Page 8 of Return to Clan Sinclair
“I’ll wager Peter’s death was difficult for them.”
She nodded. Her beloved Peter had caught a simple cold. It had lingered for a few weeks and gone into pneumonia, until his heart had simply stopped one night.
“You’re their connection to Peter. If you change too much, it’s like you’re taking Peter away from them again.”
She considered Virginia’s words.
“I moved to one of the gardener’s cottages on the castle grounds. You would have thought I danced naked in the light of the moon.”
Virginia smiled.
She regarded the hearth, now empty of fire. In a few weeks the room would need a full grown blaze. She might not live in Edinburgh any longer but Scottish weather didn’t change.
“Is that why you’re still dressed in black?”
She glanced down at herself. “I don’t know if I’ll ever wear anything else,” she said. “Heaven knows what the brothers would do if I ever wore mauve.” She glanced at Virginia. “I loved Peter with all my heart, but he’s gone. I can’t make him come alive, no matter how much I pray for it.”
“No, you can’t,” Virginia said softly. “And you need a life of your own, one you choose. Have you considered moving back to Scotland?”
“I’ve begun to think it’s the only way I can have a life,” she said.
“You’re always welcome at Drumvagen.”
The suite she’d never before seen proved that.
When Macrath and Virginia had come to Ireland after Peter’s death, the attraction between them had been difficult to witness because it reminded her too much of Peter’s loss. Would it still?
Peter, too, had a way of looking at her across the room, a glance signifying love, possession, and passion. Sometimes he would smile at her, his lips barely curving, yet she would know he was vastly amused by the scene he was watching. He was a kind, considerate, thoroughly likable man, a financial genius who had taken the Duke of Lester’s fortune and trebled it. Because of him, Iverclaire was positioned well for the next hundred years. Even the most profligate descendent could not hope to spend all of the money he’d amassed.
She and her daughters were also wealthy. She could easily move anywhere she wanted and not fear for lack of money.
“Thank you,” she said. “Maybe that’s why I came home, to see if there’s a place for me here.”
“You know there is.” Virginia held out the tin, but this time she shook her head.
“Now tell me why this Bruce person is here at Drumvagen.”
“Bruce Preston. He’s a business associate of Macrath. I suspect he is investigating something to do with Macrath’s newest invention. Macrath won’t discuss the details with me. He told me when the time was right, he would share everything, but for now it’s a secret.”
How like Macrath.
She stood, walked to the window, looking down on the massive rose garden.
“Now I wish I hadn’t left the girls in Ireland. They would love Drumvagen.”
“Time enough for them to see it,” Virginia said. “But mothers sometimes need time alone.”
She nodded. Suddenly she was crying. She didn’t know if she was weeping for all the confusion and misery of the last year or for the loss of Peter or for her future, unexciting as it was.
Virginia was there, a shoulder and an embrace.
That’s why she was here at Drumvagen, to feel loved and to be heard.
“It was pirates,” Carlton said, his bottom lip sticking out. “I saw pirates.” He eyed Macrath as if calculating just how much he could push his father. “You wouldn’t want me to be trapped in my room, Papa, when there were pirates about.”
Any other time, Macrath might have been amused, but not now. He stood there, arms folded, staring down at his youngest son.
Virginia had almost died giving birth to Carlton. Yet he was the most adventurous and challenging of all his children. Alistair had been intelligent, curious, and perfectly mannered. Fiona was sweet, endearing, and a beauty. Carlton could never stay clean, was forever imagining things, and fought him every step of the way.
