Karen Ranney

by The Devil of Clan Sinclair

  A feeling of foreboding swamped her as she closed the armoire doors slowly, then left the room.

  Long minutes later Virginia pulled back, her expression a combination of embarrassment and incredulity.

  He stroked his knuckles over her heated cheeks, feeling his heart expand. He was happy, and the feeling buoyed him, expanded through him like air into a balloon.

  For years he’d been willing to do almost anything to succeed, and he had. Until now he hadn’t realized he’d neglected a vital part of life. He hadn’t thought about his own happiness. Now it seemed of paramount importance.

  In a day his life had changed course. One single day and suddenly his focus was different.

  How did he retain this feeling of elation? He suspected the answer was absurdly simple—by keeping Virginia with him.

  How did he coax her into loving him? Not with wealth, because she’d always been wealthy. He doubted he could pretty up his speech enough for it to be considered poetry. What could convince her to love him?

  He’d always been able to find answers for his problems, either from correspondence with men more learned than he or by seeking out answers through trial and error. Who, though, did he go to for advice about love?

  Brianag? Perhaps she could furnish him a potion to use, if she didn’t strike him for hinting she had powers of witchcraft. He would have paid the devil a ransom if Virginia remained with him.

  She got to her knees and moved to his side. She rearranged her skirts and buttoned her bodice while he made himself presentable.

  “Stay here. Don’t return to London,” he said.

  She didn’t answer, only stared down at her clasped hands. A moment later she shook her head.

  “I cannot,” she said. “How could you ask that of me?”

  Had he been wrong? Did she value her title that much?

  “I’m expected back in London,” she said faintly.

  “You’re expected back in London,” he repeated.

  She wouldn’t look at him, slipped from the ledge and turned her back. Her hair was floating about her shoulders in a cloud, enticing him. He wanted to thrust his hands into it, tilt her head back and watch her try to avoid him then.

  “We’re not in London, Virginia,” he said. “We’re far enough away the gossips wouldn’t know you’re here. Or care. Stay with me. If you insist on mourning your earl, we’ll marry after enough time has passed.”

  She turned toward him, her eyes widening, her face so pale she looked like she might faint.

  “Oh, Macrath.” She walked closer and stretched out her hand, cupping his jaw in her palm. “Dearest Macrath.” Her voice sounded teary, but her eyes were dry.

  “You won’t stay?”

  “I can’t.” She dropped her head, staring at the stone floor.

  Silence stretched between them. Not the expectant kind that allows for anticipation, but something darker and more troubling. This silence was one of unvoiced truths, hidden meanings, and lies.

  The ocean-born breeze sighed through the opening to the beach. The gulls cried aloud in joyous triumph over a school of fish. The tide rolled onto the sand as the sun poured in through the hole at the top of the grotto. Life went on, even though he was as cold as ice.

  He buttoned his shirt, each movement of his fingers allowing his frozen thoughts to thaw.

  She started to braid her hair, her fingers flying expertly over the tresses.

  “Didn’t your husband’s family think it an odd journey for you to take so soon? What did you tell them?”

  “I needed to get away,” she said. “To escape London. And maybe myself,” she added.

  “Or for a bit of entertainment? You had an itch and decided to scratch it?”

  She glanced at him. He had never seen her complexion as pale as it was now. She bit at her bottom lip.

  “No, Macrath,” she said, stretching out her hand to him. “I can’t stay with you, however much I may want to. To do so would be to thrust Lawrence’s family into the center of controversy and scandal.”

  “Then why come to Scotland days after you became a widow?”

  “Because I needed to see you,” she said, her voice sounding like she pushed back tears. “Because I wanted to see you.”

  “I feel the same. Stay with me.”

  But, damn her, she didn’t speak. She only inspected her clothing, fluffed up her skirts and strolled toward the passage. He followed her, grabbed her arm, and turned her before she could escape.

  “Like it or not,” she said softly before he could speak, “I am the Countess of Barrett. I have people depending on me, just like your sisters are dependent on you.”

  A few minutes ago they’d been as close as any two people could be. Now a continent separated them.

  “I think, perhaps,” he said, speaking the words with remarkably little emotion, “it would be best if you left Drumvagen as quickly as possible.”

  He should’ve guarded his heart with greater care. He should have remembered she’d wounded him before, but that injury had not been at her hands.

  This one was.

  Chapter 13

  The sun slipped behind gray clouds, the diffused light giving the moor almost a pastoral appearance. Seabirds swooped overhead, soaring on air currents preceding another storm.

  Macrath stood at the window watching as Virginia Traylor, Countess of Barrett, departed Drumvagen. She didn’t stop, didn’t ask the coachman to pull the carriage to the side of the road or look for a wider place to turn around to come back to him.

  I am the Countess of Barrett. I have people depending on me, just like your sisters are dependent on you.

  She hid behind her title when it suited her and dismissed it at other times.

  The girl he’d known had vanished. Where was the Virginia who delighted in the news of the day, whose eyes had sparkled with mischief? Where was the girl who talked politics with him, who whispered of the latest broadsheets in an excited voice? In her place was a woman who fascinated him but remained a stranger even now.

