The Witch Of Clan Sinclair (4 page)

“There are rumors he wants to run for election there.”

Surprised, she glanced at Allan. “How do you know that?”

“Gossip,” he said. “I hear it occasionally.”

“Well, you should tell me,” she said. “Gossip makes for readership.”

Before she could ask, Allan moved the stack of paper below the press, guided the finished blank into the housing and locked it into place. The press was old and needed to be replaced, but Allan was a genius at repairing it every few days.

After carefully rolling ink over the blank of the broadside, he rubbed off the excess. Placing a page on the press, he moved to the large iron wheel and turned it in a practice run. The plate descended to the page and back up again. Opening the press, he peeled the printed page away, handed it to her, and waited.

After reading it through quickly, she gave her approval.

She glanced at the brooch pinned to her collar. She had three hours to produce five hundred sheets. Allan, even working at moderate speed, could do that easily.

“The provost could make things very difficult,” Allan said.

“How? By demanding that we not publish the truth? That would only get us more publicity.”

“Is it the truth?”

She turned and looked at Allan. He was fully awake now, his brown-eyed stare direct and unflinching.

“Yes, it’s the truth,” she said, wishing she didn’t feel on such shaky ground.

Perhaps the provost couldn’t have changed the rules, but he could certainly have been more gracious. Nor did he have to smile at her like that.

She nodded just once, hoping Allan wouldn’t question her further.

Chapter 4

F
enella hadn’t been able to see her lover for a whole day. Her
lover.
The word skittered up her spine and curved her lips in a smile.

How shocking she was, but no more so than Mairi had been. Or a hundred, thousand other women, she suspected.

How decadent she was, almost wicked. People would think so, and they would probably comment among themselves. “Did you know Fenella has taken a lover?” They might as well say, “Did you know that she has embraced her downfall with such joy?”

Allan was her lover, and the secret ached to be spilled and shared. Allan, her beloved, who slipped away when he could to see her, who made the very air shimmer with joy.

No one noticed that she was out of sorts all day, or how close she was to tears. Not even the maids, with whom she had more dealings than anyone, seemed to think anything was amiss.

Fenella closed her eyes, listening to the night and the sound of barking dogs. For whom did they bark? Each other? Or did one of them mourn a fallen master and the others simply join in to share his grief?

She willed Allan to her with a thought.
Beloved, come soon.
She’d wait for another quarter hour and if he wasn’t here reluctantly head to her room.

Sometimes he couldn’t get away, but when he could, Allan walked from the paper, meeting her in the garden. If circumstances permitted, she accompanied him back to his room, where they were guaranteed privacy and passion.

If she were lucky, she’d see him tonight. She would be able to talk with him. She’d raise her hand and put it on his face and trace the contour of his smile with her thumb.

She missed him so much she ached with it.

The creak of the garden gate alerted her.

Gathering her cloak close, she flew along the flagstone path, and when Allan grabbed and held her, she laughed against his chest, his coat smothering the sound.

A moment later his mouth warmed her lips and set her heart quivering in her chest.

“I thought she would never leave,” Allan said.

She placed her hands on his chest, worried that his coat wasn’t thick enough against the cold.

“Can we go back to the paper, then?”

“Can you get away?” he asked, as he did every time.

She nodded. “Everyone thinks I’ve retired to my room. I’ve a headache again.”

“Poor sick sweetheart,” he said, kissing her once more.

She muffled her laughter.

“We have to tell her,” Allan said. “I don’t like all this secrecy.”

“I know, I know,” she said, patting his chest. “But I’m all she has.”

He stepped back. “So you’ll stay with her for the rest of your life, then? Simply because you feel sorry for her?”

She smiled at the thought of anyone feeling sorry for Mairi. Her cousin was such a sweet person but people didn’t notice that about her. Instead, they only saw Mairi’s passion. She was never just irritated, she was incensed. She never felt badly for someone, she wept for them. She wasn’t interested in a cause, she was engulfed in it.

She’d always been that way, even as a child. But Fenella knew that if Mairi hadn’t been so intense with her emotions, and so spirited, she might not be standing in the garden of a home far lovelier than the one in which she’d once lived.

“I owe her so much,” she said. “She took me in, made me a sister.”

