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By Root 340 0

—only to be quickly dismissed. It was not like that at all: there were plenty of perfectly eligible people who resorted to the services of an introduction agency or who advertised, and the results were often very successful. And there were plenty of women—there must be—who even if they proposed to a man might just as easily have received proposals themselves. No, the male monopoly of proposals, such as it was, was untenable and should be abandoned. And yet, and yet … the fact of the matter was that she had lacked the courage to propose to Jamie.

It did not matter. She could now say my fiancé, and they could exchange rings. She wanted to give him one too and had already seen one she liked in a jeweller’s window in Bruntsfield. It was a discreet band made of rose-coloured gold; a lovely thing which it had never occurred to her she would eventually purchase. And when it came to a ring for her, when Jamie had mentioned it she had suggested something modest; she did not want him to spend too much. Of course, now that they were engaged the whole issue of the disparity in their respective means could disappear. Her possessions would be his by virtue of the marriage, and vice versa, of course; Jamie was about to become well-off.

There were other things to think about that were considerably less attractive than rings. Prominent amongst these was the question of what, if anything, to say to Cat. Isabel’s niece had grudgingly accepted her aunt’s relationship with Jamie, her former boyfriend, but both of them, by unspoken agreement, kept off the subject when in one another’s company. Now Isabel had to decide whether to mention the engagement to Cat, or whether, in fear of her ire, to say nothing, leaving her to hear of it from somebody else. Eddie could be the messenger, perhaps, or even the personal announcements column of the Scotsman could break the news, not the bravest way out, but one that might make it easier for Cat to deal with news that almost certainly would not be welcome.

Even if she was still feeling euphoric—almost light-headed—after the evening’s events, Isabel had several things to do that morning. Jamie had hinted that breakfast in bed would not go amiss—for the second time, she observed, in three days, but she agreed, none the less, to make it for him.

“When we’re married,” she said, “I take it that you won’t expect breakfast in bed every day. Or will you?” She would make him breakfast in bed every day if that was what he wanted; of course she would. She would do anything for him.

“Of course not,” he said. “This will be the very last time. I promise.”

It sounded so strange to utter the words when we are married. As a moral philosopher, and arbiter, in that role, of hypothetical private lives, she was used to talking about the marriages of others. Now it was her—Isabel Dalhousie—whose future was being referred to. Married: the word had a delicious flavour to it; like the name of some exotic place—Dar-es-Salaam, Timbuktu, Popocatépetl. Marriage was a whole territory, a citizenship, to be adopted and inhabited, as the neophyte takes on the ways and thinking of a new religion. She had been married before, of course, but it had been something false, something quite different.

When she took the breakfast tray up to Jamie, she found that he had taken Charlie into bed with him and was reading to him, a story of a fox and his family who defeat a trio of unpleasant farmers. The story had been translated into Scots as The Sleekit Mr. Tod, and it was this version that Jamie was reading to Charlie. It was well beyond his understanding, of course, but the little boy was listening intently.

“I want him to understand Scots,” said Jamie. “It’s our language, after all.”

Isabel smiled. “Of course. But he probably has to understand English first.”

Jamie looked doubtful, and returned to the story. “A tod is a fox in Scots,” he explained to Charlie. “That’s why he’s called Mr. Tod.”

Charlie stared at his father with grave incomprehension.

Jamie began to read again. “ ‘And so the wee tod askit his faither, Will there be dugs?