  He knew her body well, but did he know her mind? Who was Virginia?

  He’d been a silly, lovestruck idiot a year ago, and he wasn’t going to long for her again. Perhaps there was one woman in every man’s life who showed him to be a fool, who turned his stomach inside out and made pudding of his mind. If that were true, he’d just banished his.

  He wouldn’t think of her any longer. He wouldn’t return to the grotto until the image of their loving had faded, until she was no more than a ghost. He wouldn’t come back to the suite where he now stood until all hint of her perfume had dissipated. Open up the windows, air out the rooms, banish her scent.

  Could he erase his memories? If so, he’d wipe out the whole last day along with the joy, the lilting happiness he’d felt in her presence.

  “She’s gone, then?”

  He didn’t turn at Brianag’s words. He only nodded.

  “You’ll be better off, I’m thinking.”

  “Are you a soothsayer now, Brianag?”

  “Some say I have the gift.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “But you don’t,” he said. “Because that would be too much like witchcraft.”

  When she smiled, her face looked odd, almost like it wasn’t prepared for amusement. Scowls suited her better.

  “She wasn’t for the likes of you, her with her maid and her airs.”

  He turned back to the window. “I don’t think Virginia has airs,” he said. One sin he couldn’t lay at her feet.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?” Brianag said. “She’s gone and she won’t be back.”

  “No,” he said, feeling something inside twist with the realization. “She won’t be back.”

  After she left, he strode into the bedroom, flinging open the doors of the armoire. The space was empty. What had he expected to find? Something he could use as a talisman, a reminder? Something he’d tuck into his pocket? He never wanted to forget Virginia Anderson Traylor, C
ountess of Barrett. She was a walking, living, breathing lesson.

  He opened the bureau drawers. Nothing there, either, showing her maid was exceptionally conscientious.

  No, he didn’t need anything to help him recall her. She was there, etched in his mind like acid.

  Why hadn’t she stayed with him? Had she come to Scotland to resurrect a lost love, only to find that it had died just like her husband?

  Once, she’d loved him, he was certain of it. And now?

  Evidently not enough to remain in Scotland with him.

  Walking to the bed, he placed his hand on the pillow, half expecting the smooth linen to be warm. The faint depression suggested she’d lain there, but not for long. Last night she’d been in his arms, and this morning they’d awakened each other with passion.

  How quickly passion had turned to anger. Or perhaps his rage was merely a shield, a camouflage behind which his true emotions hid.

  He’d lost, and failure didn’t come easily to him, but that wasn’t the reason he clenched his hand into a fist and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  London

  July, 1869

  Returning home, if London could ever be considered that, took forever. Virginia survived the journey by not once thinking of Macrath. Whenever he came into her thoughts, she caught herself and immediately started to think of something else, anything but him.

  Once they reached London, traffic was horrendous, as usual. She could probably walk to their town house faster than the carriage would arrive. She’d already broken so many of society’s edicts, she didn’t dare do such a thing. One look at her, in her attire, and people would start gossiping about the Walking Widow.

  She was tired of mourning, and yet she had another year and a half of it. In truth, she didn’t mourn Lawrence as much as she mourned Macrath.

  No, she would not think of him.

  “It looks to rain again, your ladyship,” Hannah said, peering behind the leather shade.

  She didn’t care, but she mustered a smile for the maid’s benefits. “Isn’t it always raining in London?”

  “Was it ever so at your home? In America?”

  She clasped her hands together tidily in her lap, sent her mind back to those days of her childhood, to the estate overlooking the Hudson River. She’d run and tumbled over acres of lush green grass, laughed with abandon, and hid from those instructed to care for her behind the great oaks bordering the property.

  “I don’t remember it raining much,” she said, as images of deep blue skies came to mind. “But when it did, we had pounding thunderstorms that felt like God was shaking his fist at us.”

  She’d had a privileged childhood, if a lonely one. She rarely associated with children her own age. Most of her companions were adults. She’d been reared to be silent rather than vocal, unobtrusive rather than to step forward, timid rather than courageous.

  She had enjoyed growing up at Cliff House, loved everything about her life until the day she’d been told to prepare for her English debut.

  “I’ll be damned if you’ll marry a common man, Virginia,” her father told her. “I’ll get a title for myself. I’ve always liked the idea of being a duchess’s father.”

  But he was unable to find a likely duke. The only available one had been a nearly deaf octogenarian.

  “He smells bad,” was the one and only comment her father ever made about the Duke of Marbleton. To her everlasting gratitude, the man had annoyed him.

  Harold Anderson was a man of varied opinions and obstinate viewpoint. When he took umbrage to someone, there was no changing his mind. For that reason, he’d never truly considered Macrath’s suit. Macrath had not groveled enough for her father. He wasn’t impressed by her father’s consequence.

  He had only loved her.

  No, she would not think about Macrath.

  Oh, but she would long for him in earnest now. She would gaze at herself in her bath and remember when he’d praised her breasts, lifting one, then the other, saluting their shape with a kiss to each nipple.