Mairi had given her a home after her parents died, only months apart: first, her father of a heart problem, and then her mother, of pneumonia. Mairi had taken her hand at her mother’s funeral, marched over to Macrath and announced, “Fenella is coming home to live with us now.”

At the time, her cousins had been as poor as she, but at least there were three of them. The idea of being part of a family, of not being alone, was so heavenly that she’d started crying right then and there. She knew it hadn’t been her tears that convinced a much younger Macrath—barely more than a child himself—to take her in, as much as Mairi’s stubborn insistence that she was one of them.

Since then, she had truly become one of them. She was as much a member of the Sinclair family as Mairi or Ceana or Macrath.

How could she make Allan understand?

After Calvin, Mairi had walled herself off from people. She no longer trusted as easily. Nor was she as generous in spirit. She eyed other people with more caution, as if waiting for them to disappoint—or worse—hurt her.

She’d narrowed her world until it became only the
Gazette
as a source of pride and Fenella as her only friend.

The best thing, she thought now, was to tell her about Allan, and quickly. Mairi would simply have to understand why she hadn’t mentioned her feelings before. What she felt for Allan was special and hers. She hadn’t even wanted to share it with her cousin.

“She’ll have to make her own life,” he said. “Without you.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck. The night was cold but she didn’t care. Even here, in a knifing wind, it was heaven as long as Allan was with her.

“Give it a little time, Allan,” she said. “We’ve only known each other for a few months.”

“I knew the minute I saw you,” he said. “It was the same for you.”

She nodded. She’d come to the paper to fetch Mairi for some errand or another, and her cousin had introduced her to Allan.

She was used to being ignored, which was why she was so shocked when he had said, “You’re so beautiful.”

Stunned, she only stared at him.

“I’m sorry if I was rude,” he said.

She shook her head, bemused by his grin.

“It’s just that I needed to say it. I imagine you hear it all the time.”

She’d blushed in response, and he’d stared at her. At that moment she’d felt beautiful. Whenever she was with him, he made her feel that way.

That day had abruptly changed, become sunnier, and each day afterward had been the same.

Whenever she saw him, she was different, as if air was trapped in her stomach, buoying her up, making her feel strangely light.

She found reasons to call on Mairi during the day, made excuses to go to the paper. Some days Allan was so busy he could only spare her a quick grin. Sometimes Mairi was out and they had time to talk.

She’d learned of his apprenticeship. She told him of her early life in Leeds. They liked the same kind of books, wanted to see more of the world. Each had a sense of humor that meshed well with the other.

Love crept up on her unaware.

One morning she looked at him and suddenly the world was different. Spring was all year long and happiness alternated with misery as her predominant emotions.

They’d been in each other’s arms the night he asked her to marry him.

Allan was right. She had to talk to her cousin.

A
s Logan sat in his library at home, signing letters that would be posted the next day, Thomas recited the guest list for the night’s entertainment.

As usual, Thomas was concise, listing the names of the invited guests, their occupations and interests. Logan was expected to remember as many details as possible, so as to be charming and gracious when being introduced to the fashionable citizens of Edinburgh. At least their host had been gracious enough to provide the list. That way he had some warning who would be in attendance.

According to Thomas, who had once uttered the comment after imbibing a few too many whiskeys, Logan was on stage at all times. The only time he was exempt from being a politician was on the privy and asleep.

Occasionally, he wondered if Thomas remembered that slurred advice, but thought not.

Marriage, a relatively recent event for Thomas, had changed the man, causing him to smile more. He could even be heard to hum a tune from time to time.

What about him? Would marriage change him? A thought that kept Logan staring at the letter in front of him. To what? A tamed and domesticated cat? Would he purr for his wife?

He was damned happy as it was.

As he finished signing the last of the correspondence, he sat back in the chair listening.

Finally, Thomas ground to a halt.

Logan asked a few questions, made mental notes, and was satisfied that he was prepared.

“I’ve the dossier you wished, sir,” Thomas said, retrieving a piece of paper from the back of his file and pushing it across the desk to Logan.

“The dossier?”

“On the Sinclair woman, sir.”

