The Virgin Of Clan Sinclair

by Karen Ranney

  She nodded. She’d never been able to abide a person who was cruel to any animal.

  “I’m so glad you came to see me,” the countess said, leaning forward to grab an oversize bell on the table. When she shook it, the noise woke all the birds at once. The resulting cacophony prevented Ellice from hearing what the other woman was saying. The noise didn’t seem to disturb the countess at all, who kept talking.

  When the squawks and screeches subsided, she smiled. “I’ve rung for tea. I haven’t had a visitor in so long that I have forgotten how to be polite. Oh, except for Mr. McMahon,” she added.

  “Did Mr. McMahon bring you the birds?” Ellice asked.

  “Oh, yes. He brings me everything. He owns the most wonderful emporium. I must simply take you there one day. Do you like Edinburgh?”

  “I’ve only been there a few times,” Ellice said. “But I found the city to be fascinating.”

  “It is, of course, if you like cities. I find that all those people are a bit frightening.”

  Ellice just smiled. She was finding the conditions of her mother-in-law’s home to be more frightening than any crowd of people.

  “How are you settling in at Huntly?”

  What did she say that could be complimentary and yet not a lie?

  “It’s very large.”

  “It’s an elephant of a house,” her mother-in-law said, surprising her. “Ross loves it, of course, but visitors have a tendency to gape. When I first came here I thought I’d never learn all the rooms or find my way.”

  “Did you?”

  Her mother-in-law laughed. “No, which is why I’m living here. I know this house very well. I don’t get lost, and if I want to go to the parlor I don’t have ten to choose from.”

  Perhaps she could find a place to spend time as well, somewhere not as imposing.

  “I’ve often thought the house was built to impress, but then the family history is impressive. Did you know that the family fought on the Royalists’ side during the civil war? At one point there was even talk of a Forster being sentenced to death. But during the Restoration, the family fortunes turned. James Forster became a knight and the Lord Clerk Register of Scotland.”

  She smiled at Ellice. “A great many Forster men have been in service to their country.”

  “Is that why Ross wants to be a representative peer?”

  “What a very astute question. I quite like you, my dear.”

  She also felt a sense of kinship with her mother-in-law. If that feeling could extend to her husband, she’d be happy at Huntly.

  Ross, however, wasn’t speaking to her. He didn’t even remain in the same room.

  She pushed the thought away as two maids emerged from a doorway she hadn’t seen.

  For the next several minutes she and her mother-in-law occupied themselves with tea and scones. She hadn’t eaten much that morning and now found herself famished.

  She took a sip, a mixture of black tea and something more fragrant, perhaps chamomile. This, too, was overlaid with the scent of cinnamon.

  Across the room, three shelves were filled with an assortment of stuffed birds. Evidently the countess didn’t see the odd juxtaposition of dead birds in the same room with dozens of live ones. She counted at least three pheasants, two quail families, and a half-dozen hawks. In addition to the birds there was a creature that looked like a mad chipmunk, rearing up on his hind legs, claws extended like he was trying to escape the glass dome surrounding him.

  “Now,” the countess said a few moments later, “let me answer your question about Ross.”

  Placing her cup on the tray before her, her mother-in-law turned and regarded her. Her blue eyes were soft but held a world of pain. A strange thought to have amid the excess surrounding them.

  “I’m not a very clever woman,” the countess said. “But I am a kind one. I’ve found that kindness is a greater asset than cleverness.”

  Since Ellice had always been surrounded by clever people who were also kind, she didn’t know what to say. Thankfully, her mother-in-law didn’t seem to expect a response.

  “How much do you know about Ross’s father?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Ellice said, realizing it was true. Ross never talked about his father.

  “Ours was an arranged marriage, something planned from my birth. No one knew that I was madly in love with Thomas from the moment I saw him.” She plucked at her skirt with one hand. “Love is a very strange emotion, don’t you think? It makes you miserable and fills you with delight at the same time.”

