Page 3 of The Devil of Clan Sinclair
“I’ve already picked out your husband and it’s not that Scot.”
Her hands were still clasped in front of her. She bowed her head again, her gaze on the crimson patterned carpet. She’d think of anything but her father’s words. Her mind, unaccustomed to joy, had forced her imagination to produce something more familiar, her father’s derision.
“You’re going to be a countess, daughter. How do you feel about that?”
She was going to be sick.
Slowly, she lifted her eyes, unsurprised to find him smiling.
“But you agreed to meet with him,” she said.
“It’s done, Virginia. We’ve just now finalized the arrangements. You’re to be married within the month to the Earl of Barrett.”
Turning, he extended his hand and a woman stepped out of the shadows. “Your future mother-in-law, Virginia. The Countess of Barrett.”
She gave the woman barely a glance, intent on her father. She said the one word she never said, one tiny word she’d learned had no power in the past. Perhaps it would work now.
“Please.”
The world halted, stilled, hung on a breath of air.
“There’s no fussing about it; the deal has been struck.”
“But you agreed to meet with Macrath.”
He scowled at her. “I won’t tolerate your rebellion, Virginia.” Turning to the woman, he said, “I’ll have her chaperone take my daughter home, your ladyship. Perhaps a few weeks of contemplating her future will make her grateful for it.”
The woman merely nodded.
“There won’t be any entertainments until after your wedding,” her father said.
Did it matter?
She’d be confined to her room, but she didn’t care. She’d sit and stare out at the world, her body in one place, her soul and heart in another.
Virginia only shook her head, unable to speak, flooded by a sense of despair so deep she was certain she was bleeding inside.
Chapter 1
London, England
July, 1869
The ferns near the window wiggled their fronds as if they wanted to escape the room.
Virginia Anderson Traylor, Countess of Barrett, wiggled on the chair and wanted to do the same.
She sat in the corner of the parlor, swathed in black. Her hands were folded on her lap, her knees pressed together, her head at the perfect angle.
How many times had she thought about this scene? In the last year, at least a dozen or more, but in her imagination she’d always been surrounded by weeping women rather than sitting a solitary vigil.
She stood, unable to remain still any longer. She’d been a good and proper widow for nine hours now. For the last four, she’d watched over her husband’s coffin alone.
Her thoughts, however, had not been on her husband.
A dog howled, no doubt the same dog that howled for three nights straight. Ellice, her sister-in-law, thought he’d announced Poor Lawrence’s death.
The parlor where she sat stretched the length of the town house. Two fireplaces warmed it in winter, but now it was pleasantly temperate. The room had been refurbished with the infusion of money she’d brought to the marriage. The wallpaper was a deep crimson, topped by an ivory frieze of leaves and ferns. Four overstuffed chairs, upholstered in a similar crimson pattern as the wallpaper, squatted next to a tufted settee. A half-dozen marble-topped tables, each adorned with a tapestry runner, filled the rest of the available space, their sharp corners patiently waiting to snare a passing skirt.
