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Alas, it was not only the family’s concern for her wellbeing that brought her here. Charles and Camilla Rathbourne loved her like a true daughter, and the girls couldn’t seem to do without her.
It was her Season too, they argued fervently. And Brigid supposed that having been presented to the Queen formally made it true.
At least she hadn’t perpetrated some unforgivable and humiliating faux pas during the presentation. She cared nothing for her own standing, but she did reflect on the entire family despite being a thrice removed distant cousin of suspicious origins. So, she wanted to do her part.
Notwithstanding, she had zero expectations for the marriage mart. Less than zero.
First, Brigid was a wild Highland lass through and through. “Muscled lugs” sounded mighty fine to her. No English milksop nobility please, no sir. Though none of the bony lads back home paid her any mind.
Which brought her to point two: Brigid detested lies, which meant that she was first and foremost always truthful with herself—she was not the most comely of the fairer sex.
(And honestly, who invented the misleading phrase, “fairer sex,” in the first place? Brigid believed firmly that a well-formed man was far more beautiful than his female counterpart.)
She was of average height and stature. Though she tended toward the rotund. Her face was not classically oval or gracefully angular. She didn’t have a pointed, lovely elfin chin. One might wonder whether she had a chin at all, given how her face was almost a perfect circle.
Not heart-shaped; simply circular.
Her cheeks prevented her face from being uninterestingly flat. They were euphemistically called “apple cheeks,” and they tended to sport a similar color whether she wanted them to or not. It wasn’t an attractive, shy blush by any means. More like a couple spills of blotchy red.
Her nose wasn’t deformed, thank goodness. But neither was it particularly noteworthy.
A button nose, some might generously call it. Over a mouth that, were it situated on a lovelier face, might have been described as resembling a rosebud. But on her, it was too small for the otherwise bland palette, and it rather disappeared in the shadows of her mountainous cheeks.
Her eyes were at least a pretty-ish sort of brown. In exactly the right shaft of light, it might even turn hazel. But her lashes were stubby and short, though thankfully thick, so that her already boring eyes didn’t look entirely naked and dull behind the thick lenses of her glasses.
In fact, those custom-made glasses might be the most remarkable thing about her countenance.
Her hair was nice and thick, but tended toward frizz. And because it was so thick, no artful coiffures ever worked on her. A braid, a bun, that was all her maid could manage. Held precariously in place by dozens of pins. As to color, it was a perfectly average brown. Not mahogany, nor auburn, nor dark copper.
Just plain brown.
And then there was her unflattering figure. Best not to linger on the details there. Suffice it to say thatrotundapplied here as well. Even the strongest corsets couldn’t carve a waist between her ribs and hips.
A distant, several-branches-removed relative of a lesser British nobility with no beauty and a modest dowry would do smashingly well with the sleek, titled gentlemen of theton.
Not.
Brigid had no illusions.
But the preeminent reason she had no expectations for the marriage mart was simply that Brigid had no wish to marry.
Full stop.
Muscled Scottish lugs might be well and good for eye candy, and perhaps she could be tempted to indulge in casual flirtation if anyone sought to engage her attention. (Strangely, no man had, thus far in her twenty-five years).
But marriage was something different altogether.
Brigid loved her freedom above all else. Luckily, her situation in life afforded her many luxuries that most women of her generation did not possess.
An inheritance was put aside so that she would never lack for worldly necessities. If, for whatever reason, she could no longer live at Castle Mar, there was a neat little manor house two miles down the road with several acres of her own land to cherish.
She was afforded the best education, and the Rathbournes even indulged her less feminine pursuits. Like astronomy and other sciences. Mathematics and philosophy. It was why her glasses grew thicker every year, she supposed. During the infrequent times she wasn’t daydreaming, her nose was invariably buried in a book.
In fact, she was in the middle of writing one herself.
She didn’t know if it would turn into a full-length novel or not. She had no ambitions to publish. Even under a pen name. It was merely a collection of stories at present. Fantasies that unfolded in panoramic lushness when she dreamed.
Oh, how she dreamed…