  The older woman glanced over at her. “Do you love my son?” Before she could formulate a reply, the countess shook her head. “No, don’t answer that. It’s none of my concern. All that I hope is that you, too, are a kind person, Ellice. He so needs a little kindness.”

  Once again she didn’t know what to say.

  “I wasn’t clever enough or beautiful enough to keep Thomas. Oh, he did his duty by me. But once he had his heir, he looked to other women.”

  The countess closed her eyes, took another deep breath, then opened them again.

  “You don’t know any of this, do you?”

  Ellice shook her head, placed one hand on the velvet cushion beside her, fingers absently stroking the softness.

  “Perhaps the greatest kindness I could give you is to leave you in ignorance,” the countess said.

  Ellice stood then and walked to the far end of the room and the windows overlooking the courtyard. “Everyone is leaving me in ignorance, I’m afraid.” She could see the library from there. Was he working inside or had he left Huntly? Was he visiting Edinburgh?

  “You’ll find that I’m invariably nosy, my dear. It’s one of my failings. Why do you look so sad?”

  She turned, facing her mother-in-law. “Do I? I haven’t the slightest idea why, your ladyship.”

  A lie, and it seemed the older woman knew it.

  “You have a mother,” the countess said. “So I will not ask you to call me that. But could you not call me Janet?”

  Ellice nodded.

  “Now, tell me why you’re so sad.”

  “Did he love her very much?”

  Janet didn’t answer her. Instead, she sat back, sipped at her tea and studied the far wall. Finally, she looked back at Ellice.

  “Come and sit, my dear. We must have a very difficult conversation, you and I.”

  She didn’t want to return to the settee. She wanted to leave this room with its overpowering clutter and this woman with her glistening eyes.

  But she had vowed to be a woman of courage. Slowly, she walked back and sat, waiting for the countess to speak.

  “Cassandra was an exceedingly kind woman,” she said. “A beautiful woman as well. She was clever, too.” Janet smiled. “There were times I almost wished to hate her. A beautiful, kind, and clever creature. It hardly seems fair, does it?”

  “I have been surrounded by women like that all my life,” Ellice said, thinking of Virginia and Mairi.

  She didn’t want to hear about the paragon of virtue who was Ross’s dead wife. How, though, did she silence the countess? She was at fault for voicing a question she shouldn’t have asked.

  “I thought, at first, that it was a blessed marriage,” the countess said. “Ross felt for her what I felt for his father, a sort of uncomplicated adoration.”

  She smiled, and Ellice thought it was a strangely sad expression.

  “Lovers are allowed to be fools for a certain amount of time, I think. Perhaps a year. Certainly not longer and in some cases much sooner. In my case,” she said, glancing at Ellice, “it lasted much longer. But it was a willful blindness. My son was never a fool, Ellice. He’s not given to much emotionality. I credit his father’s overemotionality for that.”

  Janet held out the teapot. “More tea?”

  Once their cups were refilled, her mother-in-law seemed reluctant to continue.

  “My mother says she loved my father but they never seemed to talk to each other,�
� Ellice said, staring into her cup. “My brother never pretended to love his wife, but now she’s madly in love with her husband and makes no pretense about it.”

  “And you? Have you ever been in love?”

  There was that question again. How would she describe her feelings for Ross? A delirium, perhaps, one that was keeping her confused. He’d introduced her to the joy of passion and then ignored her.

  Janet placed a hand over hers.

  “Ross deserves love, my dear Ellice. Of all the people I know, even me, he deserves love most of all. And someone to trust.”

  She looked away, disturbed by Janet’s gaze.

  “Because he lost Cassandra?”

  “No, my dear girl, because he never had Cassandra. He loved an illusion, a woman he created from wishes. She was never who he wanted her to be.”

  “But she was clever and kind.”

  “Yes, but she didn’t love him.”

  She looked over at Janet. The other woman nodded.