  Her knees would not simply be knees from now on, but marvels of creation, objects of his kisses and the teasing touch of his fingers behind them, to see if she was ticklish there.

  Not one spot on her body was left untouched, bereft of a stroke or comment. Not one inch had been left unaltered.

  Would he remember her touch as well?

  Her fingers seemed to retain the memory of his hard chest, the curve of his muscular buttocks, the tantalizing shape of his manhood. He’d urged her to learn him and she had. Even now she could feel him, hard and heavy against her palms.

  She closed her eyes, wishing she could return in time. He’d loved her three times, and each had been a memory that would last all her life. What she experienced with him had been unlike what she’d imagined love to be.

  No, she would not think of Macrath.

  How could she help but think of him? Regret colored each thought.

  The seduction had been accomplished then, her mission performed. But, oh, it had been so much more than that. He’d changed her with his loving, and she wasn’t the same woman who’d left London.

  He wanted her to stay with him and had offered her marriage. She would tuck that memory into a box called Impossible Wishes. Being with Macrath would guarantee her future, but what about Enid and her daughters?

  How much was she to sacrifice for them?

  Even now she ached to be in Scotland.

  No, it was much better not to think of Macrath.

  She and Hannah sat, waiting for one of the advertising vans to move. Everyone was trying to sell something in London, from the sandwich men who plodded back and forth on the street to the vans slowing traffic everywhere.

  She didn’t like the city, but she’d never realized how much until just this moment.

  When it wasn’t raining, the fog was so thick she felt like she was swallowing air more than breathing it. On some days the only way to get to the carriage was with a handkerchief pressed against her nose and mouth, her mind on something other than the sulfurous stench.

  She didn’t have much affection for society, either, and all the rules she still didn’t understand. Odd little things about greeting people in the order of their importance, of always appearing apologetic, of being self-deprecating to the point of absurdity.

  Also, no one had warned her she’d have to spend a few months learning how Londoners spoke. The upper classes elongated their speech, each word followed by a pause, like they were too weary to finish a thought. After a time the affectation started to wear on her. More than once she’d had to stop herself from demanding the speaker simply get on with it and say what he meant to say, for heaven’s sake.

  She understood the Scottish easier than a titled Londoner.

  When the carriage finally rolled to a stop in front of their town house, she felt a great sense of relief, tempered as it was with reluctance.

  The house was in a prosperous square, surrounded by other, identical, homes. The reddish brick was still sharp on its corners, the town houses having been built only a decade or so ago. The windowsills were painted white, the doors black, and brass fixtures and lamps of wrought iron adorned each residence. A small fenced yard sat in front of each house, and in the rear was a similarly small garden. It was, however, a pleasant enough place to live, and probably much better than their future accommodations.

  A week ago their circumstances had been dire enough. Now they seemed doubly so. Going to Scotland hadn’t done anything but give her a feeling of such shame she wanted to scrub it from her skin.

  Would she ever feel clean?

  She left the carriage, thanking Hosking, and mounted the steps, Hannah behind her.

  Rather than Albert, the majordomo, greeting them at the door, Paul was there, his appraising glance sweeping from the tips of her shoes to her bonnet.

  What was he thinking with that sharp gaze? She didn’t want to know. She didn’t care.

  He didn�
�t look like he was going to step aside. She glanced back at Hosking, who hadn’t driven the carriage around to the stables. Instead, he stood there impassively, watching the other man with the same dislike she, too, felt.

  “We’ve missed you, your ladyship,” Paul said.

  She started to wiggle her fingers free of her gloves. Must she remove them and her bonnet on the steps of the town house?

  “Will you allow me inside?” she asked.

  His eyes flattened and his lips thinned, worrisome signs of temper. Who was Paul Henderson to be angry at her?

  “Of course, your ladyship,” he said, bowing slightly and moving to the side. She and Hannah entered the house and immediately went upstairs. Perhaps she should speak to Enid about the man without delay.

  She had many things to do, but she didn’t feel capable of any of them right now. Being so close to tears didn’t help, either.

  Chapter 14

  Drumvagen, Scotland

  September, 1869

  “It’s too far away, Macrath,” his sister said.

  Since Mairi was prone to issuing edicts, he only waited. She would finish in a moment, marshaling her arguments as she always did.

  She was, save for being female, perfectly suited to manage the Sinclair Printing Company. To the world that paid attention to such things, he owned the company, inheriting its assets and liabilities from his father. Mairi, however, ran Sinclair Printing, signing his name without hesitation to those documents she couldn’t execute on her own.

  When she had to transact business in person, she did so. Only rarely did she encounter an obstinate male who refused to deal with a woman. When that happened, Mairi simply retreated and corresponded with the gentleman, using his name.

  “It’s entirely too far away, Macrath.”

  “I’ve been to Australia before,” he said.

  “Yes, but when you left home, you’d a date in mind to return. Now you don’t.” She frowned at him.

  He smiled and drank his whiskey, the glass cold against his fingers. He wished he could appreciate the taste of the single malt in solitude, but his sister and cousin had descended on him last night, having received his letter that he was leaving for Australia and determined to change his mind.