Page 24 of The Devil of Clan Sinclair
Virginia was at Drumvagen.
Brianag tapped her foot impatiently. Who employed whom?
“Is there anything else?”
“You might try smiling once in awhile,” he said. “Or stop looking so ferocious. Or try remembering I’m your employer. A simple ‘sir’ wouldn’t be amiss from time to time.”
“Is that all? Sir?”
He nodded, and she left the room, mumbling something in her indecipherable Scots.
Macrath had been born and raised in Edinburgh. He considered himself a Scot through and through. Yet the people of Kinloch spoke with such a thick accent he had a hard time understanding them. He’d heard Brianag in the kitchen, talking to the maids, and it might as well be a foreign tongue. When she noticed him, she always switched to a more understandable Scottish English, one not requiring interpretation.
When she was irritated, however, she spoke whatever she wanted.
He eased back in his chair, staring at the carved ceiling. Reaching inside his jacket, he plucked out the note he’d kept with him for a year. A handy piece of remembrance, a morality tale in a few sentences. Something to keep him sane—and probably bitter—for all these months. A reminder that he shouldn’t be so overjoyed to see her now, or not until certain questions were resolved.
He read it again although he could see the words whenever he closed his eyes. A moment later he tucked it away again.
What explanation would she give him for both the note and her arrival at Drumvagen?
The last time he’d seen her, Virginia had been walking away from him with a smile, heading toward her father.
A man to whom he’d taken an instant dislike, a confession he’d never made to her.
“My daughter tells me you own a newspaper,” Anderson had said on that first meeting. They’d both been sipping whiskey offered in one of the rooms set aside for bored spouses and male escorts.
Of average height, Anderson had black hair and blue eyes that were cold and flat, without one ounce of warmth. The only time he appeared remotely approachable was when he talked about his empire, how many shares of stock in railroads he owned, his cotton mills, and ships. Evidently, the recent war in America had only expanded his holdings.
A curiosity—not once did Anderson mention his daughter.
“The newspaper is a family business,” Macrath told him. “I’ve since branched out into other fields. I’ve invented an ice machine.”
“An inventor, eh? One of those fellas who tinker with things, then try to convince the rest of us to give them money for it. Is that it?”
“I suppose it is,” Macrath said.
The American had just described, in unflattering terms, what he’d done to get funding for his first machine. He’d come up with the idea, created a prototype, then solicited investors to whom he proved it would be a good risk. After the first flurry of sales of the Sinclair Ice Machine, having made five men richer than they’d been, he declined any further investments.
When he explained this to Virginia’s father, the man didn’t look impressed. Instead, Anderson studied him with a sour expression on his face.
“I’ve heard tales about Scotland. How you all prance about in kilts, showing your bare asses. I’m surprised there are any of you left, what with you beating each other over the head with swords for hundreds of years.”
“Perhaps I’ll get a chance to show you the real Scotland,” he said, hoping such an occasion never happened. He couldn’t imagine being trapped in a railroad car or carriage with Anderson for longer than a minute or two.
The man flicked his hand at him, as if to dismiss Scotland and Macrath. In the next moment he’d wandered off, leaving Macrath staring after him and trying to imagine the man as an in-law.
However, he’d been willing to put aside his feelings for Virginia’s sake.
Evidently, Virginia had put aside hers as well. For him.
Why was she here? Should he even care? She was here, and that was all that mattered.
Virginia studied her reflection in the pier glass as Hannah fluffed her hem and straightened her hoop.
“It’s a good thing you’re one of those women who look handsome in black,” her mother-in-law had said. “But you needn’t wear those nightgowns edged in black, I think.”
She had closed her eyes on that comment, not wishing to discuss her nightgowns with Enid.
