The Lady Most Willing

It was certainly true that there are some events from which no woman’s reputation can recover. An immodest kiss? Perhaps. A lascivious grope? Perhaps not. A fiance falling from her bedchamber window to his death? Never.

Fiona had been labeled an uncaring trollop throughout her village by sunset on that fateful day; by week’s end, she was known throughout Scotland as a reckless fornicator. If not worse. The mother of her former fiance spat in her path for a good three years at the merest glimpse of Fiona, and she wasn’t the only one.

No one seemed to care that when he fell, the lumbering oaf Dugald Trotter had been climbing up to her window without the slightest encouragement on her part. They were too busy being scandalized by her shameless ways—not to mention the fact that she had, in their version of events, “callously neglected” to inform Dugald that mere ivy cannot hold a man’s weight. Even those inclined to excuse frolicsome behavior between betrothed couples couldn’t seem to forgive her for not warning him.

Of course, any man with a functioning brain could have taken a look at the ivy below her window and come to his own assessment of its strength. But that was how stupid her fiance had been, at least in Fiona’s uncharitable recollection.

Dugald apparently didn’t think of it, and she hadn’t warned him because—as she kept trying to point out, to no avail—she never planned to welcome him or anyone else to come through her window.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, she often found herself outraged at the universal rejection of her account of the event. Her own father had racketed about the house for months, moaning about how she had besmirched the family name.

“So you say,” he would bellow, in response to her protests. “What was poor Dugald doing at your window, then? Sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a female child! He wouldna climbed your ivy, you silly goose, if you hadna turned a carnal eye in his direction. Ach, poor Dugald, poor, poor Dugald.”

There the argument would stop, because Fiona didn’t allow herself to comment whenever the chorus of poor Dugald reached deafening proportions. She knew perfectly well that she had not thrown Dugald any come-hither glances. In fact, she wasn’t even sure what such a glance would look like.

She wouldn’t have learned it from Dugald. He seemed to regard her as a pot of gold rather than a nubile woman, at least until the last evening of his life. In fact, she’d thought him more in pursuit of her fortune than her person.

But that night she had refused to kiss his whiskey-soaked mouth, only to find herself shoved against a brick wall and forcibly dealt a wet kiss accompanied by a rough squeeze to her breast. The very memory made her shudder. She had slapped Dugald so hard that he reeled backward, after which she had run into the ballroom—with every intention of breaking her betrothal on the morning.

As for what he was doing climbing up to her window later that night . . . she could only think that he had decided to take matters into his own hands. Presumably, he had planned to force her to accept the marriage, and the only thing that had saved her virtue was the fragility of the ivy.

She certainly could not suggest such a terrible thing aloud. God forbid she would dishonor a man’s name after death by suggesting he might have had something so sordid as rape in mind. Poor Dugald had killed himself, to her mind.

Besides, she came to think of herself as lucky. What was ruination compared to being married to a beast of a man? She proceeded to shape a life that was happily husband-free, regularly offering prayerful thanks to her late mother for leaving her the fortune that made such a decision possible.

By five years after the “incident,” as her father called it, most people had stopped crossing the street when she approached. The last two seasons she had even ventured to London as Marilla’s chaperone; her half sister seemed likely to cause a nasty scandal if she wasn’t closely watched.

And though Fiona was not precisely fond of her sister—it was hard to imagine who could be—she did love her. Somewhat.

In short, during the last five years Fiona had arrived at the conclusion that the fatefully flimsy ivy had preserved not only her virtue, but her happiness.

A wealthy, unmarried woman has all the time she likes to read whatever she wishes. She can learn cheese making and experiment with medicinal salves for the pure pleasure of it. She can brew dyes from red currants, and then try making wines from the berries instead.

Freed from the need to hunt and catch a man, she could eschew crimping irons and chilly, yet seductive, gowns. She need not blunder around a ballroom pretending that she has perfect eyesight; instead, she can balance a pair of spectacles on her nose and accept the fact that she resembles someone’s maiden aunt.

Which status she would presumably attain, someday.

She was free.

“Please do not spontaneously offer either gentleman a kiss,” she said now. “From where I stood, Oakley looked mortified rather than flattered.”

“Kissing means very little.” Marilla tossed her curls. “You’ve been out of society too long, Fiona. I can assure you that he understood it as a jest, even if you did not.”

Fiona silently counted to five. Then: “If kissing means very little, I still think it would nevertheless be better to allow a gentleman to kiss you, if he shows the