Page 49 of The Devil of Clan Sinclair
The sun slipped behind gray clouds, the diffused light giving the moor almost a pastoral appearance. Seabirds swooped overhead, soaring on air currents preceding another storm.
Macrath stood at the window watching as Virginia Traylor, Countess of Barrett, departed Drumvagen. She didn’t stop, didn’t ask the coachman to pull the carriage to the side of the road or look for a wider place to turn around to come back to him.
I am the Countess of Barrett. I have people depending on me, just like your sisters are dependent on you.
She hid behind her title when it suited her and dismissed it at other times.
The girl he’d known had vanished. Where was the Virginia who delighted in the news of the day, whose eyes had sparkled with mischief? Where was the girl who talked politics with him, who whispered of the latest broadsheets in an excited voice? In her place was a woman who fascinated him but remained a stranger even now.
He knew her body well, but did he know her mind? Who was Virginia?
He’d been a silly, lovestruck idiot a year ago, and he wasn’t going to long for her again. Perhaps there was one woman in every man’s life who showed him to be a fool, who turned his stomach inside out and made pudding of his mind. If that were true, he’d just banished his.
He wouldn’t think of her any longer. He wouldn’t return to the grotto until the image of their loving had faded, until she was no more than a ghost. He wouldn’t come back to the suite where he now stood until all hint of her perfume had dissipated. Open up the windows, air out the rooms, banish her scent.
Could he erase his memories? If so, he’d wipe out the whole last day along with the joy, the lilting happiness he’d felt in her presence.
“She’s gone, then?”
He didn’t turn at Brianag’s words. He only nodded.
“You’ll be better off, I’m thinking.”
“Are you a soothsayer now, Brianag?”
“Some say I have the gift.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “But you don’t,” he said. “Because that would be too much like witchcraft.”
When she smiled, her face looked odd, almost like it wasn’t prepared for amusement. Scowls suited her better.
“She wasn’t for the likes of you, her with her maid and her airs.”
He turned back to the window. “I don’t think Virginia has airs,” he said. One sin he couldn’t lay at her feet.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?” Brianag said. “She’s gone and she won’t be back.”
“No,” he said, feeling something inside twist with the realization. “She won’t be back.”
After she left, he strode into the bedroom, flinging open the doors of the armoire. The space was empty. What had he expected to find? Something he could use as a talisman, a reminder? Something he’d tuck into his pocket? He never wanted to forget Virginia Anderson Traylor, Countess of Barrett. She was a walking, living, breathing lesson.
He opened the bureau drawers. Nothing there, either, showing her maid was exceptionally conscientious.
No, he didn’t need anything to help him recall her. She was there, etched in his mind like acid.
Why hadn’t she stayed with him? Had she come to Scotland to resurrect a lost love, only to find that it had died just like her husband?
Once, she’d loved him, he was certain of it. And now?
Evidently not enough to remain in Scotland with him.
Walking to the bed, he placed his hand on the pillow, half expecting the smooth linen to be warm. The faint depression suggested she’d lain there, but not for long. Last night she’d been in his arms, and this morning they’d awakened each other with passion.
How quickly passion had turned to anger. Or perhaps his rage was merely a shield, a camouflage behind which his true emotions hid.
He’d lost, and failure didn’t come easily to him, but that wasn’t the reason he clenched his hand into a fist and left the room, slamming the door behind him.
London
