The Witch Of Clan Sinclair

by Ranney, Karen

  “Then you’ll just have to take the money, Mairi. If you want to consider it a loan, then fine. But you deserve the chance to run the Gazette as you wish. Besides, you’ll need the money for the publishing company.”

  She shook her head. “You do know how expensive that will be, don’t you?”

  “It’s worth it, even if we only publish Enid and Brianag’s book.”

  He had a point.

  “Let me know if there’s anything you need.” He held her gaze. “Promise you will.”

  She nodded.

  He turned to leave her but hesitated.

  “I’m sorry, Mairi,” he said. “For my part in all of this.”

  “I know, Macrath. You do have a tendency, however, to barge in and think about the consequences later.”

  He laughed. “Virginia would agree,” he said.

  “I have nothing to fault you for, Macrath. Everything that happened was my doing.” She held onto the door, feeling as if it was the only solid thing in her world. She didn’t want Macrath to go, but he had his own life at Drumvagen. She had hers, whatever it might turn out to be, here in Edinburgh.

  “Not Robert. That was my doing and none of yours.”

  She nodded. “Very well, not Robert. Will you replace him?”

  “Do I need to?” he asked.

  Did she need a chaperone? Once she would have enthusiastically told him no, but after the last two months, perhaps she needed to reassess herself. She hadn’t been wise or calm or measured or anything else she thought herself to be.

  She shook her head, determined never again to be as foolish as she had been.

  “About Harrison. I think you love him, Mairi, and love is such a fleeting and rare thing that it would be a shame not to acknowledge it and act on it.”

  “What does it matter?” she asked. “I ruined everything. I doubt he’ll even want to see me again.”

  “Don’t be foolish. You’re mirror images of each other. Come now, haven’t you seen it? He’s stubborn and so are you. He’s filled with pride and so are you. He’s also intelligent, passionate, and determined to convince other people. All traits you possess, Mairi.”

  Macrath smiled, such a sweet and understanding expression that her heart felt as if it had been squeezed. She really was going to weep if he didn’t leave, and soon.

  “Are you an authority on love, Macrath, just because you married?”

  “I’m an authority on love, Mairi, because I almost threw it away, just like you’re doing. If Virginia hadn’t been as hard-headed as you, I might not be as happy as I am today. Go to him. Tell him you love him. Don’t throw away this chance at happiness.”

  The effort of simply standing there, listening to him, nearly overwhelmed her, and he seemed to sense it, too, because he caught her face between his hands and kissed her on the nose, much as he had as a boy.

  “Be happy, Mairi. Do it. I want you happy.”

  She was not going to let him see her cry. Macrath would be horrified at first and then he’d tease her unmercifully. She looked away, studying the floor intently, trying to salvage a shred of dignity from this moment.

  Chapter 32

  Mairi sat in the parlor, wondering how much longer she could bear the room. She’d already grown tired of the house. She wanted to be doing something, anything.

  She’d made one daylight visit to the site of the building that had once housed the Sinclair Printing Company. Charred timbers and the remains of the staircase lay in a heap in one corner. She thought the grayish lump of metal near the front of the building must be the press. Ash and a black, tarlike substance lay a foot thick everywhere. The acrid stench of smoke and a curious chemical odor hung in the air.

  She knew she would remember that smell for the rest of her life and be able to label it. Nothing so easy as Fire or Disaster. It was pain, sharp and persistent.

  For almost an hour she stood in the bitter cold, remembering. James and Allan were beside her, silent, as if they were all mourning. Perhaps they were, for something forever gone.

  Nothing could be salvaged from the fire, so she hadn’t been back. Nor would she ever return again. She didn’t even want to rebuild on the site. Too many memories were buried there. No, if she was going to start the Edinburgh Women’s Gazette, she would do so in a new location, not build on a ruin. She would lease an acceptable building and start from the beginning.

  She stared out the window, transfixed by the snow piling on the mullions. Edinburgh in December could experience a day of bright sunshine followed by three days of snow. The snow had been falling for two hours, covering the street in white, making every corner of her world beautiful for a little while.

  She glanced down at the book in her hand. She’d read the same page three times and had yet to remember anything.

  Yesterday she’d sent Abigail out to collect as many broadsheets published by their competitors as she could. Blessedly, there wasn’t a hint of scandal about the Lord Provost.

  Although news of the Gazette fire had been reported in the other papers, none of them gloated over their demise. Instead, she’d been pleasantly surprised when several representatives of competitive papers came to call, each of them offering their press until she could find another building. As gratified as she was, she’d turned them down. Once the Edinburgh Women’s Gazette was up and running, she intended to be the best newspaper in Edinburgh, and she’d feel bad trouncing someone from whom she’d taken charity.

  Robert had left the house, packing his trunk, finding lodgings in Leith. They hadn’t spoken, and when he bid the rest of the household farewell, she remained in her room, refusing to see him. She’d taken a great deal of abuse at Robert’s hands. Not only his weekly tirades about expenses, but his forever muttering dire predictions about her actions. The letters were almost anticlimactic, demonstrating exactly what he thought of her.

