Chapter 20
Monday morning, clouds rushed across the sky and the wind tugged on Catriona’s skirts from all directions while she walked to the Randolph Hotel. Her hairdo was loose by the time she arrived in Hattie’s drawing room. She brushed the locks away from her face, annoyed by the untidy sensation. She watched Hattie and Lucie put the plates from the tea cart onto the table and felt a pang of dread. Her friends were quite observant, and she currently seemed to carry a massive sign above her head: I have done very naughty things with a man!
She had dreamt about doing it again, too, had taken everything to its conclusion in her sleep. In reality, he had said, We will not do this again . . .
“Catriona, why are you lurking? Join us,” Hattie called, and waved her closer.
Nobody will know.
She entered with a stiff smile.
“Annabelle can’t attend today because baby Jamie has the sniffles,” Hattie related while she handed out cups of tea. “The poor mite.”
Lucie and Catriona made commiserative sounds. Underneath her skirts, Catriona’s left leg was bouncing. She couldn’t seem to breathe properly. This wasn’t just owed to her situation with Elias. She had been around too many people for too long, taking in too many stories. If there weren’t so many layers to her feelings lately, she would have recognized her exhaustion sooner.
“We don’t have much to discuss anyway,” Lucie said. She glanced over the documents she was balancing on her knees. “We are still advancing on the Property Act front—we’ve converted three more to vote in our favor last week. I suspect they sense a sea change and prefer to not be on the losing side. Only a few of the usual suspects will cause us trouble.”
“Who,” Catriona asked.
Lucie checked her notes. “Most notably, Sir George Campbell, and our old pal Mr. Warton. They are actively running a countercampaign.”
“Sir George,” Catriona muttered. “Ghastly creature.”
The man was loud and uncompromising at the Campbell clan meetings. She would never forget his thinly veiled criticism that Wester Ross seemed content with having a daughter for an heiress rather than taking a new wife and thus another chance at producing a son.
Hattie put down her biscuit. “Could they truly stop the bill again at the last moment?”
“They could delay it severely,” Lucie said, “or weaken the wording, if they garner enough support for their proposals on the day of the decision.”
Hattie made to pick up her biscuit again, then just left it on the plate.
“I’m so sick of them,” she said softly. “I’m tired of them.”
She reclined on the sofa and picked up her fan from the side table to cool her face.
Lucie arched a brow at her but turned her attention to Catriona. “What about the writ campaign?”
“Discouraging,” she replied, thinking of the last letters she had read. “I think it requires personal visits, not writing. I might as well put it aside for now, until a team supports me.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. At this pace, it shall take the usual fifty years before anything changes.”
Lucie’s frown lines ran deep as she looked from Hattie to Catriona. “What’s the matter this morning? Defeatist noises from both of you?”
“I’d call it realistic, to be honest, not defeatist,” Catriona said.
Lucie huffed. “They want us to not even try. Don’t fall for it.”
“They also want us to spend our precious time on nonsense, and this feels like a waste of my time. It’s not an unprecedented pattern: very few replies at all, and all of them negative.”
Lucie made a face that said Oh well, then. “I trust your judgment,” she said. “I just don’t think you have tried long enough to make this judgment.”
“I think the evidence is pretty conclusive.”
“You do put a lot of stock into patterns,” Hattie remarked as she flapped her fan. “There are advantages in being . . . open-minded.”
“Extrapolating is a rational method,” Catriona said with a frown. “It’s neither closed-nor open-minded.”
Hattie dropped back her head and made a guttural sound. “Human beings are not rational,” she said. “They are . . . a mess.”
Catriona’s eyes narrowed. “You’re still put out because I didn’t want to marry Elias Khoury, aren’t you.”
Great. She just couldn’t stop herself from sneaking in his name, could she? His face kept springing up before her mind’s eye, short-circuiting the flow of her thoughts. I won’t kiss you under your father’s roof again. That was what his mouth had said, at least. A stubborn thought returned: that it wasn’t truly over yet . . .