Chapter 33

The night out wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for Cormac’s mum, who did the Rotary club with Larissa’s aunt—although Cormac’s mum just helped out, and Larissa’s aunt, the very posh Tabitha, was the local grandee in charge, who handed out the prizes at the local pet show and chaired the ball committee. Bridie hadn’t forgiven her youngest son for ducking out of the army and taking a local job, but she wasn’t going to tell Tabitha this; in fact, she made quite the point of him going to London and hobnobbing with the hoi polloi, and wasn’t Tabitha’s niece there, and perhaps she could show him around, and Tabitha, who was a decent sort underneath it all and terrified of appearing a snob just because her brother was the Duke of Argyll, agreed and passed on Larissa’s details.

And, in fact, she’d caught her niece at just the right moment. Larissa was in an absolutely furious mood after being rejected the previous year by the local laird, Ramsay Urquart, who had, in fact, headed off with some guttersnipe nanny who’d inveigled her way sneakily into his pathetic affections—“Such a cliché,” she’d moaned to her friends, who’d all agreed with her strongly and said he couldn’t handle a strong woman with her own mind, and poured more fizz, and complained yet again about how shit all the men were these days, which was comforting.

She hadn’t seen a picture of Cormac—he wasn’t on Tinder, not that she’d been looking at it or swiping, and anyway Tinder was for absolute losers; it was kind of ridiculous, but they wouldn’t let her on Raya, which was a disgrace, all her friends agreed, which was also comforting. Tabitha said he had looked after her knee when she’d gotten it replaced and was quite the hottie, but Tabitha still thought Peter Bowles was the height of hotness, whoever he was, so she wasn’t going to take Tabitha’s word for it.

And it rather appealed to her to see someone from Kirrinfief. Let that get back to Ramsay, let him see how much she absolutely did not care and was not a snob or only after him for his title—as if. Who wanted that stupid crumbling house of his when here she was dating a nurse or something? So. Pleasing her aunt, of whom she was fond, and annoying her ex, and bringing a (hopefully) hot new man into her circle, and initiating some Scottish rube into what proper London sophistication actually looked like sounded entirely up her street, so she booked a table at her swanky London club and got lots of her girlfriends on board and got the fizz in and was in general in excellent spirits.