  Although she wasn’t certain she believed his protestations of innocence about the fire, or even that the fire had been an accident, she was sure she couldn’t trust Robert again.

  James occupied himself in duties in the stables. She noted, however, that Abigail took him his meals from time to time, along with a cup of tea and a few biscuits. Not to mention a purloined scone or two.

  Were they all guilty of a subterranean life?

  Allan had been offered the surprising task of helping out at one of Logan’s bookshops. When he announced that he’d taken the position, she couldn’t find the words to protest. How could she employ him when there was no paper? With no means to make an income, she couldn’t afford his salary.

  “The minute the paper is up and running, Mairi, I’ll be your pressman.”

  She had only nodded, wondering when that would be.

  She’d also begun to wonder if the fire wasn’t a lesson of sorts or punishment for her arrogance. The moments of introspection were coming too frequently, as if someone had given her a stereoscope. Except that the slides she viewed weren’t those of famous sights in Rome and Florence but those of her own life.

  Each scene was a different example of where she hadn’t been the person she’d always thought herself to be. Instead of diligent and conscientious, she’d been intense and dismissive. She recalled times when she wasn’t as kind as she could have been, when she was impatient or simply didn’t see other people. She heard her voice etched with irritation or boredom.

  She’d told herself that she had to make the Gazette a success, which had only been an excuse to justify living a solitary life. She’d been hurt and shamed by Calvin’s rejection but never admitted it. Looking back, she saw that she’d wrapped all that pain around her in a tight cocoon.

  Fenella was right.

  Somehow, she’d thought that Fenella wanted the same solitary life. How selfish she’d been, and now she compounded that feeling with envy.

  Until meeting Logan, she hadn’t known she was lonely. She thought her life was full, rich, and filled with events that propelled her from morning to night to morning again.
She woke up energized and excited. She went to sleep grudgingly, knowing she needed her rest but unwilling to lose so many hours.

  Yet something had always been missing.

  She knew what it was now.

  How odd that being refused admittance to the Edinburgh Press Club had changed her life simply by introducing her to Logan. Until that very instant when she’d first seen him, when her eyes locked with his, she’d been content with the existence she created for herself.

  Seeing him had changed something, had unlocked a door she hadn’t even known existed.

  Would she ever be the same again?

  She pressed her fingers over her eyes, trying to ease their stinging, a result of nights of fitful sleep.

  From the moment she left his house she’d been in pain. She hadn’t been able to sleep. She questioned everything in her life, and she was miserable. Worse, she was angry and on the brink of tears most of the time.

  The door suddenly opened, and Fenella entered, followed by Abigail, each of them carrying a tray.

  “Since you insist on remaining here or in your room,” Fenella said, “I’ve brought lunch to you. We’ll sit and eat together.”

  “I’m truly not hungry,” she said.

  “Then you can watch me eat,” Fenella said, directing Abigail to place her tray directly in front of Mairi. “You can surely have some tea.”

  Before Mairi could say a word, Fenella thrust a cup into her hands. She took it and remained silent while Fenella poured the tea, then added the sugar she liked.

  Maybe she would have a pastie or two. The smell wafting from the platter made her stomach growl in protest.

  Fenella didn’t bother hiding her smile when Mairi reached for one.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” her cousin said a few minutes later.

  Her pastie finished, Mairi reached for a chocolate-covered biscuit. She wasn’t hungry so much as fumbling for something to say.

  “I wasn’t avoiding you,” she said. “I just didn’t seek you out.”

  “Or come down for dinner. Or lunch. Or breakfast.”

  An unwilling smile curved her lips. “Very well, perhaps I was avoiding you.”

  “Why?”

  “Jealousy,” she said.

  Fenella’s eyes widened and she stopped eating. “Of me?”

  Mairi nodded.

  Fenella put her pastie down on the plate.

  “Why would you be jealous of me?” she asked, smiling gently. “You have the same potential for happiness.”

  “Embarrassment, then.”

  She sat back and looked at Mairi. “Hasn’t that faded?”

  “Regrettably, no.”

  “Are you embarrassed about being caught, Mairi? Or embarrassed for going to Mr. Harrison’s home?”

  She didn’t know how to answer that. She wasn’t embarrassed about going with Logan, but all of them descending on his house like hungry locusts was still humiliating.

  Her only answer, however, was a shrug.

  For a few minutes they didn’t speak, the room cocooned by the falling snow.

  Fenella dusted off her hands.

  “You seem very interested in the idea of fighting for the rights of women, Mairi. Could you not also fight for the right to be a woman?”

  She put the half eaten biscuit down. “What does that mean?”

  Fenella sighed. “Why can’t you love someone and still be yourself? Love doesn’t change a woman. It makes life better, Mairi. It doesn’t make it worse.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Oh, you know,” Fenella said. “If you’d allow yourself to. You’re in love with Logan, but you won’t allow it. Why, Mairi?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were afraid. But you’ve never been afraid of anything.” Fenella sat back. “Or am I wrong? Does he frighten you?”

  She shook her head.