  “She made him miserable,” Janet said. “Just as his father made me miserable. You shouldn’t make people who love you miserable, even if you don’t feel the same.”

  “She didn’t love Ross?”

  “Oh, no, my dear. She loved my husband.”

  Chapter 27

  Ellice stared at her mother-in-law. For a moment she forgot to breathe.

  Words backed up in her mind, gated by surprise and something like disbelief. Surely Janet was joking. But the older woman wasn’t.

  “What happened?” she asked, dreading the rest of the tale.

  “Only a handful of us know,” she said. “Not out of respect for the parties involved as much as for Ross.” She inclined her head and smiled. “And perhaps for me. Not that it matters anymore in my case. But it was a sordid story, all the same. A man old enough to know better, a girl half his age, and passion, of course.”

  Janet took a sip of her tea, made a face and put it down. Although she took a biscuit, she didn’t eat it, instead stared at it as if surprised to find herself holding it.

  “I think Thomas fell in love. I think it surprised him as much as anyone. As far as Cassandra, it was easy to see how she would have been swept up. My husband was a very attractive man.”

  She glanced at Ellice. “Ross is his likeness, of course. But where Ross is more serious, his father was always filled with laughter. He wanted to experience life with open arms. He was interested in everything, knew everyone’s name, was probably the most popular man in Edinburgh at one time.”

  Ellice set her cup down beside Janet’s, wondering if the older woman’s hands were trembling, too. Was this story as difficult to tell as it was to hear?

  She was filled with questions but restrained herself, sitting back and folding her hands in her lap. The fewer interruptions, the faster the tale would be told.

  “Thomas was enchanted with Cassandra from the first. He welcomed her into the family with his usual boisterous joie de vivre. She was, I think, charmed by him, but most women were.”

  She looked away, staring into the air as if seeing the two of them in her mind.

  “I don’t know when it changed. I’ve spent enough hours going over things. When did his smile become less avuncular and more possessive? When did she stop seeing him as father-in-law and start viewing him as a lover?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not anything I’ve asked Ross. In the last five years we’ve been very polite with each other. We deal well with day-to-day issues, but I don’t discuss his father and he doesn’t discuss Cassandra.”

  Janet folded her hands together, studying them where they rested on her knee.

  “They ran away together, of course. Thomas left a very civilized note. They were going to live on the Continent. He wasn’t concerned about a divorce. He didn’t believe in marriage all that much anyway. To the rest of the world, to people who didn’t know him, he’d be Cassandra’s husband.”

  She smiled again. “I knew him better than that. In a few months he’d want to resume his identity as the Earl of Gadsden. It was as much a part of him as his teeth or hair. In time, he’d be annoyed at society’s censure. He’d want to either marry Cassandra or give her up for another toy.”

  She placed her cold hand over Ellice’s. “I think Cassandra would have felt differently. Thomas thought himself a proletariat despite being firmly in the aristocracy. Cassandra was neither, just a decent woman in an indecent situation.”

  “You’re very fair,” Ellice said. “More than I would be, I think.”

  “Oh, my dear, that’s because Cassandra and I shared the same failing. We were both wildly in love with the wrong man.”

  “What happened?”

  “Ill fortune. Fate. Circumstances.” Janet pulled back her hand and waved it in the air. “Pick one. Pick them all. Their carriage overturned on a rainy night outside Paris. Cassandra died instantly. Thomas lingered for three days before succumbing to his injuries. We didn’t know until a week later that they were dead, and since it happened abroad we were able to alter the story a little. They hadn’t run away together. They were simply traveling to meet Ross.”

  She finally understood the urgency Ross felt at keeping her book unpublished. Or at least changing the names and the circumstances.

  She couldn’t ask the questions she most wanted answered. How had he felt about Cassandra’s betrayal? Had he loved her so desperately that he couldn’t believe in love again?

  Was he still in love with her?

