Unperturbed, Mr. Warton took offense at the wording in almost every line of the bill. Hot air rose from the chamber while his finicky analyses dragged on; the collective mood was stewing like a pot left too long over the fire, any minute now it would boil over.
Mr. Warton charged ahead undeterred. “Consider this—consider that the way this bill is amended as is presently proposed, it backdates its effects. As of the passing of this bill, every husband in Britain who entered marriage under the old conditions shall find himself trapped in a legal situation he never chose . . .”
Shouting ensued. It took a moment to realize that the committee members on the government side had come to their feet in protest.
Hattie curled her hands around the trellis and peered at the teeming scene. “This will go badly again, won’t it,” she said, sounding shaken. “Won’t it?”
“No,” Catriona said thickly. “No, Hattie, for once, this is going rather well for us.”
“You are imposing social revolution on us,” Mr. Warton yelled at no one in particular. “It is a post facto social revolution!”
“Ordaahh!” The speaker was joining the fray, shouting like the referee of a boxing match. “Ordaahh. Question negatived.”
When the clock ticked past one o’clock in the morning and the count was read at once, the result was clear: after four-and-twenty years, a decision was made in favor of women. Above the uproar, in their ornate cage, women fell into one another’s arms with incoherent cries of joy.
Still breathless and flushed with triumph, they crammed into Ballentine’s office half an hour later. Dripping ice buckets with champagne bottles and piles of sandwiches on silver platters waited on the viscount’s desk; in the aftermath of battle, the rules of formality were suspended. Lucie herself was serving, handing out overflowing goblets and laughing with her head thrown back. Aoife and Susan had joined them along with two ladies from the London Print investment consortium. The energy in the small space buzzed, the excited voices blended to an indistinct chatter. Lady Salisbury, consortium chair, thumped the floor with her cane whenever she wanted to emphasize a point. Catriona retreated into the corner next to the door. She kept the cool, sticky rim of the glass against her bottom lip and focused on breathing. A pleasant masculine scent lingered in Ballentine’s room, not exactly tailored to her palate but enough to push the constant presence at the back of her mind to the fore. Elias. She gulped the champagne. The taste held memories, too. Her lungs constricted, turning her cold on the inside, detached from her surroundings.
The door opened and the men walked in, Ballentine, Blackstone, Wester Ross. The duke was last. His normally sleek blond hair had curled in the damp air.
“Hullo there,” Lucie hollered, one fist waving in the air, and judging by Ballentine’s smirk, he approved. Blackstone put an arm around Hattie’s waist, and she placed a hand on his chest. The duke kept his hands to himself, but his sharp gaze was riveted on Annabelle’s beaming face as though she were the only person in existence. In a room filled with people she loved, Catriona’s chest hollowed with crushing emptiness. He should have been here. She bore it quietly, this agony of two vast and opposite emotions, victory and loss, trying to exist in her body at the same time.
“Are you all right, my dear?” Wester Ross stood next to her, a Scotch in hand. “You look a little peaked.”
“It was a long day,” she said vaguely.
“Quite,” her father replied, amused. “Well done. Here, have a sandwich.”
Somehow, she made it through eating sandwiches, and chitchatted with whoever intruded into her corner.
When the platters and bottles had been emptied for a while and the atmosphere naturally transitioned to drowsy, Lucie and Aoife stuck their heads together and a moment later, they disappeared into the antechamber. Eventually, Aoife emerged again and looked at Ballentine. “She asks that you leave the room for a moment,” she said. “In fact, why don’t all the gentlemen wait outside for a bit.”
The gentlemen exchanged bemused glances but obliged.
Aoife knocked on the antechamber door. “The air’s clear.”
The door opened.
Catriona nearly dropped her glass.
A vision of a bride had appeared on the doorstep.
“Lucie,” Hattie cried. “You are stunning!”
Lucie wore white. Gleaming, uncompromising white and . . . she sparkled. The gauzy layers of tulle and the delicate scalloped lace veil were shot through with tiny diamonds. Silver thread embroidery trimmed the skirt and snug satin sleeves.
“Feast your eyes,” Lucie said, and swished her skirts. “Since you will miss the ceremony.” She turned back and forth. “Do you think Ballentine will like it?”
“He will adore you,” Hattie said and furiously dabbed at her wet cheeks.
Annabelle grinned. “You will have to tell us what it looks like, when a reformed rake cries.”
It wasn’t the grand dress that took Catriona’s breath away, it was the look on her friend’s face. Lucie’s usually hawkish eyes were glowing with a deeply private excitement. A month ago, Catriona would have simply felt satisfied that her dear friend was very much in love with her betrothed. Now she recognized the emotion beyond the abstract, and it ripped her heart in half like a paper shape.
When they parted for the night, Hattie took her hand in both of hers. “Remember,” she said, “there’s a proper celebration in the Randolph for the Oxford chapter on Thursday. Be there at noon.”
Catriona nodded. On Thursday, she would be packing for Applecross.
By the time she was in her father’s carriage to the Campbell town house, her watch showed the witching hour, three o’clock in the morning. She was in an odd state of lethargy, her body exhausted, her mind still rushing with thoughts. Images of the chamber, broiling with their hard-won victory, and of Lucie, dressed like a fairy queen, kept looping past.
Wester Ross sat opposite her, his face turned to the window. The lenses of his spectacles reflected the light of the street lanterns, and it wasn’t possible to tell whether his eyes were open or closed.
“Sir,” she said softly.
“Yes, my dear?”
“I wondered . . . why have you never prevailed on me to marry?”
He looked at her with mild surprise. “Is marriage on your mind now? Has the change in the law worked a change on you?”
“I have wondered why you never remarried,” she admitted. “And a good match for either of us could have fixed our purse.”
Wester Ross remained quiet for so long, looking out into the night with such an absent-minded expression, Catriona suspected he had considered and then forgotten his answer, when he turned to her and said: “I loved your mother.”
A lump formed in her throat. “Of course you did.”
“Not everyone up in Applecross approved of our match.” The earl nodded, as if to himself. “Her father was an Englishman and she had roots in Sussex. It didn’t stop us.”
He had never shared of himself like this before. So much was left unsaid, deterred by the gulf between the generations or the walls of grief.