  She felt protected around Logan, as if his size, the power of his personality, shielded her, even from herself. She’d never had anyone to depend on like Logan. Her father had always been too busy. Macrath had been too driven. And Calvin? She almost laughed at the thought of depending on Calvin. He’d been a weak man, terrified of the opinion of others. He would be horrified at her recent actions.

  Calvin was a shadow next to Logan.

  When would she stop doing that? Measuring other people against Logan wasn’t wise. Worse, it made her sorrow even greater, if that were possible.

  Fenella drank her tea then put the cup down, eyeing Mairi.

  “I think you’re in love with him.”

  “What I feel for Logan Harrison isn’t love. Love isn’t volatile. I want to shout at him more often than not. I want to march up to him and poke him in the chest with my finger.” And then pull his head down for a kiss.

  Fenella smiled. “The right man excites you, pushes you, makes you laugh with abandon.”

  She stared at her cousin.

  “Love shouldn’t make me want to run from the room and hide my head under a pillow.”

  Fenella shocked her by laughing.

  Mairi frowned at her cousin.

  “Love should make me feel warm inside, not as if someone has punched me in the stomach. I shouldn’t be trembling at the thought of love. It should make me sigh in contentment, not make me nauseous.”

  “If you want to feel contentment, get a kitten. Or a puppy,” Fenella said. “Feel that way for a pet, not a man.”

  Fenella shook her head, still smiling. “You’re just like him, you know,” she said.

  Surprised, Mairi gave up all pretense of eating. “Macrath said the same.”

  “You’re both strong-willed people, determined to get your way. You see a goal and you go after it. I think Logan is like that, too. Did you know that he’s our youngest Lord Provost?”

  “I may have read something about that,” Mairi said.

  “He’s also been very successful in his businesses,” she continued. “He has three bookstores.”

  “Yes, I know,” Mairi said.

  She glanced at her cousin, to find Fenella’s eyes twinkling.

  “We’re not the same at all,” she said. “Besides, he never said a word about the future until Macrath suggested marriage. I’ll not force a man to the altar.”

  She didn’t tell her cousin about his declaration of love, even though the words still echoed in her mind.

  “Is that what has you in knots?”

  Mairi studied her skirt as her fingers pleated the fabric. “I’m human. I have feelings.”

  “Perhaps he’s the same,” Fenella said, picking up one of the trays.

  Mairi looked up at her.

  “Perhaps he was loath to say anything for fear of your reaction. Would you have been receptive to his courtship?”

  She stared at Fenella, who smiled at her.

  “Oh, Mairi, love is exactly what you described. It’s volatile and messy and inconvenient and glorious.”

  She vanished through the doorway, leaving Mairi to stare after her. Had Fenella always been so direct and she’d never noticed it before? Or had love changed her, as it seemed to change everyone?

  As for her, she was almost sick for the loss of Logan and furious because she was. Then she was even more miserable because she realized she’d brought all this unhappiness on herself.

  Logan had come up with a half-dozen strategies, all of them worthwhile. He could simply appear everywhere she went until she threw up her hands in exasperation and allowed him to plead his case.

  Or he could send her a note for every hour of every day until she begged him not to write her again.

  He’d compose a broadside—perhaps write a bad poem to her—have it printed and distribute it around her house, sending a hundred or so to her. Or hang them from the branches of the trees around her house.

  He’d take out an ad in one of Edinburgh’s papers and confess his love to her for all the good citizens of Edinburgh to read.

  He
’d stand in front of her house with musicians and serenade her. He’d been told he had a passably good baritone.

  He would bring her books he’d liked, editions from his own library. He wasn’t a fan of poetry, but perhaps she would like Burns. Every Scot liked Burns.

  The problem was that none of those ideas would change Mairi’s mind if she were determined that it wasn’t going to be changed.

  She didn’t want his money. Although he hadn’t amassed a fortune, his bookshops were doing well. Edinburgh was a city of lawyers, bankers, and politicians, and he catered to each group. Because of the success of his business, he’d always have an occupation to return to should he wish to leave politics.

  He suspected that if the costs he had to pay to be a politician became too dear—the loss of privacy and the endless need to always be available—he could walk away from being Lord Provost without much difficulty.

  He couldn’t walk away from Mairi.

  She didn’t want his house or his possessions.

  She didn’t want him.

  That was the most difficult thing to accept. How could she forget those moments in his bed? Or those hours when they’d talked and he’d been more honest with her than anyone?

  He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, placed his feet on it and settled back in his chair. Weaving his fingers together over his stomach, he stared out the window at the view of the castle.

  His classic thinking pose, as Thomas would say.

  He had never courted a woman, let alone one like Mairi. Perhaps if he instituted all of his plans, she wouldn’t have a chance to say no. She’d be so overwhelmed by his single-minded assault that she’d surrender.

  He grinned. When had Mairi ever surrendered?

  Thomas entered the room, his arms filled with papers. No doubt a hundred tasks he had to review before the next council meeting.

  He smiled at his secretary. “Have I ever taken a holiday, Thomas?”

  Thomas deposited the lot on top of his desk, rearranging his face from an instant frown to a more acceptable expression.

  “Other than the few days you went to Drumvagen, sir? I don’t think so.”

  “Then I think it’s time I do, don’t you?”