Portrait of a Scotsman (A League of Extraordinary Women, #3)

by Evie Dunmore

“Men are a bit silly sometimes,” Mina said. “They enjoy gambling at either the stock market or the roulette table but frequently overestimate both their luck and their prowess.”

A man immune to female charm was a dangerous creature when charm was one’s chief line of defense.

“I’m just always tickled when man’s division of women into frigid wives and lusty whores slaps them right back in the face.”

“At the back of her mind, a woman knows she’s at the mercy of how well the menfolk in her life can control their hands, Luke. And you have the hands of a brawler.”

“Blackstone won’t turn into a prince, no matter how loving and patient you are. Fairy tales express our hopes, not reality. The tale of women being tied to men they don’t want is as old as time, so of course we want hope. However, the reality is, a woman’s martyrdom will not change a man who doesn’t wish to change.

How perfectly safe the world would be for women to follow their dreams if it were not for men interfering at every turn, wouldn’t it?”

yet a woman must not go shopping or to a gallery by herself. It was too dangerous, they said, for her reputation, her virtue. But who did the endangering? Men. How convenient for men as a group that the misdeeds of a few elevated each one of them to the status of protector and rendered women dependent on them, so that in turn they could legitimately drag them along to Scotland whenever they saw fit. Proof that progressiveness wasn’t a matter of possibilities—who and what was to be included in the progress was a matter of will. Man would probably circle the globe in a flight apparatus before women had power over themselves.

laws are only ever as good as the will to enforce them.”

“Why not begin bettering the world by giving away your vast wealth to those in need?” Lucian made a contemptuous sound. “Charity? No. I want lasting change. Remember the trouble of raising wages to a living wage as a single entrepreneur? I want a restructuring of government expenditure. A systemic redistribution of wealth—that is what I want.”

“It’s difficult to leave all you know,” he said. “Even if it is what kills you.”

don’t blame anyone for not leaving; blame the circumstances that make staying hell.”

“It’s so . . .” She shook her head. “Confusing,” she whispered. His dark gaze traced her profile, assessing. “Perhaps because your mind is telling you one thing when your body is telling you another,” he said in a low voice. “Might be less confusing if you stopped thinking of it as a reward for me, but as taking pleasure for yourself.” Well, that only went against every tenet of a woman’s education.

I think it is because a woman’s life in London . . . is complicated. Even the part where we lounge in a parlor and read books—they have to be the correct books and they have to be read at appropriate times. Propriety and etiquette rule every step we take, every word we say. . . . One should think we habituate to this constant implication of potential slander, but I don’t. Every day I feel one fateful, clumsy misstep away from scandal. One slip-up and I’m losing my worth. The awareness is always present, a current in the back of one’s mind no matter how happy the days. I hadn’t ever seen it clearly until you brought me here . . . because what can I do wrong, here on the heather field, or in this strange inn? It’s dreadful having to live under someone’s eye, being steered toward the same things everyone should like and do. It feels like a constant pruning of my self.

She felt his hand on her hip, heavy and warm, and her body softened in response. How fortunate, to have a husband who knew how to settle her.

It is an odd thought, isn’t it, that there are specific rules for us women just because we are women, only for the rules to differ again depending on the clothes we wear and how much wealth we have to our name.

labor, once it crosses the door into a home, is magically transformed into a priceless act of love or female duty—meanwhile, women’s hands are raw from very real chores.”

looming. She had thought being in love would be a warm, joyful state of being. Now she found it could also feel like balancing on a ridge in high winds, where she felt breathless and too uncertain where to step or what to say lest it all came crashing down.

sometimes we look at fellow humans who suffer and see nothing like ourselves. It is too tempting to believe that hardship is something that only happens to others.

“You were not my only jailer,” she said. “I’m standing up against everyone who forced my hand: my father; my mother, my sister, a whole society that colludes and agrees that it is morally better for a woman to be chained to a stranger than to be forgiven for leaning in for a kiss. I’m taking a stand against this mortal fear they ingrained in my bones, a fear that something terrible would happen if I refused you.”

“Stop saying that word,” he said, his impatience flaring back to life. “You’re not stupid; you’re anything but.” Her smile was achingly sad. “But I have heard that word, in various guises, for half my life,” she said. “I know it isn’t true, but I don’t feel it. I worry for myself. I have realized that outwardly, I’m well accomplished, but inside, I harbor a version of me still at boarding school, full of old insecurity, and I recognize it now as a breeding ground for odd behavior, for me saying and doing things I don’t mean, for turning to other people’s opinions before consulting my own too often, for feeling unnecessarily hurt because I mix an actual issue at hand with old, still bleeding grievances. I know a few women with such a split disposition—they successfully run a home, but they can’t even make a simple decision without their husbands. Or they insist on controlling meaningless details just to feel in control of something. And what chance did they ever have to be different? We pass seamlessly from father to husband with no opportunity to know ourselves without interference. We are kept childlike in our dependence, in our small world, and in our continued focus on others, and those others keep telling us what we are. But I’m still young. It’s not too late, I can still learn. I already care much less for the opinions of people, and I want more.

“What I’m interested in is whether one can improve the ills of the world with the same system that’s been causing them,” Aoife Byrne said. “Reform or revolution, that’s the question.”