Page 15 of The Devil of Clan Sinclair
Her father was determined that she was to be cultured. He had no interest in anything but business, so while he met with various solicitors, off she went in the company of her American maid and her English chaperone, a woman with whom she’d been saddled since arriving in London.
Mrs. Haverstock was as far from a chaperone as Virginia could imagine. The woman had been widowed, she said, for over five years, which meant she must have married as a child. She was only a few years older than her, with blond hair so pale it appeared almost white in a certain light. She smiled often and was delighted by almost everything she saw, even Virginia’s father.
“Mr. Anderson,” she once said, “is an amazing man to have accomplished all he’s done as young as he is.” From that day forward, Virginia watched Mrs. Haverstock with curiosity, wondering if she had dreams of becoming the second Mrs. Anderson.
A curious thing to contemplate because she’d never once considered that her father would remarry. That he didn’t was probably due more to his consuming interest in business over amatory pursuits.
However, she would not have been surprised if Mrs. Haverstock was successful. She’d managed to convince him to hire her after only one interview, after all.
The woman was indefatigable. They visited St. Paul’s Cathedral one day and Covent Garden Market the next. One whole afternoon was spent at London Bridge, followed by a short and fragrant journey down the Thames.
Virginia would never forget how horrified she’d been by Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks. She couldn’t imagine her father approving that expedition so she never told him of it, or the nightmares that came for two days afterward at the thought of all those wax statues coming alive.
At Westminster Abbey, she was horrified to discover other tourists gouging their names into the royal tombs. When she said as much to her chaperone, Mrs. Haverstock just waved her comment away.
“They’ve done the same to the pyramids, my dear.”
Mrs. Haverstock adored museums, and Virginia might have as well had she not been dragged to every one of them in London. The East Indian Museum was regrettably boring, but the British Museum was most impressive.
The concentric circles and curved shelves of the Round Reading Room fascinated her. So, too, the various readers occupying the tables. Each claimed his space beneath the vaulted blue dome like it was his home. One reader had strung a rope between him and the nearest table and hung tracts from them, cautioning a visitor from speaking to him. Another had brochures of anti-papal literature arrayed in front of him.
She was walking quietly from one shelf to another, grateful to have momentarily lost Mrs. Haverstock to a conversation with an unexpectedly encountered friend, when she saw him.
Macrath leaned against a bookshelf and smiled at her.
Her heart was leaping in her chest like a child promised a candy.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
Looking around, she couldn’t see Mrs. Haverstock. She grabbed Macrath’s sleeve and disappeared in front of one of the curved shelves with him, well aware that, if seen, this infraction of decorum was sure to be reported to her father.
“What are you doing here?” she asked again.
“I could say that I visit the British Museum often,” he said.
“Do you?”
“It’s only my second time here.”
For a month they’d seen each other at balls and dinners, and found a way to slip away from the crowd. More than once he’d asked for her reticule and she’d handed it to him, amused when he slipped a few broadsides inside.
“There, you won’t have to lie. You didn’t buy them.”
Whenever he did that, she’d take out the broadsides later, smoothing her hands over the rough paper, not caring about what tales they told as much as that Macrath had touched them.
“You told Ceana you’d be here,” he said, smiling.
She had occasion to meet Ceana one night, and the two became fast friends, each watching for the other at various events.
But it was Macrath who changed her life.
If Macrath was in a room, her eyes sought him out. If he laughed, her ears heard it. She could even tell if he spoke in a crowd because his Scottish accent was so distinctive.
“I came to see you,” he said now. “I couldn’t wait for tonight.”
“You couldn’t?”
Her heart had ascended to the base of her throat and something odd was happening in her eyes. She couldn’t hold all the emotions she was feeling inside, and they had to be expressed as tears.