  She didn’t like the feeling she was getting, a sour taste at the back of her tongue, one that translated to a sudden coldness of her limbs.

  “So you see, my dear, my son deserves a woman who adores him for his own sake. Not for his wealth or even his looks. But for the person he is.”

  She met Janet’s eyes. “And if he never feels the same way?”

  “Then you will have to live like I have, my dear. But it’s not been a bad life for all that. Loving someone, even if they don’t return it, is better than never feeling love at all.”

  She wasn’t sure she agreed, but Ellice picked up her cold tea and pretended to drink, the better to keep herself from asking questions Janet couldn’t answer.

  The afternoon was a bright one, the sun streaming into the library, dancing along the stone floor, inspiring Ross to turn more than once and gaze out at the lake in the distance.

  Anything but think about how inept he felt.

  He hadn’t been able to finish the letter about his new acquisition of two Egyptian scrolls. He kept getting stuck on the second sentence. Nothing he wrote made any sense. He sounded like a bumbling fool. Or worse, a pontificating, bumbling fool.

  He’d thrown away a dozen pieces of stationery, rejected an equal number of pens, frowned at his inkwell, polished the silver dome of it with a piece of soft cloth he found in the bottom desk drawer, and was generally out of sorts.

  If he didn’t know better—and there was every possibility that he didn’t—he’d have thought his brain was directly connected to his libido.

  For a week he’d stayed away from Ellice. He’d been cordial but cool, determined and distant. He hadn’t returned to her room. Nor did he invite her to his.

  He certainly didn’t discuss what he’d read, even though he wasn’t able to dismiss it from his mind all that easily.

  She might have been surprised at passion, but he was surprised by her. She’d asked him questions about the election that were more politically astute than he’d expected. She seemed truly interested in his plans for Huntly’s library. She’d laughed with him over some of his childhood exploits and confessed her own.

  She wasn’t the least impressed with Huntly. In fact, it was possible she disliked his home, which disturbed him. He wanted her to be happy here.

  He repeated that thought, knowing it was at odds with his treatment of Ellice for the last week. He wanted her to be happy. He wanted her to be pleased. He wanted her smiling and laughing.

  He wanted her in his b
ed.

  For years he’d remained largely celibate. Why, now, was he feeling nearly desperate?

  Last night he woke after a particularly graphic dream and wanted to go to her. Laying there, fists clenched in the sheets, he’d willed himself to banish all thoughts of his wife. Finally, he fell back to sleep at dawn.

  Now he was staring at another draft of his letter to a scholar of antiquities like a schoolboy just learning to write.

  What would she think of the scrolls? Or his plans for a gazebo near the lake? Why did he want to discuss his day with her, or ask her opinion of his speech before the election?

  This morning she’d knocked on his door. Charles, one of the footmen, had told him when he’d returned to his chambers after breakfast.

  “Did she say anything?” he asked, feeling like an idiot for soliciting information from one of his staff.

  “No, your lordship.”

  Perhaps he should travel to a friend’s house, go to Edinburgh to garner support for the election. Or even travel to London. He could see his legal firm there as well as his factors. The Forster fortune was due to varied global interests. Although his father had rarely concerned himself with ensuring its continuation, he was involved on a daily basis.

  Society might consider it plebeian for him to involve himself with trade. He thought it even more so not to care and watch an income vanish.

  Luckily, there was no chance of the Forster fortune disappearing anytime soon.

  His wealth was one of the reasons he avoided remarrying. He didn’t want to be the sweetest apple on the tree, the man sought after not for his character or any other trait but for his income.

  Ellice hadn’t known about his wealth. She hadn’t even been aware of Huntly.

  He should at least show her more of his home. She would want to see the source of the hot springs, the newborn hound puppies, the dairy operation. He’d take her walking along the lake, show her where he fished as a boy. Perhaps he’d even take her to the bench where he sat so many hours after his wife left him.

  He should tell her about Cassandra.