He nodded and began to read. Mairi Sinclair did work as the editor of the
Edinburgh Gazette,
one of the newspapers he read on a weekly basis.

“She owns the paper?”

“No, sir. It’s owned by her brother. She manages it, however, and is evidently responsible for its day-to-day operation.” He consulted another sheet of paper. “She is also responsible for three columns, the most prominent of which she writes under her brother’s name, Macrath Sinclair.”

That was a surprise. He looked forward to reading that column with each edition of the paper. The fact that Mairi Sinclair was the author left him with a discordant feeling. The woman who’d been so argumentative at the press club also possessed a fine mind and a cohesive way of marshaling her thoughts.

He handed the dossier back to Thomas. His secretary would dutifully file it in a place where it could be easily retrieved. As for him, he’d had years of perfecting his memory. He’d recall everything he needed to know about the woman.

“I’ll be ready shortly,” he said, standing.

“I’ll have your carriage brought around, sir,” Thomas said.

After he left, Thomas would return home to his wife, sleep only a few hours, and be back at his desk at the council offices at daybreak.

Logan dressed in a black evening suit with a white shirt and embroidered vest. As he fixed his cuff links, he thought about the Sinclair woman. She lived only a few blocks away, with the
Edinburgh Gazette
building somewhere in the middle. One of three children, she was orphaned when she was sixteen and had never been married. She wasn’t a young woman right out of the schoolroom, but had probably been forced to grow up quickly.

Experience was sometimes a greater teacher than age.

Who was Macrath Sinclair, that he’d given over control of the family newspaper to his sister? Who was Mairi Sinclair that she’d accepted it?

He discovered that he very much wanted to know the answer to both questions, in direct violation of his common sense. The Sinclair woman was aggressive and argumentative, not the type who should interest him.

As he left the house, the cold dried his eyes and burned the inside of his nose. The air smelled of approaching snow. He’d once loved Edinburgh in the winter, when a dusting of white frosted the craggy edifice of Castle Rock. Now, he noted the men, women, and children over the fires in Old Town and his love of the season faded in light of their misery.

He knew too much about the problems of the city to see only its beauty. Edinburgh was a dual creature, steeped in history and bedeviled by current problems.

They stopped in front of the Drummonds’ magnificent home in Old Town, his carriage waved ahead of the others. The four-story red brick structure dominated a square filled with waiting vehicles, an indication of the popularity of the Drummonds’ entertainments. Ribbons of glittering windows lit up the house, and as he left his vehicle, he could hear the orchestra playing a lively waltz.

His own home was not nearly as ostentatious, but he hadn’t the Drummond fortune. Still, his rise had been what most people would call meteoric. Twenty years ago he was apprenticed to a bookseller on Leith Walk. Five years later he accumulated the funds to open his own stall and then his first bookshop. He’d never considered politics at the time, until he became irritated by the slow movement of the city council. He hadn’t imagined that his election would be so easy. Nor that he’d be elected Lord Provost a few years later.

The constant need to be affable and attentive was draining, however, and never more so than on nights like this when he was swept along on a tide of greetings, smiles, and handshakes, or claps on the shoulder.

He was a servant of the city and that knowledge never left him. He was to serve Edinburgh like a faithful steward, care for her people and her problems, and perform his duties as capably as he could.

Still, there were nights like tonight when he felt that Edinburgh was a jealous mistress and clung to him with talonlike fingers lest he stray.

When someone called out, he turned to greet an acquaintance, their conversation interrupted by the sight of Barbara Drummond, looking resplendent in a pale yellow gown.

“How pleasant you look,” he said, which wasn’t overstating the matter. Her blond hair was arranged in almost a Grecian fashion, upswept and tucked up in the back. Little bows held up drapes of fabric on her dress. Her long white gloves were immaculate and festooned with a dizzying number of buttons.

She smiled at him charmingly, acknowledging his appreciation. The great-niece of a duke with a merchant father, she was one of the women on his list of acceptable candidates for wife.

Whoever he married would need to be a companion, a helpmate, and conscious of his position at all times. She must always be an asset, be personable, kind, and able to remember people’s names, their children’s names, and other pertinent details. She might even slide into Thomas’s role from time to time, giving him information about those people he’d forgotten.