sips, “it could of course leave you with the impression that I have considered it.”
“Not at all,” Annabelle assured her.
“Never,” Hattie agreed, but she was gripping the edge of her seat now, looking ready to burst.
“That was the longest I have ever heard you speak,” Lucie said, sounding awed.
“You have played out an entire marriage in your head and divorced the man before you even attempted courting,” Hattie cried.
Catriona put her cup back onto the saucer with a clink. “Why are we fussing over my nonexistent marriage to a stranger?”
“Right,” Lucie said. “Let the poor woman be, Hattie. I’m ringing in our meeting now. Whoever wants to talk about anything other than our agenda shall have to leave the room.”
She looked sternly at Hattie, whose room it happened to be, and opened her satchel, allowing Catriona to exhale with relief. It was hard enough keeping her face empty without having to spin romantic fantasies about the man she was trying to erase from her brain.
Lucie produced a sheet with a neatly drawn table containing names, some of them already haphazardly crossed out.
“Since our last meeting, we have spoken to two dozen dithering MPs, and in conclusion, it was a success,” she announced. “If we continue at this rate, we might have an amendment before the year is over.” She knocked on the surface of the table.
The point was agreed, and it was Catriona’s turn to present.
“I sent my first appeals out last Friday.” She nudged the two letters she had placed on the table. “My results are disappointing.”
“Those are quick replies,” Lucie remarked. Quick replies were usually written with tempers running high.
Catriona opened the first envelope. “Essentially, this one says: don’t be silly—the writ protects women from being left abandoned and penniless by errant husbands. No man would pay maintenance unless he faced jail.”
“Tosh,” said Lucie, “as if there weren’t other legal means available than this writ to correct such a man.”
“I think this one here is closer to the crux of the issue,” Catriona said and opened the second envelope. “Listen to this: The Writ for Restitution of Conjugal Rights has a purpose,” she read out. “If a wife could abscond on a whim, then who is to guarantee that she will honor her vows? A capricious bride could change her mind as soon as the day after the wedding and leave, thus condemning an innocent, upstanding man to years of celibacy as well as depriving him of the opportunity to father children. I am honouring your query with a response because I admired your academic work about the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople. I have much respect for a woman who has a man’s brain. However, a word of warning: when a woman fails to pair her intellect with the softer inclinations of the female sex, she is in danger of becoming a harridan or unsexed altogether. My regards to Wester Ross, I should like to meet him at the club when he is in London next.”
For a long moment, they looked at one another blankly. The muffled sound of nearby traffic filled the room.
At last, Hattie said in a grave voice: “The Theodosian Walls of Constantinople.”
They burst out laughing, so uncontrolled and high-pitched that it sounded like screaming.
“Capricious bride,” said Annabelle, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes, and just when the fresh shrieks died down, Lucie choked out, “unsexed,” and they doubled over again.
“I wonder what it would feel like,” Annabelle said when calm had been restored, “how I’d feel if I woke up every morning filled with such brass-necked audacity.”
“Invincible?” Hattie suggested.
Perhaps I would consider marriage then, Catriona thought. I could just close the door to my study whenever I needed and trust he would love me for being good at what I do, not for what I can do for him . . .
She glanced at the pocket watch. In two hours, she’d face her most recent disappointment in the Common Room. His attractive face appeared before her mind’s eye, and her body remained quiet, as if numb.
Chapter 16
He had, very casually, looked at his pocket watch at five minutes to one, then he had moved the chess pieces into their positions of the last game. When the door to the Common Room opened a few minutes later, he kept his eyes on the board for a moment as though his body hadn’t just buzzed with awareness.